Bushi vs. Dr. Cerebro, IWRG Intercontinental Lightweight Championship, 1/10/10
Black Terry Jr's handhelds are fast becoming the only way to watch IWRG. Give me Terry's handhelds over their TV production any day.
This was nothing like a lucha libre title match, but I've decided to stop caring about that this year. If someone works a decent title match, I'll praise them for it, but it's painfully obvious that these matches are the norm now. They kind of remind me of WWE matches, but I g
IWRG 1/07/10
Black Terry/Dr Cerebro/Cerebro Negro vs. Pantera/Suicida/Zatura
This had some of the lousiest matwork I've seen in a Terribles Cerebros match. It was like they were trying to do old-school Los Temerarios/Fantásticos exchanges, but they're all a bit too portly. Things picked up in the second fall when the Cerebros started brawling and I dug the camera angle on the technicos' comeback (and the topes in particular), but this was largely forgettable.
Angelico/Solar/Ultra
Satanico vs. Shiro Koshinaka, hair vs. hair, EMLL 7/30/84
One of the things I discovered while watching the New Japan set is that I hate Shiro Koshinaka. I don't know why this is, since he's never been a worker I've felt strongly about one way or the other. I think Dylan Waco may have referred to him as a blackhole and that's as good a description of him as any. It did pique my interest in this match, however. It's not a match I remember liking particularly much, but it's Satanico so there
El Hijo del Santo vs. Felino, CMLL 7/25/97
This was a revancha for Santo's title loss to Felino on July 4th; a match that ended with one of the great screwjob finishes of all time. If you've never seen that bout, I highly recommend it. It's one of the best lucha matches of the 90s and the finish is pure Casas.
This revancha didn't offer much in the way of revenge, and I should've known by the number of times they showed Casas at ringside that they were just furthering the angle, but a
Time for some lucha awards.
2009 was a frustrating year that saw a lot of sources for IWRG and Arena Puebla appear and disappear, but at the same time a lot of random lucha indy footage made its way onto the internet. These awards are unashamedly based on the Tapatía Awards at cubsfan's site, and this year I asked Raging Noodles to give us his thoughts too. Don't bother reading them if you like CMLL and AAA.
Best Wrestler:
RN -- Negro Navarro
This was one of the best years
El Hijo del Santo vs. Felino, Mexican National Middleweight Championship, CMLL 4/5/96
This was a good match. It wasn't a mat classic like the Blue Panther vs. Atlantis Copa Victoria final, but it had a lot in common with how I think lucha should be wrestled these days, i.e., if you're not going to wrestle close to the canvas, you should at least be clever about how you put a match together.
This started off on the mat, but didn't really go anywhere because Felino wasn't able to work fr
Solar/Black Terry vs. Negro Navarro/Rambo, UWE, 10/17/09
This continued the trend of matches failing to be anything special, but it did feature some high end Solar vs. Negro Navarro.
In all of their recent matches, they've shown that they're not content to rest on the laurels of local MCs hyping them up as maestros extraordinaire. The 10/5 Misioneros vs. Space Cadets match from Futrap de Nuevo Laredo and the 11/22 Solar/Platino/Perro Mastin vs. Negro Navarro/Fishman Jr/Arcanos trios fr
Freelance vs. Oficial Fierro, hair vs. hair, 11/29/09
This was more like it.
Fierro came into the match with his arm bandaged up and Freelance spent most of the match going after the injury and telling the ref to fuck off. Nothing outstanding, but at least he did the whole una sopa de su propio chocolate schtick without any qualms. If anyone's going to be a Black Terry type figure in ten, fifteen years time, then it has to be Freelance, since he's one of the few young workers with any
RAMBO VS. VILLANO III, 6/14/01
RAMBO VS. VILLANO III, HAIR VS. HAIR, 6/21/01
Eight years is a long time to wait for your revenge, but that's how long it took José Luis Mendieta Rodríguez to finally meet up with senor Señor Mendoza again.
PART ONE -- THE MANO A MANO
RAGING NOODLES:
Watching this I was thinking about how certain essentials and basics have been lost in pro wrestling matches as the years go by. There is nothing excessive here like most modern pro wrestling mat
Dr. Cerebro vs. Suicida, hair vs. hair, 11/15/09
This was the most poorly booked hair match I've seen in a long time.
There was no reason for these guys to be fighting, IWRG just threw the match out there like they usually do. The workers were given about a week's turnaround to have a hair match and there wasn't even time to have a series of low blow finishes like Policeman and Centella de Oro. Given the confines of what they were asked to do, it wasn't a bad match, but there wasn't a
BLACK TERRY VS. MULTIFACETICO, hair vs. mask, 4/17/08
Black Terry in a singles match. This has gotta be good, right?
RAGING NOODLES:
The opening video promo for this match makes me want to get a hold of all the Black Terry footage that's available on video tape. Even of stuff that doesn't look too promising, I have this impression that it will at least have one bright moment somewhere. Black Terry's like Anthony Mann, as he is able to overcome a lot of tough limitations and still
Dr. Cerebro & Suicida vs. Oficial Fierro & Trauma I, IWRG Castillo Del Terror, 11/01/09
This year has seen a lot of sources for IWRG come and go as guys get their accounts suspended or burn themselves out on uploading every single bit of TV. Not that I'm complaining. Without these people, I wouldn't have seen any IWRG this year. Thankfully, a new source for IWRG's Sunday show has emerged and I am hellbent on enjoying it while it lasts.
