Lucha Worth Watching: Undercarders! A Mask Match!

Metalico/Sangre Azteca/Frezzer vs. Principe Diamante/Fugaz/Reyko  CMLL 1/2/18

ER: I watch a lot of Metalico matches, which not only fills me with joy, but also keeps me up to date on undercarders who I may not normally go out of my way to see. And because of that, now I know about Frezzer! Frezzer, who also sometimes goes by the more reasonable "Freezer". Frezzer, who also sometimes goes by "Dr. Freezer", which is impressive. Luchadors start when they're 12, so I imagine Freezer was a real Doogie Howser type who got his MD in his teens. It's probably safe to assume that teenage Dr. Freezer then lost his medical license, probably due to something innocuous like poor documentation or record keeping (and definitely not due to supplying an abundance of medication to other wrestlers) and was forced to just go be Freezer. Or, Frezzer. He's like a young Arkangel or less offense driven (and de-mulletted) Virus. You want a guy to cut low on missed clotheslines, bump fast to the floor, catch your flip dive, do a great vertical suplex (not just falling ackward but leaping up as you fall), and also set up rudo double teams? Baby you're gonna want some Frezzer in your life. Sangre Azteca is permanently buried at the bottom of the card, but is always better than people remember. His approach to basic lucha sequences is great, he doesn't cut corners, smooth bumps on ranas, fast bumps to the floor, can catch a dive, underrated mat game (he's really strong at takedowns and exchanges). Add in stooging Metalico and we have a fine rudo team. I was mostly unfamiliar with the tecnicos and I wasn't going into this for the tecnicos, but came away liking Reyko. Reyko had this awful bush league Batman gear, but his work was better than his gear. He rolled through nice on armdrags, bumped around for rudos, and hit a pretty nuts somersault plancha off the top to the floor. Undercard rudos are one of my favorite things in lucha, check out one or two you haven't seen before.

Angel Dorado vs. Difunto I  ERLL 1/28/18

ER: This is apparently a match with some contentious opinions. Some have said it's one of the best matches of the year, others assume that those people used their the goodwill of friends to trick people into watching a match that they had already wasted time watching, just paying this nightmare forward, and now it's my duty to trick somebody else so that this lurking, menacing man will stop following me and my friends no matter where we hide and no matter how far we run. We get 28 minutes of match, and it feels majorly clipped in spots. Was this match actually 50 minutes?? I cannot imagine what was deemed not good enough to air, because we got a LOT of footage of two guys hitting some semi-blown spots and then lying on the mat for long periods of time. There was a lot of mat lying. I didn't see how Dorado first got his mask ripped open, but I saw both men lying on the mat for long periods of time. We get a couple of great moments: Dorado hits a gorgeous tornillo through the ropes, a spot that should surely make the gif rounds; Difunto breaks a beer bottle over Dorado's head, and I have no clue what the access to prop glass is down in Monterrey, but I'll assume it's slim. So it's a crazy holy shit moment, a guy busting a bottle over someone's head...but it also happens maybe 4 minutes into this match. Dorado did that tornillo and another huge dive off the top to the floor after having a bottle smashed over his head. Other than that, we get a lot of very lazy moments of getting into position, we get that nasty modern big match lucha thing of a big move off the top (like a Spanish Fly), then a kickout, then both men lie still for a long time, then the guy who took the Spanish Fly is the next to do a move. That happens throughout. The fans are really into Dorado, and both men bleed, but man I wish I had seen a 2 minute highlight video of this match, with no other footage showing up. We all could have thought we'd missed out on a violent classic. But now here I am with my back against the ocean, car facing me on the beach with the parking lights on, watching the trees, waiting for it to appear. Somebody else please watch this before it finds me.