2014 Ongoing Match of the Year List

68. Freelance/Arez/Micke Segura v. Los Tortugas Ninjas 12/13

PAS: Really fun lucha trios with everyone moving at a brisk pace and hitting all of their spots cleanly. Freelance is great at this kind of fast moving sprint, and I enjoyed Arez more here then I have in other more ambitious performances. There is a great Turtle Lady of the Lake spot in the first fall where a Ninja turtle gets stuck on his back and wiggles around, and when Arez goes to capitalize the turtle rolls him up. Finish was a bit of partner disunity between Arez and Segura which felt like a cop out finish to this kind of match, otherwise this was a blast

ER: Fun spotfest with a bunch of great ranas and armdrags, and of course the sheer joy of just watching grown men wrestle in ninja turtle costumes. For the record, I think the wrestling turtle power rankings are 1. Tortuga Leonardo 2. Tortuga Raphael 3. Tortuga Michaelangelo. Donatello was a no-show apparently. Wrestling in the turtle outfits seems really difficult, what with those floppy half shells always getting in the way. Huge bonus points to all of them for doing dives, I could easily see those shells getting hung up on the ropes and sending them to their doom. The outfits are pretty bulky so Freelance and Segura also get bonus points for working pretty spots with those shells getting in the way. Arez is one of those guys who isn't great at acting natural when he's waiting to do a spot. He just kind of runs in place until it's his turn, like a puppy waiting for you to throw a ball. He also usually breaks out at least one spot in a match where you think he took a real nasty move, but then you realize "Oh, apparently that was supposed to hurt the other guy." But here he does a lot of cool big stomps, really trying to crack Leo's shell (and of course there is a move that dumps him on his own head while a turtle takes a back bump, but apparently it hurt the turtle more? Some sort of shell psychology I suppose). Leonardo was the best at taking all of the intricate Freelance/Segura offense, I dug his opening matwork the most, and he did great little things like cut low on clotheslines , lean into super kicks and go for trips on drop downs. Plus he and Raphael knew how to mug best as turtles. This was all good fun.


2014 MASTER LIST