2023 Ongoing MOTY List: LA Park, Pimpi, KAOMA JR?

 

3. LA Park/Sayrus vs. Pimpinela Escarlata/Kaoma Jr. 3Bat Productions 9/9

ER: I wanted to see LA Park live in Richmond, CA a couple months ago. It was a real stacked card with LA Park in a tag team main event opposite Jacob Fatu for the first time since their MLW blow up, Psycho Circus vs. Puerquiza Extrema, what was surely a great tag with Black Taurus, Arez, Canis Lupus, and Laredo Kid, plus an undercard with Faby Apache and Pimpi and others I loved. My buddy Jason and I drove down because that is a total no brainer of a live show right there, and we opted to drive down to buy tickets at the door and avoid the online service charges on the $50 GA tickets. Well smart guy, they were charging *$70* for the GA tickets at the door, with front row seats priced at $220 and the next two rows at $180. I was so shocked to hear that $70 price that I had to ask "Dollars?" Folks, I am not to the point in my life - nor do I think I ever will be - where I am prepared to pay $70 for a lucha show (or any wrestling show) and so we turned back around and drove back from whence we came. To their credit, there was a huge line around the building and it was only kids under 5 who got in for free, so hats off to all the families there with several kids who were prepared to pay $400 to see live lucha. I am apparently a Broke Bitch, which is why I cannot pay $70 to see LA Park live, but I can be paid by my job to watch this LA Park match in the bathroom. 

Honestly, had this match just been Park and Pimpi brawling and slapping each other with Park's belt, I would have added it to my MOTY list. I've seen plenty of Park matches over the past several years that are mostly comprised of belt whippings, and I loved them all. Luckily for us, this match is much more than whippings, and features a totally unexpected (to me) standout performance from Kaoma Jr., a guy who has been around for 20+ years who I don't think I've heard about before this match. Even cooler, is that we get essentially a full Park/Pimpinela fight before the entire match peaks with a Kaoma and Sayrus (another guy I'd never heard of and was expecting nothing from) showcase that totally delivers in every way. 

The Park/Pimpi stretches were everything I wanted them to be. I would have been extremely entertained by the belt not even coming into play, as is evidenced by Park trying to take out Pimpi's legs with a log roll - a large, mossy log gaining speed - but that belt comes into play almost immediately. I don't know how Park keeps Get Hit With Belt fresh, but he does. I loved how he reacted normally to all of Pimpi's belt shots, but the second the rudo ref tried it he snapped to attention, and the ref froze in his shoes in sudden terror...before belting Park right across the fucking FACE. Park falls onto and sits on a woman at ringside, takes a nice shoved bump into the ringpost, and recovers on the floor while Cassandro welts up Sayrus with that belt. Pimpinela's open hand chops hit almost as hard as Park's, and he hits Park right in the neck with those large open hands, then beats him around General Admission with a Piso Mojado placard, and all of the rudos - ref included - throw overhand chops at Park. 

It ramps up even more when Park inevitably turns the tides, beating Pimpi on top of the same woman that he fell onto earlier, Pimpi screaming melodramatically the entire time, sounding like Gretchen from Bob's Burgers. But then Park disappears and triumphantly reappears with a beer cooler...and fucking swings it incredibly hard, by the handle, into Pimpi and Kaoma. I don't care if they got an arm up as a shield, the speed Park swung that cooler at Kaoma could have broke his ulna. When the belt whipping payback comes, it comes with vengeance, and of course the ref gets the worst of it. It's a pair of bad whippings, the kind that made me long for LA Park whipping Johnny Knoxville, Johnny's eyes going wide as he's momentarily silent before breaking out into his high pitched giggle. I've seen Park force a rudo ref to take his whipping live more than once and this was the worst I've seen, capped beautifully by Park standing on the man's palms while the man's pudgy stomach takes a real whipcrack. 

Now, Kaoma. I went into this match expected nothing out of Sayrus or Kaoma, because they were not the men who drew me to this match, and all I really wanted was for them to mostly stay out of the way. But every time Kaoma got in between Park and Pimpi's brawling, he was an instant standout. His overhand chops somehow stood out even more than Pimpi's he takes a high backdrop from Park, and then I really snapped awake when he hit a startlingly convincing shoulderblock into Park. Park has at least 60 pounds on Kaoma, but that shoulderblock looked like something that genuinely knocked Park on his ample ass. His tope focuses on that actual headbutt portion of the tope, a man dedicated to playing the classics with accuracy and violence. I've seen so many Arms Fully Stretched Out dogshit topes that I began to think the odds of seeing a classic flying headbutt done by someone other than Hijo del Santo were next to nil. Sayrus has a really impressive tornillo crossbody block and was a nice dance partner for Kaoma, but Kaoma just kept raising the bar. His tope en reversa senton is an actual incredible spot, executed with precision, like a graceful lucha version of Tenryu's falling top rope elbowdrop. His Atlantida thrown into a backbreaker looked...well, backbreaking, and the man rolls up tidily for a complicated Sayrus huracanrana the way all my favorite rudo bases do. Park and Pimpi's finishing stretch was a total afterthought thanks to Kaoma's fireworks, and I loved how the match transitioned into these two showing out. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST