Got a copy of JT's Ladies Ride Again. It has two catfights: one a tag team match with four women I'd never heard of and the other Belle Starr and Calamity Jane vs a bunch of lesbian feminists.
1) The only interesting thing, to me, about the Belle and Calam fight was knowing they had fought in another book but they work together here. I like that kind of female-relationship material, but there isn't any actual payoff here. This fight itself I found dull in its setup and description. Also, the material goes all in on "feminists=ugly=lesbians=criminals," which I find very off-putting.
2) The tag team is ... odd, but I like it. The description of the girls I'd rate as interesting, while the fighting itself has a few good moments but way too much is cut out--while the fight itself covers many pages, a lot of those involve characters talking while the match is going on, etc, and you don't get a lot of direct action. However, the conceit of the fight is that it's a "debate" between representatives of two all-girls English boarding schools. And Edson sticks with the conceit for the whole fight, so you get sentences like "she and her debating opponent continued their discussion by rolling over each other on the mat, yanking hair." It's so bizarre I found it endearing.
3) At one point, Belle Starr is mistakenly referred to by the text as Belle Boyd.
4) Two pedophiles are at the tag team match, I believe in order to blackmail the Headmistress of the boarding school.
It's not a collection of great fights, but I liked it for its weirdness. It's not Best Edson, but it might be Most Edson.
