Lucha Worth Watching: Dick Riviere!

Dick Riviere/Akuma/Nitro vs. Aguila Blanca/Magia Blanca/Oro Jr. CMLL 5/28/19

ER: What a surprising little Tuesday CMLL treat. Riviere and Aguila are two lanky as hell French geeks who perform up to the crowd's standards and get a real fun, enthusiastic reaction the whole match. Riviere wrestles like a Quackenbush trainee but embraces the fact that he looks like a background coder on Silicon Valley. He's not a nerd pretending to be a comic book hero, he's a nerd who flexes his tiny muscles, has a shitty goatee, Dudley "Booger" Dawson hair, builds to a very funny shirt removal spot, and gets wrecked on a powerbomb while attempting a rana. He brings a fun sniveling heel charisma to CMLL and I hope he stays longer. Aguila Blanca is a flyer who works like a less polished Soberano Jr., but it felt like the crowd wasn't expecting a lot and were then pleasantly surprised once he hit a big springboard splash to the floor and a big 450. I've seen a lot more seasoned guys come into CMLL and not blend in and adapt, and these guys looked good. Akuma has turned into a Demus clone, which is a cool guy to be a clone of as I won't ever object to a fed having more than one guy who works like Demus. He rushes hard into tecnicos and takes those embellished headscissors from Blanca like a good base junior. I love these kind of no frills undercard weeknight matches, they always have a chance at overdelivering because the stakes are so low, and they can take chances like putting a couple of French goofs in a match.

Dick Riviere/Star Jr./Starman vs. Hijo del Signo/Akuma/Nitro CMLL 5/29/18

ER: I enjoyed our French dweeb so much in his CMLL appearance last week, so I sought out the only other lucha matches he's showed up in the past couple years, just for a little bit more of the story. Here we get to see him as a tecnico. He's even more of a dweeb, as he's wearing superhero cosplay but still has a dumb Shaggy goatee and a snaggletooth. But it's fun seeing him as a tecnico. The Quackenbush vibes are still strong, but in a good way. He has a lot of nice high arcing armdrags, hits a crazy Asai moonsault that hits well and sends him flying into the barricade, and leans into some big lariats. I like this weirdo! Everyone shows up for this one though (Star Jr. has a notably awkward moment but leans into strikes well), Nitro throws the hard lariats I mentioned, Signo is arguably the most professional guy to not break out of the undercard, Starman is maybe the smoothest tecnico to break out of the undercard, and Dick Riviere still does the shirt removal spot as a tecnico and it still works! This was a really fun match that nobody would have possibly gone far out of their way to see, but I just had to see more Dick!

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Lucha Worth Watching: Cassandro! CMLL Undercard!

Cassandro/Flyer vs. Magnus/Medico Asesino Jr. FILLM 11/18/18

ER: Man how cool is Cassandro?? Here he is working the coolest lucha arena in the world, the one that looks like it's a Street Fighter II background, and he comes out wearing a spectacular green coat with a long train, which somehow looks elegant while being dragged across the dirty concrete. He's not a guy who shows up a ton on tape, as that is part of the excitement around Cassandro. But he's the exact same guy you remember, here pulling off tight armdrags, a painfully precise missile dropkick, and his signature tope con giro. Asesino came off like a fun rudo stooge, Magnus hits a nice dive into the aisle and Flyer gets to hit two (which makes sense as his name ain't Matwork) including a big asai moonsault. Cassandro commanded the crowd like a conductor at a couple points, really a guy who knows exactly what to do no matter the setting, and while this match didn't set out to be a classic you definitely would have left satisfied had you gone there seeking a fun Cassandro main. Lucha shows are becoming more and more common in the States, and it feels like Cassandro should be able to bring buzz to these shows. There's no reason one of the three lucha feds running Denver isn't running Cassandro/Zumbido matches, but come on people let's make this happen!

Akuma/Espanto Jr./Espiritu Negro vs. Star Jr./Pegasso/Stigma CMLL 4/16/19

ER: This was a real fun undercard match that had a real fine rudo trios team performance and a bunch of great big tecnico moments for Star Jr., in the kind of match that really looked like they were already looking at Star Jr. as a future Soberano Jr. (when Soberano moves up even higher on the card). The crowd reactions for Star Jr. hear were real loud and real organic, felt like a guy who the locals were really treating as a star (he can just drop the Jr. once he's an actual star). The rudo team is a bunch of guys who haven't gotten much ink on Segunda Caida even though they've all been in the biggest lucha fed for like 5 years. Here they really make the case as an interesting team, standing out in ways that I think the Dinamitas started standing out a couple years ago on undercards. They had a bunch of mean double teams (loved a missile dropkick into tandem vertical suplex that poor Stigma took), Akuma hits a sky high flapjack, all three guys bite opponents at one point, and they handled their end of big base bumps. They were a team that made me want to see more of them as a team. Star Jr. had a big exciting match; crowd was flipping out for his headscissors, his big springboard rana to the entrance ramp looked as big as it should have, the crowd went nuts for every time he outsmarted the rudos, just a really fun performance that got a deserving response. Pegasso is a pro in these kinds of "2nd flashiest tecnico in a trios" roles, and Stigma was in there for some big bumps; the whole match has a nice breezy vibe that I think made all 6 look strong.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE CASSANDRO

