Lucha Worth Watching: Wotan vs. Fly Star! Hijo de Canis Lupus! Dragon Bane!

Wotan vs. Fly Star FILLM 3/16/19

ER: Hey, it's 13 minutes of grimy indy lucha asskicking, bleeding, and nasty spills onto concrete. I love those things in my wrestling! This is a super libre which should always be code for "covered in blood" and wouldn't you know, that code is still active! Wotan starts by throwing Fly Star violently into, onto, and through some chairs (those hard ass old wooden arena seats), ripping a chair back loose for later, and hitting quick and mean headbutts whenever Fly Star puts up a fight. By minute 3 of what we have here, Fly Star's face is already covered in blood. Wotan is obviously going to keep headbutting him and punching him in the face, and the great thing about Wotan is even though he might beat the blood out of you, he will happily donate his own plasma to the bottom of your boots. Fly Star hits him with a dropkick on the floor that sends him tumbling, punches him in the head, and eventually tries to do a corner dropkick that had to be Fly Star seeing just how hard he could run and kick Wotan in the jaw. I love when Wotan's mask is ripped and loosely covering only his mouth, blood running everywhere, and both guys still decide who hits harder. I dug Wotan just wasting fly Star with a double chop, with Fly Star taking it as if he'd been hit by a truck, and I imagine Star's chest and neck were already tender, because Wotan had thrown 5 of the hardest possible lariats up to that point in the match. Both guys take HUGE violent bumps to the floor on missed offense, with Fly Star crashing hard on a slingshot senton, and then Wotan crashing hard on a somersault senton off the apron. These guys are dying out there, but neither man really got finished, the batteries just kind of ran out or just plain broke. It looks like we'll have to run this back again with another violent stip.

Dragon Bane/Hijo de Canis Lupus vs. Aramis/Imposible IWRG 4/28/19

ER: Super high octane sprint, that made smart use of partner saves to keep the crazy spots turned up without making for any eye rolling kickouts. They also figured out that the best way to make a stupid dance-y sequence look good is to just work stiff. Spinning around someone and hitting a superkick is fine by me, as long as you're Aramis here and look like you realign a jaw. The dives were expectedly spectacular: Bane and Lupus took both tecnicos with them on bullet topes into the front row, Aramis hits a gorgeous dive past the ringpost in the segunda, Imposible wears impossibly small trunks, etc. They throw in some fun visuals, like Bane running around the ring away from Imposible, only to get caught with a quebradora from Aramis, both Bane and Lupus taking vertical suplex bumps on the entrance ramp, and the saves all got great reactions from me as they went to big moves early and didn't turn the match into a bunch of kickouts and lying around. Hijo de Canis Lupus looked really good, had that same vibe Los Traumas had when they started to get noticed more. Lupus hit some of the hardest damn corner clotheslines I've seen this year, and the forcefulness of many of the strikes and running shots really added to the match. We also got a couple nice powerbombs, including Lupus tossing Aramis onto his partner with one, followed by immediately rolling him through to hit his own sitout powerbomb. The breakdown at the end was fun, and the way they staggered the pins was nice. Aramis surprised me with an awesome ankle lock to finish things, suddenly making me want to see Aramis work a Bloodsport show.

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Lucha Worth Watching: El Hijo Del Santo & Juvy in London! Arena Neza Highflyers!

El Hijo Del Santo/Hijo del Fantasma vs. Juventud Guerrera/Laredo Kid LLL 5/11/19

ER: We've been getting a little more current Santo footage poking its head out, an occasional handheld, and now he's actually doing more of a US tour. Phil got to take his son to see Santo live, and I saw him work a singles match against Ultimo Dragon a week ago. This tag was from London and I dig how Santo is a guy who finds a dance partner he likes, takes them around the horn, lays low for a couple years, then does it all over again. He did it earlier this decade with Mystico de la Juarez, did the same with Angel Blanco Jr., and Laredo Kid appears to be the new Santo dance partner, and that's cool. And the match is really fun, though I was left wishing they mixed it up more. Outside of one brief attempted unmasking, Santo and Juvy steered clear of each other, and after awhile I assumed the big match ending blowout was going to be the two of them finally going at it. They never did, and that's a shame because Juvy looked game as hell throughout, and outside of a post WCW rush of luchadors back into Mexico there aren't a ton of times we've seen Santo across from Juvy. Juvy still has an argument for best strikes in lucha (and easily in the discussion against anyone), as he's a guy with good enough chops, punches, and elbows that he could survive as a wrestler even when he body eventually begins to fail. I absolutely love how Juvy throws a chop, it's one of my favorite wrestling motions. He works well with Fantasma, hits a nice rana off the apron and really stays fired up throughout (though I was amused by him bumping to the floor and then getting of dodge to not take a potential Fantasma tope). Santo looked like Santo, rolled a bit with Laredo on the mat, hit a few wild pendulum armdrags, hit a great baseball slide dropkick to the floor, and hit his rolling senton/dive past the turnbuckles. His knees buckled after the senton and I believe that's the only time I've seen that happen, it's crazy to me that he's still doing that spot around the horn. This whole thing was clean and professional, but needed a hotter tercera to get bumped up to list. Santo squaring off and brawling with Juvy would have gotten it there. Somebody book that.

Neza Kid/Dragon Bane vs. Aramis/Auzter AAA 6/1/19

ER: I love seeing flyers go nuts on a lucha undercard, and here are four guys pulling off some bonkers spots while hot Neza crowd goes nuts. I will seek out any Freelance/Neza Kid stuff, and thanks to him I also got to discover the joy that is Dragon Bane. I'm confident I've never watched him before, but he impressed me here and I'll be watching more. He and Neza are technically the rudos, though this isn't muddled up by cheating or fast counts or anything like that; this is much more about the four of them hitting weirdo headscissors and flying into the crowd on dives. Auzter was pretty raw and had a little uncertainty, didn't quite know how to get from a to b, but the b usually looked good when he got there. Neza and Dragon were much more the glue, and Bane especially did a pretty awesome job of reining in Auzter, going over for some of his less thought out ideas, taking big hard bumps and spilling to the floor far too quickly. I dig this guy. Neza brings his unmistakable aim and grace, and he and Bane work overtime as we get a zillion superkicks from Aramis and Auzter, but a bunch of them look good! But people want dives and they deliver dives! Boy do they. Neza hits a couple of doozies, a huge Asai moonsault off the top to the floor that bends Aramis over the barricade, and later hits his gorgeous springboard hilo, bending both Aramis and Auzter over that barricade. Auzter hits a wild springboard tornillo, Aramis hits a crushing bullet tope that threatens to literally collapse the barricade while at the same time Dragon Bane hits a crazy multi jump moonsault, and later Dragon hits a huge twisting press off the top, crashing into everyone before the video just fades to black (disappointingly leaving us with no visible finish). So yeah, the dives were spectacular, and if we got an actual ending this would have likely landed on list.

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