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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Will Ospreay is 12

AEW Dynamite 4/17/26

Will Ospreay vs Hechicero

(The fictional character of) Will Ospreay is very, very dumb. 

And that's okay. It fits classic archetypes, the simple, quirky, strong hero with the good heart who can't bear to see injustice done around him. Li'l Abner. Andy Griffith's character in No Time for Sergeants. Maybe Tom Brown in Tom Brown's Schooldays if we want to go the UK route. The gentle giant. The stalwart knight. Galahad in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Gourry in Slayers, to talk about old anime because I don't know any new anime (Goku works, maybe? Everyone knows Goku. He seems dumber than Goku; Luffy? That works, right?). It's an archetype. Pure of heart; so pure that he's not all that bright, for knowledge corrupts and all that. 

The character of Will Ospreay is a basically well-meaning dog who is going to bite at his wound and needs a collar of shame. He is stubborn. He is prideful. He is absolutely assured of his own ability. 

Maybe it's not just okay. Maybe it actually fits the moment we live in. There has been recent  social commentary about how everyone's a twelve year old boy now. The US has a Department of War and argues about the Gulf of America. Hollywood properties are all superhero movies and nostalgic remakes. 

The viral post on bluesky from "Patrick Cosmos" introducing the concept was as follows:

"I'm strong and I want to have like fifty kids and a farm" of course you do. You're twelve. "I don't want to eat vegetables I think steak and French fries is the only meal" hell yeah homie you're twelve. "Maybe if there's crime we should just send the army" bless your heart my twelve year old buddy."

And... that's perfect for the character of Will Ospreay, right? He's big, dumb, does flips, is going to slam that round peg into the square hole until it fits, dammit. Because he's that determined and that stalwart and that sure of himself. If you do him wrong, he will be hurt and very angry about it, and will punch you, and kick you, and do a back flip at you and look very angry as he does it. If you hurt him, he will be hurt, and sell the hurt, and then hit all of his stuff perfectly, really focusing, really getting it done, and then it will really hurt him, because it was dumb, and he shouldn't have done it that way, but it’s the only way he knows how so he’s not going to let that stop him.

He's a perfect pro wrestling character for our time. 

And this is the lens you have to understand literally everything he does, all of his matches. It's the only way his matches make any coherent, logical sense. They fall apart under carefully examination otherwise. Trust me, I’ve tried. With the lens though… He's Dudley Do-Right. He's George of the Jungle. He's stronger than the average wrestler, faster, slicker, more agile, more resilient, far, far more stubborn. 

His weakness, so much as he has any weakness, is that he is so, so very dumb and stubborn. 

We've not dealt with any sort of wrestling character like this since maybe Henry Godwinn? Hillbilly Jim? Maybe Festus? He's basically playing the classic US country bumpkin but instead he's an Assassin's Creed cloak wearing 12-year old who represents modernity in ways that hit the zeitgeist perfectly.

There will be logic and causality in his matches but it's never going to be the most satisfying when it comes to build and payoff, clear and clean transitions, clean act breaks (Storytelling). Because he's too dumb a character for any of that; he's too stubborn. He's going to run his head into the wall again and again and you can't tell Go Dog Go in that scenario let alone Shakespeare. But that doesn't mean that what you end up seeing isn't exciting, like a fireworks display is exciting, and like fireworks displays, even if the build isn't necessarily there, there's probably going to be a grand finale. 

Just remember at all times that this character is a blistering moron with a heart of gold, and you'll find your way through the jungle of great spots and exciting sequences and absolutely broken causality that starts right before he does something and doesn’t start back up until after. Because he's going to hit you with his broken hand. He'll sell it beforehand and he will sell it afterwards, but he's going to hit you with it anyway, damn it, because he is Will Ospreay, bruv, and because he can. Don’t tell Picasso how to paint, and don’t tell Will Ospreay he can’t punch someone with his broken hand. 

So, with that lens established, here he faced Hechicero. It's a little like super competent bad guys trying to fight Inspector Gadget or Maxwell Smart, right? You can use the best techniques and the best traps, but Ospreay's going to stick that peg into that hole anyway, no matter the shape, and there’s virtually nothing you can do to stop him. 

Instead of going high to start, Hechicero went low, pulling a leg, scoring a takedown, tying Ospreay up. There were a hundred ways for Ospreay to potentially escape; he wasn’t even all that far from the ropes. But no, he had to do a headstand and use a toupie style twisting escape, damaging his own heavily taped neck right from the get go. Because he is a stubborn moron. You get the sense he KNEW it was going to hurt his neck and he did it anyway, just to prove that he could. 

Ospreay, now angry and wanting to get back at Hechicero, eye for an eye style like any good 12 year old, went for one of his legs. Hechicero stepped over, took Will down. Will tried to counter a couple of times, but ended up tied up in a knot again for his trouble. Will finally got out and put on a side headlock takeover, confident, sure of himself, needing to show everyone he was just as good as one of the best technical wrestlers in the world. Hechicero immediately turned it into a headscissors and again, instead of prying the legs open or getting out any other way, Will just had to bridge up and hop around him before vaulting to his feet. He immediately sold his neck. Of course he did. He stupidly hurt it getting out of the hold. Hechicero hadn’t even targeted the neck yet! He was targeting everything else, maybe most of all Ospreay’s 12-year old pride, and then Will was doing all the work for him!

Then, finally, Hechicero started in on the head with a dropkick and a few strikes. Will, seeing red once more, hit a clutch ‘rana to take him over. That made everything fun for him again. He stomped about, hyped up the crowd, and hit a dive. That hurt (he rubbed his shoulder), and he started in with some good old fashioned fisticuffs instead. This was the smartest thing he’d done so far and the lad should be lauded for it. Hechicero tried to fire back but to no avail. Instead of showing off or outwrestling him, Will gave him the what for, stiff upper lip entirely focused on beating Hechicero around the ringside area and then back into the ring. That included a ten punch in the corner, great fun that almost cost him, as Hechicero slipped out. 

Will was able to ping Hechicero with a spin wheel kick though (not sure if that hurt the shoulder since he didn’t sell it), and then went right into a figure four lock of all things. Why that? If you ask me, it was to get back at those leg submissions from before, combined with the animal instinct to keep his head away from Hechicero. Most of all though, it let him look Hechicero in the eyes, let him stare right at him and say “Ha, I got you now, Bruv. Who’s the mat specialist?” Pure id. Hechicero tried a few things but went to the ropes before long, a sensible move from a sensible rudo.

Will stayed on the leg, but quickly got distracted by Marina Shafir sitting in the crowd, allowing Hechicero to come back, and after a few reversal attempts (Ospreay seeming perfectly fine throughout), Hechicero was able to hit the conjuro spinning backbreaker followed up by a step up knee to the back of the head in the corner. Nasty stuff. Hechicero followed it up, tactician that he is, by working the leg up to the shoulder, to finally unlock the neck with a twisting crank of his feet. He was basking in it now, feeling momentum and his own thrill of victory, as he skillfully locked in la tapitia. Will grimaced as Hechicero yanked his hair in the hold, his visage becoming more teeth than face as his neck was pulled back. 

Hechicero moved in for the kill, tossing Will against the ropes once more. It was the worst thing he could do. Any normal, reasonable human being would have bounced back, ducked, hit a clothesline, jumping knee, big boot, anything that wouldn’t hurt himself as well when it absolutely wasn’t necessary. Those were things that Hechicero might expect, might plan for, might be ready to counter. But no, good ol’ Will wasn’t going to do that. Instead he went right onto his head again, bouncing off the ropes with a handspring and hit a flipping kick. You can’t defend against stupidity. The greatest chess master sometimes has more to fear from someone who doesn’t know the rules of the game. 

Ospreay continued on with a springboard elbow (wincing on impact) and a standing sky twister press. That led to Callis and Danielson getting ahead of me and this review and going on about just how dumb Will is, a rare point of agreement between the two. Still, Ospreay pressed his advantage and even though Hechicero fought back, Will was primed, ready to unleash the Hidden Blade. Just not as ready as Hechicero was. Hechicero caught him on the charge with one of his finishers, the twisting headscissors legdrop. That would have been, to any normal person, the end of the match. To Ospreay, dumb but preternaturally tough and resilient, that meant that he actually had to put his foot on the rope to beat the count on a pin. No small thing for such a superheroic figure.

That drew the doctor in to check on him. Will wouldn’t quit, wouldn’t stop. He’d done nothing but take neck damage since he returned from surgery, but he couldn’t even imagine such an eventuality. He can’t even spell “eventuality.” So Hechicero dropped him throat first on the rail. Still, even after the Doctor checked on him more, he refused to throw in the towel. That’s not something to hold against him. Most babyfaces wouldn’t. It’s not exactly the same as doing a headstand when you didn’t need to. Still, it’s consistent; it’s all consistent! That’s the point!