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2015 En Busca De Idolo Qualifying Cibernetico

Not as excited about this years lineups as I was last year, but I figure I will cover it again, and see if anyone breaks out. Like last year, I am going to rate everything either Must See, Spare Moment and Don't Bother

Blue Panther Jr./Boby Zavala/Canelo Casas/Delta/Disturbio/Esfinge/Flyer/Guerrero Maya Jr. v. Akuma/Cancerbero/Gallo/Joker/Pegasso/Raziel/Sagrado/Stigma-Spare Moment

This was less lunatic then last years qualifier, it had less awkward blown stuff (really the only awful thing was Maya Jr. blowing a dive, which is weird because he is the most experienced guy here), but also less holy shit moments. I liked Joker's brawling, and Cancerbero is always good, they were the two stand outs for the non-qualifiers. Flyer looks like he will take the Star. Jr./Dragon Lee role of young guy embracing hot death, will be interesting to see if he has anymore to show. Casas, Maya and Panther Jr. have the genetics and Maya has been pretty good for a long time, although he did look off here. Hard to get much of a sense of anything in a match like this, but I am going to remain optimistic.

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Lucha Azteca Workrate Report 2/15/14

Phil's favorite!!! It's tournament lucha!!! The dry hump of lucha libre!!! This is the Gran Alternativa tourney from 1/31.

1. Blue Panther & Cachorro vs. Averno & Rebelde

Wow, 5 minutes for a tourney lucha match that isn't the finals? Color me spoiled. This was really fun for what it was. Panther and his kid vs. Averno and Hooligan's kid (which is to say, Averno teaming with Hooligan's son. I don't think Averno and Hooligan have a sexual relationship). This is my first time seeing Rebelde and he breaks out a bananas dive on Panther, almost going vertical before crashing into him. In the ring he hits a cool corkscrew splash off the top. Cachorro gets his own big dive, Panther does some swank armlock on Averno. Really this is the most you can hope for with tourney lucha.

2. La Sombra & Oro Jr. vs. Rey Bucanero & Akuma

And then there's this. 150 seconds of dry indie moves delivered heatlessly and pointlessly. Oro hit a pair of nice moonsault presses, one to the floor. Indie move, guy gets up, other guy does indie move, etc.

3. Maximo & Hombre Bala Jr. vs. Terrible & Guerrero Negro Jr.

Wow. If anybody needed any proof of why tourney lucha is the worst, here we have a 45 second match where they go to nearfalls right out of the gate. Maximo goes to kiss Negro, Negro fights, and then amusingly Terrible forces a kiss on Maximo which shocks him enough for Negro to get the pin. Clever, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a waste of everybody's time (is there anything more lame than sitting through entrances that last longer than the match?).

4. Volador Jr. & Soberano Jr. vs. Mephisto & Espanto Jr.

It usually takes about 3-4 matches into a lucha tourney to make you wonder why the hell you even bothered, but then you know you're half way through the whole thing and you've come this far and you still haven't learned to cut your losses after all these years. Soberano is wearing his dorky spider-man jammy jams and does just about the ugliest standing moonsault you've ever seen. Throw in his sloppy backcracker and you have indie goober Yahtzee. Volador took forever to set up a rana off the top rope, which in a match this short was essentially 1/3 of the match. The best part of the match was when they cut to a gal in the crowd drinking beer, 3 solo cups deep. I'd be getting wasted too if I had shown up for some Friday night wrestling and was presented with a collection of 2 minute matches.

5. Blue Panther & Cachorro vs. La Sombra & Oro Jr.

Cachorro hits another epic tope that just plasters Sombra into the back wall. Panther gets hit with Oro's moonsault press and looks like he's starting to turn the pinfall attempt into some sort of cool crucifix submission...but his son runs in and breaks up the pinfall.

6. El Terrible & Guerrero Negro Jr. vs. Volador Jr. & Soberano Jr.

All of the dated indie spots! I'm starting to think when I put a bunch of old Japan and indie wrestling VHS tapes on craigslist that they somehow ended up in the hands of undercard luchadors. Here was Soberano and Volador doing some throwback Scoot Andrews spots while Negro tried his fucking damndest to make it look plausible. A for effort. Volador looks sluggish and bored.

7. THE FINALS: La Sombra & Oro Jr. vs. Volador Jr. & Soberano Jr.

Sombra dumped himself on his dome a couple times whipping off Volador Code Red variations, Volador absolutely brained Oro with a superkick in the corner. The crowd is usually mic'd down quite a bit and you could hear a noticeable uproar immediately following the kick. The ref even checked on him. It looked nasty. But most of this match was inept 2.9 counts with no heat or drama. The most hilariously inept was towards the end when Soberano and Oro, the two featured young guys in this whole tournament, finally were left solo in the ring to square off. They're both getting their sides of the crowd hyped up, crowd is wanting it, Oro rushes at him...and Soberano just powerbombs and pins him. Waah waah. No exchanges, no flash, just...bloop.

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