Found Footage Friday: APACHE~! SKAYDE~! HECHICERO~! RAYO~! FIERA~! LUCERO~! SANGRE~! ULTIMO~! ATLANTIS~!

Gran Apache vs. Skayde DTU 4/18/10

MD: We're all happy that Black Terry, Jr. is posting matches. He's posted this one here and on Facebook, so give him clicks:  https://www.facebook.com/reel/1681600072845956. Here we got up close and personal for a super enjoyable encounter. Apache was able to keep up with Skyde on the mat the whole way through and had a bunch of thunking power moves, while also bringing multiple dropkicks, a moonsault attempt in the middle, and then the two dives at the end. There was something a little clunky about him at times. When he went over for the rolling Boston crab set up for a rowboat, he had a hard time getting over, but it never felt collaborative. It just added to the grit, and, in my mind, set up the finish where while he took Skyde out, he was spent from the effort he put in on the dives and couldn't beat the count either. 

What made this jump off the screen, however, was how sharp the holds were. They were so good at unlocking holds with little shots and bits of positioning: a twist of the arm one way so as to twist it another, a cradle that wasn't meant to be a pin but to set up the next hold, a transition from a kickout right into the next thing. For the most part Apache pressed the advantage. He had bit of a size, came off as an all arounder. Where he stumbled was not accounting for the fact that one side of the ring happened to have barbed wire all over it and he careened into it on rope running. Later on, there was a bit of added drama that for him to get a rope break on a hold, he'd have to grab the ropes on that side of the ring. It didn't play into the match too much past that but it created a more interesting environment for them to joust in.

While the crowd groaned a bit at the finish, they had no reason to complain with the action up til then. Apparently BT, Jr. is going to be posting every Monday so we'll have lots to look at over time. 

PAS: The 2010's period when Black Terry Jr. was just releasing incredible indy lucha every week (and we would get new FUTEN shows) was one of the most rewarding periods of my pro-wrestling fandom. IWRG and the smaller lucha promotions were just on fire, awesome cool matches every week with guys like Black Terry, Negro Navarro, Dr. Cerebro and many more just killing it. Lots of that stuff has been only sporadically available in recent years, and I am pretty sure this is a match which is completely new. Apache is a guy who dipped into that 2010s indy lucha world, but wasn't a mainstay, so it is especially neat to get to see him stretch, and more Skayde is also always a treat. This is a match which just fulfilled expectations, I came in expecting great looking Llave, some cool exchanges and a little Apache high flying and it just checked the boxes. My expectations are pretty high for this stuff, and while it didn't exceed them, just hitting them is pretty great.  

ER: Had I been there live this is something I still would be thinking about. Black Terry Jr. is back and puts you in the front row of lost lucha libre like few. Phil isn't exaggerating about how much the original BTJ handhelds meant to his fandom, I remember all the excited phone calls and texts about every single new upload, leading down the Black Terry rabbit hole, documenting some of the coolest lucha that had mostly to that point gone unseen by all but the most dedicated lucha heads. I don't think I've ever seen Gran Apache in any of BTJ's handhelds, and the sight of Apache in an environment like this looks totally foreign to me. It's beautiful. Live, seeing two old guys (well, 50 and 45, youthful for our brand of lucha) working llave and the hardest fucking mat possible, it's the thing I want from my lucha. We see them fully up close rolling through exchanges, Apache rolling through leg locks that get tighter with each roll, going through what feels like a 12 step process to knot up Skayde's legs. Apache's llave somehow looks more graceful while Skayde's moves more heavily. I don't mean that as an insult to Skayde's work, I thought the heaviness added to the pendulum swings of his llave, his floating majistral looking like an act of magic physics rather than fast Quackenbush precision. Skayde's single legs and cinched in crabs looked ligament tearing, and Apache is wise to just start slapping and punching him the longer we go. 

