ohtani's jacket

IWRG 3/11 Negro Navarro, Trauma II, Barba Roja vs. Black Terry, Dr. Cerebro, Hijo del Signo Negro Navarro was back in Naucalpan this week and took on all three opponents in this match, including a fella by the name of Black Terry. Black Terry vs. Negro Navarro -- the best match-up in wrestling, save for the fact that it never happens!! For some reason, Black Terry and Negro Navarro go out of their way to avoid each other on most occasions. Even on miscellaneous shows, they avoid each other -- they're like the anti-Solar and Navarro. Then again, Terry is never really Terry when Navarro is around, so maybe it's a wash. Their exchanges here were an awesome tease and Terry's selling was brilliant, but he came off second best again. Navarro's a tough motherfucker, but I prefer it when Terry's knocking workas out tha box, daily. The trouble with Terry vs. Navarro is that Navarro's an immovable object. If they ran this match as drills, how many times do you think people could take Navarro down? I kinda doubt whether Terry could do it for real. Navarro knows he's a badass motherfucker -- and fair enough, I say -- but it means Terry slips into technico mode when he faces Negro. Terry is a terrific face, but he's better as a rudo so perhaps they're better off working in situations where they both can be the man. The other cool match-up in this was Navarro vs. Dr. Cerebro, a brief, almost backhanded exchange that had me wondering how good a singles match between those two would be. There's not much chance of that happening, but this whole match was full of fantasy booking: Navarro/Terry? Navarro/Cerebro? Cerebro/Trauma II? There was a disruptive riff with Barba Roja trying to screw the Dinastia but still there was enough good wrestling here to satisfy the weekly viewer. Angelico vs. Trauma I [sALAVADOR AMERICAS] I guess everyone will have an opinion on this because it's Angelico, but I'll give them points for trying. I wasn't expecting much of an arc from this, but they tried their damnest to make it seem important. The wrestling didn't reach the heights of Zatura vs. Trauma II (which is probably the most relevant comparison), and in truth was a bit crude in parts, but the effort couldn't be faulted. The evenness of the match worked better than in Angelico/Navarro because it's easier to buy Angelico and Trauma I as being the same age and experience level (even if it's not true), and while the limb selling didn't appeal to me personally, Trauma I working this match a year ago seems unfathomable to me. Trauma I or Trauma II is an interesting debate. I still lean towards Trauma II for the simple reason that he's stronger on the mat, while Trauma I seems better at striking and all the bits between matwork and the finish, but he's improving at such a rate of knots that it's almost a weekly split between the two. Some weeks Trauma II is better and vice versa. Like I said, I don't think this match was quite the breakout performance that the Zatura match was a year ago, but it was more of a plus than a negative.

When did Jesse Ventura do this Conspiracy Theory TV series?

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.

Black Jaguar vs. Latin Brother, mask vs. mask, 2/28/10 This was a mask match from Coliseo Coacalco, which for the unfamiliar is an outdoor venue in Coacalco (http://coliseocoacalco.com.mx/COLISEO_COACALCO_360.exe). It's really cool -- kind of like sticking your head into a tent at a school fair or flea market and paying a few bucks to watch two guys beat the shit out of each other. Guys were standing around talking while the luchadores brawled at their feet, and cheered them on like you'd tell your kids to run and go play. The match itself was what you'd expect from indy workers, but it was extremely well paced and the selling was excellent. Latin Brother's cut was so bad I was worried it would turn septic. Definitely a match that captured the spirt of a mask match. Black Terry Jr. is a legend for shooting this stuff. Todo x el Todo Brussels, 2/27/10 Cassandro vs. Magno Negro Navarro vs. Solar This was similar to Lucha Libre London from two years ago. Nice to see that Cassandro has lost none of his star power and still does the sharpest WCWSN lucha match around. Navarro vs. Solar was wrestled for people who don't know who Solar and Negro Navarro are. Personally, I thought it was better than their London match and proof that Solar and Navarro are continuously improving against one another. IWRG Dr. Cerebro vs. Hijo del Pantera, IWRG Intercontinental Lightweight Championship, 3/4/10 Well this sucked. I quit smoking a week ago, so I'm in no mood to mince words.... this was shit. It's one thing to have a bad match, but to not even try is a waste of time. No excuses here, they just didn't bother. Without a doubt the worst match I've seen all year.

IWRG 2/25 Dr. Cerebro, Trauma I y Hijo del Signo vs. Pantera, Hijo del Pantera y Zatura [captains hair] This was another solid match from the month of February. No-one gave a particularly outstanding performance, but it reminded me of those old-school trios matches that were used to set-up Satanico/Dandy and other such feuds. Dr. Cerebro wasn't able to impose himself on the match to the degree that Black Terry can, but Terry is a big lynchpin to remove and I thought they did fairly well in his absence. Structurally, this trios was different from the IWRG norm. Instead of having the matwork build into a brawl, they brawled through two falls and held off on the matwork until the tercera caida. It probably could've done with some blood and a grandstand finish, but it was clear from the booking that they're not ready to blow this off yet. Personally, I liked last week's match better, but there was enough to tie me over until next week. Based on the fallout from this match, Hijo del Pantera will challenge Dr. Cerebro for his Lightweight Championship on Thursday. That may not seem like a compelling match, but short programs like these are miles better than the type of booking that saw Suicida take Cerebro's hair late last year. I'm not sure if Hijo del Pantera is ready for a singles match yet, but for the past few years I've been watching lucha in the hope that my favourite workers will spend five minutes on the mat. The enjoyment that I get from lucha has amounted to a few minutes here and a few minutes there. Dr. Cerebro vs. Hijo del Pantera may not be match of the year, but at least IWRG are giving us something to follow on a weekly basis. Add Pantera and Black Terry as seconds and you've got a compelling reason to watch now that it's up to Hijo del Pantera to avenge his father. It ought to be a good litmus test to see whether Cerebro is ready for this leadership role he's assumed; right now, I'd say he's still better hunting in a pack than he is on his own, but a strong rudo performance next week could change all that. Here's hoping.

