Matt D

Emotionally, I often lean towards getting the beatdown started early. I understand that the matwork and the early exchanges are the whole appeal to many people and much of where the mastery is, but for me much of the appeal of lucha is the visceral moment of the comeback, and the raising of tension to make that moment sing. That's kind of what I meant about Sangre Chicana vs MS-1 being a bit of a skeleton key. Almost every lucha trios has that to some degree, but the balance is different, and I much prefer matches where the meat is in the beatdown. That's true with most of us here and Southern Tags too though, I think. I know I took flack for loving all of the early Ingobernables trios last year where they ambushed and started with a beatdown week after week while everyone was going nuts over the Busca spotfests instead.

Alright, I have a lot to say, and some of this I've been meaning to get put down somewhere for a while. I had a hard time with lucha. I had enjoyed the process of the AWA 80s set so much that I wanted to get right on board with lucha even though I was extremely unfamiliar with it, and I struggled through the first few discs on the set. By the time I hit disc 5, I started to feel like I had a little sense of what I was watching, enough so that I wanted to spin off and start writing things up for Segunda Caida. The #1 rule I had, however, was not to just jump to the best stuff. Why watch the best stuff before you have an understanding of what you're watching? When you do that, you don't have an accurate baseline, or your baseline becomes MS-1 vs Sangre Chicana. I wanted to watch a number of different situations from a number of different years, and I tried to avoid singles matches until I understood more of what built up to them. And Parv, I did exactly what you'd do in this situation. I watched matches, I took notes, and I started to look for patterns. In doing so, I figured out some things about at least the CMLL style of lucha. (And even then I admit that I lose some context with my language gaps, but you can learn a lot, in general, from how the matches are worked). Let's start with this. Here's what you don't need to know about lucha. In trios matches, there are captains. To win a fall, either the captain has to get pinned/submitted or the other two members of the team have to. If someone is knocked out of the ring or dives out, a partner can replace him. Babyfaces are tecnicos. Heels are Rudos. It's not exactly a 1 to 1 correlation. A backbreaker is called a quebradora. A tope con giro is some sort of flippy spinny dive thing. The first fall is the primera. The second fall is the segunda. The third fall is the tercera. That's what someone does not need to know about lucha. Why? Because you know that stuff already and it doesn't really matter all that much. Mike Tenay told us all that years ago as if it was all that mattered. It's not important on a real narrative level and you know it anyway. Here's what you need to know about trios matches. Trios matches have a point. Almost everything done in a trios match has a purpose. Almost every trios match has an internal narrative, some central theme that it's pushing forward. Usually that's a feud between two wrestlers, though CMLL's booking or lack there of means not always. Sometimes they're the captains, sometimes they're not. All of the wrestlers are generally paired up against each other in the beginning, though those pairings can shift. The match will almost always end with a refocusing towards the key pairing. That's what late match dives are for, by the way. Dives, in trios terceras, are generally to clear the ring and set up the last exchange between the key players, to put the exclamation point on the match. The dives aren't the end. They're a means to the end. This actually inverts the standard southern tag formula which usually ends with a hot tag and everyone in the ring as things break down. Then in the unfocused chaos, either the babyfaces triumph or the heels do something underhanded to win. Lucha trios matches are generally the opposite of that with things becoming refocused after a fairly chaotic tercera. That brings things back to structure. This style is about build and payoff. The tercera, as I just mentioned, is about a build to the dives and that last exchange. In a lot of ways, the rest of the match is the build to the tercera. There are only a few ways these matches are generally structured and once you understand these patterns, understanding lucha becomes a lot easier. A ) The tecnicos and the rudos start out the match in a feeling out process with pairings, matwork, and fast exchanges. The tecnicos have a general advantage. Eventually, the rudos have enough and opportunistically swarm the ring starting the beatdown. Or the tecnicos can win the first fall and that swarming starts in the segunda. Or B )The rudos ambush the tecnicos from the get go and immediately start the beatdown. That's pretty much it. The beatdown is your heat and works one of two ways. Either A ) all of the rudos are in the ring at once and they churn through the tecnicos using a numbers game, with the tecnicos cycling in. Rarely do you have it so that the tecnicos are shown to be all recovered at once. They won't be waiting on the apron but instead they'll convalesce on the floor (Volador had a match this last weekend where he was hanging out on the apron for way too long during his partner getting beat down 2 on 1 and it drove me nuts because you never see it). The more over tecnicos will know to fight back a bit but ultimately keep getting overwhelmed. Or B ) after taking the advantage, one rudo stays in the ring for the most part, beating on one tecnico. So long as this happens, they can play more face-in-peril style. The rudos will cycle in and occasionally, after a long beating, a tecnico might roll out and another will take the heat. These matches are about broad momentum shifts. They are about the mandate of heaven shifting. So whether the rudos started the beatdown in the primera or the segunda, generally in the subsequent fall, the tecnicos will come back. This is usually due to the rudos going to a well once too often, getting too cocky, or through basic miscommunication. Often times, it'll be through one tecnico dodging or reversing a move in the ring and the other two flying in, or brawling on the outside, and will often involve a revenge spot, whether that is a posting or mask ripping or whatever, some quick shine, and then a tying up of the falls (unless the tecnicos were already ahead, in which case move on to the next paragraph). This usually leads to a reset where everyone pairs off again, one at a time. This involves a lot of quick, logical cut offs, a chance for everyone to show off their offense, and usually some more tecnico shine as they fight against the odds. All of that builds back to the dives and then to the finish, usually between the two luchadores most focused, and with some ending that will bridge to whatever (usually similar) match they are running the next week, and occasionally to an eventual singles match. That's not every trios match, but if you come in with that framework, that model, as a tool for understanding what you're seeing, to see how it fits and how it matches and what the variation is, then it's much harder to get lost. You can do the same thing with wager matches or title matches.

