Lucha Worth Watching: A Good Lucha Cage Match?

Gringo Loco vs. Bandolero GALLI Lucha 9/9/18

PAS: We get a bit of a black swan here, with an actual good lucha cage match. With the return of Gringo Loco to the spotlight in recent years, he has been mostly working as a base in spotfest or as a tag worker, this was main event brawling Loco which is what he made his name in that amazing IWRG run. It wasn't at that level (Bandolero isn't Black Terry or Chico Che) but it had some moments. Loco jumped Bandolero in the aisle and worked him over with chair shots and tossed him around ringside, its the kind of wild brawling I love, and my favorite part of the match. When they got into the cage it turned more into a 21st century cage match with the cage being used for big spots. There were some big ones too, Bandelero did a bunch of cool Spider Man climbing on the cage to fly off and they did a huge top of the cage rana.

ER: For a match type neither of us like, Phil and I have weirdly written up several lucha cage matches over the past year. Is the format getting better, or are Phil and I getting dumber? You know, I take that back as I watched several matches on that All Cage Match IWRG show and that was terrible. I still need to watch most of that weird ass Negro Navarro show that took place in an MMA cage. So...no, lucha cage matches are still terrible, but still capable of being fun, and this was plenty fun. It manages to combine two things I dislike - lucha cage matches, and lucha main event big move 2 fall lay around structure - into something palatable, so give these two credit. They overall managed to sequence nicely and build to the big stuff appropriately (even though I did think Gringo hitting a powerbomb, rolled into a piledriver, rolled into a tiger driver.....well that feels like a pretty "finisher" combo to me), and we got some pretty great big stuff. Gringo is a master at basing, that magical combo of taking moves gracefully while landing heavily. It's the latter thing that most wrestlers don't have. Sure Petey Williams can take a reverse rana, but there's no heft to it. It's like a movie with bad CGI, nothing has heft, it's just 2002 Incredible Hulk bounding around light as a feather. Bandolero does some big flying off the top of the cage, and OFF the cage, like in a cool spot where he leaps off the chain link with a moonsault (not off the top mind you, off the side of the cage itself!). A lucha cage match hinges on cool spots and big bumps and blood; this didn't have blood, but 2/3 ain't bad, and Gringo is a guy with a couple cool bumps into a cage, and when chairs get involved at least the violence is going to have a high floor.