Lucha Worth Watching: Wotan vs. Fly Star! Hijo de Canis Lupus! Dragon Bane!

Wotan vs. Fly Star FILLM 3/16/19

ER: Hey, it's 13 minutes of grimy indy lucha asskicking, bleeding, and nasty spills onto concrete. I love those things in my wrestling! This is a super libre which should always be code for "covered in blood" and wouldn't you know, that code is still active! Wotan starts by throwing Fly Star violently into, onto, and through some chairs (those hard ass old wooden arena seats), ripping a chair back loose for later, and hitting quick and mean headbutts whenever Fly Star puts up a fight. By minute 3 of what we have here, Fly Star's face is already covered in blood. Wotan is obviously going to keep headbutting him and punching him in the face, and the great thing about Wotan is even though he might beat the blood out of you, he will happily donate his own plasma to the bottom of your boots. Fly Star hits him with a dropkick on the floor that sends him tumbling, punches him in the head, and eventually tries to do a corner dropkick that had to be Fly Star seeing just how hard he could run and kick Wotan in the jaw. I love when Wotan's mask is ripped and loosely covering only his mouth, blood running everywhere, and both guys still decide who hits harder. I dug Wotan just wasting fly Star with a double chop, with Fly Star taking it as if he'd been hit by a truck, and I imagine Star's chest and neck were already tender, because Wotan had thrown 5 of the hardest possible lariats up to that point in the match. Both guys take HUGE violent bumps to the floor on missed offense, with Fly Star crashing hard on a slingshot senton, and then Wotan crashing hard on a somersault senton off the apron. These guys are dying out there, but neither man really got finished, the batteries just kind of ran out or just plain broke. It looks like we'll have to run this back again with another violent stip.

Dragon Bane/Hijo de Canis Lupus vs. Aramis/Imposible IWRG 4/28/19

ER: Super high octane sprint, that made smart use of partner saves to keep the crazy spots turned up without making for any eye rolling kickouts. They also figured out that the best way to make a stupid dance-y sequence look good is to just work stiff. Spinning around someone and hitting a superkick is fine by me, as long as you're Aramis here and look like you realign a jaw. The dives were expectedly spectacular: Bane and Lupus took both tecnicos with them on bullet topes into the front row, Aramis hits a gorgeous dive past the ringpost in the segunda, Imposible wears impossibly small trunks, etc. They throw in some fun visuals, like Bane running around the ring away from Imposible, only to get caught with a quebradora from Aramis, both Bane and Lupus taking vertical suplex bumps on the entrance ramp, and the saves all got great reactions from me as they went to big moves early and didn't turn the match into a bunch of kickouts and lying around. Hijo de Canis Lupus looked really good, had that same vibe Los Traumas had when they started to get noticed more. Lupus hit some of the hardest damn corner clotheslines I've seen this year, and the forcefulness of many of the strikes and running shots really added to the match. We also got a couple nice powerbombs, including Lupus tossing Aramis onto his partner with one, followed by immediately rolling him through to hit his own sitout powerbomb. The breakdown at the end was fun, and the way they staggered the pins was nice. Aramis surprised me with an awesome ankle lock to finish things, suddenly making me want to see Aramis work a Bloodsport show.