Trying to figure out those motives again. I'll try to write something about the journey tomorrow.

I've done such a bad job of writing up what I've been watching. Last night was Steve Grey vs John Naylor. It was the semi finals of a tournament, one fall. This was my first time seeing Naylor and I came out impressed (which could be a testament to Grey because I know OJ really doesn't like him). He had the weight advantage. I'm still getting a grip on the style, really, but there such a sense of struggle and gamesmanship. Here, Naylor had the strength and weight advantage, but was still quick and savvy. Grey spent a lot of the match battling from beneath, early on due to some legwork off of a half crab (And they made something as simple as a crab really matter in their multiple attempts at it during the match). There were a few "hanging onto the arm" exchanges that were just spectacular, and I liked the escalation towards the finish that stemmed from Grey getting slightly more desperate as things went on, allowing Naylor to capitalize. I never know how much I'm superimposing over these matches, but to me, there is a sense of circling with the rounds system, of a forward momentum that sort of ebbs and flows on the way to its ultimate destination. The whole becomes more than the sum of its parts.

First to the post on this one and I think it's very, very good. Inventive shine. Goliath and Moreno both held their own (being guys we hadn't seen as much so I wasn't sure). Then, they managed the sort of stuttering heat that the Guerreros liked to do but with weightier face in peril sections that had very little mid-match shine between them which made it feel like the babyfaces were just more damaged than the heels. Multiple hot tags or at least momentum shifts. I really liked it.

MS-1 vs Sangre Chicana IS exceptional, but it's also the skeleton key that unlocks almost all more traditional lucha.

Every match on there is tagged by wrestler.

I've written up around 230 lucha matches on SC. Not sure if that would help or hurt at this stage.

Will: Luke Harper Hater.

My guess is that for the general audience it's easier to promote guys like Duggan and JYD and WWF Rock and Wrestling era nostalgia acts than the guys like Wahoo and Bockwinkel and 70s nostalgia acts. So that was prioritized.

I love how we see Duggan develop his babyface act through the service.

This is your new best friend: http://www.thecubsfan.com/cmll/roster/matchfinder.php

Not a ton of 80s here (though some), and this is a clunky way to go about it but we've covered a ton of them on SC over the years: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=site%3Asegundacaida.blogspot.com%20%22title%20match%22

Also, anything with Satanico. The Rocca vs Mocho Cota matches too.

In the world where he could get his win back vs Koko?

The funny part is the word "ONLY"

From 2009: "*Gene & Ole Anderson Strengths: Consistent headliners as a tag team in the Carolinas and Georgia territories throughout the 70s during a period when they more often than not worked main events. Generally considered the legendary tag team in the Carolinas, which when they started teaming was a tag team territory, and remained the veteran top heel team when the big stars came in and it became a singles territory. Ole Anderson, in particular, was one of the greatest heels and talkers of his era. One of the few tag team in history who were at one point top ten draws (9th place, 1977). Weaknesses: Never “in demand” wrestlers outside of their territory, when it came to being brought in for the hot spot cities like New York, St. Louis, Toronto, Tokyo or Houston like most Hall of Famers from that era were. When it comes to worldwide star power and drawing power, not among the top candidates on the ballot and have never come close in recent elections." Where does that 9th place number come from?

I'm not sure how long after this was Jake's turn but Boesch talked about how he might have wanted the crowd's admiration for purely monetary reasons. THAT specific crowd wasn't going to cheer for anyone but the RnR (you can see the girls in the crowd and how concerned they were at points, etc), but the work itself had a lot of miscommunication and even more than that, just not being on the same page. Jake would want the tag after Barbarian got clowned a bit and Barbarian refused. Barbarian would have firm control, tag out, and Jake would lose it. Lots of little things, even before they crashed into each other a bunch at the end.

Dudleys were my first thought too, but it looks like maybe they give Ryback some rub off of all of this now.

That Jake spot was amazing. Have the RnRs done that elsewhere? I don't remember ever seeing it. This was another match with a babyface chinlock that was a momentum killer. This time with Gibson doing it to Roberts. The heat on Morton was solid, though, and all of the heel communication was a blast. You don't think of Jake as a stooging heel but he was here.

I really liked the beginning and end of the match, but the middle, with JYD's ill-placed chinlock and Reed's long frontface lock sort of dragged. Anytime they were going at it was gold though. I can't understate how good it was when they were pounding on each other. There was just too much of the other stuff.

That was the one where they had Sid and Jake originally, right? Then Sid was injured and it looked like it was going to be Savage and Jake.

I guess that's why it stood out to me so much last night when Brie Bella took the fans' chants of "We Want Becky" and used them to rile the crowd and get them to do the No/Yes thing with her Bryan-style kicks on FIP Paige. Not only was it Brie Bella who did it (as opposed to Kevin Owens or someone), but it was obviously her responding to something that couldn't have been easily predicted in random Becky Lynch chants. It was as heelish as you get in 2015 WWE. More so, probably.

Dustin's made that spot work more than a few times over the last four years or so.

According to this site, the third crow hunting season of the year in MN ends on 10/31. He probably has to get back for that.