Man, it was good to see Dr. Cerebro again.
Blue Panther vs. Atlantis, La Copa Victoria final, CMLL 12/5/97
This was awesome. Twenty minutes of grappling with neither guy leaving their feet.
Like a lot of lucha fans, I'm always on the look out for a pure mat contest. Most of the time, you get a caida or two of matwork before the match starts heading in a different direction, so to find a match like this is pretty rare. Searching through tape lists is a lot like digging for gold. You start digging in the wrong places and come up
Máscara Año 2000 vs. Mogur, mask vs. mask, 9/23/88
This is the other match on the Viva Lucha Libre Part II commercial tape.
You've got to love the old school CMLL entrances. There's a bunch of kids at ringside to begin with, hoping to get Máscara Año 2000's autograph or something. Moguar has the most nonchalant entrance possible and the kids run back to their seats as the two start hitting each other.
I remember Jose being keen to see this because he reckoned Máscara Año 2000 wa
El Dandy vs. Pirata Morgan, hair vs. hair, 9/23/88
So, here it is -- the elusive hair match. Only available in Japan and at a rental store to boot.
This will have its grand unveiling on the DVDVR Lucha set, so you'll have to wait until then to see it. I know a lot of people are dying to see it, so I won't tell you too much about what happens, but if you've ever scanned through lucha records and let all those untaped matches kill you, then have I got a present for you. Where it rates i
Paul Heyman made (mainstream US) wrestling grow up goes the thought, but I don't think it ever did. The "Attitude" era wasn't grown-up at all. It was for an older audience than "The New Generation" era and the Hogan era, sure, but if those previous eras were "childish" then 98-01 was, at most, adolescent.
Realistically the next logical step was to become more adult; more intelligent. They can give Chris Jericho every Backlundword under the sun to say in his promos (without as best I can re
Sixty-Minute Sprints
On KENTA/Marufuji and Toyota/Kyoko...
I'm a huge Manami (and Kyoko as much, for that matter) fan, and certainly out of the current crop of wrestlers KENTA's one of my favourites; but really neither are cut out for going 60:00. Whereas in the days of Lou Thesz and Dory Funk when most matches were at a pace you could keep for sixty, Manami and KENTA are two people whose strength lies in their great athleticism, creativity, speed... generally the qualities for super "spot" w
Perro Aguayo vs. Máscara Año 2000, hair vs. mask, AAA Triplemania, 4/30/93
I guess I could be watching better stuff than this, but I'm into these bullshit mainevents lately. I don't know what's come over me, because I actually thought this was pretty good.
To be fair, it wasn't a difficult match to work. The layout made it difficult for them to fail: a bit of brawling, a couple of quick falls, outside interference from the rudo corner, a smidge of controversy over the referee El Chocol
EL DANDY VS. ANTIFAZ DEL NORTE, hair vs. mask, Monterrey, 9/17/00
Antifaz del Norte goes to the dance with El Dandy.
RAGING NOODLES:
I think my positive reaction to this match has a lot to do with when it occurred. If this match had taken place in 1989-1992, I know it wouldn't have stood out amongst the great stuff that was taken place at that time. No doubt it's a flawed match but in 2000 and after years of El Dandy having 4 minute matches on WCW Worldwide, this feels like a bla
EL DANDY y ULTIMO VAMPIRO vs. NEGRO NAVARRO y PANTERA (IWRG 4/4/02)
Dandy vs. Navarro! This is the match where they use their fists a lot.
RAGING NOODLES:
This past weekend I saw this match for the first time in years and was blown away by the Dandy/Navarro exchanges. Most of the pimping of Negro Navarro centers around his incredible matwork, and it's obvious why. But Navarro's someone that should get much more praise for being a complete worker with tremendous brawling skills a
PERRO AGUAYO, JR. VS. UNIVERSO 2000, hair vs. hair, 3/17/06
Just to get our readers up to speed:
After Universo Dos Mil laid Perro Aguayo, Sr. out and took his hair, Perro Aguayo, Jr. took on the age old quest of avenging his father's defeat. Perro, Sr. wound up returning on the 2004 Homenaje a Dos Leyendas show, where the Aguayos took the hair of Cien Caras and Máscara Año 2000 in a pretty good match actually. Sadly, Lover Ice's account was pulled before we could give it a proper revi
Mil Mascaras vs. Perro Aguayo, Olympic Auditorium, 1982
I believe this is from Hollywood Wrestling, the LA promotion which Kurt Brown immortalises each week on the Slammin' Stan Podcast.
It was taped off the Spanish International Network, and featured guest commentary from British wrestlers Chris Adams and Ringo Rigby, who sounded like the Beatles. I shouldn't really say that, since I'm from the Commonwealth and have been familiar with British accents my entire life, but still I got a ki
PERRO AGUAYO VS. UNIVERSO 2000, hair vs. mask, CMLL El Jucio Final, 3/30/01
So here's the deal: 2009 is almost over, and I'm no closer to figuring out what the best matches of the decade were, so from now until whenever we drop this project, Raging Noodles and I will search for the likely candidates. Judging by the wrestling this decade, we'll probably watch anything and everything.
First up is a mascara vs. cabellera match from Perro Aguayo's lengthy retirement tour.
RAGING NOODL