Apache's punches and slaps were one of the first things that got me into actual lucha libre, believe it or not. I was mostly familiar with lucha through WCW, and Psychosis/Rey/Juvy matches from Japan or ECW. When my family finally got cable TV in the year 2000 it wasn't long before I found Galavision, and discovered Gran Apache slapping the shit out of Oscar Sevilla in his little Sears portrait matador suit. I was fully onboard the Apache express from one match, and here every punch and slap to Skayde brought me back to those first ones I saw. I never got to see Apache live (I saw Skayde once, during a period where he had gained weight and got outshone by a 60 year old Solar) and the sound of his strikes live must have been incredible. 

7 minutes into this I yelled "There's barbed wire in there?!" to my living room, as BT Jr. had kept that angle hidden. There's a whole side of the ring with barbed wire around the ropes and while these men mostly stay away from the wire, Apache does accidentally hit it once and yelps loudly, a hilarious camera reveal. It also leads to my actual favorite shot, late in the match, as Apache punches Skayde in the face. The afternoon sun glows behind them and The Barbed Wire Side of the Ring looms in the foreground unused, the kind of lucha vision only seen in outdoor tent lucha. Now that BTJ is back, who knows how many more similar visions we will see. We'll write about every one. 

Caifan Rockero I vs. Rey Hechicero 2/13/09

MD: Likewise, Rob's gone through a channel posting a ton of things and pried out what seems to be new or lost or recovered, perfect for us. And for us, it doesn't get too much more perfect than an incredibly blurry match between Caifan and Hechicero from 09. I'm pretty certain AEW fans have no idea how old Hechicero is and how long he's been doing this. I saw my share of his stuff back when I first started getting into lucha, including an apuestas match with Caifan from a year after this one, so this is like going home in some ways.

They go almost 30 and it feels like a series of a hundred mostly disconnected exchanges, each one interesting and experimental in its own right. They're all full of struggle. For a lot of it, Caifan is the aggressor and Hechicero has to get out of something, though he has his share of hefting Caifan up as well. Sometimes it's clear what they're going for and it works beautifully. Sometimes you're left to wonder. There's a shoulder breaker Hechicero does twenty minutes in where I'm not sure if that's what he meant to start with. Other times, though, the struggle is wonderful. When Hechicero went for a tapitia, he only got it after slamming Caifan's head into the mat a few times in a way that I'm not sure I've ever quite seen; simple but it worked very well within the sequence. Caifan hit his arm cradle suplex twice. There was a bit more of a sense of build for the second one, but you still wonder about him having to go to the well in such a long match like that.

They did escalate to rope running but then they'd take it back down. So much as there was a narrative, it was one of increasing exhaustion and damage over time. You believed it because they were doing so much. The moves did get bigger to a degree, more off the top, for instance. When Hechicero finally stunned Caifan enough to get the hold he really wanted, it felt more like him outlasting Caifan than anything else. I wouldn't call this particularly focused, but it was certainly imaginative and fun. 

Atlantis/Rayo De Jalisco Jr./Ultimo Dragon vs. La Fiera/Sangre Chicana/Charles Lucero 9/6/92 Plaza De Toros Monumental

MD: Lucero was a replacement for Tugboat Tyler. They didn't even update the graphics. But he's part of what made this fun. We've seen the rest of these guys go at it, and yeah, I'll always be glad to see Chicana and Fiera, but a relatively young (relative to a lot of the footage we have of him fifteen years later) Lucero in the mix was novel.

A lot of this is the rudos stooging all over the place, Lucero pretending Atlantis fouled him, Fiera having Ultimo run over his back, everyone playing into Rayo's act. Again, some of the novelty is seeing Lucero feed into it. Eventually Chicana punches Rayo in the skull while he has a hold on and the rudos take over. Atlantis comes back with a chair on Chicana and it feels a little unwarranted maybe but who knows what these guys were up to otherwise. The tonal shift is especially weird as they go into everyone-in-a-headlock-at-once and la estella and a celebratory finishing bit for the tecnicos but hey, we're not going to complain too much about mean Atlantis chairshots. This too, like everything else this week, was fun. 

ER: I love when 15 minutes of VHS tape trader quality lucha shows up, talk about a trip back. There's always something new to observe, always somebody who stands out that you weren't thinking about earlier that week, month, or year. Charles Lucero was someone I didn't know about until his matches with Hechicero, Rayo a lot of people didn't know about until he was older and lazier and up his own ass (complimentary, and pejoratively) and here they're both a perfect set of rivals. In the primera there's this great early moment where Rayo is teasing his matador attacks on Chicana, before just rushing past him to double hammer fist Lucero off the ropes to the floor, just swinging that Mexican Polish Hammer into his chest. His misdirections to throw off Lucero's timing are wildly entertaining. I enjoyed old conceited Rayo but whenever I see the stop-start routines done in younger Rayo speed it feels like some of the best lucha trickster work we have. La Fiera was also a standout, because early 90s Fiera is always going to be a standout, and here he was especially gifted at making 1992 Ultimo Dragon's offense sing. Great pairing, an accompanist who knew how to make a guy feel like a star.  

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MLJ: Sombra Spotlight 1: Black Diamond, Brillante, Principe de Oro vs Charles Lucero, Susto, Tigre Universitario

2006-04-02 @ Gimnasio Nuevo León
Black Demond, Brillante, Principe de Oro vs Charles Lucero, Susto, Tigre Universitario

I rarely do things that are actually topical, but I thought it'd be interesting to chart Sombra's career over a number of years to look at his development. It'll also point to a few matches for people unfamiliar with him that want to check him out now that he's headed to NXT.

A few points to start:
1.) My impression (and part of this is to see if it's true) is that he improved a lot over the years and he didn't really come into his own until he became part of Los Ingobernables over the last couple of years and with the rudo turn. These early matches, while interesting, probably aren't the best indication.
2.) I'm just going with things that look interesting to me. I'm planning on mainly looking at singles matches. Usually I like to see the trios' build as well, but we'd be doing this for three months if I did that. Sometimes it was hard to pick. He had a ton of matches with Dragon Rojo, jr. for instance.
3.) No Volador singles matches. If you are interested in Sombra and new to Sombra, you should check some of them out, though. It's a feud which really shows off what he can do from a physical standpoint if not a psychology one. I'm not going to cover them here, however.

So this isn't the first match we have online with him, but it's one of the first. He was working the Brilliante, Jr. gimmick after his father. He was sixteen here. I went with this one over the other one because this had Lucero as well, and I really do want to see as much of him as I can as he's a more than solid indy mainstay. Unfortunately, this wasn't really a good match to see him do much. The tecnicos were all precious metal themed. Black Diamond is not someone I've found a lot of information on, but he may have ended up in prison for 25 years after killing someone in 2010. I'm really going to get better at Spanish at some point, I promise. The three years of high school classes just aren't cutting it. I have no idea who Susto is, but wiki says his name translates to: "a cultural illness primarily among Latin American cultures described as a condition of being frightened and chronic somatic suffering stemming from emotional trauma or from witnessing traumatic experiences lived by others." so that's pretty cool for a gimmick, I guess.

This was second to last on a card that ended with Damien 666 and Garza vs Pierroth and Super Parka. Hechicero was in the second match up against Panthro, Jr. and "X-Man." It's a shame we don't seem to have that one too. It felt like an indy match. That's pretty much what I'll say about it. Immediate beatdown, eventual comeback, reset and tecnico shine and cutoffs heading to the finish. The central story thrust was Black Diamond vs Tigre Universitario but I don't see a singles match between the two that it led to. The beatdown was heated enough, with a lot of triple beatings on Diamond. I liked Susto's over the top style of selling. Here's a gif:

There was a heel ref, liberal amounts of weapon shots, and a pretty good finish, so far as bs finishes go, with a double ref bump, a weapon shot, and a roll up out of nowhere despite that. So far as indy-styled matches go, it was a controlled mess but contained enough, with heat and some good spots. I wish Lucero had gotten to do more (or was caught on camera more. He didn't get much focus).

So, what about Sombra? Well, Brilliante didn't get a ton of focus either, but he let himself get pinballed and kept out of the ring well enough during the beatdown. The focus was on Black Diamond but he certainly didn't get in the way. He had a good corner dropkick and a bad legdrop. He could already do the back handspring off the ropes and a backflip, but he was a half step slow in making some of his spots actually live and breathe in the match. His big moment to end the segunda was an internal springboard moonsault, and he very gingerly got up to the top rope for it (keep in mind the gif is sped up so it doesn't seem as bad. I should find a better way to make gifs at some point):

Later on he'd have a pretty clumsy 619 set up, but then followed it up with a nice enough (if still a big hesitant) headscissors on the outside. Definite potential as a spot-hitting, high-flying tecnico, even at 16:

Really, though, you could only tell so much here. I'll probably hit one more trios and then move on to singles matches, where we can get a better sense of things.

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MLJ: Hechicero Spotlight 10: Rey Hechicero vs Charles Lucero [Poder Y Honor]

NOTE: If you've not yet seen this match, I strongly suggest that you watch it before reading this. First off, it's very good. Second, there's a moment in it that really should be seen in context before I start talking about it. You've been warned.

taped 2013-08-04 @ Arena Coliseo Monterrey
Rey Hechicero vs Charles Lucero [Poder Y Honor]

Alright, so this is an excellent match. Let's lead with that. It was ranked highly by a lot of people back in 2013 and I think it put Hechicero more on the map and therefore made people all the more excited when he was put into the Busca in 2014. I'm with people on that for the most part. It's excellent and considering how many Lucero and Hechicero matches over the last six or seven years just weren't circulated, we're lucky to have it. I do see two big potential problems with it. I'll hit one now and then the other later on.

So, the first potential problem: the match does not seem to follow well from the build of the previous two matches. There were there matches in around a three week span, a trios match, a singles match, and then the title match. The first two followed similar patterns: Hechicero started out against Lucero with great respect and admiration, obviously glad to be able to face off on the mat against a maestro. Lucero accepted his handshake in both matches and they put on a show, with Hechicero gaining the advantage with his more tricked out matwork. In both cases, Lucero was the one to get frustrated first, and rudo that he was, to show poor sportsmanship and start to use strikes to take the match over. In both cases, he eventually won with the same roll up into a submission. One would think that there should be some level of escalation (or heat) here after two such matches, but at first glance it's not there. Instead, they start with the same sort of matwork and with Lucero going for a strike (here, a dropkick) first out of frustration.

This, however, was a title match, and a very different sort of title match than many that we see today. It was much more of a throwback to the title matches of decades' past, where (as I understand it) the commission had more of a grip on things and would heavily frown upon the sort of antics you might get in other sorts of matches. That defined the style. I do think for people just starting to watch lucha, title matches are good showcases for the matwork and dives and dramatic third falls where any move could end the match. For people who have watched a bit more, however, they can be harder to relate to, since they lack the real primal emotion of trios and apuesta matches. In the latter, the match's heart is on its sleeve and the emotion is in your face. In the older style of title matches, it is more concentrated, more subtle, distilled into body language and struggle.

I think the emotion created leading into this match by the two matches previous was still there, but it was transmogrified by the style of the match they were working. There is a strong sense of struggle in the primera and build, as Hechicero used more and more convoluted holds, often rolling with Lucero, disorienting him, twisting him this way and that, and Lucero grasping a limb and utilizing leverage, escaping with simplicity and tenacity in the face of Hechicero's complexity. Even when he managed to lock in an arm bar and refuse to let go, Hechicero was just too much, able to bring too many contortions and too much imagination to the table. So Lucero, once again, got frustrated and hit a dropkick. That turned the tide, and though Hechicero kept fighting, Lucero turned another roll up (this time a victory roll) into a submission (a rotated leg-lock at that, giving Hechicero a taste of his own medicine, leaving simplicity behind), something he's so good at, to take the fall. The emotion was all there, and it didn't serve, necessarily as a sequel to the previous two matches, but instead, another variation of them, the themes repeating themselves onto a slightly different palette with more subtle shades but far higher stakes. Hechicero and Lucero were both creatures of stubbornness and both with their faults. Hechcero thrived on the opportunity to pit his complexity and creativity against Lucero's skill. Lucero's patience was not as large as his temper, as his will to win. In this case, it meant Hechicero fought more honorably, that he perhaps won the moral battle, but it was Lucero who won the fall.

The primera was Hechicero trying to fight back out of the hole he'd been pushed (or in this case dropkicked) into. He was cut off repeatedly, by another dropkick high, or after a nice tope off the ropes by a dropkick low. He'd get crushed by one corner clothesline but avoid the second by utilizing a Flair flip only to get cut off by a powerbomb. Eventually, though, Lucero, feeling the pressure from his younger opponent and his comebacks, decided to take a risk and climb the ropes. Hechicero took advantage, flipping up to 'rana him from the top. From there, he was able to hook a limb, and once he did it was a matter of tying Lucero up. One limb became two, and then three. A roll, a twist, and the fourth. There was a sense not that he was fumbling, but that he was looking at the options available to him after hooking and rolling so that he could maximize the pain and punishment. Lucero was too aggressive (or maybe increasingly desperate) and made a mistake that cost him the fall.

Hechicero started with the advantage in the tercera, but quickly made a mistake of his own, putting his head down for a second back body drop that let Lucero lock on a Gourry special. From there, they moved on to a more traditional tercera, each man trying submissions and pin attempts, with a few bombs interspersed. It was good but only starting to pick up the pace when the game-changer occurred. They ran a few spots culminating with Hechicero landing on his feet on a missed moonsault and getting Lucero to the Apron, and then after a pretty lackluster step-up kick (more on that later, for Problem #2), going for a tope suicida. Fairly standard practice for a match like this. They'd go for dives, sell them big, sort of as a shortcut to get to the level of selling necessary for the big near-falls before the finish, and then take it home.

Lucero moved and the crash into the chairs was catastrophic, spot of the year level catastrophic. Hopefully, everyone chose to watch the match first (or had seen it already), because it's not just so jarring and painful looking, but it's so sudden as well. It's wholly out of place in the match they were building, which was good, but far more subdued and subtle. This was a brick to the head, or a head into a brick wall at high speeds.

They treated it with due reverence, everyone checking on Hechicero and Lucero frustrated by the situation, holding back and holding back until he had enough. He charged in like an old lion smelling blood and weakness, utilizing his newly earned control of the match with a toss into the corner and an Alabama Slam out of it. He couldn't put Hechicero away though and because of that, and because of the arrogance over the control he now had, he made a massive mistake once more. Last time it had been going to the top rope when he thought he needed to. This time, it was going for a flipping dive to the outside off the apron because he WANTED to, because of a natural flaw in his character. Lucero missed, landing right on his shoulder, and they both stumbled back into the ring, now having earned their selling for the last part of the match in a huge way.

And they paid it off. Dives have function in lucha matches. Usually, they're to clear the ring in a trios so as to put the focus on the feud that the match is building. They can serve as payoff, teased and prevented until the crowd can have the satisfaction of the tecnicos hitting them, or they can help to justify the selling necessary in the final falls of big matches. That's what they were going for here, and it worked in both cases. The first one was an absolute gamechanger and the second was an equalizer, something that put Hechicero back in the game and leveled the playing feel, not completely, but enough that he at least had a chance. Even so, once they're back into the ring, he foolishly climbed the ropes. Lucero was able to toss him off but it hurt his shoulder more in the process. Both wrestlers were making terrible kayfabe decisions here. Hechicero's dive was reasonable. Who knew he'd wipe out like that? But Lucero had no reason to dive except for a very believable ego and then Hechicero was a fool (but again, a hurting, desperate, believable one) to go up to the top.

From there, they moved to the finish. Lucero went for a complex tie up again, but his shoulder gave way allowing Hechicero to roll him up for two. They both made it back to their feet and after the best struggle I've ever seen with the move, Hechicero hit the Valiente Driver and twisted Lucero one final time for the submission win.

So I was able to both raise and dismiss one potential problem in the match way back in paragraph two. The second one is trickier. Basically, Hechicero has no business being a tecnico. He was older here than he was a few years before and wrestling an opponent who was far older than what he was used to. Between the two of them, some of the more agile spots failed on execution. Generally, I am okay with this, far more okay than most. Wrestling is symbolic after all. Some people just can't make almost anything look well. That's not the case with Hechicero though. So much of his matwork and suplexes look great, but his more flashy stuff only seems to about half the time. The issue isn't necessarily the execution but the decision to execute stuff that he couldn't hit cleanly. It's doubly a problem when they're key moments, like the corner flip up to 'rana which was slow and labored, or even the step up kick that launched Lucero to the outside. Key moments and they were barely executed. Hechicero has a pretty stocky body type. So does Valiente, but Valiente's something of a freak of nature with what he can do in the ring. Again, it's not an execution issue, in and of itself, so much as a "poor decision" issue, and that's the sort of thing that will take away from a match.

That complaint aside, I thought this was great. It was character driven, but a bit more subdued until the dive, very much a throwback title match which is not only refreshing, but also allows for its own tropes and structuring, utilizing narrative tools that aren' always dusted off in this day and age. Everyone should watch it.

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MLJ: Hechicero Spotlight 9: Charles Lucero vs Rey Hechicero

2013-07-28 @ Arena Coliseo Monterrey
Charles Lucero vs Rey Hechicero

Here we go. This is the second of a third match series that we have, the first being the trios and the third being the title match. My understanding is that it's that third match which is supposed to be the really great one. This, on the other hand, I'd call very good, with a lot of things I liked a lot and a few things I didn't like quite as much.

It was very structurally sound, with a Hechicero-invoked handshake leading to a stretch of escalating feel-out matwork, leading to a few quicker roll up attempts and the tecnico taking the primera. Soon after, Lucero became frustrated and showed his rudo leanings, punching first and then utilizing a lot of very simple offense to soften Hechicero up for a submission. This rolled into the tercera with the beatdown crescendoing to the point where the viewer really wanted the comeback, which was earned over a couple of spots. From there Hechicero hit a dive and they traded submissions, moves, and nearfalls until the finish. Perfectly sound lucha.

The best part of all of this was that, in Lucero, Hechicero had someone who could take his stuff. He wasn't young, by any means, and he wasn't as agile as Hechicero who has a sort of clunky bigger man agility, but Lucero seemed to have a great physical presence and awareness and was very good at ending up at the right place at the right time, no matter how he got there. This played out in the tercera as Hechicero was hitting his spinning offense and what not, but far more importantly, in the primera, where he was doing the most tricked out of tricked out matwork and it all worked smoothly. One of the criticisms I've had of Hechicero was that he would try things that his opponent obviously couldn't handle and he wasn't quite game enough to get them into the position he needed in, as opposed to someone like Virus, who is absolutely expert at that. Lucero was good enough to not just end up in the proper position, but then to have some really inspired counters. At times, they were seemingly fitting limbs into even the tiniest hole to gain leverage and space and advantage.

The second best part was the character work. I'm going with my usual language deficit here, but the way I saw this was that the character of Hechicero appreciates and respects Lucero and just wants to have a great match with him, thus the handshake and the matwork and counters. Lucero, professional as he is, is at least tolerant of this, right up until the point that he loses the first fall and gets frustrated. From there, he punches away and takes over. His offense in the segunda was very straightforward. Before the punch he's utilizing a really simple leg hug that Hechicero sells well. Afterwards, it's punch, punch, a kick off the ropes to the gut, a back body drop with some struggle, a series of punches to the head while grounded, and then a nice, deep bent-over Gory Special for the submission. The minimalist nature of all of it made for a great contrast to Hechicero. It should be noted that this was how they worked the trios too, with the handshake and Lucero being the one to interfere and let his rudo tendencies take over. Considering that he took the win in both, with a similar move and the fact that he took the fight to Hechicero first was part of why he won, I'm really curious to see how that will play into the title match.

While Lucero was able to fit into Hechicero's world and interface with his matwork and moves, I think there were times where things ended up a little too collaborative or unbelievable. For instance, at one point, Lucero tossed Hechicero headfirst into the turnbuckle and Hechicero ended up in a handstand so that he could eat an Alabama Slam. It was a stretch. They also had a very loose segment of whips and rolls throughs and what not during the segunda where I wasn't fully buying into the fact that neither guy was holding on to anything. It looked cool and flowed smoothly but it went against how they were wrestling in the primera and really against common sense for what they'd established. It felt like doing near-falls (or armdrags or whatever) for the sake of doing them.

Then there was the transition. I love earned transitions. It's not enough to just duck a hold and then hit a move and take over. Here Hechicero was run into the corner once and when Lucero tried it again, he ran up the ropes and hit a reversal. He was cut off though and it was a few moves later when Lucero went for a 619 that Hechicero caught it, positioned him in the ropes, dropkicked him out and hit a vault up spinning plancha to the outside to really shift the gears of the match. The problem was that I didn't buy Lucero doing the 619, especially how he executed it which was clunky and slow and basically meant to be caught. Maybe it's believable as the old guy trying to hang or make a point or something. Hell, maybe it's part of his normal offense and I've just not seen him do it because I've only seen two of his matches, but it just rang false to me.

Ultimately, though, these two pair up really well, and it's a shame we don't have more Lucero than we do out there. Good match and I'm very much looking forward to seeing them vying for the title from the following week.

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MLJ: Hechicero Spotlight 8: Hijo Del Centurion Negro, Rey Hechicero, Símbolo vs Black Spirit, Charles Lucero, Golden Boy

2013-07-21 @ Arena Coliseo Monterrey
Hijo Del Centurion Negro, Rey Hechicero, Símbolo vs Black Spirit, Charles Lucero, Golden Boy

I've spent a number of weeks going through this exercise with both Cavernario and Hechicero and frankly, the results looked a lot better for Cavernario. That's not a fair comparison though. Almost all of Hechicero's problems in these years stem from his environment. His opponents were generally of a lower quality, though I have come to like Caifan a lot. He had less coaching, I imagine, less editing certainly, more freedom, and very likely, a crowd that demanded much of what he was giving them. It felt indy because it was indy. It felt unpolished because it wasn't being polished. Even when he was in matches with high level talents like Ultimo Guerrero and LA Park, they used the environment as an excuse for excess.

He was lauded in this period, even in the years before it, and I just haven't seen the matches to back that up. Yes, he had cool moves. Yes, he had cool matwork. Yes, he had a lot of attitude, even if he was stuck as a tecnico for more of these years than I'd expect, but he didn't always use the moves well, or hit the matwork smoothly. My only conclusion so far is that going to CMLL was a godsend for him because it constrained him in ways that improved his game immensely.

Something in my gut (and in the comments of reader Rah) says that might be inaccurate so I'm hoping this might just be the turning point instead. Maybe he only needed the right opponent, and that opponent might have just been Charles Lucero.

There's not a ton about Lucero online, not in English at least. He was fifty-four (and about to turn fifty-five) when this match took place. He was a local Monterrey wrestler and just looking at what I can find here, his big claim to fame was losing hte UWA World Welterweight Championship to El Hijo del Santo in 1990. He doesn't show up on cubsfan's match finder until 2000 as anything more than a blip. He definitely comes off as a maestro however and he's the foil for Hechicero that I was hoping we'd get in Blue Panther and that we might have were it not for wrong pairings.

The Hechicero vs Lucero matwork is the real deal.

That doesn't look like much necessarily, but it was looped organically from what came before, and Lucero went with it, making it work and then cycled out of it successfully. I've seen other guys stammer about. Hechicero doesn't have the ability to move people around that let's say Virus does, but that's counterbalanced by the fact he does absurdly complex things. So if he does have someone who's game, they can really make what they do interesting. They traded inverted deathlocks and this was just good stuff.

They ended it with a handshake.

After that the other pairings cycled in. Black Spirit and Hijo del Centuro Negro were fine when they kept it simple and focused on the arm. That was actually a good contrast to what came before. When they started to do something more advanced to follow the act they had to follow, it broke down a bit. This was cute though:

I didn't get a great sense of Simbolo or Golden Boy here, but they picked up the pace and it was all nice and balanced. Shortly thereafter, things broke down and they went to the finish of the fall, which had a lot of armdrags around the ring that could have been a bit more polished and submissions with the tecnicos on top.

Segunda had a reset and some switching of pairs, at least briefly, as Golden Boy got to face off against Hechicero. This was pretty rough though, with a fumbled roll up submission. Lucero, totally tossing away the handshake from before, chose this moment to come in and stomp and let the rudos be rudos (it was a mercy, really). He immediately had great intensity but I'm not sure I followed the character shift. This was a fun beatdown, with Irish whips down the ramp and plastic trash cans and what have you before the rudos locked in submissions. Golden Boy really drove his elbow in on an abdominal stretch which is always appreciated.

The Tercera had one of my favorite lucha tropes, the comeback that stems from the rudos getting too cocky and doing something completely ridiculous. In this case, it was a three man submission, complete with posing, that let Simbolo charge in and get them from behind. I was going to make a gif of this, but I can't quite get that to work right now. Here's a screenshot instead:

The comeback was loose and chaotic but more focused and effective than, let's say, the match with Parka and Ultimo Guerrero. It was heated in a good way with a few moments of payoff before Lucero scored a nice looking submission to set up the singles matches to come. This wasn't perfect by any means but it was on the more enjoyable scale of indy, where the lack of polish gave it, at times, a chaotic or organic feel. The Lucero vs Hechicero stuff definitely has me excited for their singles matches to come.

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2014 Ongoing Match of the Year List

11. Charles Lucero v. Silver Star ACM 3/2

PAS: This was very similar structurally to last years awesome Hechicero v. Lucero match which might have been my 2013 MOTY. We have a couple of falls of tricked out maestro matwork and then a big near fall section with a crazy uncalled for bump. It is a pretty awesome match structure, which is always going to lead to a great match, and if the other guy is game, a classic. Silver Star doesn't bring as much to the table as Hechicero in this, he is right there with the matwork, but doesn't add a ton of flourishes, and delivers a big bump, but not the psychotic bump of the other match. I think this was hurt a bit in my mind by being so similar to something better, as Lucero looked really great again. He is so good as switching speeds on the mat, he goes from deliberately working over an arm or leg, to these very fast twisting roll ups, it's like a Fugazi song.

ER: So Lucero may be one of my absolute favorite old guys who I'd never heard of until last year. He works like a younger Blue Panther, all beautiful mat exchanges and cool sequences. There's something quietly graceful about old man luchadors. Lucero has a gorgeous sequence in the primera where he armdrag rolled over Star, picked a leg and did a suave Dandy Roll. I'm sure at some point in his life it was lightning fast, but the muscle memory is so tight that everything may be slower but still looks almost stately elegant. Like if Jim Jarmusch filmed it in black and white it would look incredible. Silver Star is a young buck by lucha standards (I was told 40) and a big fat guy. He was a good power base and even hit a fast fat guy tope at one point and takes a lunatic bump missing a senton off the apron to the floor. Holy lord. Finish was a great throwback spot and Lucero just kept upping the old man awesome as this went on. Lucero is my new Toro Bill Sr.


2014 MASTER LIST

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