This Sweet Thought Will Cheer Terry While Dying, We Will Miss Him When He's Gone

Black Terry vs. Multifacetico IWRG 4/17/08 - EPIC

PAS: Out of this world great match. There is something special about Terry in his house Arena Naucalpan, throwing left hooks, smashing people into beer coolers and spilling blood. I loved how he just tortured Multifacetico early, breaking his back by twisting his body in the rope, cracking him with perfcet punches, and then cutting him off mid air with a backcracker for the pin. Exactly what you want from that rudo beatdown fall. Loved the comeback he fed Multifacitico in the second fall and it all leads to a dramatic third fall with lots of blood. Terry has so many different great notes he could play, but this kind of dramatic fist fight is his best.

JR: They keep advertising their myspace page here: zona de combate. Can you imagine how great Terry would have been in mid 00s CZW?

There is a lot to like here. In the first fall, Terry works at such a deliberate pace, almost the closest we get to a WWE heel from this era. He doesn't preen, but the structure of the fall is so similar to something you might see on TV from Orton or someone else in the states just a few years later.

From there, we get Terry in a style that feels more familiar. The match quickens, and I think would come across significantly better if the camera had lingered on Multifacetico from ringside. The closer we got to him the more compelled I felt to root for him, but the hard cam here does him no favors.

The third fall is good, falling into some of the apuestas rhythms that I find so comfortable. Terry works holds that feel consequential and Multi finds flashes that make it seem as though he is in the fight. The seconds add very little here, muddying the waters in ways that lucha gets away with more often than other styles, but the finishing stretch feels mostly earned and suitably triumphant.

In a way, I like this match as an example of a match that feels taped together by Terry. There's nothing particularly exclamatory from him but I can't help but feel it would be decidedly worse with someone else taking his place. I don't mean for that to sound backhanded, quite the opposite. A Terry performance that for him seems so rote is inherently valuable, inherently above replacement.

Matt reviewed this match here

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE BLACK TERRY