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 guess lucha is heading that way in general with WWE having a bigger influence in Mexico than ever before. Dr. Cerebro is reasonably proficient at this style of wrestling and his work of late kind of reminds me of Dr. Wagner, Jr during his workrate phase, though on a somewhat miniature scale. The key difference between Wagner and Cerebro is that Cerebro hasn't foresaken his mat game entirely and still busts out strange looking submission holds from time to time. You could probably argue that Cerebro is a better mat worker than Wagner ever was, but he's looking more and more like a spot worker every time I see him.

Bushi is a Japanese guy I've never head of since I don't really follow Japanese wrestling anymore, but apparently he's leaving the territory anyway. For a squash match on his way out, I thought this was reasonably okay. Bushi seemed earnest and I guess he learned a thing or two on this excursion. His work was kind of early Yamada-ish in that when in doubt go for a leg lock, but he didn't have any problems working juniors spots with Cerebro and the topes were cool. Terry's camera work captures a lot of the selling that IWRG misses, and my overall impression of the match was that it was reasonably consistent. Cerebro dominated the bout, but there was enough scope for both guys to put the match over even if it was truncated. The piledriver at the end was a nice touch. Might as well show him the way out in a loser leaves town match.

So, Cerebro is the lightweight champ. I wonder how long he'll hold the title for. There was trouble brewing between him and El Hijo del Diablo at the end of the match, but you'd have to think that will lead to the latest in the endless series of IWRG hair matches. You'd think IWRG would move this title onto guys like Freelance, Zatura, Trauma II and Angelico, but I guess Cerebro won't defend it for a while.