IWRG 6/18/09

TKG: Boo! We missed a week. I was stoked to see Black Terry opposite Fuerza, Trauma II v Zatura in a superlibre and if Pendulo was as charismatic when teamed with heterosexuals. Instead we get a week of IWRG with no Negro Navarro, Black Terry or Freelance. Thankfully everyone else stepped up their game.

PAS: Apparently the station showed a repeat, so that stuff may be lost in the mists of time. As always the goodness is provided by the amazing

Lucha Libre Nation

PAS: Folks should check out the two opening matches from this weeks Puebla show too, good shit.

Azoka/Sauron v Jack/Exodia

TKG: I assume Azoka and Exodia are Ultimo trainees. They announce this as Exodia’s debut match and he really had the feel of guy in a ring for the first time. I don’t think Sauron’s really the rudo who is going to elicit the best out of this type of green rookie. Where is Paramedico? Azoka is now working heel and he is still really green but still a guy who I kind of like as sells guy struggling out of mat work and submissions well. Surprisingly Jack does a nice job of walking him through some violent mat work. Selling struggle isn’t a skill that’s particularly in demand among Japanese lucharesu feds, and I imagine when he goes to Japan it will be drilled out of Azoka, but it’s nice touch in actual real lucha.

PAS: Sauron seems like he is on enough roids that he should be in AAA, rather then stuck working IWRG openers. He isn't even mediocre, but still better then Groon XXX. Too bad Growth Hormone can't make you grow. He looked decent taking an armdrag or two, but throw those awful looking Davey Boy Smith "trying to avoid a bicep tear" clotheslines. Despite the matwork Yack's fake La Parka is still painful. This was one of those matches where the IWRG willingness to give everything 25 minutes bites you in the ass a little.

Chico Che, Rigo, Trauma I v Barbra Roja, Hijo del Pirata Morgan, Pirata Morgan Jr.

TKG: RIGO~!!! OK this is hilarious. Rigo is a guy working a Rigo Tovar (70s Mexican Cumbia star)look alike gimmick. I’m really bad at explaining music nerd jokes and this requires alot of context. Chico Che is also a guy working a 70s Cumbia musician look alike gimmick. His new short hair hurts the gimmick but on some level he's always been a guy who dresses like Chico Che doesn't so much look like him. Still there is something really amusing about the guy who hands out gimmicks in IWRG doing this type of Cumbia look alike gimmicks. As though the WWE had a Deep South tag team with one guy working a Giorgio Moroder look alike gimmick tagged with a Barry White look alike with neither working a musical gimmick. I can’t come up with anything better than the disco comparison. Part of the weirdness is that while a really popular music in Mexico, Cumbia is a genre whose roots are foreign (Columbia and Panama). It doesn’t have the volk kultur connotations of Los Folkloricos in AAA.
http://www.cuarteto-continental.unlugar.com/cuartetocontinental/cumbiamexicana.html has a nice history of cumbia in Mexico plus youtube link to Conjunto Africanos singing "Los Luchadores". So all that contributes to the humor of the Rigo lookalike gimmick, but really what puts it over the top is the degree to which Rigo actually has the emaciated look of a 70s musician who has shocked everyone by living into the new century.I don’t know how old Ringo is but he doesn’t have the emaciated look of 70s era Joe Perry, Dee Dee Ramone, Ozzy or Iggy so much as he has the emaciated look of late 90s era Joe Perry, Dee Dee Ramone, Ozzy or Iggy. I really liked the way Riggo sold for the Pirata Family’s stuff and liked his tough brawling offense. He had a dive and a couple of rope assisted flashy spots that had a real tough awkward look to them. It’s possible that against lesser opponents, that stuff would have just looked blown. But for now I am a Rigo fan. Trauma I is getting the hang of his bruiser gimmick and I liked the whole three tough brawlers as a face team deal they had going.

PAS: I am still a little unsold on the Pirata kids, they were guys with lots of nasty triple teams, but also some not so good looking triple teams. Came off a little Thomasellish at times, however I still dug this match and will certainly be willing to give them a bunch more chances to impress me. I am amused at Tomk's explanation of the Rigo gimmick because I was on the phone with Dean when I first watched this, and described him as looking like current Gene Simmons. He kind of wrestles like you might imagine Gene Simmons would wrestle if instead of starting a rock band he moved to Mexico and became a luchadore.