IWRG 2/18 Los Oficiales vs. Freelance, Angelico y Angel Freelance is back and appears to be out of shape. I assume he's been injured as he struggled to get into his usual groove here. Not that it made much difference. IWRG has wiped the slate clean this year with great booking and I don't see the point in continuing with a feud from their muddled past. It's high time they did something different with Freelance, whose career has stalled of late. Obviously, when a guy's been out injured you want to reintroduce him in trios matches, but I'm talking about the big picture here. Like most lucha companies, IWRG only really focus on their main events. They'll shift guys around in order to provide different main events, but if you're not involved in the top program then you're generally on the back burner in matches like this. IWRG may run another Freelance vs. Oficial hair/mask match or they may not, that's just the way lucha booking works. There's not a lot of midcard booking to speak of and a lot of matches just get thrown together. In this case, the last major thing Freelance was involved in was a hair loss to Fierro, and there were enough brawling elements to suggest a rematch of sorts, but IWRG will keep it humming along until they decide whether they want to run with a wager match or another Oficiales title defence, either of which will headline their Thursday or Sunday show, and then it's back to the back burner. What his means is that Freelance ends up chasing his tail, while the Oficiales ply their schtick against a random assortment of technicos. It's easy to forget that the Oficiales are double title holders because they're stuck in this revolving door of weak technico opposition and not enough trios outfits to feud with. In the past, trios acts seledom grew stale because they had a lot of other great trios groups to feud with. You could move their matches up and down the card, spreading things out if the feud was stronger enough. The Oficiales spend most of their time working with guys like Angel and The Rated R Superstar, instead of Los Piratas, which I think would be a great feud if IWRG could bring those guys in on a more consistent basis. I don't know the ins and outs of lucha indy bookings and why guys come and go from IWRG, but I do know that the Oficiales have run aground since their breakout year in 2008. In part, it's because their schtick isn't as strong as groups from the heyday of Mexican trios wrestling (of which we really only saw the last hurrah), but they're still good workers. Terry's camera caught some of the detail work these guys do like bleeding underneath their masks and the cool bump one of them did into a fan, but the match structure was basically the same as any other Oficiales match, and to bring it back to Freelance vs. The Officiales, it's a feud that's been going on since late 2007 (if not longer) and was decidedly fresher at that time. IWRG has been on the whole very good this year, thanks to The Man With a Movie Camera, Black Terry Jr., but there's still an element of their TV being poorly put together in terms of match making. Black Terry, Dr. Cerebro y Trauma I vs. Pantera, Hijo del Pantera y Zatura This continued the theme of the Cerebros being cattle rustlers and Pantera being a retired gunslinger who just wants to settle down on his own bit of land and teach his son to shoot and be a man, but whose past keeps catching up with him... This match was so fucking great. Black Terry was like an evil Henry Fonda in this. I kept asking myself what the Panteras had done to deserve such abuse and the answer is nothing. They were minding their own business and Terry decided to fuck with them for the hell of it. Over at luchablog, I've been talking shit about people's nominations for Best Rudo of 2009 and being an ass, but honestly, I don't see how CMLL rudos are rudos at all. They're bases for the technico flyers and work to the beat of the drumming and air horns. The louder the air horns, the more popular the rudo appears to be. That may be lively for some people, but this match was just supreme. The Cerebros' agenda was pretty simple here -- beat the shit out of Pantera and his kid until they beg for mercy. Pantera's selling was superb again, and Black Terry lorded over the match. The shift Terry has pulled in the past few weeks from the type of guy you'd pen a Country and Western song about to the ruthless bastard who's fucking with Pantera's homestead has been sensational and equally great on both accounts. The amount of dedication Black Terry shows towards ruling it in a small promotion in the tiny Arena Naucalpan has me wondering if he's not a top 10 luchador all-time. He may not be an iconic figure on a national basis, but the man just doesn't quit. Hijo del Pantera managed to escape the rustlers in Super Astro style, which was the trigger spot for Pantera to start kicking ass. Pantera is a biggish sort of guy by lucha standards and can rumble if that's what Terry wants, but the awesome thing about this match was that he went for the win and they had a third caida where they built to a triple tope spot and cool shit like that. Both Terry and Pantera were barking orders on the outside, squabbling with the refs and turning this into a must-win caida. Such a great feud. Unfortunately, we're not going to get a Terry vs. Pantera singles match out of it as Terry just lost his hair and has been giving more of the spotlight to Cerebro of late, but Cerebro was huge in this, so I can more than live with the shift to Pantera v. Cerebro. Cerebro has turned into a hell of a brawler in recent weeks. I'm not sure if like Navarro it's an area of his game that's always been underrated, but he really is looking like the most confident guy in wrestling right now. I really liked the finish in this match too. I thought the Pantera counter into a pin was such a great "fuck you" moment and I loved Terry kicking the rope at the end after he lost the playoff with Pantera. Also great was the beating he gave Zatura after the bell and his nod to the Terry fans at ringside. Definitely my favourite feud of 2010 so far.

