Lucha Worth Watching: Blue Demon Jr., IWA-MS Wrestler

1. Blue Demon Jr. vs. LA Park vs. Silver King (Liga Elite 9/9/16)

ER: This match is pretty notable just because of the ridiculous beating that Demon takes. I've seen Demon in some damn lazy performances, and here he just gets pummeled. This performance made me feel sympathy for Demon, and somehow root for him. That's never happened before. Park and King just start beating on him with hard plastic chairs, and even throw him 4 rows into the crowd. Demon takes a man size bump getting tossed through a bunch of chairs, really crazy and out of character for him. He disappears for awhile after getting absolutely wailed on, and then we get more of a Park/King brawl. King hits his middle rope dive to the floor, Park gets launched into the crowd and takes an even more brutal bump than Demon. Eventually Demon makes his triumphant return and waylays dudes with chairs, masks get yanked up, DQ's happen, and I weirdly earned some respect for Demon. Strange for him to turn 50 and start taking furious beatings. I mean, I was at a Timothy Thatcher/Blue Demon match where Thatcher started the match with a stiff chop and Demon clearly leaned in and told him to back off, as Thatcher then held way back on every strike the rest of the match. And here Demon isn't even in Arena Mexico and he's getting beaten like he owes money. Crazy choice, but respect.

2. Blue Demon Jr./Xtreme Tiger/Golden Magic vs. Rey Escorpion/Sharly Rockstar/Cibernetico (Liga Elite 9/14/16)

ER: Blue Demon is now apparently this past his prime southern brawler, still working indies and paler and fatter than he was in the 8x10s he's selling, taken in his prime 20 years prior. Blue Demon comes out slowly, with his shoulder in a sling because of what happened up above on this electronic page. He immediately gets sucked into a brawl on the floor with Escorpion, who is pretty much the worst guy in lucha to get sucked into a brawl with. He'll beat the skin off of your face. And immediately he's beating Demon into the crowd, hitting him with chairs, kicking him through other chairs, Demon is falling around on concrete with one arm, getting thrown over the railing, just taking another beating. Later he gets to stand tall in the ring, bravely going up against everyone like he had two good wings, bending Rockstar into a nice, violent cloverleaf with his good arm, great triumphant tecnico moment. Xtreme Tiger lives up to his name and hits a rana from the top rope, onto Escorpion on the apron, and landing on his feet while Rey took a violent bump into the narrow and hard ringside area. Good lord, guys. Cibernetico is kind of a poor man's Pierroth in this, a rigid gassed up stiff working dude. But, that's an easy step up from typical Cibernetico. Golden Magic also stood out to me for the first time, even though I've seen him probably 6 times already. He's a generic tecnico but hits some nice generic tecnico spots, big rana and nice armdrag. He's got a cool mask and a good look, nice guy to have on the cards in a trios. I usually don't expect a good match when Blue Demon AND Cibernetico are in it, but this was a good one. I don't know what's wrong with me, suddenly becoming a Blue Demon @ 50 fan.