Phil Schneider

This is one of the last great bloody Arena Mexico apuestas matches. Scorpio and Bestia are a pair of awesome grizzled ugly rudos who come out smoking. They totally bum rush Santo and Casas slam them into the seats and the barricade and bloody them up. Santo is one of wrestlings great bleeders, but it is rarer to see Casas leaking like this. Total one sided violent domination by the rudos in the first fall. The tide turn is awesome Santo is getting double teamed, and as the rudos whip him into the ropes, Casas grabs his torso, throwing off the timing and allowing Santo to hit them with a double clothesline and take control. Technicos take over and get revenge cutting up both rudos. Third fall is a classic with lots of crazy dives, near falls and gritty violence. All four guys are amazing, but man alive is Casas on another level here, he is one of the most expressive wrestlers in history, just watching his face is such a pleasure. Pain, discouragement, glee, anger it is all there, just a maestro.

It isn't that hard to get inaugural ball tickets, I went to Obama's second ball and there are a ton of people there

Awesome, I would love to get more of a conversation going about French catch stuff, anyway you could ask Bob about a date on the Cesca v. Cantanzarro match? Really interested to nail that down.

End of the road Killer Karl Kox might be one of my favorite wrestlers ever. Just a nasty old bastard who will split your eyebrow with a right hand or knee you in the throat. I also loved the early matwork portion too, nothing fancy, nothing tricky but really impactful. These are a pair of old dudes with crazy tendon strength and it was fun to watch them struggle in tests of strength in weird angles. Wrestling matches are full of traditional knuckle lock tests of strength, these guys were struggling from their back or their knees. Then we get the great mask hiding foreign object section. Destroyer is an old master at that and it is fun to see him have to deal with someone using his own tricks on him. It is like a Lawler match with the heel hiding a chain too. Every one of those foreign object shots were extra violent looking, the headbutts were sold like they should be, and the chain assisted punches really thudded. These no bump Kox matches are the best, I could watch him not bump forever.

Yeah there is nothing holy about that grail

My goodness, what an absolute gore soaked classic. It feels on first watch like if Blue Panther vs. Villano 5 had a Cactus Jack v. Terry Funk KOTDM level blood. IWRG has fallen pretty far from the heights of 2010 and it was great to see it regain its glorious heights. Opening couple of falls serve as a great table setter. Lupus smacks Trauma with a tope and dominates the first fall tapping T1 out with his own Lo Negro del Negro spinning figure four. Stealing moves isn't a thing you see very much of in lucha (this is the Rock spamming shitty Stone Cold Stunners), so it was a cool bit of taunting by Lupus. Second fall has Trauma coming back and capturing the fall with a rocking chair, and then the true violence starts, they start cracking each other with headbutts and then they both go out to grab chairs. A couple of nasty hard plastic chair shots and the gore starts flowing. The finish run was awesome, the ref gets bumped hard, and Lupus quickly attacks and hits Trauma with the dreaded illegal martinete while the ref is down. I love lucha matches built around martinete's, and this was one of the best. T1 can't lift his neck and needs to block pins by grabbing the ropes and grabbing the ref's hand. Lupus gets frustrated goes for a splash, T1 lifts his knees. Now both guys are lying in their own blood, and a doctor runs in and tries to place a cervical collar on Trauma, Lupus gets to his feet, chucks the doctor to the side and tries to attack. T1 with a neck brace hanging half off attacks the leg desperately and they have a great fight over the spinning figure four. It is one of the coolest mask match finishes I can remember. We have awesome pageantry after with Lupus getting unmasked and proposing to his girlfriend. The wrestling parts of this were a little off, Lupus is only so-so at holds, but the brawling, bleeding and drama was off the charts.

That is where my inlaws live, I'll have to bring by a fruit basket when I visit

You should gift us something awesome to make up for the delay

Nothing I love more then a inter promotional Japanese brawl. Team NOAH is undermanned and are awesome fighting from below. Serious Inoue is great, he is such a shlub, and I love it when he steps it up and goes to war. The Yasuda experiment was a pretty huge turn of the century failure, but this was his crowning achievement, he is a great bully smacking around Inoue with sumo thrusts and chucking him to the ground. In one of the cooler moments Yasuda has Inoue mounted and Honda runs in and chucks him with his awesome german suplex. Finish was totally boss, Hashimoto is a serial killer in this, he comes in a demolishes Inoue with these brutal looking over hand chops, they have to stop the match because his shoulder is so damaged. Has everything you want in this kind of match, bad feelings, great character work and big time violence.

Preston Quinn is the best, VA indy guy, who has the whole variety of punches, great upper cut, good over hands, great hooks. Jimmy Rave is really great too

Lexi Alexander? That is super weird, she is a pretty awesome gonzo action director (Punisher War Zone is a dope B action movie) but a pretty weird choice for something like this. It would be like putting John Woo or Gaereth Evans in charge.

Whole segment, people who treat wrestling matches as bell to bell are dummies

I don't care if a finish is clean, but if they are going to end on bullshit I want it to be good bullshit. Something like Reigns v. Lesnar ending with that stupid MIB cash in really hurts it.

I think they should drop the most awesome gem they have ready to go at midnight, to counter program The Last Battle of Atlanta. Show those WWE Network folks who the real kings of old school footage are!!

Does anyone have an approximate date on the Cesca v. Cantazarro match. Working on a MOTY by year project at SC and have no idea what year that match is.

That whole show got released years ago

Jose Lothario v. Great Mephisto NWA Houston 1/18/74 This is a Brass Knuxs title match, which means that Lothario can throw hands. Mephisto has got quite a bag of tricks, he has a muslim prayer run gimmick, burkaed valet, loaded boot, the whole cheap heat casserole. Not much of a wrestler, but a lot of entertaining shtick. Lothario blows him out in the first fall, unloading awesome looking punches, busting open Memphisto, 10-8 round for sure. Mephisto gets a bit of an advantage in the second fall with Lothario taking a monster bump to the floor and Mephisto loading his orthopedic book. Third fall is more back and forth with Lothario selling a broken rib or punctured lung from the loaded kicks. I would have gone higher on this if Mephisto's stuff looked better, this was a great Lothario performance, but relatively one sided.

Holy hell what a war. Really felt like a lucha version of one of those peak Necro Butcher brawls. Terry is truly amazing, how in god's name can a man of his age work two violent wars like this and the Aero Boy apuestas match back to back? I loved the early matwork which was pretty slick, and Cavernario countering submission holds by biting Terry in the thigh makes perfect sense, that is totally what a Caveman training in ju-jitsu would do. After the matwork they get down to the violence with both guys just slamming their heads into each other Regal and Benoit style. The brawling in this was really frantic, big shots, thrown quickly from off angles. At one point Cavernario throws a forearm which almost knocks Terry off the screen. Ragged nasty stuff. Loved the finish too with ball shots feeling less like a cop out and more like the sensible way to end a battle like this.

This is a apuestas match the way it should be, seedy dirty gym, both guys bleeding and getting dirt in open cuts, nothing slickly produced or fancy, just a nasty bit of business. Terry is still a great brawler, Aeroboy jumps him in the aisle but Terry takes over and posts him and cracks him with a chair shot. He rips the mask and digs a piece of broken plastic chair into Aero Boy's head Abby style. Aero boy takes over when Terry dives off the ring apron right into a thrown chair, which is a crazy pants spot for an old ass man to take. Terry gets busted open as well, and we get some great visuals of Terry as a broken bloody old man fighting for his life. Finish run was a bit sloppy, with Terry kind of blowing a code red, but it had some great moments too. Aero Boy was game, but a great example of how Terry can still bring it.

Here are the highlights on youtube, you can get the unclipped version by emailing Black Terry Jr.

Black Terry Jr.

PAS: Necro Butcher has pretty much disappeared over the last couple of years, and with Nick Gage back in jail there really hasn't been that kind of unhinged bloody slightly dangerous brawler around anymore. Enter in the sixty-three year old Black Terry who is the Necro we have been looking for. Terry has been having a hell of a year bleeding and brawling through a bunch of tiny gyms across Mexico, this weekend he even no showed an Arena Mexico event so he could bleed all over the rocks and dirt at Coliseo Coacalco. Wotan is a DTU guy and is perfectly willing to smash his forehead violently into Terry's he also had a pretty nice tope, and took a hard backdrop on the ground. Terry was a machine in this, hitting backfists, right hands, coconut headbuts. There was one hinky spot where Terry had to hold a chair on top of himself so Wotan could dropkick him, but otherwise everything was pretty flawless. By the end of the match both guys are rolling around in gravel and chairs punching each other in their bloody heads. Gritty violent and awesome.

Marc Maron signed on today.

The 2016 Black Terry run continues as he grabs Demus out of CMLL minis hell and lets him brawl and bleed like a crazed Warwik Davis in a Mexican Leprechaun remake. They start out with some lucha exchanges, and Demus raises Terry's hand and cheap shots him, and it gets gritty. Demus throws him outside, smashes him with a chair and tries to open up his skull on a concrete pillar. By the end both guys are leaking and are doing a lariat battle. Finish has some unnecessary ref shit which may keep it from the level of peak 2016 Terry, but it was such a treat to show up in BTJR's feed. Well worth the 4 bucks.

Of course he isn't in the WON HOF, I doubt he was ever even on the ballot. A couple of funny skits with Don Muraco doesn't even pass the Ultimo Dragon bar.