IWRG 2/11/10 Trauma I y Trauma II vs. Samot y Maldito Jr. Can't say I was too enthused by this this. Trauma II had difficulty working his mat routine against a larger opponent; he should really know by now that you don't have to work the mat in every match, especially if your opponent has no skill in that area. There was enough stiffness in this to keep the punters happy, but it seemed lke a repeat of the Traumas match against Zatura and Suicida, only this time against a poor man's version of Villanos IV and V. I was impressed with the Traumas' double team moves, however, and the heat they're getting is cementing them as made men, so that's cool. Black Terry, Dr. Cerebro y H. del Signo vs. Pantera, H. del Pantera y Zatura Black Terry looks badass with his shaved head. He was in an irritable mood here, which I'm guessing is because the Gringos added injury to insult in last week's hair match. He had a great, niggly fall with Pantera, and I really liked how it was the Cerebros who initiated the brawling in the second caida even though they'd won the opening fall. Usually, the rudos start brawling in order to reclaim a match, but Terry was in full on cock-mode here, which is a little different from the rudo contra rudo version we've been seeing lately. The brawling was fantastic, too, with the Cerebros sauntering around the ring and delivering cheap shots like the Infernales in their prime. I've never thought much of Pantera, but this was by far his best veteran performance since dropping the mask, and his selling in the second caida was superb. His selling reminded me of every great beatdown in movie history. It's a shame that the Cerebros didn't leave his kid half dead so Pantera could turn Archie “The Stomper” Gouldie on them in the coming weeks, but Pantera doing the Super Astro tightrope escape was something you don't see everyday. The third fall lacked a big showdown between Terry and Pantera, and the double pin was a downer no matter which way you look at it, but I'm expecting more fireworks in the coming weeks. I just hope IWRG don't burn through all these feuds in the first half of the year. It's only February, fellas. The other great thing about this match was Dr. Cerebro. He was just oozing with confidence here and worked a hell of a mat exchange with Zatura. Nobody has Pantera's back like Cerebro has Terry's, so I'm looking forward the revancha this week. To me, matches like this are what make IWRG so great -- they're imperfect little classics in a post-90s wrestling world where three stars is the new four stars and veterans are the only guys who know what the fuck they're doing. Sangre Chicana, Black Terry y Negro Navarro vs. Solar I, Rocky Santana y Olimpico, AULL, 2/13/10 I don't particularly like it when Solar vs. Navarro dominates a match, but this didn't have much else going for it, so I enjoyed their extended exchange in the opening caida. To be fair, it was a pretty great exchange. It started off in typical fashion with Solar getting the early takedowns and Navarro being dismissive of them, but built in intensity to the point where both guys were trying ridiculously complicated submission attempts. Nice arc and a sweet crescendo. Still, I really hate watching Black Terry in these UWE matches. He always plays second or third fiddle to the other vets and is nothing like the Terry we see in IWRG character-wise or even wrestling-wise. The Chicana punch was good and Solar sold it well, but as a huge Sangre Chicana fan I have to say I don't think his performance was anywhere near as good as Pirata Morgan or Pantera in recent weeks, and ultimately the technico side was too weak for this to be anything special. Black Terry y Shu el Guerrero vs. Negro Navarro y El Signo, 2/14/10 When I was a young boy Tenements, slums and corner bums Playing tag with winos The only way to have some fun One thing 'bout the ghetto You don't have to hurry It'll be there tommorow So brother don't you worry Ghetto Life Talking 'bout ghetto life Talking 'bout Ghettoo Liiiiiiiiife This was a hell of a match in a hell of a venue. So many times you check cubfans' match finder and there's all these great looking matches that never see the light of day; now Terry Jr. is taking his camera cross country on weekends and we're discovering lucha is wrestled everywhere in Mexico -- tenements, slums, ghettos, under the fucking ground... this shit is real. This was a great little match. I might cop flak for this, but I thought the match showed how much Solar/Navarro fucks things up. No Solar meant a very prominent Black Terry and also saw Signo give the best performance he's delivered in five years. I've got nothing against Solar, but the other guys tend to tune out when he and Navarro take centre stage, and this was such a nice mix of matwork and brawling that I was happy to see these guys roll with each other after all those disconnected Space Cadets/Misioneros matches last year. Once upon a time, Signo was a hell of a worker. In the dying days of UWA, he was a dynamo, captain of the Misioneros and a better worker than Navarro if you can imagine that. Recently, I watched him brawling with Villano III in one of those random UWA trios that were WAR-like in their allegiances and they tore shit down like the El Toreo demolition. This was a throwback performance to those days if ever I saw one. And Shu showed up! I dunno where he magically appeared from, but fuck me if there isn't a greater missing in action luchador than Shu el Guerrero. Good to see that he's still making himself into a ball so that Navarro has to think twice about which limb to attack. The cool thing about this match was how they kept needling each other. There's been a bit of discussion at the new IWRG board -- http://z7.invisionfree.com/IWRG_Lucha_Libr...dex.php?act=idx -- about whether Terry has taken the mantle back from Negro Navarro as the best worker in Mexico, but the real Navarro came roaring back this weekend, making it a week-to-week contest at this point. The two of them actually brawled a bit in this match, and fuck when is that rematch going to happen? Anyway, there was no Angelico here, so no need for Navarro to be a pussy. I can't believe I just wrote that about Negro Navarro, but I'm telling you this was the real Navarro. The guy who sells without acting like anything really hurts him and doesn't give two fucks. Cool match that the Misioneros won by being bigger ***** than Terry and Shu.

