Tarzan Boy vs. Rey Bucanero (CMLL 01/01/00)
This was an effective mano a mano bout. Mano a manos usually have a glass ceiling on how good they can be but this had a bit of meat to it. The double juice helped. Blood is so rare in CMLL these days that it was a surprise to see Bucanero bleed so much. There were a couple of gaffes on the bigger action stuff, like the blatant calling of the flash pin in the segunda caida and Tarzan Boy overshooting his dive, but it was a decent Coliseo bout, and
Negro Casas, Lizmark & Olimpico vs Blue Panther, Bestia Salvaje & Scorpio Jr. (CMLL 01/18/00)
I thought this was excellent while it lasted. I could have sworn I'd had my fill of Casas vs. Bestia & Scorpio over the years, but it's been a while and I dug watching Casas and Bestia trade blows. Panther was excellent in this, which isn't always the case when he's the lead guy in a rudo team. I wasn't sure how legit Olimpico's injury was considering how long Panther kept him in the arm
Volador Jr. vs. Cavernario, 2016 CMLL Reyes del Aire final, 9/30/16
I didn't start enjoying this until deep into the terceda caida. The crowd was at a fever pitch and there was a lot of selling and drama. Prior to that, it was move after move, dive after dive, with it all feeling pretty hollow. People often complain about the first two falls in lucha being short and pointless. You watch a match like this and it's hard to dispute that claim. The first two falls were rubbish, especially the se
Volador Jr. vs. Cavernario, NWA World Historic Welterweight Championship, CMLL 10/7/16
Well, it was obvious watching this that CMLL title matches are no longer mat-based classics but generic singles matches, and that lucha is more influenced by outside influences than ever before. That said, I still enjoyed this.
What I liked about it was that the rudo, Cavernario, had the momentum for most of the bout. and the tecnico, Volador Jr, had to keep fighting back even after he'd squared thing
Negro Casas vs. Rey Hechicero (Arena Coliseo Monterrey 4/24/16)
This was a decent match, but would have to have been a hell of a lot more dramatic to be in the running for Match of the Year contention.
The match peaked with the primera caida, which isn't a great place for a two-out-of-three falls match to peak. The idea of Casas working holds with Hechicero appealed to me. Casas isn't a great mat worker, but he knows how to hang in there, and I thought the flow of the matwork and Casas'
Trauma I vs. Canis Lupus (mask vs. mask, IWRG 9/4/16)
It seemed impossible for this match to live up to the hype. Over the past few weeks, I've seen it described as one of the best brawls ever, one of the best mask matches of all-time and a match of the decade contender.
For the first two falls, it failed to live up to the hype. The work in the first fall wasn't bad but there was too much pandering to the crowd instead of the intense focus on maiming your opponent that you expect from an
So, it's the first day of 2017, and as usual I've done a piss-poor job of following the modern lucha scene as it happens. But in this day and age of YouTube playlists, there's no excuse to not get caught up.
I'm going to start with the Black Terry vs. Aeroboy apuesta match, which is where I left off last time.
Black Terry vs. Aeroboy (mask vs. hair, 6/10/16)
This was a nice, scuzzy apuesta match. I liked how they started fighting before Aeroboy had taken his jacket off just like in
Black Terry vs. Aero Boy, Funcion Estelar, 3/18/16
Black Terry, what drives this man? What keeps him in the fight game? Lacing up the boots, ignoring the lumps and bruises, tending to the cuts. Terry is almost the same age as my father but still he fights. The early exchanges here showed that Terry isn't as quick as he used to be. He can't bump like he used to, can't pull a kick to the back like a young man might, but as soon as this goes to the outside Terry is in his element. Outside the r
Black Terry vs. Barbaro Cavernario, Cara Lucha 6/11/16
Holy crap this was awesome. I haven't seen Terry wrestle for a couple of years and barely recognised him with the bald head and yellow t-shirt, but brawling Terry was always my favourite kind of Terry and he brought the same level of stiffness as his Hechicero matches from a few years back. I watched this straight after the LA Park/Rush Liga Elite mano a mano and blow for blow this was the more violent match. The older and lumpier Terry
El Signo vs. Villano V, UWA World Light Heavyweight Championship, UWA 4/3/92
I first saw this many years ago when sharing lucha online was still in its infancy. I may have written about it for this blog (I have a cold today and can't be bothered trawling through the archives.) The version I remember didn't have the pre-match interviews or workout footage, and really, who doesn't like watching luchadores train? Villano's neck-strengthening exercises were so freakin' cool. This was 13 minutes
We all know that dataintcash is an invaluable source of lucha libre footage, and we all know that invaluable sources of wrestling footage invariably disappear from YouTube, so I thought instead of letting dataintcash's channel go to waste, I'd start throwing out some thoughts about his uploads for prosperity's sake. Originally, I was going to do an hours worth of footage at a time, but since his uploads tend to be fairly long, I'll just watch what I can. With Arthur Psycho's uploads, I did these
Katsumi Usuda vs Masanobu Kurisu-Big Mouth Loud 29.12.2005.
