Lucha Worth Watching: Dalys vs. Isis! Rush & Cavernario Put Up Their Hair!

Dalys vs. Reyna Isis  CMLL 9/7/18

ER: This wasn't in an easy spot on the card, right after a micros trios match that was fairly epic in scope, had a ramp dive and got a lot of time, big triumphant Micro Man finish. So this match had to follow that, and they opted for opening with 3 minutes of snug matwork. They went right out and said "you're getting something different" and I liked it. Dalys works mean throughout the whole match, totally turning a woman who is the QUEEN of ISIS into a tecnica. I liked their mat exchanges, a lot of hard takedowns and nice headlocks. Dalys muscled her around and stomped her around the ring, hit a couple nice throws and looked real scary in spots. Isis had a couple nice tecnica comebacks, a nice rana, dive off the middle rope to the floor, a nice Santo rolling sunset flip. But Dalys was real tough here, came off like someone who could believably work intergender trios. Dalys finished with a stiff senton, and I liked how energized Isis was throughout, and even while getting pinned she was still limply trying to kick her limbs out. I thought this was a tough match, and probably the most interested lightning match I've seen this year.

PAS: Dalys looked awesome in this match, sort of a mix of Finlay and Cris Cyborg. She really punishes Isis, putting her in a STF and yanking up on her neck, driving her knee into Isis chest, lifting her up by her hair. All of her slams had Isis landing flat backed, which is pretty rare in lucha, and felt like she knocked all of the air out of her. Isis had some headscissors and an OK dive, but I really didn't buy her getting any offense on Dalys. Joe Gomez wasn't ripping off offense on Fit or anything. Still a great vicious performance by Dalys and I need to dig around and watch more of her.

Hair vs. Hair: Barbaro Cavenario/Rush vs. Volador Jr. Matt Taven  CMLL 9/14/18

ER: Say what you will about this match, but these are four heads of hair worthy of a hair match. If my head were shaved, it would be grown back to where I typically keep it within 6 weeks. Not a valuable guy to have in a hair match? But Cavernario has the most hair by volume in the fed, Rush has the most valuable hair in wrestling, Volador's is among the longest in the fed, and Matt Taven is a garbage direct to video Pauly Shore as Slender Man. The match has plenty of flaws, Matt Taven stinks up most of his time in the match, but he's countered by a touchstone big match performance from Cavenario, a performance that really cements him among the best main event workers in the world today. A crazy tercera also helps kick this to the good side, with plenty of big moves, a huge moment I don't think I've seen, and that continually crazy Barbaro performance. Barbaro breaks out some some unhinged caveman moments, diving off the entrance ramp with a big splash, diving off the top with a big splash, crazy missile dropkick that he lands on his feet, breaking out his from the apron past the ringpost dive, nearly beheading himself on a Fuerza bump, eating a flip dive from Volador, taking a suicide elbow from Taven, eating Volador's flipping piledriver with a death wish, taking a rana standing on the top rope....it was a fucking stunt show and Cavenario was Hal Needham. Taven looked like shit and even spent a large part of the match getting booed. Did the crowd sense the rudo turn, or were they just sick of his dogshit flipping neckbreaker variations? Sick of him hitting bad springboard dropkicks? Volador does  plenty of stuff I dislike, and I think we're beyond needing a moratorium on backcrackers in lucha, but he throws himself hard into a quebrada and a big flip dive and that adds to the match. Rush walked around like a punk and threw some hard corner dropkicks, had an excellent timely save, and absolutely planted Volador with the piledriver finish. This whole thing was plenty fun, even with flaws, but even if the match stunk it would be worth seeing just for Cavenario.