Blue Panther vs. Atlantis, NWA World Middleweight Championship, 8/9/91 I thought I ought to do something a little special to mark my 200th entry, so since I've been talking about Blue Panther vs. Atlantis lately, I decided to go back and watch their match from '91. This match was part of the first batch of lucha I ever bought and is a large part of why I became hooked on lucha. I'm not particularly fond of watching matches I've seen before, particularly when I'm comparing it to the excitement of receiving my first batch of lucha libre, but with so much lucha under my belt since I first saw this, I was almost astonished by how much I enjoyed it. I probably appreciate it more than ever before, which is rare for me since I'm usually interested in the latest and greatest lucha libre match. There's a real buzz surrounding this match that only happens when you get two wrestlers in the ring who you know are going to deliver. Watching Roberto Rangel give his pre-match instructions, it struck me that you had El Dandy and Pierroth Jr. seconding here, two of the most charismatic luchadores in CMLL at the time, and yet all eyes are on Panther and Atlantis. When they head to their opposite corners and go through their final warm-ups, there's an excitement around the bell sounding that's as close to a big time title fight as professional wrestling gets. That may sound like an odd thing to say about the costumed world of Mexican lucha libre, but watch this first caida unfold; it's by far the most competitive opening to a two-out-of-three falls title match I have ever witnessed. I won't go into great detail about what happens, because this is a match that has been uploaded several times on youtube, so there's no excuse for not watching it if you're the least bit interested in professional lucha libre, but this is the caida that convinced me that lucha could be as serious and competitive as any other style of wrestling while looking nothing like other styles of wrestling. And really, that's the beauty of lucha libre -- there's nothing else like it. But watch this caida. There's a rare sort of intensity to it that you seledom find in any sort of wrestling. It's as if they're in the third caida already -- in fact, it's almost as if it's a one fall match with the way Panther and Atlantis fight to take the opening fall. The way they build this intensity is by gradually selling more and more so that each counter becomes increasingly threatening. If you think luchadores can't sell like wrestlers are meant to, I suggest you watch this match, because the great ones can and do sell, while working the most brilliant holds imaginable. The great thing about this caida is that little by little you get the feeling that Atlantis is the champ here. It was a belt he held for a significantly long time and defended against some pretty reputable opposition, and you can see that class come through in the key and deciding moments. The first fall builds to its epic conclusion and you start figuring whether they can keep up this intensity over the next two falls, but the second fall is short, sharp and clever. By this stage, the competitive juices of both guys are flowing and Atlantis starts dropping these awesome knees to the face of Blue Panther. Panther shrugs them off and comes back with a immense hit of his own that shocks Atlantis enough for a quick and decisive equaliser. Pierroth loves it and so do I, because Panther signalled his intent with that body blow. He's here to mount a challenge and not about to fade away. The third caida is built around the timeless notions of desperation and fatigue and those smallest of margins between winning and losing. It's somewhat looser than the opening fall because both guys are tiring, but the great thing about Atlantis vs. Panther matches is how sparingly they used their big takedown offence. Panther had his powerbomb and that spinebuster he liked to do and Atlantis had his back breaker and huracarrana, and they were delivered with gusto and sold like they were the tipping point of the match. The great thing about a third caida is how it weighs on each wrestler's mind. If you get a two from a roll-up and another from a sunset flip, you've got to be thinking that you're running out of chances here. It takes a steely sort of determination to think that you've almost got your man when he escapes your best stuff time and time again. Panther is the first one to crack by trying to go up top, which if you've followed the career of Blue Panther is not his game. Atlantis knocks him off and goes for a huge corner tope, but unforunately his legs hit the top rope as he's going through and he doesn't hit it cleanly. Not to worry, though, as Panther follows up with a tope of his own, which leds to one of the greatest submission attempts ever witnessed in a lucha ring when Panther has Atlantis trapped in an inverted Gory Special and it dead set looks like Altantis is going to submit in the middle of the ring. Atlantis escapes with a roll-up and Panther reverses that for another great nearfall. Atlantis is shaken here and only has a few seconds to regather before Panther comes at him again, and it's almost as if the seconds are ticking down until Atlantis loses. He steps and fakes and makes his move and I won't even tell you how he wins this because it's ridiculously great and enough to pop the biggest sportatorium on a buzzer beater in the biggest game of the year. It's just huge. Perfectly executed and the mother of all final plays. I watch a lot of sport and I've experienced all the different emotions -- shock, joy, devastation -- and that was what this match was for the audience and for these two wrestlers, which is ultimately what pro-wrestling is trying to achieve. Just a great match. Watch it. Love it. Gain a thirst for lucha libre.

Personally, I've managed to narrow my tastes to the one or two styles I like. I might sample the odd match from another promotion or take part in a poll if it interests me, but I don't feel the need to track down everything. Just a bit of high end stuff is good. I sometimes take a few months off from watching any wrestling and dive into other hobbies or scale it back to a couple of times a week. This year has been pretty fun so far with the Black Terry Jr. handhelds.

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.

In 1997, CMLL had one of the greatest single year runs of any promotion in wrestling history, but what about 1998? It's not a year you hear a lot about. I don't think too many people could tell you what the match of the year was or which workers were on their game that year. Most of the CMLL I've seen from '99 has the company heading down the path of no return, so I thought I'd sample some matches from '98 and see what sort of state the company was in. El Hijo Del Santo, Blue Panther y Black Warrior vs. Negro Casas, Atlantis y Mr. Niebla (CMLL 4/24/98) This started off with some poor exchanges between Black Warrior and Mr. Niebla that were pretty indicative of where this company was heading over the next ten years. CMLL was a lot like other styles of wrestling in the 90s in that it paid off how solid the 70s and 80s had been without producing any workers who could carry on with the job; but watching older matches like these where CMLL is teetering on the point of being crap, you have to wonder why the veterans didn't take the young guys aside and say, "look that dive fake you tried was fucking awful, here's how you do it properly" because Atlantis and Blue Panther did a simple and effective "over the top rope exit" in the second caida which is what these young guys should've been learning from. Instead, you have these great exchanges between Panther and Atlantis and Santo and Casas that make Niebla and Black Warrior stick out like a pair of sore thumbs. Twelve years later, great mat exchanges are nothing to be scoffed at; but looking at the match from the perspective of when it occurred, CMLL were keen to push through guys like Black Warrior and Niebla regardless of match quality, and so as younger guys were pushed to the top, the veterans began succumbing to what is essentially a lazy style and nothing like the way they were brought up. The two young guys were interesting to watch, however. Black Warrior had a knack for making himself invisible in a trios match. You could tell that he was never going to be a star because he didn't want to take the bull by the horns and stand out in any way. I suppose it doesn't hurt to keep a low profile, but he may be the most low-key pinball bumper the world has ever seen. His tope was like a bullet, but he never made much of it and threw it away in the first caida here. Niebla, on the other hand, has always been an awful worker. I honestly think you can chart the downfall of the classic luchador to Angel Azteca's failure to stay on top in the very early 90s, because he was the last technico I can think of who had the offence to carry on with lucha in the traditional sense. Niebla was just a blight; he had some tricked out submissions that saved him from being as mind-numbingly bad as Blue Demon Jr., but so much of what makes a good technico is between the ropes and he was so bad at the stop and pop stuff that he was a lost cause in the end. The guy who held this match together, for the first two falls anyway, was Atlantis. He had something of a resurgence in the late 90s that began around 1996 and culminated with his famous mask match against Villano III in the early part of 2000. He squared off against Blue Panther here, and while it wasn't quite as smooth as some of the other times they've wrestled it was by far the high point of the match. When I first got into lucha, people always said that the must-see Panther exchanges were against Santo and Solar, but I'm pretty convinced now that Atlantis is the best match-up that Panther has ever had. For some reason, Blue Panther brought out the absolute best in Atlantis as a wrestler. Atlantis tried exchanges with Blue Panther that he never really tried with any other worker, which is a curious thing really, because when you think of Atlantis you think of a guy who was a great facilitator. He was a guy who was good at the nuts and bolts of trios work, as can be seen here when he provides the second caida with the necessary rhythm for a quick reply from the technicos, but against Panther he looked like one of the giants of this era of lucha libre and every bit the WON Hall of Famer that he's struggled to become. The other opening exchange was between Santo and Casas, who were still feuding at this point. It was more reminiscent of their UWA work than the Japanese influences they'd dabbled in the year before. Pretty much a bunch of jockeying, but they did a good job of engaging without really engaging to set-up the obvious fight they were gonna have in the third caida. The first two falls were okay and did a decent job of setting up the third caida, but what a mess that turned out to be. The technicos levelled the match with the second caida and Negro Casas spat in Santo's face to let him know they'd levelled it. Santo did an awesome job of wiping his eyes and mask and proceeded to give Casas one of the best asskickings I've seen Santo produce, but instead of the match erupting into a Dandy/Casas style third caida, everything just stopped... I mean dead in its tracks... I don't think I've ever seen these workers just drop a match like this in the third caida. Panther spent an eternity untying Atlantis' mask. The Santo/Casas feud really peaked with those trios matches that built to the Santo/Casas singles match at the end of the summer the year before, and all of their matches thereafter were middling, but none of them qualified as a rut. This was just awful and the confused booking at the end of Panther ripping Atlantis' mask off made it seem like there was no focus whatsoever to where they were trying to head with Santo and Casas. It was as confusing as the late '97 booking where Santo had a falling out Scorpio Jr. but continued on as a rudo unabated. Not a match I'd recommend and strike one against 1998 CMLL.

