IWRG

Las Nuevas Figuras FIL vs. Los Gladiadores IWRG, 2/4/10

IWRG has been on a roll of late, thanks to an influx of new talent and some much improved booking from the men in charge. This was a

cibernetico match between the IWRG regulars and the young guys they've been using to fill out the undercard; not a great match, but it serves to illustrate why IWRG has been on an upward swing since the beginning of the year. The first run through was stronger than the elimination half for the simple reason that IWRG guys eliminating rookies is like watching The Dream Team play Angola, but there was some tremendous confidence shown by the IWRG regulars in leading the young guys through their best exchanges to date, especially since a cibernetico match is about outdoing the pair before you. The fact that IWRG could go five/six exchanges deep in such a match shows you how far the group of workers below Terry and Navarro have come in the past twelve months. With the Traumas, it's a case of young workers making huge strides, but with a guy like Dr. Cerebro it's about tapping into the potential that's always been there and making him seem like a major figure alongside Terry. The young guys are important too, because they provide fresh match-ups and allow the bookers some leeway with matchmaking. With a bigger roster and a place for everyone, there's less need for revancha after revancha and arbitrary apuestas matches. So while this was a minor match, I thought it was hugely positive and showed just how much depth and variety there is IWRG these days.

Hijo del Pirata, Trauma I y Trauma II vs. Chico Che, Angel y El Hijo del Pantera, 2/7/10

Black Terry Jr. had a hard time filming this as there was just too much going on to capture it all, but from what I could make out it was a pretty decent sprint. Speaking of confidence, Trauma II looked just as good working with Angel here as Black Terry did working with Hijo del Sigo in the cibernetico above, which is high praise considering Terry looked better against Signo than he has all year in regular lucha exchanges. But the guy who impressed me here was Che. I haven't seen him for quite a few months and he seems to have developed into a competent fatboy worker. That's great news because lucha, like rugby, is a game for all shapes and sizes, so if you have competent fatboy workers on your roster then you've got Puebla levels of flavour. I absolutely loved his headbutt in this.

Black Terry y Doctor Cerebro vs. Hijo del Diablo y Gringo Loco, Hair/Cage match, 2/7/10

Normally, I wouldn't watch a lucha cage match, but this feud has been so well booked by IWRG standards that I had to see what happens next. Where did they get that cage from? There has to be some story about how they got scrap metal and some half price chain link fence and welded it all together. It was pretty much the perfect looking cage for this scummy gimmick the Gringo Locos are doing. I thought Terry Jr. did a tremendous job of shooting the early parts of this match before the big Cerebro bladejob, because usually IWRG rely on a large number of edits to prevent their brawls from seeming static. Terry obviously has an eye for the business since he pretty much choose the best shots possible to stop this from being too monotonous, although he was sometimes on the wrong side of the action when it came to Hijo del Diablo's kicks. The match was a decent brawl much like their Super Libre match w/ the blood and quality of brawling making it superior to most lucha gimmick matches. Terry was spectacular as usual and the stretch run into the finish was awesome. All in all, it was pretty good stuff. There's got to be some sort of irony in the lucha indy version of Gringo Locos having better matches than the original Gringo Locos. The fan altercation ruled too.

CMLL

Centella de Oro y Lestat vs. Fuerza Chicana y Policeman, 1/25/10

Holy shit is all I can about this. Centella de Oro and Fuerza Chicana did the best opening matwork I've seen all year and Lestat and Policeman weren't far behind. The locals are only getting a single fall these days but if it wasn't for Lestat and Policeman's poor dive and catch this would've been the perfect lightning match. As it was, it was pretty much three falls in one with all the shifts you'd expect from a trios match. Centella de Oro was amazing in his second go around with Chicana and absolutely destroyed everyone in Mexico with his performance here.

Blue Panther, Metro y Valiente vs. Averno, Mephisto y Virus, 2/2/10

I'm feeling more upbeat about lucha than I have at any point since I started this blog, so I'll drop a bit of praise on this. I thought Blue Panther was phenomenal in this match and his mat segment with Averno bordered on genius. Forget about his 2008, this was the best Panther has looked since that 2004 handheld Terry Jr. put up on his old account. His rope exchanges with Virus were awesome too and in a perfect world CMLL would devote 20 minutes to a Blue Panther/Virus singles match. Other than that, the match was average. Virus and Valiente fell well short of what they're capable of and Valiente himself didn't shine until his killer dive at the end of the match. The third fall had the potential to be really exciting with guys lining each other up and charging at one another, but they had to go and do all the bullshit CMLL staples which somehow CMLL think people not only want to see week in, week out but four or five times on the same card. I mean, they laid a pretty decent platform here in the third caida with one-on-one match situations and different guys hitting the ring to take over, but after they'd run through all six guys they went with rudo triple teaming and a whole bunch of other contrived shit. Fucking Averno was in his element, though. So much of the shit he's involved in ought to be abolished. The finish was weak as hell too. Still, this was more good than bad. Panther was great.