Bracito De Oro/Cicloncito Ramirez/Mascarita Magica vs Damiancito El Guerrero/El Fierito/Pierrothito, CMLL 10/3/97

This was incredible.

A lot of people have a difficult time getting into lucha & trios make it harder. Hell, I had to watch this twice to realise it was an incredible match. The thing about trios is that you really have to watch a shitload of them to understand how they work. Trios have a loose structure. There's a few basic forms, but almost everything can be varied, which is why guys like Dr Lucha Steve Sims use jazz analogies -- improvised free form over the top of basic structures (something like that, I don't remember the exact quote.) What that basically means is you can work a trios any way you like, since there's only a few basic rules. You can vary just about anything -- from the length of the falls to the style of wrestling used; rhythm, pace, order... Workers probably don't think about it too much, but that's what they're doing in the choices they make. It's almost like each fall has a scale & workers can play notes up and down that scale.

At first it's difficult to know whether what you're watching is actually good, but once you figure out the possibilities it becomes much easier. Take this match for example. If you're wondering why it's great, the simple answer is the matwork, fast exchanges and dives. As Phil Schneider pointed out in the original thread -- http://board.deathvalleydriver.com/index.p...503&hl=mini (great read, btw), this is traditional CMLL build. What really impressed me is how they upped the rhythm of each fall. There's not a lot of rudo work in this match, so it's wrestled at pace. In most trios, the rhythm varies between the first and second fall depending on whether the rudos won or lost the opening fall. Here, the second caida is a faster version of the first. Yet it's even more creative. To keep upping the rhythm, while working more & more interesting holds, is the most impressive thing I've seen in a long time. To top that in the third caida is incredible. The first time I saw this, I thought "OK, it's a workrate match, but where's the rudo/technico stuff?" Now I'm thinking I just saw six guys master the workrate form of lucha libre trios.

There's an adage I learnt in screenwriting: ""Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form." There's a lot of guys these days who could do with mastering the form before trying this sort of workrate match.