I haven't seen the Brazos yet. Which match should I watch? The one long, two short formula is easier to watch than three long falls, I think. I sometimes wonder why IWRG don't try to have great trios matches. It's not as though they lack the roster for it.

God, that would not go well.

Black Terry/Dr. Cerebro vs. Gringo Loco/El Hijo del Diablo, 1/24/10 This was pretty cool. Of all the styles Terry works, brawling suits him best because you get a caricature of Black Terry the man. There was nothing pretty about this match; it was about as scummy as you'd expect from two guys working the Gringo Locos gimmick in a lucha indy backwater. They brawled all over the ringside area in a match that never really got going in the ring since neither side wanted to settle it proper, but this sort of rambling match suits Black Terry to a tee. His comebacks were fantastic and I thought his headbutt was incredible. He had a gash on his forehead that needed sewing up, and as he sat there being sutured, the silence got me thinking... Where was he going after the show? What type of car or truck does he drive? What does he listen to on the radio? These are the type of things I want to know. He really is a legend. This was just another fight and a few more stitches, but what a performer. He's like a character in a John Huston film or a Merle Haggard song. Black Terry/Dr. Cerebro/Negro Navarro vs. Solar/Zatura/Suicida, 1/28/10 This was solid. IWRG have a new working style where the first fall goes long and the second and third falls are short. It's somewhat predictable but seems to be working for them. Solar squared off with Navarro to nobody's great surprise. Their exchanges were better than watching Navarro work with Angelico, but you have to wonder what they're gunning for at this point. Solar wanted Navarro and Navarro wanted Solar, but we've seen this all before. It's a draw. Neither guy is better than the other and maybe one day they'll leave it at that. Terry got to work a bit in this match, which I was happy about since he's usually innocuous when Solar and Navarro are about. He did a pretty awesome job of stretching Zatura, but the most notable thing about the match was some rare CONTINUITY. I could hardly believe it when Cerebro went after Suicida. I mean to look at him you wouldn't think he lost his hair a few months ago, but he obviously hasn't forgotten and gave Segura an extra hiding at the end. Dr. Cerebro vs. El Hijo del Diablo, Campeonato Mundial Ligero IWRG, 1/31/10 This was awesome and easily surpassed any IWRG singles match I've seen since Zatura/Trauma. There was a ton of heat for this as El Hijo del Diablo had his own cheering section dressed up in devil costumes, and while he's not much of a worker in the Black Terry sense, this match was exceptionally well booked to make the most of the heat they got. Diablo can't work the mat, but he has size and they used that to great effect. He roughed Cerebro up and opened the cut from the tag match above. I can't recall ever seeing Cerebro sell as well as he did here and his comeback was fantastic, which made this the first time in ages that I was actually pumped to see the third caida of an IWRG match. There was some awesome bullshit in the tercera caida. The fall was mostly dives and selling with Terry trying to protect his man from a mauling. Diablo finally got stuck into Terry and they did the most awesome Dusty finish. It was a real Pena style finish. Terry was being held back by the ref and the commissioner or someone, and Gringo Loco, who'd been ejected from ringside earlier, came running to the ring to potato Cerebro with a foreign object. The ref counted three and it looked like we had a new champ, but Terry saw the whole thing unfold and actually went into Gringo Loco's pants to find the foreign object. I don't think I've ever seen that before. He pulled out a chain and showed it to the ref and the entire arena. The ref overturned his decision and raised Cerebro's hand. Just an all-round awesome spectacle. Instead of an overload of moves and nearfalls, we actually got to see a match that built to a bruised but vindicated champ holding onto his belt. The crowd were into it in a way that they usually aren't and there were plenty of folks screaming at the ref about the fuck-up he'd made. Good shit. Negro Navarro/Trauma I vs. Pirata Morgan/El Hijo del Pirata Morgan, 1/31/10 This was also pretty good, though it couldn't live up to the heat that the previous match got. Everytime I see Pirata Morgan, I can't quite get my head around what he's turned into. I literally find myself asking, "what the fuck is that?" But the mofo can still work. I actually thought he outworked Navarro in this match on a less is more basis. His mat exchange with Trauma I was better than Navarro's work with El Hijo del Pirata Morgan. Granted, Trauma I has probably overtaken Son of Pirata Morgan at this point, but Morgan had a more direct, straightforward way of tackling Trauma. Navarro did a couple of cool submissions, but he's become somewhat overexposed of late. There were a couple of teases that the match would come down to Pirata and Navarro one-on-one, but they wound up giving this match to the kids which I thought was the right idea. The veterans were both pinned while they were in a Pirata Morgan figure four and the finish to the match was that awesome submission stand-off that we first saw in Black Terry's match with Multifacetico. It was a cool finish because you had both Navarro and Pirata at ringside cheering on their kids. They were like a pair of football dads. Navarro was slightly disgusted when his son tapped then his paternal instinct took over. Pretty cool. MATCH OF THE MONTH: It's been a strong month for IWRG, but I don't think you can go past Cerebro/Diablo. Finally, a lucha title match with a little bit of drama that made you want to actually watch the second and third caidas. I don't know what's happening with IWRG right now, but they seem a hell of a lot more focused and actually deserve to be considered the best promotion in Mexico instead of winning by default. Do they have a new booker or something?

