Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 9/29/13

So this was from a fairly recent show, happening in May 2013. Which means we jumped from airing 4+ year old matches on up to present day. We're never going to see those missing 4 years of matches, are we? Still that actually gives me hope that Santo's 2013 appearance from the same show eventually turns up on this show.

1. Persian Prince vs. Pistolero

I know Pistolero is a PWR trainee (there's a cringe-y statement from him on the Pro Wrestling Revolution site that seems written by the owner of PWR, talking about how they were a great place to train, but with a bunch of petty thinly-veiled digs thrown in at APW, who I think started training him before he moved on to be trained at PWR. He even calls them "that school up north" which tickles me to no end) and I know nothing about Persian Prince (I could not locate any internet flame war letters that he wrote). Match seemed kind of built to showcase Pistolero, and I dug what I saw. Nothing flashy but I don't believe he's been working for long. He had nice elbows and forearm strikes, took a big bump off a reversed bulldog, and did a cool deadlifty German suplex. Couldn't get much of a read on Prince, but he did ragdoll and fold up nicely for the German suplex. Match ends suddenly and flatly on Prince's first offensive move, a flying shoulderblock with some wonky timing. Something seemed off and Pistolero landed funny taking it, then they just went to the pin. Crowd seemed confused. I seemed confused. Rewound to see what happened, still couldn't really tell. Prince threw a shoulder block, Pistolero bumped kinda fast and awkwardly, match ended.

2. Pequeno Halloween vs. Octagoncito

On paper this was one of the more exciting matches I've seen on a PWR card. And the match delivered and would have been killer live. We get 4 minutes of cool matwork stuff that is kind of exhibition-y, not so much mat struggle as "here's some cool stuff we can do" but that doesn't really matter here. Halloween busts out plenty of cool intricate twisty submissions where he has 3 limbs tied up all at once with all of them doing different things, and Octagoncito has some cool roll ups to get out of them. It builds really nicely to maximize the crowd getting into it, leaping into a couple of really hot dives and big bumps from both guys. Cool spot where Octagoncito tries something from the apron but Halloween hits a drop toe hold, then dropkicks him to the floor and follows up with the Halloween face first slide bump but does this one as a splash on Octagoncito. The match was as good as I hoped it would be. Aside from a couple flubbed headscissor spots everything looked cool, and Pequeno Halloween still looks just as good as he did when he was making tape more regularly in 2007-2009 (when I thought he and Pequeno Damien and Bam Bam were three of the best workers in the world). Pretty impressive that he's kept his work up to that level while working as a freelancer. I just wish he showed up more often.