Zatura VS Trauma II [Campeonato Mundial Peso Ligero]

TKG:This wasn’t an organic match, it was very much a match of guys who had “ideas” they wanted to try out, but the ideas were really good ones and left this enjoying the match and thinking both guys are smart and have more promise than I thought going in. I mean this wasn’t Pareja Toxico lots of “innovative” spots, so much as smart ideas. Match still exists very much in the world of matches between guys who watch a lot of tapes and have a bunch of “innovative ideas” that they want to work in. While that often can lead in bad directions, I really enjoyed it here. Trauma II and Zatura are young guys who have good execution and timing on this stuff, the actual ideas they have are actually really smart and creative, they understand how to fit them into the title match structure well, and you get the sense that this will become organic for them pretty quickly. Both guys come in with taped shoulders and Zatura does some nice arm selling in first fall with Trauma working it over well, while Trauma tweaks himself leading to nice selling and work later, first fall had lots of rolling into locks with lots of stuff put on near ropes setting up escapes that felt like someone had watched some PWFG Shamrock with lucha eyes and really understood it, they worked in a smart handspeed exchange section that made sense in context, some huge spots including a powerbomb into corner followed by a top rope dive that again didn’t feel back and forward so much as everything set up well. My favorite thing was the way they moved from one body part to the next. First fall starts with both guys working extremities (leg locks followed by Trauma moves up to work the arm of Zatura) with both guys being able to either reverse the holds or reach the ropes with extremity that isn’t in a lock. Zatura wins the fall by putting Trauma II into essentially a neblina variation. As soon as he did it, you knew he had won the fall. Neblina isn’t a move that I think of as an answer to reversals or rope breaks-being a way to capture and put pressure on all the extremities at once. But they made it make sense. Second fall has Trauma II use a sub with a choke as the answer to not being able to tap opponent by working arm or leg. Third fall has Zatura put Trauma II in a Romero Special and fuck you pop for the Romero Special cause he’s got all the extremities locked up, and then II slips out and grabs the Romero Special with a choke and you want to get up and do dance with noisemaker. The “innovative idea” was a way to build a match to set up and get you to pop for a Romero special. So smart. Face v face title match isn’t the easiest thing to pull off to begin with, that they were able to workshop this many outside ideas into it was pretty impressive.

PAS: This kind of felt to me like the ECWA Low-Ki v. American Dragon matches or the AAA Juventud Guererra v. Rey Mysterio series. You were watching a pair of really talented young guys work out a different way to wrestle. This didn't look like a traditional lucha title match, or a bad US Indy style current CMLL title match. It felt like they were trying to find a third way to do things. Trauma II is the son of Negro Navarro who is currently the best wrestler in the world, but one who really works in an archaic style. As much as I dig what he does, Navarro doesn't wrestle like current lucha libre stars. Which is good because current lucha libre is pretty terrible, this match felt like Trauma looked at what was present and now, and said "How can I do this and still be a Navarro." The take downs in this match weren't as slick as your Maestros, but they were neat looking and the execution of the holds was very violent looking. This also had some slick reversal stuff although some of it looked like it needed to go a beat faster. I was pretty blown away by Zatura here too, look back four or five reviews ago and I was dissing him as a guy not worthy of a third spot on the Chico Che, Freelance team, now he is more them holding his own in a tremendous title match. Just a huge leap in my estimation of him. You can never really tell in lucha, as I remember a point where both Shocker and Rey Buccanaro finished top five in a DVDVR 500, but I do get the sense that these two are going to having matches this great for decades to come.

Juventud Guerrera VS Dr. Cerebro

TKG:CEREBRINA DRIVER!!!!!! Holy fuck. They follow the face v face match with this heel v heel one. And really no one does heel v heel better than lucha. Juvi is great as really strutting pretty sissy style heel while Dr Cerebro at this point is a complete vicious bull who will bowl right through people. Juventud’s execution was really questionable the last time we saw him in IWRG but his stuff looked good here and he sold in ways that reminded you of how great Juvi can be. For this type of tough heel vs sissy heel who can still fuck you up, this wasn’t anywhere near as good as the best Shocker v Tarzan Boy stuff from the beginning of the decade. But it’s been a bunch of yeara since then and no one is really doing this these days and I am stoked for the hair match.

PAS: I really dug this, Juvi is so hateable as a sleazy little prick. You really want to see Cerebro kill him, and he totally does. This had the feel of a hypothetical Manny Fernandez v. John Tatum match, and was as good as you would expect that to be. Juvi must have been on a different combo of drugs here vs. the last match, he actually looked like he belonged in the ring, and wasn't just the worlds greatest Johnny Fairplay. And holy fuck was that finish a finish. With the spotty broadcast of IWRG lately it would be a tragedy to miss this hair v. hair match.