But now, as they came back from their second commercial break, Hechicero had Will in real danger. He had him draped over the rope, yanking on the neck. Will got free and immediately charged right at Hechicero only to get tripped and go sailing over the top. Oh Will. Hechicero hit a dive of his own and followed it up with his diving elbow to a standing opponent but to the back of Will’s head. Again, brutal stuff. 

But it didn’t matter, because in this world that we’re stuck in, you don’t have to be smart. You just have to be incessant. If you don’t give up, and you don’t admit fault, and you just keep on tweeting through it, well… eventually things will go your way. That’s exactly what Will did and as Hechicero went for a suplex, Will turned it into a Stundog Millionaire. He used the distance that earned him to charge at Hechicero (of course he did) and ran right into a foot (of course he did). But he kept the pressure on and caught Hechicero over his shoulder. This time the shoulder gave way. Hechicero went for a small package. Ospreay was able to turn it over and then (again going tit for tat, anything you can do I can do better, in 12 year old fashion) went for a backslide of his own.

That didn’t work and neither did his attempt at the Oscutter, shoulder generally fine for it, by the way; it was just that Hechicero caught him. Hech followed it by turning another pin attempt into his vaulting rear naked choke, but here, maybe the great tactician overthought things and should have just kept it simple himself. He figured Ospreay would be ready for it and turned it into a cross armbreaker. Ospreay was able to tough it out (neck and all) and shove that round hole into the square peg once and for all, lifting him up for a Styles Clash and hitting the Hidden Blade for the pin and the win.

And I have to admit, having this lens in mind, the idea that the kayfabe character of Will Ospreay is a nigh-invulnerable, super powerful, ridiculously athletic blistering idiot meant that a lot of the narrative issues I would have had with the match could be brushed over. That doesn’t mean the drama was really maximized, though I think they got it closer than usual. It does mean that you could draw a throughline from beginning to end. Some side missions like the figure-four that didn’t really have any impact in the match over all? Well that was Will just being a petty idiot. Him doing handsprings perfectly and only selling after the fact? A stubborn idiot. The endless times he just charged into something? Well, that’s just Will, innit? And in the end, Hechicero found himself playing chess against someone playing checkers and instead of taking his king, got crowned on top of his head for his trouble. 

Dudley Do-Right has caught his man. George of the Jungle stopped the poachers. Goku vanquished the … evil Saiyans trying to invade earth? Peace is restored to the land. And thankfully, because everyone is twelve, no one even had to think too hard about it (except for me, I guess), and no one (not even me) even had to learn a moral lesson.

So there we have it. After 54 five star matches from the Observer, moral lesson or no, I think I’ve finally figured out the perfect framework to watch and appreciate Will Ospreay matches. And now, like anyone who stares at a Picasso painting for too long, I have a headache.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 1/5 - 1/11/26 (Part 2)

AEW Collision 1/10/26

Mark Briscoe vs Hechicero

There's nothing quite like pro wrestling.

Look at what we have here, two of the greatest, most stylized and over the top characters you'll find in any medium in 2026. 

There's Mark Briscoe, bearded, teeth missing, zany practitioner of redneck kung fu who likes to dive off of chairs and thirsts for violence, a wildman chicken farmer with a bombastic vocabulary and a canny glint in his eyes that you'd find in any folk hero out of the Americana canon. But he also carries with him the weight of fatherhood, the weight of carrying his late brother's legacy, of being a staunch and loyal friend, of never giving up even in the face of injustice and hardship, and he carries it all with a sort of humble, accepting spiritual grace that, in turn, humbles us all.

And then there's Hechicero, the alchemist of the ring, a fire-bending, dynamic, larger than life luchador, looking like something out of a medieval horrorshow, a mask over his face, a hood over his mask, and contacts over his eyes so as to be unknowable, yet so capable of making his reactions known to the world as he reaches out and grasps the attention of the very last row. He's possibly the most creative wrestler of his generation, able to add twists and contortions to every hold and construct elaborate technique-driven entry points for every move, the ultimate middle ground between style and substance, and isn't that the true ideal for what pro wrestling can and should be? 

Here they are then, on a random Saturday in a Texas residency, anchoring the changeover from 8 pm to 9 pm EST on TNT, fighting over Briscoe's TNT title. 

So it is that styles make fights, and contrast makes the world go round, and characters draw the eye, pulling us away from our phones, from social media, from the responsibilities of the day. With these two, with the styles they bring to the table and the contrast between them, how could anyone possibly look away?

To begin, Hechicero, well versed in the most arcane arts of llave and lucha, raised every possible question for Briscoe, locking in holds, putting painful torque on limbs, invoking the Conjuro backbreaker. But Briscoe's wisdom is the sort that you wouldn't find in dusty old spellbooks but by living life, and he had answers, landing on his feet on a mare, on a back body drop, putting his hands up in exultation even as Hechicero recoiled in surprise and disdain. This was the wizard's world but Briscoe could walk through it, head high.

He walked all the way into a world of his own, maneuvering Hechicero out between the ropes deftly and laying in the redneck kung-fu, ridiculous but effective karate chops, on the floor. He set up the chair to leap, but Hechicero disrupted it, making sure to punctuate his clever act to the crowd (as he punctuates all things, a living, breathing exclamation point), only to turn around and eat Briscoe's flying feet.

But just as Briscoe could walk through Hechicero's world, Hechicero could slink about in Briscoe's. As Mark went for the Cactus Elbow (his punctuation an opening parenthesis of "bang, bang"), Hechicero laid in wait on the floor, capturing him in an unlikely and impressive cross armbreaker on the floor. He followed it up by grapevining the arms and charging Briscoe into the post, and the blink of an eye, the alchemist had turned led to gold once more.

Over the next many minutes, Hechicero plied his trade, locking in all manner of unique submission. Briscoe made it to the ropes, surviving again and again as the wizard seethed and scowled (with his head, his arms, his torso, using his whole body to emote and accentuate the mask). The fans, perhaps given the locale, perhaps given that Don Callis was conveniently abroad, remained split, unable to deny the skill and flair they were witnessing but never about to abandon Briscoe and his struggle.

When Briscoe did start to fight back it was with one arm (and his whole body, and especially, at a key moment, his teeth). Hechicero invited punches but made sure to turn his body so Briscoe would fire off with the bad arm. He liked to play with his food. Briscoe was able to get the better of him and get him back to the floor and this time, he did leap off the chair, even if it was an awkward, desperate leap, even if the simple act of opening the chair was a pained labor given his arm.

Perhaps Hechicero was too eager to play with his food, too confident. After Briscoe couldn't lock in the Jay Driller, as that relies on a butterflying double underhook and both arms, Hechicero lifted him into the position himself. Instead of dropping him straight onto his head, he dropped him to the side as well so as to lock in one more submission.

When that failed, he showed his frustration again and charged in wildly. Briscoe, just like brer rabbit before him, moved off to the side and dodged, causing Hechicero to crash into the ropes. That was all the opening Mark needed for a second attempt at the Jay Driller. This time, with fate and momentum on his side, he found the strength and the grit to heft Hechicero up and drop him down. 

He very much stole out this win. If Hechicero had went for the Jay Driller instead, this might have been different. If Callis had there, maybe this would have been different. If he'd locked in even one more submission, maybe even Mark Briscoe would have had to quit. 

But he didn't, and he wasn't, and he hadn't. Maybe next time he would. Pro wrestling is a never ending story, and next week might be different. For now though, Mark Briscoe survived to defend his title another day. And we were left watching two styles that did make a fight, and two characters that made the fight into a folk tale for modern times, one full of skill and spirit and sensation, one that we were fortunate to get to bear witness to on one random Saturday in Texas. 

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2025 Ongoing MOTY List: Satanico vs. Hechicero

Satanico vs. Hechicero CMLL 12/2/25

MD: We have seen matches with men in their 70s. Remember, even something like Black Terry vs Mr. Condor had Terry in his late 60s, maybe not quite the same. There is a certain expectation when you're watching a match with a 70+ year old, let alone someone who, like Satanico, is 76. You expect a maesteros match. You expect tricks on the mat, little bits of leverage, skill and technique and mastery. It can be a joy. Often times it is a joy because the sum of wrestling knowledge in the head of such a man, the number of things he knows that almost no one else alive can replicate, are multitudinous. You may see something that you would not see anywhere else in the world in the entirety of the year. 

But of course your expectations are tempered. Maybe it'll get a bit chippy. Maybe it'll boil over towards the end. Men that know how to punch that know how to take punches. But you have expectations for a reason.

And this started much the same, on the mat. Hechicero cinched in a tight headlock but Satanico was able to snatch a leg and take him down. Hechicero pointed to the skies as distraction and scored a takedown of his own. He worked to lock in a hold, twisting ankles, crossing legs, rough and aggressive, but Satanico knew every trick and scored yet another trip. Were they to do twelve minutes of this, it would be a refreshing, enjoyable time for all, something we would have been very glad to see but might have had very little to write about. 

But Hechicero, always skilled, underlooked for so, so long, was a man of pride. He was a worldwide star, and to have a 76 year old, even a 76 year old that was perhaps the greatest rudo of all time, turn things around on him and force him to fall to the mat, arms flailing, it was more than he could endure. 

He pressed Satanico back into the ropes, refusing to break. Satanico, in turn, knowing the value of every moment and having no time for this, pressed his fist up against Hechicero's face and pushed him back with it, a small but poignant gesture more full of more gravitas than a thousand elaborate spots. 

They locked up again. Satanico went for a drop down and Hechicero kicked him in the skull. Everything had changed. This was no longer a maestro match, no longer an exhibition. It became something darker, something more visceral and gripping. It became a mauling. 

Hechicero fired off shots in the corner. He got up onto the turnbuckles to rain down punches. Usually an opponent can withstand them, hold himself up, all the way to the count of ten. Satanico started to wither immediately though, started to wilt. There was nothing he could do as Hechicero whipped him into the corner. Every step felt like labored anguish, as if he was trudging through mud accumulated over decades with joints that had weathered more storms than would be expected from someone half his age. 

Hechicero gave him no respite, save for to shrug at the crowd. It wasn't him doing this to Satanico. It was life, just the natural order of things. How could you blame Hechicero, wizard that he was, for the simple passage of time? He pulled him to the outside, tossed him into the ramp, laid his head upon it and dropped a knee, followed it up with a kick. He was merely time's agent in all of this, a representative of a force bigger than us all. Why he even stopped to grab a sign professing love for him. None of this was his fault. He was an innocent bystander in the mauling of Satanico. It was fate tugging at his fists and heels, not any evil animus from Hechicero himself.

Maybe that's what pushed Satanico over the edge, what drove him to fight back far past the point of wisdom or reason. He'd spent a lifetime taking full responsibility for every twisted act, a rudo's rudo, a man who perhaps had regrets, but none of them were about embracing the wickedness in his heart. And at times, the crowd loved him for such confident honesty. They loved him now as he started firing back. It wouldn't be enough though. It took a sidestep that sent Hechicero careening into the ropes feet first, to truly get back into the fight. 

Once he was back in, however, well, he was Satanico after all, wasn't he? And that meant he could get down and dirty. He peppered Hechicero on the floor. He started to undo his mask back in the ring. When Hechicero refused to budge on his clotheslines, he drew him in, causing him to overcommit so he could topple the younger man. And then, finally having him down on the floor, he let the devil into his veins one last time and leaped without restraint or hesitation, a daring senton off the apron.

There seemed to be an aspect of futility in this defiance however. Hechicero was one of the best in the world. He recovered quickly, jamming a step-up knee in Satanico's face and dropping him with a power bomb. But futility did not always know sense. When you reach a certain age, the sheer act of getting up becomes a challenge, a complex act of physics where one leg helps to turn the other, propelling you back to your feet. Satanico utilized this exact technique here to escape the subsequent pin, the power of a simple lever that you're more apt to learn through aging than in wrestling school. Whether wise or not, he survived to keep fighting.

And keep fighting he did. Thrown off by the shock of Satanico's escape, Hechicero allowed himself to get jammed on a whip. Satanico pressed the matter, hitting a bulldog, a single arm driver, lifting Hechicero up and dropping him to lock on a submission. It wouldn't last. Hechicero was younger, stronger, more resilient and he was able to power Satanico up for an airplane spin. But he got cocky and missed the moonsault that followed and then couldn't get Satanico up into a Gory special, instead falling victim to a struggle-laden sunset flip, two skin of his teeth nearfalls that almost earned Satanico a last, unexpected taste of glory.

Perhaps drunk upon the taste of it, Satanico went for one more sunset flip only for Hechicero to turn it around and, his feet hanging off the side of the apron suspiciously, he forced Satanico down for a count of three. But when you're 76, when you're facing someone at the height of his power like Hechicero, perhaps glory isn't just to be found in victory. Satanico wasn't even supposed to be there that day. He was a substitution for Blue Panther. Even then, this was supposed to be a nice casual maestros match, the sort we've seen before. But instead, tempers flared and opportunity arose, a last ride for the old scoundrel, maybe not one that he had asked for, but one that he would embrace nonetheless, and in doing so, feel and inspire all of those old thrills one more time.

ER: It's crazy to think how close we came to having this match on D3AN. We had five guys confirmed for our llave trios and wanted a cool old man for the sixth spot. Getting Hechicero in there was already a dream, but with Blue Panther and Virus also involved it was a dream on top of a dream on top of a dream. But we wanted one more cool old guy. Solar had just had surgery, Negro Navarro wasn't available, and Satanico was someone we really wanted. We already had Blue Panther put on one of his best showings of an incredible year at DEAN~! 2, and we wanted a guy 10 years older to try and do the same. Alas, we couldn't get Satanico, so we had to "settle" for Pantera. Boo hoo, El Pantera rules and I loved him in our llave trios.  

So here, a couple months later, is the Satanico/Hechicero exchanges we wanted, and it's wonderful. A few months ago I took my dad, who is two years younger than Satanico, to a Giants game. We went on a mile walk before the game and at his speed, it took us over 45 minutes. Yes, my dad was moving a little bit faster than 1 MPH. Satanico is more athletic than my dad, but he is an old man and moves like an old man. That said, I hope I am this spry at 76, and I hope I have someone like Hechicero in my circle to make sure that I am protected this well. I love Satanico, and love that this old man is still rocking, but this match makes me wonder what kind of match Hechicero could have gotten out of Mae Young in her 80s, because he does all of his coolest stuff and never cracks an egg (or an old man's skull). It's a marvelous showing. 

There are great moments large and small, and every one of them looks vicious while being as gentle as can be. Hechicero wasn't a saint, there were several moments where he preyed on an old man's slowed reaction time, going high for a knuckle lock before dropping in quick with a single leg, or targeting this sweet devil of a saint's poor old knees and bending them over ropes while twisting joints. When he throws Satanico into the entrance ramp, he's kicking him in the back of the head and dropping knees on his draped neck, and while I'm sure Satanico didn't feel a thing I loved how snug Hechicero made it all look. He ran into some incredible crashes while working around Satanico's body, flying into a big upside down bump into the ropes as Satanico sidestepped him, running into a back elbow and flying into the air like he ran orbital bone first into a trailer hitch, or just taking an old man's full weight senton off the apron. Satanico's full weight might be just 140 lb., but it's still full weight.  

Satanico stepped up in cool ways. I loved when they were tangled up on the mat, Hechicero working a leg, and when Hechicero started throwing punches, Satanico started firing back elbows over his shoulder, responding harder than he was getting, forcing Hechicero to abandon his strategy. The man may be the oldest currently active wrestler, but he still throws a classic style bulldog that looks refreshing in 2025. And I don't know what it is about old dudes with great faces, but those faces always seem to be amplified to crazed delirium whenever an old man locks in a Fujiwara. 

But Hechicero is a god. After seeing how perfectly he worked his running knee in the corner, and the way he let Satanico dangle in the air on a powerbomb, teasing like he was going to drop him on his head before lifting him back up and dropping the man perfectly flat, I will proudly trust Hechicero with handling all of my Faberge eggs. Especially the old evil ones. 

2025 MOTY MASTER LIST

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NJPW Wrestle Dynasty 1/5/25

 

Athena vs. Persephone vs. Willow Nightingale vs. Momo Watanabe 

ER: I'm kind of shocked by how good this was and how well they kept up a certain energy for 10+ minutes. But I also think a lot of it just might have been Athena. I think this was 10 minutes of waiting for what Athena was going to do next. She is pure lighting and can go go go. She leaps into everything at a doggish pace. She hits the mat and people hard. She gets thrown into a fast tope a minute in and I'm not sure it's the 4th coolest thing she did all match. I thought Persephone really shined in a match where they all got time to shine (and did). She had some big bumps and lands with good weight, real good babyface energy and a unique strength spot approach. Willow got the attention of a big crowd multiple times, and Watanabe was fine fourth wheel. But every great moment led to Athena making it greater. She worked into and out of sequences with everyone so well. She's like if Low Ki really loved Manami Toyota. It's electric. She chokeslams Persephone on the apron like a small Taue demon. When she hits the Eclipse on Willow it's like the finisher 2 Cold Scorpio was jealous he didn't invent. 

Willow makes the Eclipse even better by taking her straps down in power before turning into it. You know I am a big fan of Lawler strap lowering and lowering the straps before taking the final shot is arguably the best use of the straps. I love Willow. But Athena is as must watch in a match like this as prime Juvy. The opening 3 minutes was so hot and as well timed as the greatest 4 ways, and I didn't think the energy level could be maintained. Because of Athena, it was. She ran everything together and there were a lot of strong timing peaks from the other three. The finish was kind of silly, with Thekla not committing on interference enough for what should have been the finish and then Momo hitting Athena across the head with A FUCKING BASEBALL BAT as hard as she can, it comes off a bit ridiculous. Like your scoop suplex was cool, do a few of those and give your opponent something to actually sell. What's Athena supposed to do with a baseball bat shot to the head, work a brain damage angle for 10 months?  

Dustin Rhodes/Sammy Guevara vs. Yoshinobu Kanemaru/SHO

ER: Man this was good. This was most likely Dustin's last ever match in Japan. Maybe not. I wouldn't bet against him. But this was the first match he'd wrestled in Japan since 2010. The thing is, Dustin was never a Japan guy. You'd never know it from watching this match. This was a great performance that connected with a crowd that was seated far away from him, in a way where they seemed familiar with him just because his wrestling style is That Good. He's a man with an improbably long and impressively durable high end career and he's wrestling his first match in the Tokyo Dome in 30 years. It's an amazing return. He shows out for it. 

Dustin working against these two guys is weird and fun. The size difference between he and SHO is insane and SHO sells it as such all match. Dustin is tireless when he needs to be and makes the most out of a total name grab bag random set of career opponents. Do a fucking shining wizard thing that looks awesome, fuck yeah! Dustin's hot tag where he just wastes both of them is the best. SHO is taking Dustin clotheslines aimed at the jaw they both get powerslams he can still somehow give in the same twisting form. SHO takes almost all of Dustin's shit and he takes it so well. Once he bounced across the ring for a 55 year old code red, Dustin obviously knew this guy knew the deal and knew the Man. 

I never got the hate for Sammy. I think he's pretty great. I like a kid who's not a bad kid but also a little shit. A nice guy who is capable of saying something pretty mean to your sister. He does moonsaults with wild abandon and takes the farthest back body drop bumps of anyone on any of these rosters. Does a Good Superkick still matter in 2025? I think it can. If it can, then Sammy has some of the consistently best. Not just in execution, but in placement within a match. He has this way of milking goodwill out of every indie spot that's ever been overused: superkicks, back crackers, cutters, but maintains the timing to make all of them feed well into a legend like Dustin's offense. Kanemaru's moonsault across Dustin's knees looked pretty bad, but I guess if you were in a fight with Dustin the smartest thing you could do is target his knees so let's give Kanemaru Body Part Specific Moonsault Credit here. He still gets docked for not holding up his end of the match with his shtick. Dustin rules. 

Lucha Gauntlet

ER: Good lucha highspot showcase except it kept getting interrupted by less talented New Japan guys who threw the rhythm off. Mascara Dorada and Hechicero were standouts. Hechicero doing his thing within a growing throng of competitors was cool every time he was the focus, but I especially liked him tying up Fujita in knots when they were the only two. Dorada kept finding new ways to deliver and take offense, always throwing in something extra. He kept finding a new way to flip for a kick, and the key to Dorada at his best is he has this way of adding an extra flip or twist but making it look like it wasn't mapped way out ahead of time. His tope into Soberano was awesome, and Soberano was the best at catching everyone's dives during the big dive train. After he hit a tornillo with a million twists, they had him out front and center saving everyone's bacon.   

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Katsuyori Shibata

ER: This was an "Exhibition Match" but I am unclear on what was being exhibited. We know that Tanahashi has bad leg injuries and cannot move, but he has also had many other matches this year which were not just him exchanging chops with someone for 4 minutes before time expired. The one minute of collar and elbow lock up was much more engaging than the 4 minutes of chopping that followed. Meltzer went ***1/4 on this which might honestly be his most ridiculous rating ever. Calling a match 7 stars, we all know that's stupid, but he rated this higher than the Dustin tag and the women's 4 way, which were actual GOOD matches! Nobody could squint their eyes and even call this a match. It would be like giving Inoki ***1/4 for people lining up to take his bom-ba-ye slaps. What exactly was Meltzer rating here? What subtext am I missing that made it Good, Actually, that Tanahashi is incapable of throwing chops with any strength? 

Mercedes Mone vs. Mina Shirakawa

ER: I thought this was a really good Mina performance - one of her best long singles match showings I've seen - but I couldn't get into what Mercedes was doing. She had this weird way of silently emoting to the crowd, a PC thing that doesn't play at all in a gigantic dome. She would silently sell through her teeth as Mina was working over her leg, then sell her leg by doing a bunch of offense that required her to slam her knee into things. I don't think her teeth selling played in the large venue and I think she went to wordless crying faces too soon. Meanwhile, Mina was savagely going after her leg in ways she doesn't do in AEW. I loved all her knee breakers and the way she'd kick the inside of Mone's knee, slamming her knee into the mat and maneuvering into figure 4 leg locks (quicker than I thought she was capable of doing). Mone scrambling for the ropes was one of her only bits of selling I liked. Mina was working over Mone's knee not to soften her up for some submission, but to leave her prone for her impact DDTs, and I loved all of Mina's impact DDTs. But Mone was working this more like a "Things I Wanted To Do in the Tokyo Dome" so she was bridging up to hit the three amigos (feeling way out of place in this match) and then doing offense based entirely around fucking up her own knees: several different codebreaker/back crackers, a gutbuster, the meteora, just a total disconnect from the great match Mina was working. 

Brody King vs. David Finlay

ER: I don't know if I bought Finlay's offense against King, but I bought the way King took Finlay's offense and the way they made the most out of their misses. Finlay got sidestepped early on a charge into the guardrail, a great last second feint by King that sends Finlay into a gross full speed miss...but then Finlay hits that same flying body attack into King later in the match, delivered at the exact same speed and impacting King the way his body impacted the railing. I like that kind of commitment to not just a miss, but to show your delivery and execution is consistent and real. King is great at misses too, with a great miss very early on a charge into the corner. I love the specific way he hit the turnbuckle pad, like a dog who ran full speed into a sliding glass door. When this settled into Monster vs. Man it was at its best. Finlay's strikes look terrible so it made sense when King was knocking him around with his actual good elbow strikes, and Finlay does Staggered By Strikes selling better than I thought. The finish felt too abrupt for a match that had a good pace, but I kind of liked Finlay being unable to hit a sunset flip powerbomb out of the corner...only to just lift and hit a regular powerbomb right after. King made the Overkill look like a finish, dropping down fast face first into Finlay's knee. 

Claudio Castagnoli vs. Shota Umino 

ER: There aren't actually people out there who hype up Umino as some kind of good wrestler, right? I sure don't see that kind of praise, and I see no reason for that praise. This guy brings very little to the table. His strikes would not break through a spiderweb, and his selling is nonexistent. The first three minutes is just Claudio running him ribs first into the ringpost and a half dozen guardrails and I was looking forward to a match where Claudio beats the hell out of this man who could only exist in a post-Marufuji Japanese wrestling landscape. But this guy really has nothing once the actual moves are delivered. He is not bad at taking and selling a move itself, but once the moment has passed he is onto his bullshit. He fights this too often as Claudio's equal, but none of his offense makes him look equal to anyone. He is a less effective Kentaro Shiga, and lucky for him Claudio is good at taking all of his overly complicated DDTs. The one time Umino's damaged ribs came back into play was the only real compelling part of the match: Claudio's scorpion deathlock. This hold won me over the longer Claudio had it locked it. At first I thought it was for a pointless build to a bad Umino comeback, but the longer Claudio had it applied and the harder Umino fought for the ropes, the more I thought it could actually finish the match. The more I wanted it to finish the match, because I didn't want to see what kind of do-si-do reversal of a reversal nonsense Umino broke out for the home stretch. He made the ropes, he do-si-do'd, he somehow won without ever looking convincing in any way. 

Although he did do one thing well, and I couldn't believe it. HOW is Umino the guy who can throw good looking downward strike elbows to the head and neck?! Nobody makes those look good! Here's the lightest elbow striker on the card and he's lighting Claudio up while balancing on the ropes? What is the deal with this guy. 

Konosuke Takeshita vs. Tomohiro Ishii

ER: This was the match I was expecting them to have and was a good version of that match, which is a match that I don't much care for. There are a lot of parts of an Ishii match that won't make sense when applied to most other wrestlers, because he is going to take punishment until he cannot. So it annoys me when Takeshita acts shocked at Ishii absorbing punishment. When Takeshita hits the Raging Fire falcon arrow off the buckles and Ishii kicks out, he sits there on his but in disbelief for an entire 30 seconds (!), filming an extended Performance Center tryout reaction because the guy who absorbs punishment kicked out of something like 7 minutes into a match. I hate this shit. Like man if I know he's going to get up and start exchanging elbows then you should clearly know this man will kick out of things and get up to fire off some elbows. 

Ishii will take plenty of punishment and I only find that so entertaining in 2025. He's a nut, this is what he does. He will get dropped on the top of his head on a German suplex, Takeshita trying to compress any more vertebrae that haven't been compressed yet, and Ishii will take a big clothesline bump on the back of his head. As tired as I am of stand and trade showdown wrestling, I did actually like them holding waistbands and throwing their hardest shots of the match, and how Takeshita levels him with one of his hardest elbows after they let go of the waistbands. I hate how we seemingly have to sit through a lot of bad stand and trade to get to the part where "this time we really mean it" but they did a good job of making the shots mean something more down the stretch. Ishii's popped me with a frankensteiner that I through looked great, and was a nice payoff to Takeshita taking an eternity to set up a powerslam off the top rope. I bought into Ishii's lariats down the stretch. Takeshita threw some of his best strikes and Ishii built up to his biggest lariats, but even though the shots landed harder in the last half, I still never truly feel a sense of escalation as a lot of the selling is the same in the first few minutes as it is in the last few minutes. I guess we are supposed to be surprised that it is Still Going On but that sounds like a terrible way to structure a wrestling match. Can you still believe we're doing this shit? 

My favorite little moment was Ishii's lunging back elbow after absorbing lots of elbows and kicks in the corner. Takeshita held his chin afterward in a way that made it feel like an actual real moment, like he got popped and knew this was going to be the first of many. He recognized Ishii's fight, and Ishii made a single shot resonate more than a dozen Takeshita had just thrown. But the longer these things go the longer those shots all blend together. 

Young Bucks vs. Great-O-Khan/Jeff Cobb vs. Hiromu Takahashi/Tetsuya Naito

ER: Man I don't know. Maybe this would have been better if it were a simple tag match instead of this three way tag, because this three way tornado tag format stinks. Shoot maybe even with the three way format but guys actually waiting to tag in on the apron it would have worked, but this does not. Guys appear and disappear at will, and the longer guys disappear the more reminder that it's all about blatantly setting up a bunch of spots that never add up to much. There's plenty of superkick spamming, plenty of suplex spamming, plenty of dives that nobody seems to have any idea how to catch. There were plenty of spots that looked good. I like the way Cobb throws a German suplex, I liked when Matt was struggling in the tree of woe and all his strands of pearls were hanging in his face as he sputtered, and I thought the Bucks staying vocal throughout (including telling the ringside cameras they were going to go make love to their wives) brought something. But the disappearances were too frequent for chained spots that didn't land so hot, and the glue joining those spots was awful. Naito looks completely lost at times waiting for what to do next, and the only way he and Takahashi know how to interject into a spot is with bad kicks to the stomach. O-Khan was gone far too much to make an impression and the Bucks conveniently sold based on when they needed to be in position, with no regard to what move they were selling. That's the worst, and that's what kept happening all match. 

Jack Perry vs. Yota Tsuji

ER: One of those matches where nobody really looked good but one guy looked better, and it went longer than you'd want but only because it wasn't that good. They didn't do much wrong, besides not wrestling a compelling or good or watchable match. Perry has good DDTs and a couple better suplexes than you'd think but Tsuji is a real zero. What's the entry point with Tsuji? What is the draw? How does the Raymond Chandler's Carmen San Diego Zoo Suit entrance gear tie into a guy who is so on the nose The Worst Influences of Edge that he even has a Spear finisher and makes spooky faces? Perry was good at cutting off several Tsuji charges/spears, catching one in a well timed DDT and stopping another with a sly kick. I like Perry as a heel more than I did as a babyface and I think he's closer to being a good wrestler now. His personality is much more natural. I would have probably liked Edge more if he tried doing a Spanish Fly in 2002. After Perry takes the spear for the loss, he exits the arena holding a hot water bottle to his tummy and maybe Perry is actually a good wrestler. 

Kenny Omega vs. Gabe Kidd

ER: I typically do not connect with big match Kenny Omega, and I don't believe I have ever connected with a single thing that Gabe Kidd has done, but I think I loved this. This was a 12 match show and I'm not sure there was a match I was looking forward to less. Well, I knew the Yota Tsuji match would be worse, but I knew this would be twice as long and I knew the show was already five hours long. I mentally wrote this one off, and yet I found myself hooked from the start. Kenny works this like he actually cannot stand Kidd, which is something I never get from Omega matches. I always get "he is trying to have an EPIC match with X" but I never get "he is extremely annoyed by this guy and wants to hurt him" and that makes me enjoy this Kenny Omega match so much more than his usual 6+ star affairs. I also think it's fantastic that Omega is hellbent on not adjusting his ring style to account for his exploding insides and deteriorating body so now his biggest matches have this extra layer of deep pain and human stupidity that finally adds Consequence to his work. 

He bounces Kidd's body on the apron and ringside like he has no regard for his safety, bouncing him off the ropes to the floor, a snap dragon on the floor, and a big powerbomb onto a table in the announcer's area. It's one thing for him to have little regard for his opponent's body, but it's key to his character (and his character is clearly just himself) that he also has little regard for his own body. I got actually invested into him being unable to stop himself from flinging his body into dives and stupid bumps all match while his innards are screaming and his legs and hips cry out for some goddamn mercy. That disregard for self and opponent only gets cooler when disgusting suplexes into edges of chairs turn into unprotected chairshots in the year 2025. Real 1999 Chairshots taking place at a Tokyo Dome show so sparsely attended that the reactions may as well have been piped in. Kidd takes the nastiest chairshot after braining Omega with a couple. He felt that fucking swing bad too, because he sure gets his hands up quick when Omega comes swinging again. 

Drilla Moloney and Clark Connors unexpectedly added to this match without ever getting involved. Kidd's crew of ringside fuck boys yelling around the ring made the side of an idiot getting destroyed even better, and it seemingly made Omega wreck Kidd even harder with suplexes. There's just no good way to take a snap dragon off the top rope. Kidd's knees get smashed straight into the mat and that might be even more disgusting than the neck damage. 

The early shift to Kidd is great, culminating in Kidd kicking out of a double underhook piledriver, with Omega pulling back on that leg the same way he does when he knows he's getting a 3 count, comes off more obnoxious than "first in a series of moves that shouldn't be kicked out of" and I loved the juxtaposition of him kicking out of a dangerous looking piledriver that should have finished most matches, into making Omega scream with an abdominal stretch. Gabe Kidd slips out of a One Winged Angel into a Desperation Abdominal Stretch, elbow dug deep into Omega's inflamed intestines, and it is one of the all time best uses for an abdominal stretch in wrestling history. Kidd going into Payback Mode ruled. His knee to Omega's guts landed harder than Omega's V-Triggers and contributed led to a future where Omega has a few feet of intestine being removed. Not satisfied with damaging Omega's insides, he always wants him concussed. He spikes Kenny on his head with a short piledriver, and when Omega reverses a powerbomb with a rana, Kidd does not accept that reversal and just drops to his knees with a ganso bomb. There's not attempted lift into a convoluted spot, he just drops Kenny onto the back of his head. I'm laughing my ass off about it when Kidd piledrives him again. 

But if Omega can keep his guts in his body he isn't going to be slowed by head trauma. He has been through fights that Gabe Kidd hasn't yet imagined, and before long he is kneeing this man in the face repeatedly. A double middle fingers spot is something that comes off hack in 2025, but Gabe Kidd possesses the exact correct dumb guy energy to make a last gasp double bird from the knees feel exactly like something he would do when he's about to lose a fight. Kenny grabbing those middle fingers like handlebars to drive the final V-Trigger home was the best. Kidd played the best version of his character and I don't think any of this felt like Great Match mode, it felt like dangerous escalation with great big match selling. Maybe the match didn't need to be a half hour, but I thought it was a rare case where the extra time made the match better. They didn't use the extra time on more kickouts from bigger moves, it was almost always spent letting in pain. The way they sold the big move punishment and exhaustion made it all resonate, made it feel real. Kenny wrestles like a guy who is in pain and Kidd wrestles like a guy too dumb to stop taking damage. Ospreay wouldn't have the guts to sell offense as long as Omega and Kidd did, and that made me feel their story.  

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Ricochet

ER: I loved Ricochet for the first 30 seconds, and thought he was good enough for the next 20 minutes as an overwhelmed guy whose offense keeps getting lighter and lighter in the face of an unflappable champ who hits much harder. But those first 30 seconds, man. It's always great when a heel jumps somebody at the bell. When I think of a heel team rushing some babyfaces, it's almost always with punches and clubbing arms, almost always as just another way to get into the action. No different than a collar and elbow start. When it's used to debilitate an opponent, it can approach brilliance. Think Tenryu blindsiding Giant Baba with a suicide dive into Giant Baba in the 1989 Tag League. Ricochet doesn't have debilitating weapons, but he uses speed and heel flying to throw Sabre off and I loved it. A heel ambushing their opponent with a suicide dive, springboard dropkick, Sasuke Special, and springboard 450 splash before they can get their ring jacket off, is fantastic. A hot 30 second Jersey All Pro match-finishing stretch as a heel ambush.  

I don't think he kept up that attitude or energy or idea execution the rest of the match, but I also don't think it mattered because him flying into Sabre's buzzsaw was entertaining because he couldn't keep it up. The first 30 seconds worked so well because it could only work for so long. While Sabre's full body European uppercuts to take control felt plan in comparison, that was something that could be kept up for 20 minutes. Sabre hits hard early and keeps it up all match long, and once he started hitting Ricochet I don't think anything else Ricochet hit had the same immediacy. Like he ran and ran until he got a wake up call and then lightened up, hoping it would make Sabre lighten up. Sabre's shots all look dangerous, but Ricochet is still hanging onto a light springboard clothesline, chops that hit lighter the longer the match goes, arms that barely club back. His combos are also too slow, and there are almost a half dozen times where he leaves Sabre waving in the breeze like an idiot so he can do another spin. Had the story of the match actually been "Sabre endures punishment and Ricochet slows the more punishment Sabre takes" then this could have been incredible. Sometimes I think they were working that story, and those were the best parts. Other times I think Ricochet's offense just didn't work because it didn't work, and it would have been hit that way regardless. I didn't buy Ricochet as a worthy Sabre challenger, but I liked when the match was structured around not buying Ricochet as a Sabre challenger. 

Sabre's dedication to believing that being the IWGP Champ means hitting hard and trying to get guys to hit hard is what made this good, and Ricochet did well at not understanding that this was not a battle he was going to overcome and Sabre was not going to be moved off that hill. Sabre was good at reacting to a lot of Ricochet's stuff that didn't belong in the match and turning it into something painful. Sabre catching an Asai moonsault with a cravat feels like something Chris Hero had to have done in Chikara at least once. It's fun, and then everything else is very mean. Ricochet's rolling vertical suplexes going from the ring to the apron to the floor was a lot of painful bumps for a dumb spot. Sabre's selling is almost enough to make it work, especially the way he got up at 18 but lost his balance and slipped back into the guardrail before making it in. Ricochet calls him a motherfucker and Sabre laughs at the idea. I'm a motherfucker? Ricochet, a man who doesn't slap very hard, is dumb enough to challenge a guy who can slap very hard to a kneeling slap fight. It only takes two exchanges for him to get to his feet. Sabre even tells him, "You're back in Japan now, mate." Is this match about how Ricochet has Dragons Gate Mindset and isn't catching on that Sabre fancies himself as submission wrestling Scott Norton? I like that. 

So, there can't be any complaints against Sabre's submissions anymore, correct? I always felt they were hilariously wrong, but if those opinions persist anywhere they only look more wrong now. His execution is fast and it always looks extremely painful. The way he bent back Ricochet's legs for a bridged figure 4 variation, the limb wrenching llave he pretzeled him into, the neck snapping ankle cranks he kept doing. Every strike and every twist looked painful and every sub he trapped Ricochet in looked potentially match finishing. The problem might have been that everything Sabre did looked so effective, that very little Ricochet did looked as effective. Ricochet's worked punches to drop Sabre at the end of the match were good worked punches...but the spot in question didn't call for well-worked punches, they were supposed to be KO shots that each dropped Sabre to his knees. I love a good worked punch, but they don't "work" when they're the only worked looking strikes in a match, and now they are supposed to be dropping the champ. Ricochet's mid-match slow down does set up the finish nicely, as he throws his sliding clothesline so slow that Sabre just snatches his arm out of the air and maneuvers him disgustingly into a modified Rings of Saturn. I kept going back and forth on this. I liked Ricochet, and I liked the story of his bullshit not standing up to Sabre's strong style...but the match story was inconsistent because sometimes his bullshit would stand up to Sabre and then a minute later it would be clear that his bullshit was supposedly equal to Sabre...

 

Well, the opening women's match was so good that I got lured into watching and writing about an entire show from a fed I don't love...and while there were some more rewards there was also way more stuff I didn't like. The Omega/Kidd match was great, the women's match was great, Mina was great in her match, the luchadors showed out in their gauntlet, the Dustin tag was incredibly fun, and most of the people I dislike wrestled expectedly bad. Two great matches on a 5 hour card isn't much of a success rate, but I'm glad I took the time to watch them. 

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D3AN~!!! Day 1: MAESTROS~!

DEAN~!!! 3 9/6/25

Blue Panther/Virus/Pantera vs Hechicero/Dr. Cerebro/Xelhua

This exceeded every expectation.

Don't look at me that way. I'm a true believer. These are my guys. This was the match I was looking forward to the most, the one that kept getting better with every announcement. 

(I would have loved to see what Angelico could have done with these guys but now that I've seen it, I wouldn't change it for the world).

But just look at the numbers here. The tecnico side has a combined age of 181, with an average of  60.33333. And I love maestros matches, I do. It was a joy whenever any of those old man FLLM Masters title matches showed up with Negro Navarro or Solar or Blue Panther or Satanico or whoever. And yes, of course, Blue Panther is having a blowaway year. And it's not like he and Cerebro aren't empowered by wearing the mask again and there was Hechicero with his relative size to base, and Xelhua has all the youth and energy and flash you could want in a scientific wrestler. 

BUT STILL...

Even with those FLLM matches, you had a certain expectation when it came to pace and style. They'd build to a few more impactful spots, would pepper them in when it mattered the most. You might even get one dive which again, they would make the absolute most out of, but that's not why you were watching. You were watching to see the technique and the struggle and the effort, the personality and the interaction. The way they worked the crowd, the way they worked each other.

I tend to get frustrated with how six-man (and more) matches work in AEW, dependent on who you have in there. There are lots of ways to run them. I love the big 80s NJPW elimination tags where there's no room for escape if you get too close to the ropes. I grew up on Survivor Series matches which would be the only time each year to see so many personalities interact with one another. 

On paper, I understand the concept of a lucha trios style match allowing for quick action, for people to cycle in and out and keep the spots endlessly flowing. The problem is that the US wrestlers who focus on that element the most when they get to play by those rules are the same ones who generally do so much of that in the first place. It just takes away the need for them to structure a match at all and just gives them every excuse to "do stuff" without thought or meaning. 

Here, though, where there were obvious physical limitations, it worked perfectly. Instead of being more compounding more, creating noise, it allowed the action to continue and for the rigors of time to be overcome by spreading the load across all six wrestlers.

The other side of the equation in my frustration over "lucha styled" US matches is that they drop all of the other trappings, the ones that give the action purpose and form. Here, most were there. There were initial pairings (Pantera vs Cerebro, Panther vs Xelhua, Virus vs Hechicero). They made full use of the 2/3 falls format. In the primera caida, the pairings were given time so that they could work the mat. In the segunda caida, they escalated to rope running with a second round of pairings. Then the tercera caida had tricked out submissions broken up one after the next. In each caida, everything broke down building to the finish. The only thing it was missing was a clear rudo control and tecnico comeback but in a match that was, in many ways, an exhibition and showcase, that was fine, especially since the rudos took the primera, creating some inherent pressure anyway.

With the structure clear and the action steady, the details were allowed to shine, and what great details we got here. The initial pairings were a blast, with Pantera doing his headstands, with Xelhua and Panther leaning into attitude and trading similar holds, and with Hechicero's size allowing Virus (blue tecnico facepaint brandished) to hit some of his more stylized agility moves from years gone by. Everything built to Hechicero once again basing, this time for a flying Blue Panther 'rana (He'd hit another dive to set up the finish in the tercera too. What a guy). This cleared the ring for Xelhua to tie up Virus for the win. 

I loved Xelhua's swagger here. Cerebro, Hechicero, and Xelhua were a team spanning three decades of under the radar technical rudo wizards, and the youngest of the lot was full of bluster and attitude, making sure everyone knew he fit right in. Meanwhile, you had Pantera constantly clapping up the crowd and Blue Panther flexing his newly obtained rights to the "Yes" chant, keeping everyone engaged and focused and ensuring all of this was not just technically amazing but rooted in character as well. 

It carried through all the way to the tercera. I loved the cycling through. You watch that in old lucha and sometimes they'd just grab an arm or something, but here the wrestlers were going out of their way to make every hold as interesting as possible and then to wind the crowd up before breaking it up, all the way to Hechicero's last contortion for the finish.

I have no idea what inspired these guys on this night. I don't know what they were feeling. I don't know what butterflies might have been in Xelhua's stomach, or even Cerebro or Panther's, but they were given the room to stretch and express themselves and present some of the most genuine, creative, dynamic lucha libre in front of a game crowd, and they ran with faster and farther than I could have imagined. 

