Found Footage Friday: IWRG RETRO 1996~!

IWRG Retro 46 1996

Cassandra/Indomable/Chiola vs. Princesa Dorada/Julisa/Irma Aguilar

MD: You always spend some of these matches just figuring out who you're looking at. I'm no expert on 1996 IWRG luchadoras. Thankfully we had names on screen on the way out. The pairings are Indomable/Irma, Cassandra/Dorada, and Chola/Julisa.It's hard to say too much about any single wrestler here but Indomable hit hard and got hit hard against both Irma and Dorada. Julisa and Chola had some slick (or at least quick) rope running. The primera, in general, had a lot of simple and straightforward matwork n the first two pairings but everything felt like a struggle.

Cassandra stood out the most to me probably. She had a mask with the open hair and a unique look and really played to the crowd a lot. At the start of the segunda she wanted a handshake and when she didn't get it, she shook the ref's hand and give him a big hug instead. The primera was pairings with everything breaking down at the end. The segunda had a lot more in and outs. Sometimes it got a little too chaotic maybe and lost focused and it never settled down to a rudo beatdown and comeback. Instead, it built to a bunch of goofy (in a fun way) rope running where everyone got in there at once and some big tandem spots. Occasionally along the way you got ruda miscommunication. This felt better than the sum of its parts, honestly. At times it was a little rough around the edges but that didn't hurt the entertainment quota overall even if I could have used just a little more heat.

Mini Cochesse/Mini Andy Barrow vs. Mini Flashito/Mini Konnan

MD: Andy Barrow was The Killer's facepaint clad manager who became a rudo himself and this was a mini version of him. I can't say I'm super familiar but I sort of want to be now? I should ask Tom K about him. ANYWAY. This was his mini and this was pretty good. The rudos had no problem bumping, with Barrow sliding out of the ring over and over and Cochesse taking a crazy flight to nowhere through the ropes. They were solid in the beatdowns too though there was one Doomsday Device which seemed to go away afield. 

Flashito had some very nice and interesting stuff and Konnan was beloved by the kids. He also finished a caida with a nasty liontamer-esque standing cloverleaf. Flashito had a great press up dive to set the stage for the finish of the match, clearing the ring for Konnan to get a rana to end it. This hit a lot of the marks you would have wanted it to.

Kato Kung Lee/Tony Rivera/Torero vs. Los Oficiales (Oficial/Guardia/Vigilancia)

MD: A lot of fun and more heated than I expected coming in. The tecnico side was a joy actually. Kato Kung Lee has all of his super stylized faux karate stuff. Rivera has a lot of tricked out stuff including this great trip out of nowhere. And Torero has the bullfighter gimmick and most of what he does is play into that in the best sort of Rayo way. He had them charging at his red flag before the match. They clowned Los Oficiales pretty well during the primera.

Segunda went as you'd expect with three-on-one beatings. All fairly basic stuff but they controlled the ring and tempo well. Surprisingly, Rivera bled and they worked the wound a bit. That led to the big comeback in the tercera. A little bit of miscommunication set up the dives, but they twisted it where they caught each tecnico one after the next and then dragged things down until a rudo beatdown DQ (I think at least). It's always a little tough without the crowd noise but you can imagine how it went given how they worked this one. 

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: IWRG RETRO~! CEREBRO~! COCOS~! VILLANOS~! CANEK~! SCORPIO~! OFICIALES~!

IWRG Retro 9/8/22

MD: IWRG is posting old stuff. Some of it is new. Some of it is rare. We are very happy about this development.

Fantasy/Zonic vs. Rey Cuervo/Caballero Azteca 4/11/99

MD: This is the "rare" one as opposed to the "new" ones, as it was apparently on tape lists. It's a pretty fun way to spend eight minutes. About half of that is Cuervo and Azteca beating down the tecnicos and it's solid comfort food. The comeback comes on a miscommunication dropkick and goes pretty quickly into a finishing stretch of sorts as this is just one fall. Most of the heat ends up on a rudo ref who misses a tag early and misses Fantasy's shoulder being up late. It's all light stuff with a real opening match feel, but colorful, with the biggest issue being that we lose out on the native audio to the new commentary, which is a problem throughout the show but less of an issue with the matches with more substance to them.

Dr. Cerebro/Paramedico/Cirujano vs. Los Cocos 12/23/01

MD: We've got Rojo, Blanco, and Verde for those keeping score, and they come out with "Super Capo" as their valet, which feels like a big deal. Rudos ambush early and make quick work out of the clowns to end the primera. Cerebro is great here directing traffic and flipping off the rope to crush someone or kick them in the face. He bites Rojo's hand after the submission for the heck of it. In the segunda, he goes from hanging out in the corner and watching the violence to hitting a spring up turning headbutt foul to a hung up Rojo. Apparently that impressed the production team so much that they decided to show it in slow motion instead of the moment of comeback. Both Blanco and Verde looked good here, with the best spot maybe Verde on the apron ready to jump and Cerebro diving at him only for his legs to pop up so Cerebro ends up sliding across the apron and off screen errantly. Tercera had some comedy miscommunication, submissions that were broken up one after the other and a pretty nice tope suicida train, with Paramedico all but sailing into the crowd. That cleared the ring for Rojo vs Cerebro and a pretty definitive and crowd-pleasing stunner finish on Cerebro. Big takeaway here was how good he looked overall.

Canek/Villano III/Villano IV vs. Scorpio/Guardia/Vigilante 8/22/96

MD: I don't think I've seen much Scorpio, Sr. before but he looked like an old, decrepit rudo with spaghetti like hair that was made to be taken by Canek in an apuestas match.  This was super libre and all about the numbers game, with as much mask pulling as I can remember seeing in one match. The rudos attacked the Villanos before Canek could come out to even the odds but the tecnicos fired back after a couple of minutes of beatdown to take the primera. There was already a lot of mask pulling here, all around, with Guardia and Vigilante spending a good chunk of the match just trying to keep their masks on. Between falls, Scorpio successfully got Canek's mask and that led to a 3 on 2 advantage as he had to run to the back. The beatdowns were solid here and utilized the super libre rules. Scorpio stood out and kept things interesting, in the primera by choking Canek with his own cape and in the segunda, by forcing Villano III into the corner, seated, groin first, and just jamming his feet into his back. Eventually, Canek rushed to the rescue with a new mask, but super libre or no, the refs seemed to call it after too many rudo fouls to try to stem the turned tide. I have to assume that this led to a bunch of mask challenges that went nowhere. Some satisfying lucha for lucha's sake in this initial drop.

Read more!