2018 Ongoing MOTY List: Gringo Loco vs. Bandolero in a Cage!

145. 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 spotfests or as a tag worker, but this was main event brawling Loco which is what he made his name on in that amazing IWRG run. It wasn't at that level (Bandolero isn't Black Terry or Chico Che) but it had some good moments. Loco jumped Bandolero in the aisle and worked him over with chair shots and tossed him around ringside, and it's the kind of wild brawling I love and my favorite part of the match. When they got into the cage it turned into more of a 21st century cage match with the cage being used for big spots. And there were some big spots, with Bandolero doing a bunch of cool Spider Man climbing on the cage to fly off and a crazy 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 couple years. Is the format getting better, or are Phil and I getting dumber? You know, I take that back as I'm still scarred from that All Cage Match IWRG show and 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 managed to sequence nicely overall 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 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, CrossFit guys can take a reverse rana, but there's never any heft to it. It's like a movie with bad CGI, 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 out of 3 ain't bad. Gringo is still 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.

2018 MOTY MASTER LIST