I'm having trouble writing without the aid of cigarettes, so bear with me if this seems like a nothing review.

IWRG 3/8

Freelance, Jack, Ultraman Jr. vs. Oficial 911, Trauma I, Trauma II

This was an enjoyable match and made up for how dull the past few shows have been.

What I liked about this match was how organic it felt. IWRG is a company that doesn't have a lot of great matches. Most of the stuff they run is in the mid-range, and a lot of the time you get the feeling that "oh, they're going one long, two short on the falls" or "this Oficiales schtick is too much of a precursor for the technico comeback," but this felt more natural. The Ultraman injury probably helped in that regard, if that's the right choice of words, but it was pleasing to see guys using their talent instead of pumping out another rank and file trios.

There's been a lot of talk about how good Freelance looked in this match, but I think that's overstating things. He may be back into his groove, but it wasn't a match where he carried the technico side or overshadowed the contributions of everyone else. In fact, I thought he was holding back against "The Big Kahuna" 911 due to the angle at the end. The match started off with some neat submission work between Jack and Trauma II. There were comments over on the IWRG board about the lack of reversals, but it's Jack -- he's that thing from The Nightmare Before Christmas not Negro Navarro. I dug it myself, as I think Trauma II works best with small guys and Jack does an admirable job of moving like Jack Skellington. It's not a character I'm particularly fond of, but he plays it well and I enjoyed his comedy with 911. Mind you, I'm a sucker for as much variety as possible in a trios match. Freelance worked well with 911 without giving too much away and the turning point was the corner tope from Ultraman where he bit the guard rail. Ultraman smashed his front teeth up pretty bad and had to leave. Freelance took over from there and did most of his signature dives w/ 911's bumping biggest probably the single biggest contribution to the third caida. Match was pretty rocking. I enjoyed it from beginning to end.

Black Terry, Chico Che, Dr. Cerebro vs. Avisman, El Hijo del Diablo, Gringo Loco

I wasn't as high on this as everyone else. I couldn't understand why they bled so much in a standard trios brawl. Some may argue that they don't need a reason to bleed, but I couldn't find anything compelling about the rudos' performance here and I wasn't buying Black Terry's angry victim act. Dr. Cerebro seemed to drift in this as well, and it's my opinion that the Cerebros are better as out and out rudos. The only thing that I particularly dug was the performance of Chico Che. It says a lot about the "new" IWRG that you can have both Jack and Chico Che in with the good workers this week and both of them held their own.