Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 10/18/14

This week's show has a match where I'm not actually sure where it's from. John and Demon have worked a few cage matches, so the best I can say is that this match happened from 2009-2012. I think the two of them had a cage match in Mexico City at one point and I really would have liked to see that  as I've never actually seen John working in front of an actual Mexican crowd. I've seen a couple shows he worked where the audience was 80+% hispanic, but not a Mexican crowd. I'd want to see if he would work his usual pre-match race-baiting schtick (I saw him embarrassingly call the crowd "wetbacks" at an SF show) although it would have been infinitely more entertaining to see what would happen to him if he did that in Mexico City. Here (wherever this is) he just does some colorless  "I'm the REAL champion" stuff you've heard before.

1. Oliver John vs. Blue Demon Jr. (CAGE MATCH)

Match starts and I quickly find out it's escape rules, which is normally less exciting. Cage matches are almost always better when people use the cage as a means to violence, not as a climbing contest (and there's also a door, meaning we get a lot of "guy holding onto other guy's ankle" spots). John worked really hard here and it was easily one of his best showings that I've seen (especially in these Demon matches). He tried his best to play into Demon's strengths, which was more difficult in this match as Demon really didn't show up to do much. John's entire role was to basically make Demon look superhuman, and to make it appear like Demon was in danger even though Demon planned on taking no bumps. So John bumped all around for Demon's big strikes, flying into the cage from big chops and elbows and took some mammoth bumps off the top on failed escape attempts. The best one was Hamrick-esque, as John was tossed off the top crotch first on the top rope, and then messily bounced from there into a second bump. It looked dangerous, and awesome.

Now as for Demon, he bled. And that counts for a lot, because Demon bled a lot. He didn't bump, and he made John do a lot of the heavy lifting, but he bled. Bloody mask eyeholes is one of the coolest lucha visuals, and this delivered. There were also a bunch of cool shots of big drops of blood all over the mat where John was pounding him, so big hats off the PWR camera crew on those. The non-bumps were a little ridiculous. Demon would get caught on an escape attempt, and John would grab him to deliver a backdrop suplex, and every time Demon would reverse so he wouldn't have to bump off the top. John would grab him, there would be a false struggle, Demon would kick him off or something to send John flying, and then Demon would just hop off the top rope back to the mat (which is odd as you think he would just go back to trying to escape). After the third time it became pretty clear Demon was actively avoiding taking bumps (which is weird that they kept going to the spot). The worst was one time he teased doing a move off the top to a prone John, but then just ended up hopping down to the mat and doing a normal standing elbow drop. Teasing a big spot and then purposely not delivering seems like another item on Demon's list of "rudo acts performed by a tecnico". John eventually won when there was interference and a weird swerve with Vaquero Fantasma turning on Demon and hitting him with a chair, allowing John to slither over Demon out the door to the floor. Since John only won one of their cage matches, that means this was from the 2/27/10 King City show.

So overall, even with Demon's refusal to do a lot, I liked the match. John had a heckuva performance and Demon did hit a gusher which is a pretty special thing to see in wrestling these days so was effective here.