Whether or not they fully realized how much it would matter, they created something beautiful for my friends, in the memory of my friend, something that hit so many of the marks that I love about lucha, in front of a crowd, in a venue, and on a stage where this sort of a portrait has so rarely been allowed to be painted so genuinely before.  

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2025 Blue Panther Double Feature: Hechicero! Ultimo Guerrero!

MD: We've been sitting on this Panther vs Hechicero review since January. But now past Panther vs Ultimo Guerrero, we figured we'd drop them both together. Keep in mind I wrote the following 7 months ago though. Eric’s review is new though.

Blue Panther vs. Hechicero CMLL 1/10/25

MD: What a difference a decade makes. Ten years ago, we were just off of the RUSH vs. Negro Casas feud. Casas and Blue Panther were just around 55 (Casas half a year older than Panther). It seemed fairly clear that while Panther was still enjoyable in the occasional trios or maestro match, and, of course, when paired up against Casas himself, he was simply outpaced by his archrival.

It made sense. Panther was always charismatic in his own way and there was a sort of seasoned toughness and mastery to him even after he lost his mask. Casas had spent a career without one, however, and he was an absolutely singular talent when it came to expressiveness, body language, actions and reactions. Just by winding up the crowd, he could accomplish more than wrestlers thirty years younger than him who could do the most complex and amazing spots.

Yet here we are at the start of 2025, and it is Blue Panther, at the age of 64, who towers like some sort of wizened warrior king. To call his mask (allowed to him for this one night by the commission) a fountain of youth would be doing an injustice to his own daring and pluck, to Hechicero's ability to create motion and base, but maybe most of all, to the virtue of showing one's age. At times Blue Panther moved amazingly well, but it was those moments where the cracks showed, where he struggled to get from Point A to Point B that truly gave meaning to his efforts.

They were incredibly self-aware throughout. In the primera, Panther was put in a position to escape again and again, including a memorable headstand escape to headscissors. While he was able to showcase those escapes, he was working from underneath given Hechicero's superior youth and strength and his own technical mastery, and he got caught in the Conjuro. He evened things up in the segunda after a slick leap back body press. They were smart with these callbacks. In the tercera, Panther would finally get caught doing that one too many times. On the other hand, a rana that he attempted that got him caught early in the tercera (So that Hechicero could really take over) paid off later on.

Hechicero did control the first half of the tercera after catching Panther with a power bomb. Whereas he might bump through the ropes to set up a dive, he rolled Panther out and draped him over the guardrail instead, controlling and creating an illusion of motion (not that there wasn't a lot from Panther anyway, but every little bit helped). Panther's big comeback, getting the crowd going, standing tall, firing back, was as special as anything in the match and as special as anything we've seen this year so far. 

He followed it up with a dive that didn't quite work but they covered so well, with Hechicero taking over until he let Panther sweep him off the apron so they could get back on track. And anyway, there's no point in remembering that dive considering the two or three other impressive ones Panther hit and Hechicero caught. As noted, a match like this is just a little more impressive for holding together despite the cracks than something that would be plastic and perfect instead. 

And this was impressive from beginning to end, a notch on the belt not just of both wrestlers, but on the power of lucha libre and wrestling itself. Some of it was daring and athleticism and training. So much of it was the carefully crafted illusion of all those things and more. What is magic if not exactly that?

ER: I don't know where Blue Panther found the Fountain of Youth but he found it sometime at the end of 2024 and it's been something. I'm not going to say Panther has looked washed the last several years, he's just looked appropriately His Age. Great performances were more rare. We'd get a showoff spot in a trios, or a fun five minute lightning match, maybe one big singles match a year where he'd step up. Based on his work the last 5 (10?) years, Panther's 2025 has come out of nowhere. Going further, following the first two falls, the tercera also came out of nowhere. The primera and segunda felt like a Hechicero match, which makes sense. How would a 64 year old man show up any bigger in the tercera after a couple cool spots in their first two falls? Had you watched Panther's headstand escapes out of a floatover headscissors in the primera, or his gorgeous floating cannonball in the segunda, suspended in contact with Hechicero's upper torso until they crashed, you would not be expecting him to go insane in the tercera. But that's what happened. 

Hechicero looked like a monster picking on an old man, and Arena Mexico treated him as such. Every trademark Hechicero punishment was altered to be more punishing. He got several rotations on his trapped arm backbreaker and loved the heat he would draw whenever he slugged the legend. When Panther finds back at the end of the segunda, it feels like a last gasp, not necessarily the jumping off point into our special tercera.  Panther looks improbably lithe running up the turnbuckles into a crossbody, submitting Hechicero with a hold that looked like a Stu Hart Dungeon stretch punctuated and tightened by rolling. It felt like a triumph, and I guess I should never underestimate the power of a crowd behind a sympathetic old man, because again, this tercera could not have been anticipated. 

Everything jumps up to the next level in the tercera. Panther is thrown into a tree of woe and headscissors his way out of it, gets placed up top and loudly chopped. The crowd reacts as loud to Hechicero's chop as they do to anything he does all match. When Panther tries to leap off with a headscissors it is blocked, and it feels like a genuine stalemate that pushed things to a crazier place. The headscissors is fought for, the powerbomb is fought for, and when Hechicero's powerbomb wins out it feels more like a concession from Hechicero than winning a battle. A stalemate. Hechicero dropping him felt more like a man realizing he was fighting someone with more juice than he realized. And so, he dials up his inner asshole. 

Hechicero hits a leaping elbow off the apron, kicks Panther in the head several times, then starts punching him in the side of the head. All it does is fire Panther up, and the more fired up Panther gets, the louder Arena Mexico gets. Panther builds to a tope that almost kills him. His head catches on the ropes, he goes down almost head first, and it's one of those fragile moments that makes me love old man wrestlers more than any other kind of wrestler. There is built in sympathy because their bodies do not work the same, even in those moments where their youth has been tapped into, and in moments like these we are collectively reminded that they - and we - are all closer to death. As Blue Panther is making me think about death, he is unafraid, and hits a plancha off the buckles that lands like an anchor, building to a crazy leaping huracanrana off the apron. Panther either trusts Hechicero with his life, or has put aside has already come to terms with his God. 

When Panther tries running up the buckles for another crossbody, repeating what won him the segunda, Hechicero knows exactly what's coming and catches him with a big uranage, drops elbows on him, but takes too long attempting a moonsault. Panther rushes over on his knees for a pin attempt, seeing his shot, viewing the pin as a better chance at victory than locking in a sub, and manages to do so in a way that feels more capitalizing than desperate. His crossbody off the buckles that hit, was caught, but his leaping huracanrana off the buckles that was caught, now hits. Panther has Hechicero crossed up by his tenacity, and just as we seemed shocked at what Panther is suddenly capable of, that counts even more for Hechicero. They fight to the entrance ramp where Panther whips Hechicero into the tall staircase, and Panther hits a plancha off those stairs about 10 steps up, letting the crowd reaction grow with each step he takes, Arena Mexico urging him higher...wait but not that high! 

Hechicero is fighting for his life to keep this spirit down, going to his surefire basics and doing them twice, two running knees that should surely end this all. But his slower submission application almost gets him caught by a tight Panther cradle, and that's when he finally has to get dirty. To stop this from happening again, he removes Panther's mask in one quick swipe as part of his next submission attempt, a sleight of hand to throw the legend for just a brief second, a surprise for the man who has spent 20 minutes surprising everyone, which is all he needs to complete the application and bridge through for a high leveraged pin. With his performance at DEAN~! and the Ultimo Guerrero match still to come, even after witnessing all of this, nobody could have predicted Panther's continued 2025 rise.  

Blue Panther vs. Ultimo Guerrero CMLL 8/8/25

MD: The last thing I want to do is downplay the clips. I'm sure most of you saw them. Meltzer went nuts for them even. In this match, Panther did multiple dives of various sorts, be it a flip off the apron, lunging 'ranas, a trust fall from the stage, the over the post bound, and then the top rope electric chair twisting 'rana. Yes, on some of them he had help, be it from his son or Guerrero, but it was an insane stunt show by a man almost 65 years old. And while that's not what I want to talk about here (and if you know me, you know that's not what I want to talk about), the sheer abandon Panther showed in making this match work was remarkable. 

What I want to talk about, however, is how they made it matter. Some of it was going to matter anyway. It would matter by its own nature. You do a dive and it matters, because there's an element of the real to it. There's an element of the daring. There's an element of the spectacular. You do a dive as an old man and it's going to matter even more because all of those things (save maybe for the spectacular) are compounded by an even further element of real, and realness is one of the most powerful forces in pro wrestling.

But it's not the most powerful. Artifice done well will always be more powerful than the real, and when the real that is manifested (be it a resounding chop, a hold with proper technique, or a bump that you can feel from the last row) is framed by the perfect invoking of artifice, that's when wrestling hits the very best. 

