2019 Ongoing MOTY List: Latigo & Atomic Star's Apuestas Blood Drive!

29. Latigo vs. Atomic Star RCH 11/17

ER: Mask vs. Hair, super libre, rudos interfering at will, blood everywhere, love to see it. Latigo must have made a ton of enemies because there are no shortage of rudos who want his mask and, apparently, want to drain him of his blood. When I thought this was going to be constant seconds interfering on Atomic Star's behalf, I had trouble getting involved in the action. But Latigo had such a big tecnico presence that by the time he was busted open, Atomic Star throwing knuckle punches right at his deepening cut, I started pulling for the guy as if he was my best friend. He gets launched into the crowd and within a minute his body shows the bruises from landing on hard plastic chair edges, Atomic Star bouncing those same chairs off his face and busting him open. Latigo's mask is ripped, and he starts bleeding so much that I wonder if he had been scalped. He can't make any headway due to the interference, but his big break does come and man does he make the most of it. He sets up a tope con giro on Star and some goon who has been involved the whole time, and it is maybe the most rewatchable dive of the damn year. The physics of it are violently gorgeous: as Latigo crashes into them, his body flies into the crowd, but the momentum of Latigo sends them whipping ass over crown with him a split second later, his tope con giro ending with a spectacular double lariat. My god.

And soon Atomic Star is bleeding too, and you can see literal drops and puddles of blood any time they slow down. Arena Naucalpan is covered with their blood. In one shot I saw their blood dripping and splatting onto a half dozen plus chairs, seats that are totally ruined for the main event, ruined by a couple of lunatics bleeding onto and then weaponizing them. Even the ref hits a great gusher. Lucha Underground just used blood packets, but give these men long enough and every single person in Naucalpan will be juicing. The fans really get behind Latigo and his mountain of adversity, and we build to some great final moments. Having extra bodies out there means we didn't have to have our guys waste time setting up prop spots. No, our boys continued to punch blood out of each other's faces while the props were set up for them, and Star hits a Spanish Fly off the apron through a table, chairs, and barbed wire...for a big damn nearfall. And when they're finally alone in the ring, and Star delivers that sure to be last kick to the balls, the bloodied ref refuses to count, and by the time a new ref comes in it gives Latigo just enough time to recover. The martinete he saves his mask with is as triumphant as it gets, completely playing off every second of bullshit the match had produced. It's tough to pay off that kind of match-long interference, and that bloodied up ref finally having enough of this mess was a great moment, and the beating Latigo was willing to take really added up to a great long-form lucha story.

PAS: A lot of the lucha extrema stuff I have seen is more about big gross spots than real traditional lucha storytelling, and I normally don't like ref shtick and lots of interference, but this match made all of it work. Eric was right about that dive, honestly it was one of the cooler dives I can remember seeing ever, like an even more violent version of the Super Calo WCW dive into the crowd. I got to give the ref a bunch of credit for breaking out the blade, I imagine that guy had some great apuestas matches in small gyms in the 80s. Big win for Latigo, as he had to basically run through the entire rudo roster to keep his mask, but I bought him doing it and it was a big moment when he finally was triumphant.


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST