Lucha Worth Watching: Demus! Fly Star!

Demus vs. Fly Star ANLLEL 2/29/20 

PAS: Nothing like an old fashioned gritty Demus brawl. Fly Star isn't much in this match, but he goes ahead and opens up his forehead a bunch. Demus takes him out to the parking lot and leaves a nice blood smear on someones PT Cruiser, and Demus grabs a lady's cigarette and extinguishes it on Fly Stars head, staining her dress with his blood. What a gross little troll he is. I wish Fly Star's comeback was better as he doesn't really match Demus's attack, still worth watching for the filth.

ER: This was a pretty by the books Demus crowd brawl, but by the books Demus is a thing I am fine with right now. I didn't care for the match when Fly Star was involved. At one point he goes to hit a prostrate Demus with a chair and aims that thing at concrete a foot past Demus. It looked like he was trying to squash a spider, not beat a bridge troll. Jokes on him though, because whether you stiff him up or not, Demus is going to beat the hell out of you; Fly Star should have gotten his licks in while he had the chance. I think Demus's brand of through the crowd brawl holds up better than a lot of this stuff, because he populates the empty spaces with more punches and headbutts than most people. If there's ever any moment where you think there's too much walking hair holding, it typically ends immediately with Demus biting face. Both guys bleed, and my favorite parts of the match come when Demus drags Fly Star into the parking lot. Demus flings Star onto the hood of a car in a real cool way, with Star falling off on his head. But Star hits a nice moonsault to the floor and finishes with a big in ring moonsault after burying Demus in chairs. He earns that win by getting punched and headbutted a ton by Demus, the exact kind of thing you come into a Demus match to see.

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2019 Ongoing MOTY List: San Juan Pantitlan Brawl

44. Romano Garcia/Rocky Santana/Hijo del Fishman vs. Wotan/Fly Star/Toxin BELLO 9/14

ER: Gimme some young bleeders and some crazy old men and just let them go to war baby! This was wall to wall chaos, more chairshots than I could count, too many ugly spills. Santana and Garcia are both in their 60s, and Santana has that awesome old man luchador hunch. Neither is closed to washed, and I'm in love with the amount of punishment they can take and dish out. Fishman ups the crazy to keep up with his AARP discount eligible partners, and he's the one who really takes things into the fans. Fishman and Wotan take this to the people, loved the cool spear early in the match into a regular family (4 year old curled up sleeping directly behind them), and right before the finish we get the spot of the match when Fishman hits a running death valley driver into a set of chairs. Wotan gets a hard trash bucket bounced off his head a few times, and I love how the fans allegiances change as the match goes on. At first they are loud and proud for Wotan, but as the match goes on they clearly get behind Rocky, and how could they not!? Everyone takes gnarly chairshots off the head, and there was a running game of seeing who could could take a harder shot to the chest, with plenty of contenders. Wotan blistered Garcia with a double handed chop, Fishman leveled an elbow directly into Wotan's sternum, and the crowd was responding to every stiff strike. Peak crazy hits when Rocky and Wotan started flying at each other like territorial bighorn rams, and seeing Rocky Santana clonking coconuts midair in his mid 60s means I haven't been going out of my way enough to write about old man Rocky Santana matches (although a lot of Rocky/Romano match links I click end up being just 3 minute clips). The moment of Rocky going from violent headbutt offense into classic lucha exchanges (the first of the match) was a genuinely beautiful thing. I loved that late match exchange between Rocky and Toxin, showing that an old bleeding man can still do graceful sequences. Oh, and then eat a suplex into the turnbuckles. This kicked ass.

PAS: Wotan must have really hated his grandfather, because any time he is in the ring with a senior citizen he is unleashing hell. This isn't as good as the Wotan vs. Black Terry match (although maybe 20 matches in the history of wrestling are), but is still a heck of a grizzly brawl. There was some sort of broken concrete in the ring which made even the simplest bumps look super painful. There was way too much head trauma, I mean Garcia and Santana are already at the age where the average person forgets where their keys are, add in all of those chair and bucket shots and they will be drooling in their pudding in a couple more. There was a couple of modern wrestling moments which looked off, random Toxin Canadian destroyer and a tower of doom spot which took forever to set up and looked bad, but when they kept it simple and violent, it was simple and violent.


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST

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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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WWCI Arena San Juan Pantitlan 2/16/19

Another week, another cool looking Indy Lucha show put up by Lucha TV. Grabbed what looked cool to review

Demus vs. Bam Bam

PAS: Bam Bam was a mainstay of the CMLL minis division, but seemed to disappear around 2014. Demus welcomes him to the indies with a classic Demus bloodletting. Bam Bam comes in with Demus style face paint on and Demus tries to wash it off using Bam Bam's blood. Lots of great looking brawling from both guys. Bam Bam hits a great looking tope early, but when he goes for it again, Demus steps aside and flings him head first into some ratty looking chairs. It is a crazy bump and a great way to finish a match. Demus brawls are one of the most fun things in wrestling and welcome back Bam Bam.

ER: Bam Bam was out! He was done! So, welcome back to wrestling Bam Bam, and if you're curious, here's what a bunch of your blood looks like! I loved these two feuding a decade ago, would love to see them feuding right now. Bam Bam is a little chunkier, but that's probably because he was told that people love bleeding chunky luchadors, so he probably took a few years off to get that proper size. The weight doesn't appear to slow him down a lot, his rope running was still whip fast and he hits a tope in the first minute of the match that looks as good as his topes looked a decade ago. Demus won't stand for that, naturally, so proceeds to bust Bam Bam wide open. And it's one of those really great lucha bloodlettings where Bam Bam's face and torso get covered in dark red and you realize Bam Bam is a lunatic who must have wanted this! The finish is incredible, truly a finish worth of a count out victory: We get a scene very similar to the beginning of the match, a Bam Bam feint sends Demus to the floor, tope clearly coming...and Demus steps aside and helps Bam Bam find the front row of painful chairs instead. This needs to be run back all throughout 2019.

Impulso/Drako vs. Fly Star/Toscano

PAS: Three young indy guys and Toscano (the former Tarzan Boy) put on a shortish spotfest. I don't think I have seen Drako before, and I am always going to enjoy a fat guy who wrestles fat. He had a nice tackle, a baseball slide splash to the floor and a stiff powerbomb. Fly Star and Impulso are clearly setting something up, and they try some complex spots, some of which they pull off. The finish was true young guy dippshittery with Fly Star hitting a running electric chair headrop right into the corner, really looked like the kind of thing a backyard wrestler might break a cervical vertebrae with. I think we get hair challenges post match, which makes total sense, I would want to shave a guy bald if he tried to break my neck like that.

Caifan vs. Ultimo Guerrero

PAS: Ultimo Guerrero is one of the five biggest stars in one of the biggest promotions in the world, and for some reason he will show up in a tiny filthy arena to cut him self open and leak all over the ring. I am as captivated by indy brawl Guerrero as I am bored by CMLL main eventer Guerrero. Caifan is a great, great wrestler who never got a break, and he jumps Ultimo and posts him, and 90 seconds into the match Guerrero is dripping. Caifan whoops him all around the ring, including chucking a bunch of beers into his bloody head. Guerrero comes back, opens up Caifan and they just exchange big shots on the floor. This goes about 10 minutes and maybe 90 seconds are in the ring. Finish was kind of a lame low blow DQ, and they set up a hair match on the next show (third hair challenge on this show but they are doing this one.) They sold me.

ER: I loved this! UG is such a bizarre and fascinating glutton for this kind of a dirty gritty small crowd arena brawl, here he is leaving blood souvenirs on chairs and bystanders and merch all over Arena San Juan Pantitlan, beaten bloody and bumping hard on a ring that doesn't move an inch. I don't know what his deal is, but it's weird how my eyeballs glaze over his CMLL matches at this point and yet actively seek his indy work. It would be like if Dean Ambrose were currently working his typical fast forwardable Raw matches, but also bloody brawls from random VFWs near wherever Raw was taped. It makes no sense. Caifan is really great. He's someone who knows just how well to set up UG's trademark offense, while also knowing when to step in and bop him on the nose. And a LOT of the early part of this is nose bopping. I might have to break the stopwatch out to see who started bleeding earlier, UG or Bam Bam, but we're the winners in that race. UG gets smashed around ringside, Caifan is really mean about sending him tumbling and then running after him with a hard kick before UG can regain his bearings, and we get all time great brawl violence like Caifan wrapping UG's head in a banner and then punching his face through the banner. I love Caifan's hockey fight style of lucha. Ultimo's comeback on the floor is great, shoving through fans, grabbing drinks to bounce off Caifan's head, doing his flying hip attack into Caifan who was also sitting on a fan (and that fan went wandering off after being on the bottom of that pile making that teeth sucking face of someone who accidentally opened a car door into their own balls); at one point Ultimo is slamming Caifan's head repeatedly into some chairs and right behind them you can see 4 or 5 young boys just staring at these bloody lunatics in awe, not knowing how to react to the violence right in front of them. I like how Caifan handles a couple signature UG spots, namely how he ran headlong into eating a front suplex off the middle ropes (onto that damn hard ring). We've all seen UG just climb the ropes with his opponent on the way to doing that move, so it's cool that instead we get Caifan setting UG up for something and then getting grabbed on the run. Big ball shot finish works for something like this, and honestly with how much they killed each other here I have no clue what they're going to do in their hair match to top it...but I can't wait to see them try.


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST

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