IWRG Avisman vs. Bushi, 11/26/09 This was the lightweight title switch the Segunda Caida guys wrote about recently. Avisman definitely showed what he's capable of on the mat here. Bushi couldn't follow suit, but I guess he wouldn't really know how. The match peaked with Avisman's final action on the mat, which was a counter into a ankle lock of his own if I recall correctly. Great intensity from Avisman to match his angry little man demeanour. He was like a little Napoleon with his matwork here. The rest of the match bored me, however. CMLL Sangre Azteca/Dragon Rojo Jr./Misterioso II vs. Mascara Dorada/Metro/Stuka Jr, 1/6/10 This was also a title switch. There was an effort to make it seem important, but these guys are only capable of working one style and so this was just a longer version of that style. The rudos are so generic. I fucking hate the synchronised moves they do. You can't distinguish one rudo from another if they all do the same moves. They all look like Scorpio, Jr. to one degree or another, and who would've thought he'd have a lasting influence on the rudo division? Anyway, this was well rehearsed and the same match they do night in, night out. I guess you could call it solid, but the patterns are so predictable that it came across like an over-produced pop single to me. Stuka Jr is worth watching since he has a solid all-round game and a couple of nice dives, but he does the same thing in every match. CMLL Arena Puebla Centella de Oro/Blue Center/King Jaguar vs. Ares/Alarido/Crazy Black, 1/11/10 Haven't seen the locals in a while. When they're on song, the locals produce the truest form of lucha in Mexico. Centella de Oro has to be the most underrated guy in lucha circles. He carried Ares through some fucking great lucha exchanges in this match. Blue Center was awesome too. Like a veteran version of 1991 Atlantis. Stuka Jr./Metro/Fuego vs. Dr. X/Pólvora/Virus, 1/11/10 This started off with the same mat exchanges that Stuka Jr. always does, but Virus is such a great worker that he was able to turn it into a pretty good slow build. Why they chose to work a slow build is beyond me since everyone else wanted to work up tempo. That's another thing I hate -- the token slow build. Whatever happened to working the opening pairs before upping the tempo on the second go through? Virus/Stuka aside, this pretty much sucked. There were a ton of botched spots and no rhythm to bail them out. IWRG Negro Navarro vs. Angelico, 1/21/10 The best worker in Mexico meets the worst worker in Mexico. This was such a weird match to watch. After years of watching Navarro annihilate young guys one on one, he sold for Angelico as if he were a fellow maestro. If Angelico wasn't Navarro's student and just some guy he was matched against on the indy circuit, you have to wonder whether he'd give him anything at all. I was actually annoyed with Navarro here because he was selling for some of the worst looking shit you'll ever see and putting it over huge. Angelico couldn't apply his holds properly and Navarro was submitting to them in the hope of giving his student some rub. There's been a bit of talk about Navarro working "even" with Angelico, but this was beyond even. On one level, his performance was excellent as he showed he can sell as well as he works holds, but Angelico is just not ready for the sort of respect Navarro showed him here. He contributed nothing to the match and looked completely out of place. I don't know whether Navarro has his blinders on in regard to his prodigy's skill, but I sure as hell wish he was giving the rub to somebody else.

Who: My uncle, who was a bit of a black sheep of the family, was making his first trip back to New Zealand in years. We were all sitting around my Grandmother's living room when WWF Superstars came on TV. It had already taken off in Australia and for some reason he wanted to watch it. My parents had gone to NWA New Zealand's On The Mat tapings when they were dating and just after I was born, so they were familiar with several of the wrestlers from their days working the New Zealand territory. The thing that stood out to me was Hacksaw Jim Duggan hitting Andre the Giant over the head with his 2x4. What: The first big angle I remember was Outlaw Ron Bass raking Brutus the Barber Beefcake's face with his spurs. That blew my mind at the time. I remember asking said uncle endless questions about how it could've been allowed to happen. He told me it was fake and they were actors but it seemed pretty real to me. Around that time, it blew up at school. Everybody was watching it and if you missed an episode you were massively out of the loop at school. All the merchandise became huge, especially the trading cards, and I remember the most unpopular girl in school bringing a WWF magazine one day and being cool for a day. We got all the PPVs free-to-air in NZ, though they were six months after the fact. I remember the TV guide had a page devoted to wrestling news and the tabloids would have two or four page spreads complete with posters. I had a massive Megapowers explode poster that I got from renting the Wrestlemania V VHS. When: 1988. Specifically Summer Slam '88. I didn't see Hogan for the first few weeks and remember thinking "Who is this guy?" when Savage brought him out as his partner for Summer Slam. Where: New Zealand. Why: It was a phenomenon, but I was also into comic books, cartoons, action figures and TV shows like the A-Team and Knight Rider so it was tailor made for my interests at the time. The whole thing peaked with Wrestlemania VI and eventually they took it off the air. One day my friend and I were reminiscing about wrestling and decided to rent some old tapes. This was in 1994 or maybe early '95. We were hooked again, though we could only really follow it from PPV to PPV until 1997 when we started getting truncated versions of Raw and some of the WCW shows. There's no way I would've kept watching without the internet, though.

