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[2016-09-04-IWRG] Canis Lupus vs Trauma I


soup23

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I'm not going to do a full write up. I really need to see it again. Where it clicked for me utterly was when I switched to the fancam footage. From there, I started over and was hugely engaged. I sync'd together the footage in the third fall as I watched, splitting my screen and it was one of the most immersive wrestling experiences I've had in a long time. It really was an experience and I'd like to go back again and map out more of a narrative. Talk about earned exhaustive selling though. The chair segment and the wrecked bodies it left behind is one of the best examples of how a single spot or sequence can just change everything. Truly amazing finish. I need to see it again.

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  • 4 weeks later...

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.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I wish I liked this one as much as seemingly everyone else did. It had the structure of a classic lucha brawl-first fall is a beatdown, second one has the continuation of it and a comeback, third fall is a fight to death. I liked Lupus' beatdowns-nasty chops and slaps, but nowhere near it being an all time classic. Trauma's comeback was fine. The finishing stretch wasn't that much different from a modern CMLL match-there were moments were they would desperately go after each other with punches and headbutts and THOSE ruled. And the insane amount of blood ruled. But the chairshot sequence wasn't any different than modern puro suplex no sell sequences and strike exchanges as far as logic goes. I loved how they set up the Tombstone nearfall but the outcome was obvious due to how close to the ropes they were. Angle with the box y lucha comissioner ruled too and Trauma desperately grabbing onto Canis was beautiful. The atmosphere was insane-and together with the insane post-match is what made me comfortable rating it as high as I do. Proposing after losing a mask has to be up there in terms of crazy lucha things. Maybe it's my fault since I expected a diferent match-one with more punching and less nearfalls. ****1/4

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  • 10 months later...
There's always the danger that watching a match you've seen pimped for months on end as an all-timer will fail to live up to the hype. I mean, I thought the first two falls had some nice ideas and set the table well enough for the massacre that was the tercera, but I wouldn't really say they were a particularly strong pair of falls for an apuesa match. I liked Lupus' tope coming in the first fifteen seconds, he had some nice jab combos and his riling up of front row Trauma fans was entertaining, even if I'd rather he spent less time posing and more time punching a guy in the face. It was a solid enough rudo beatdown, but a beatdown more along the lines of something you'd see in the mano a mano rather than the blowoff. Lupus stealing Trauma's Lo Negro del Negro for the finish was great, though, and it begged for a follow up later on. Trauma's selling of the leg heading into the segunda was a nice touch and I bought that first fall beatdown having taken its toll on him. I don't necessarily think his comeback was too easily come by or anything, and I liked him going to the tope quickly as well, but I couldn't help heading into the third caida feeling that the whole thing lacked some bite.


Then they started blasting each other with chairs and it became everything I could've wanted. I can't really articulate it, but there are points when I'm watching lucha and it'll suddenly hit me that I'm watching something verging on the transcendent. It just kind of sneaks up on me and I don't get that feeling watching wrestling from America or Japan or Europe. I don't know the exact point I got that feeling during this, but it was somewhere between Canis Lupus curling up in the corner with blood streaming out of his forehead and Trauma headbutting him clean in the nose. The selling of exhaustion down the stretch was phenomenal, the way they'd take that little extra second or two to compose themselves, how they'd throw slaps that had nothing behind them. At one point Lupus just grabbed Trauma by the horns on his mask and repeatedly headbutted him, partly because it was about all he had left, partly because fuck this guy who won't stay down. By the end the ring mat looked like a tarp from a blood splatter reenactment, both guys were covered in gore and the drama for every nearfall was absolutely through the roof. I'd somehow managed to avoid major spoilers as well, and with Trauma I being my favourite wrestler in the world a few years back I was right there with those people under their Los Traumas masks. I got worried for a second after they bumped the ref', thinking we were about to get some schmozz finish to put a damper on things, but they went the opposite direction and that along with the tombstone only turned the heat up even more. I loved that Trauma was too fried to even kick out properly so he just grabbed the ref's arm to stop him from counting. Lupus' hands were stained completely red and he could barely push himself to his knees without slipping on the blood. And the finish. Truly the perfect payoff and a fitting way to cap any mask match. The immediate aftermath with Lupus lying face down in a literal puddle of his own blood is the sort of visual you don't soon forget.

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  • GSR changed the title to [2016-09-04-IWRG] Canis Lupus vs Trauma I

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