This is my kind of wrestling right here, I was coming in hoping for this to be a festival of ultraviolence but they chose to work the mat which I would have also accepted, I don't really ever remember watching Kurisu roll, he looked good here, doing neat stuff like using his knee to bend Usuda's ankle which you'd expect to see from Fujiwara. This "matwork" section also included Kurisu shoot headbutting Usuda like ten times. The crow
Negro Casas/Fuerza Guerrera vs. El Hijo del Santo/Octagon, Cd. Juarez, circa 1990-91
I'm hopelessly out of the loop (not that I was ever really in it to begin with), but it looks like some Mexican channel is re-airing footage from the Cicudad Juarez territory that Alfredo Esparza grew up watching in El Paso, which is pretty cool to say the least.
To me the single most interesting thing about this bout is watching Casas work with Octagon. It's almost like watching a proto version of the C
Naoya Ogawa vs Kazuo Yamazaki-NJPW 6.7.1997.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG7_3p9rc5Q
First Fujiwara-Frye, now this, today has been a good day. Ogawa is still in his gi-wearing phase and his offence is limited to judo stuff, it creates an interesting styles clash against a shoot wrestler like Yamazaki, there were a bunch of good looking slams and strikes in here but what really made it is how smartly they were built up, every offensive maneuver made here made sense from the persepctive of a
Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Don Frye-NJPW 5.6.1998.
I had no idea this happened so I watched it immediately as I stumbled upon it. It ruled. It had to. Don Frye isn't a great wrestler per se, so I tried to imagine a scenario in which this match would be disappointing, but I simply couldn't. There was no way the narrow skillset he possesses wouldn't translate well in this setting. Watching them battle on the mat was really fun, one of the first thing Fujiwara did in the match was a leglock hammerlo
Haven't watched lucha for ages. Didn't know where to start so I started all over the place.
Blue Panther/Guerrero Negro vs. Huracán Sevilla/Gran Hamada (Monterrey 1991)
I love Huracan Sevilla. Everything I've read about his reign of terror at Pavillón Azteca as Darth Vader seems the stuff of lucha journeyman legend. Terrorising toys, puppets and cartoon characters is surreal enough, but having his partners turn on him, and losing his mask to a local star in Guatemala, only adds to the l
SHINYA HASHIMOTO VS SATORU SAYAMA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7QXDdHai-c
This is probably the most important video of my life. Like I think there's a chance I encountered it somewhere before and then forgot about it but finding it right now, at this stage of my life, holds a meaning that is hard to put into words. It may not even be worked but who cares it's HASHIMOTO AND SAYAMA. This is a boxing match from a japanese TV game show. It's awesome. Great visuals, goofy gloves, punches to the
Satoru Sayama vs Yuji Ito-Gracie Tournament 29.7.1994.
Firstly I'd like to thank the person that helped me decipher Yuji Ito's kanji/name and made this review possible. One of my favourite things right now is finding as many Sayama shoot matches as possible and their inaccessibility and the convoluted youtube journeys I have to go throught to find them make them even more amusing. They mostly seem to be exhibitions on MMA cards. This was completely badass, just them trying to cramp as much
AKIRA MAEDA vs DUTCH MANTELL-UWF 11.4.1984.
OH BOY HERE WE GO. I am sure this is a match that is very famous among pwo elders but I am young and inexperienced and had no idea it happened until today. I envisioned this as a shoot style blog but really I'll post anything that I can somehow connect to shoot style here and this was too bizarre for it to not end up here. I guess this blog's philosophy is closer to UWFi than it is to RINGS. This wasn't even a shoot style match but it took plac
Jushin Thunder Liger vs Satoru Sayama-NJPW 1.5.1994.
An exhibition match with a ten minute limit-you know how those end. Glimpses of this were really great (Liger's Abisengiri, the slap-punch exchange and Sayama avoiding a shoulder block by just walking away) but it looked like they were too tentative to create something that would be more than merely good. It was completely devoid of conventional drama and had almost no highspots so I can't see traditionalists liking it much. I was curious how
Satoru Sayama vs Yoshinori Nishi-LUMAX CUP 13.10.1995.
This was an "exhibition match" that took place during a shoot tournament. I always thought worked judo would be an amazing form of pro wrestling and this is probably the closest we'll ever get, they still used leglocks and punches/kicks but wore gis and fought on tatamis. Nishi looked really great in this, his kicks were wonderful (there was a great counter spot where he sweeped Sayama's legs with one) and his flying armbar looked de
Satoru Sayama vs Tiger Mask IV-BJW 25.7.1995.
This was short and a really great Sayama carry job, his kicks looked beautiful, he performed a couple of great looking takedowns and punches the shit out of his protege when he was in a position that allowed him to do so. There's a really cool moment where TMIV goes for a wheelbarrow leglock and Sayama tries to quickly block it by grabbing TM's foot an pressing his stomach/chest with a knee but doesn't execute it fast enough and gets caugh
JAPW 6/7/2002: American Dragon vs. Low Ki
This was a submission match that would've stylistically fit right into Battlarts, hence its inclusion here. The great thing about early 2000s indies is that they could've done an amazing experimental match like this because there weren't really any indy tropes established at the time. They go out of the ring and use some pro-style offence but about 90% of this is based on grappling and struggling for submission attempts and escapes. They don't shy away