Well, it's probably a running gimmick at this point whether he knows the person or not, but I'm guessing his parents didn't let him watch TV because every kid I knew bargained with their parents to stay up and watch the A-Team. He has a point about TV shows, though. Pop culture osmosis is one thing, but it's not the same as living through it. My sister is six years younger than me and she wouldn't know shit about what happened in the 80s.

The only good lucha last year was from IWRG and Arena Puebla. Check out Zatura vs. Trauma II and the locals trios matches. The only good match I saw from Japan was the Futen mainevent. It was a bad year for wrestling.

Those Mistico/Casas matches are awful.

Los Terribles Cerebros vs. Los Oficiales, Campeonato de Trios IWRG, 12/25/09 Another poor Cerebros match. They look about done to me. Lazy matwork, weak transitions, unimaginative spots and some terrible finishes of late. I wouldn't mind if they broke up actually, because IWRG really need to run a Black Terry singles feud. Los Traumas I y II vs. Suicida y Zatura, 1/14/09 I'm not sure what to make of Trauma II's new look, but his work here was some of the better stuff I've seen out of IWRG in a while. He had a lengthy opening spell with Suicida, which was the best Mike Segura has looked in ages. I'm not a huge fan of IWRG matwork because I think they give up the holds too easily, but I liked how they worked this into a standing punch exchange then took it back to the mat only for the Traumas to beat the shit out of Mike Segura for the rest of the match. The face-off between Mike Segura and Trauma I didn't quite work, but there was some good brawling in this. The Traumas have developed into real asskickers. Dad must be proud. Pantera, Angelico y Solar vs. Hijo del Pirata, Negro Navarro y Bombero Infernal, 1/14/09 This was lively. Had some glaring faults, but it was lively. I approve of the way they've been mixing things up lately. Bombero Infernal dropped Pantera on this head, but apart from that their work was a nice change of pace and I liked how the match came down to Solar vs. Hijo del Pirata and Navarro vs. Angelico instead of the usual Solar/Navarro finish. IWRG can be short on variety at times, but this felt like a real trios match. There was some loose work, a few botches and some atrocious shit from Angelico, but even he was in the right place at the right time and I dug how they moved from match-up to match-up. If you thought Angelico's Chikara-like stand-up work was bad, wait until you see his kicks. I dunno why he does them since he has a decent looking skinny-guy chop, but he's clearly a guy who watches a bunch of youtube because he even does World of Sport mat tricks, which he probably aped from Chikara instead of the really good World of Sport workers. The best thing I'll say about his kicks is that Navarro did an awesome job of blocking them at the end and his stomach punch ought to have killed Angelico dead, but the finish wasn't bad and again it was the match dynamics that made this worth watching. I dug Navarro teaming up with a couple of bruisers in Hijo del Pirata and Bomber Infernal. Hijo del Pirata is the new Capitán Muerte in terms of bringing the offence and Bombero Infernal is a lucha indy waster. Mostly, I'm digging having weekly Solar in IWRG. If he sticks around, he may be my worker of the year.

No. Is it good?

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.

IWRG 1/07/10 Black Terry/Dr Cerebro/Cerebro Negro vs. Pantera/Suicida/Zatura This had some of the lousiest matwork I've seen in a Terribles Cerebros match. It was like they were trying to do old-school Los Temerarios/Fantásticos exchanges, but they're all a bit too portly. Things picked up in the second fall when the Cerebros started brawling and I dug the camera angle on the technicos' comeback (and the topes in particular), but this was largely forgettable. Angelico/Solar/Ultraman Jr vs. Negro Navarro/Los Traumas I & II Solid match. Angelico is an awful worker, especially when he's working from a standing switch, but I have to give him credit for hanging with Trauma I in this match and doing some reasonably interesting matwork. People keep posting highlights of Angelico on youtube and it always makes me wonder what Navarro sees in this kid, but he's taken him under his wing and we'll see how he improves throughout the year. Trauma I looked better than ever in this match; and while Trauma II couldn't get anything going with Ultraman Jr, the pair of them look like better workers than they were a year ago. If Navarro's work keeps rubbing off on his kids, then Dinastía Navarro will be front runners for trios of the year. I don't think any trios has their bases covered as well as Dinastía Navarro if the Traumas keep improving on the mat. Once again, the highlight was Navarro vs. Solar, but what I liked about this match (aside from the cool ringside view of Solar/Navarro matwork) is that they didn't dominate the bout. The young guys were given a lengthy amount of time to work with each other and Navarro and Solar swapped partners briefly, which made it seem like more of a trios match. It was subtle, but I felt Solar did a good job captaining his side. This was a step closer to the type of trios matches I'd like to see in IWRG, where there's no shortage of competitiveness. I also dug the colours Solar wore here. That change and the ringside camera made the Navarro/Solar stuff seem fresher to me. I guess the mark of any trios match is whether you'd want to see the rematch and in this case I most definitely would.

I only read the transcript of the Bret angle over at DVDVR, but I don't see how he can say "the WWE Universe" so many times without wondering what the fuck has happened in 12 years.

