2016 Ongoing MOTY List: Lupus v. Trauma 1 Mascara Contra Mascara

3. Canis Lupus v. Trauma 1 IWRG 9/4/16

PAS: 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.

ER: I remember talking to Phil maybe 4 months into 2016 and him asking "Is there going to be any lucha that makes our list this year?" And at that point there wasn't tons. There was a lot of borderline stuff. And now several months after that and the top part of our list is flat dominated by lucha. And this match brings drama and blood and even love. I wouldn't put it on the level of Blue Panther/Villano V, but it really is the first super bloody high drama mask match we've gotten since then. Stupid Arena Mexico and their hatred of plasma. I am entirely unfamiliar with Lupus, but was impressed right away with his opening brawling around ringside. He threw several punch combos that I really liked, and got into the faces of a bunch of fans. I was sold pretty early. Sadly he never really went back to this overly aggressive bully style the rest of the match, but he found other ways to do damage. I'm not used to seeing brutal chairshots in lucha, but now within the last couple months we've gotten Park and Rush blasting each other, then Black Terry getting his dome caved in by Wotan, and now Trauma and Lupus clonking each other with edges of rigid chairs. And both men start bleeding, and masks get ripped, and bleeding through masks is one of the best parts of lucha. At one point Lupus' face is dark red and his mask is torn away from his face, and the ripped mask looks like flayed skin hanging off his now dark red and skinless face. We get some very believable nearfalls with both men actually locking in pins, and believe it or not I didn't actually knew who won ahead of time (I mean, I *assumed* Trauma, but ever since that Blue Panther loss blindsided me, I don't know what to expect) so every nearfall got me. The martinete was great and I had a smile on my face during the various ways Trauma stopped the ref. All of the stuff with the doctor felt very much against lucha code, which added to the spectacle. The ring at this point is just stained an entirely different color, and we finally get an exhausted, deserved sub. I'm a sucker for wrestling and romance so I absolutely loved all the stuff with Lupus' fiancee afterwards, just as I loved Ultimo Guerrero's wife crying at ringside when he lost to Atlantis. Great stuff, all around.


2016 ONGOING MOTY LIST