Satanico vs. Shiro Koshinaka, hair vs. hair, EMLL 7/30/84 One of the things I discovered while watching the New Japan set is that I hate Shiro Koshinaka. I don't know why this is, since he's never been a worker I've felt strongly about one way or the other. I think Dylan Waco may have referred to him as a blackhole and that's as good a description of him as any. It did pique my interest in this match, however. It's not a match I remember liking particularly much, but it's Satanico so there has to be something good about it... Satanico cuts a promo at ringside before the bell. Despite being a rudo, he's entering this match against Samurai Shiro as a Mexican wrestler and thus there's a groundswell of support for him. Has there ever been a more charismatic worker than Satanico? Watch how he lays on the charm. It's so thick that you sense something is about to happen; something that will cement Satanico as a technico in this match. Sure enough, Koshinaka jumps him straight away. This in itself is an interesting turn of events, since you don't often see Satanico laid out like that. It's a sign that Satanico is going to sell for most of the fall and more than likely lose, unless he reverses the momentum Koshinaka has generated. Watching it unfold, I wasn't about to give Koshinaka much credit. I figured so long as he brawled okay, Satanico's selling would take care of the rest. However, for a touring wrestler, I thought Koshinaka did a number of excellent things in this fall. For starters, he had the right sort of intensity. It really did seem like he was eager to get the jump on Satanico. He paced about during the match introductions and argued with referee Eddie Palau like a seasoned rudo. As soon as the formalities were over, he begun dishing out more punishment to Satanico, and the tone was set for a excellent fall. Above all, he displayed a surprisingly nuanced understanding of when to cut off Satanico's comebacks. Either he was well advised or studied things with his own eyes, because you don't often see a touring guy with this much understanding of how to work a lucha match. Koshinaka chose to work the arm in this fall, which I guess is a universal way for workers from other countries to work together, but he set it up by stomping on the arm during the early heat segment and wrenching on it good and proper once Satanico was back in the ring. This gave Satanico plenty to sell, but the great thing about Satanico is that like Fujiwara he was such a great defensive wrestler that he was always looking to free himself from the hold. Instead of being meekly led around the ring by Koshinaka's wristlock, he pushed against Koshinaka's chin to try to straighten the arm. Koshinaka responded by moving with Satanico to the point where Satanico gave him his back. There was a nice armdrag takedown into a cruxific armbar, which led to a great spot where Satanico begun violently kneeing Koshinaka in the back. Koshinaka gave up the hold and was kneed in the head as he got to his feet, but he cut off the comeback with a kick to the cut and a nice elbow to the back of the head. Koshinaka went back to the armbar, but Satanico kicked him in the face repeatedly to tell him he'd had enough of all that business, and that was the only regrettable thing about the fall: that they left the mat to work the kind of rope exchanges that Koshinaka isn't particularly good at. Koshinaka took the fall with a backslide, whereas I would've much preferred a submission. Nevertheless, the second fall was also excellent. Satanico took a time out between falls and was like a man possessed trying to fight his way back into this match, but Koshinaka had too much in the tank for Satanico to muscle his way onto offence. I was really impressed with the headbutt spots Koshinaka threw in during the early part of this fall. They were amusing comedy spots and well sold, but they also led to Koshinaka attacking the head via different means; first driving Satanico's skull into the turnbuckle and then coming off the top with a nice diving knee that left El Satanico convulsing. This was the part of the match where they try to open things up a bit and work towards the bigger moves. They weren't in any hurry, however, and the pacing here was exceptionally good. Koshinaka set Satanico up for the move he wanted (another knee from the top) by weakening his leg so he couldn't get up off the mat, but Satanico shifted the weight to his knee and managed to catch Koshinaka with a big slam to the mat. It was a simple back bump, but Koshinaka rolled out of the ring and sold it like the trigger spot that it was. Satanico was limping, but came motoring around to the other side of the ring to finally beat the shit out of Koshinaka, and to everyone's joy, Koshinaka bleed after a series of postings. Great selling from Koshinaka, and a total surprise given that his selling was one of the reasons I hated him so much on the New Japan set. Satanico took the fall with an awesome looking folding press and there was a great shot of him sitting back up on the mat, cognisant of having taken the fall but looking absolutely buggered. A very good fall. The theme surrounding Koshinaka's head was a nice touch. Heading into the third fall, Satanico wasn't about to give Koshinaka any sort of a break. As soon as he caught his breath, he began giving Koshinaka a lesson in what a true hair match is all about. Palau kept trying to raise Satanico's hand and declare the second fall over, but these hair matches are all about an eye for an eye and all the things the bible teaches us not to do. And if there was ever a worker who wasn't about to turn the other cheek, it was El Satanico Daniel Lopez. He was relentless in this fall; hell bent on turning Koshinaka into a bloody pulp as a souvenir of his time in Mexico. Koshinaka fought back with a series of blows to Satanico's head, which sent Satanico into a frenzy at the sight of his own blood. Things were downright ugly now, the way a hair match should be. This was all about blood and guts; not being able to think straight and relying on instinct. Both guys tried to finish it and wound up selling more and more. Imagine my horror then when an amazing match like this ended with a DQ. The finish was bullshit. The match ended with a foul from Koshinaka He tried to feign that it wasn't a foul, but it was as clear as day and Palau was completely within his rights to award the match to Satanico. Koshinaka protested vigorously, but he wasn't quite good enough to pull this off in a way that would make a satisfying post-match out of a cheap finish. The idea was that Koshinaka was trying to counter a bodyslam into a cradle and that Satanico had faked the foul, but the way Koshinaka fed his arm made it look like a clear and blatant foul. Satanico certainly appeared to be faking during the post-match antics, but whatever their intentions it was a bullshit finish to a fantastic match. Bullshit finish aside, this was probably a top ten match for the 80s and likely the best match Koshinaka has ever had. Unfortunately, he didn't take anything he learnt in Mexico back to Japan, but a lot of workers claim that they don't like Mexico or that they can't understand the style, which may be the reason that most workers from other territories point blank suck in Mexico. Koshinaka, for whatever reason, embraced the opportunity to work in Mexico, and at a time when hair matches were still bloody brawls and there were workers like Satanico in their primes, he had a great match in the most visceral of lucha libre styles. And for that reason, I can't quite hate him as much as I did before.