And these two are masters of artifice. This was for the MLW Openweight Belt, and they had the pre-match photo. Usually that goes without a hitch, a last remnant of the 80s lucha title match, something held to a higher standard when it came to rules and behavior. Here though, it became a tug of war, with Guerrero the aggressor, hoarding his own belt and his moment to shine. All that got him was a trip to the mat and a bump onto his rear end. He rose enraged and leaped at Panther, ambushing him and tearing off his mask. Because Panther's mask is a ceremonial allowance, Guerrero was able to get all of the heat of the action with none of the penalty, the only time in a CMLL ring where that would be possible. It set the tone perfectly. Every trick in the book underpinned by real and actual substance. Every bump and move underpinned by all of those tricks.

In the Hechicero review, I had suggested that it was the mask that hid Panther's age and gave him some sort of primordial strength, serving as a fountain of youth in its own way. In this match, he more than proved me wrong. 

Still, what sticks with me now a week later and what will stick with me months down the line was that way that they framed every move, the way that they appealed to the crowd. If Panther was going to do a dive, he was going to go out of his way to let every person in that audience (and there were many) know that he was about to do it. He built up their anticipation, churned them into a furor, and then paid it off to their delight. When Guerrero turned things around on him, he did so as theatrically as possible. It wasn't enough to hit a suplex. It wasn't even enough to hit a suplex on the floor. He had to dump Panther back over the guardrail and suplex him back over that. 

And of course, when Panther came back, he made sure to channel the most powerful crowd interaction of the last fifteen years, fingers up in the air to combat Guerrero's roof-raising, Danielson's Yes Chant in full force.

There's always an element of ritual to watching an Ultimo Guerrero match. Ten years ago, I likened it to going to church on a Sunday (just on a Friday night), some of the same spots (and here there was the power bomb counter off the top), but in this match, it was Panther who was guiding the congregation. 

There was escalation and build and sense to all of it too. When Panther tried an early comeback, ref Edgar held the arm to stop a punch in the corner, because while Guerrero could get away with it, in a title match, the tecnico is to be held to a higher standard. Instead of being a hindrance and distraction, Panther used it as a way to build pressure, first for when he finally got shots on Guerrero in the corner later (once again pulled off but here not a hope spot cut off) and then finally when he mounted the turnbuckle defiantly, no... triumphantly, so that the fans could count along with him.

In the end, tasting glory as he did, feeling power that defied age and world-weariness, he flew just a bit too close to the sun. He dove one too many times, a relatively simple back cross body off the ropes. Guerrero rolled through it and won the day, retaining his title. But both men celebrated after the fact, because together they won far more than a simple match.

ER: He wore blue velvet, my god. Would you look at this beautiful man in the most perfect mask in lucha history. Believe it or not, I went into this match without seeing a single highlight. Every single crazy thing that Panther did was unexpected and every single thing got a bigger reaction from me. When I saw Sleepaway Camp for the first time a decade or so ago, I didn't know anything about it. None of my friends did, either, so the reaction by the end of the movie was a room full of humans jumping off their seats screaming. I don't know if I reached the point of screaming during this match, but Blue Panther's Continued Youth Revival did inspire me to shout at my TV no less than five times. Blue Panther was aged for a decade but now he is ageless, but he is ageless in a way that shows his age. His selling, to me, means more than ever, and his selling is better than it's ever been. 

He has this comedic babyface energy that people respond to, and it's amplified by his kind old man visage. Look at him quietly shaking out the cobwebs whenever Guerrero would kick him in the side of the head. He's doing like Milton Berle double takes within a pro wrestling selling framework. Panther's humanity is beautiful. Watching him get kicked around is like seeing somebody fight Mel Brooks. He draws sympathy in ways that would have been impossible 15+ years ago, but his selling didn't just naturally improve because he got old man sympathy, he works to connect with the crowd in ways he never used to. It's in the eyes, it's in his stumble steps, it's in the way he slowly fires up his arms. The selling alone would help him connect with these crowds to huge reaction...but the sudden moveset insanity puts it all over the top. 

Panther's clotheslines and ability to fire up a crowd makes him come off like wrestling's most powerful Rusher Kimura. His cannonball off the apron has surpassed and outlived Negro Casas's Thesz Press as the greatest crazy fired up old man crazy peak. But remember when Panther spent most of his career not doing headscissors and huracanranas and now does crazier huracanranas than ever? Is it the ultimate testament to Ultimo Guerrero's accolades as a lucha base that a 64 year old man trusts him to catch the most highflying he's done in his long career? Blue Panther's leaping huracanrana is my favorite spot of 2025. It's like if Terry Funk had added a moonsault in the 90s but if his moonsault was as great as 2 Cold Scorpio's. I gasp as Panther's head scrapes 1" over the mat, then yelled when his head does the same thing swinging over concrete. I don't think I ever anticipated Blue Panther evolving into a crazy old man Terry Funk persona, but doing it with the old man sympathies combined with youthful adventurousness. Seeing all of Panther's flying is surreal, even more surreal than seeing Panther and Guerrero do a tug of war with a fucking MLW title. A plancha over the ringpost? You've got to be kidding me. I can barely take watching this man take these risks, and I honestly don't know how he does it. 

I don't remember the last time I saw a spot as triumphant as Blue Panther punching Guerrero on the turnbuckles, letting each punch sink in, crowd screaming along, before climbing onto the shoulders of Ultimo. The camera angle made their entire fall happen in slow motion, like Butch and Sundance, Panther being held steady and ready to ride an entire man down. You can see them start to slowly tip forward and know it's the point of no return...but this whole match felt like the point of no return. Blue Panther has committed to this. He's committed to wrestling, he's committed to putting on the craziest performance at an outdoor Arizona shopping center, he's committed to innovating and finding new ways to connect at a point where nobody would blame him for coasting. I love the guy, and I've never loved him more than I do in 2025. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 8/11 - 8/17

AEW Collision 8/16/25

The Technical Spectacle (Nigel McGuinness vs Daniel Garcia vs Hechicero vs Lee Moriarty)

MD: My dislike for 4-way matches is pretty well documented at this point. I went into detail back during Double Or Nothing a few years ago. In short, 4-ways are the ultimate immersion killer. They're quite possibly the least organic form of pro wrestling ever invented. They're excuses for big spots and big set pieces that are elaborately set up in ways that have nothing to do with winning a match. They force wrestlers to act outside of their established norms, often contriving them to do things in parallel in a way that doesn't hold up under scrutiny. You end up with people laying around for far longer than they would in any other match and it all becomes a muddle with too many cooks and too many ideas. At best, you get some cool and memorable things, but we're so desensitized to that anyway that it barely registers after the fact. 

Quick pause on that. I've been watching a lot of Newborn UWF/UWF 2.0 lately. It's almost all on YouTube so I suggest people go and do the same. It's helped me refine my thoughts about shoot style and how best to engage with it. I'd seen my share of UWF 1.0, but that's so centered around a few characters and they were still figuring out the style so that you're not necessarily watching a distillable shoot style match so much as you're watching a Super Tiger or Fujiwara match. With UWF 2.0 though, everything is more locked in and refined. You can best understand the matches along three axes: technique/physical attributes (this is self-evident), opportunity (what openings exist in any single moment and how can a wrestler take advantage of them), and personality (who are these people and how do they approach the fight). You can't necessarily look at things through a traditional narrative (shine/heat/comeback) lens. Instead, by trying understanding those three things you can jump in and see how, let's say a smaller fighter apt to tire his opponent out and fight defensively like Shigeo Miyato will face off against a larger fighter who has to make use of his size and press hard early (but that might still get one powerful blow in late) like Tatsuo Nakano. Who are these people? What drives them? How does that create opportunities and how do they respond to them? What opportunities do those responses then create in the moment and throughout the match?

Still with me? Ok, so maybe people wouldn't necessarily define the Technical Spectacle as shoot style (maybe they would), but it was at least a sibling or cousin to it, and so many of those same tenets operated here. Unlike almost every other 4-way I've ever seen, this was set up around opportunities and personalities. Nigel carries the weight of the world on his shoulders knowing full well the possibility of every impossible opportunity (a different sort of opportunity, but related), having had so many of his dreams slip through his fingers. Garcia is watching his own dreams start to slip as well, stumbling through a series of failures and wanting to wrench back his future. Moriarty sees himself as the present, the time-tested Pure Champ, but without the recognition or respect he deserves. And Hechicero is just a malignant spirit, Bandido and a title shot ahead of him, a wretched, brilliant creature that just wants to ply his craft and hurt people. 

In parts of the match technique drove things and the wrestlers grappled evenly, looking to create opportunities. But when those opportunities arose, it was their personalities that defined the action, this a direct opposite of so many 4-ways where the necessary over the top spots override and overwrite personality. Moriarty was the one who went out of his way to get multiple people in a submission at once, leaning into his bravado and swagger. Garcia always had an eye out for what Nigel was doing, seeing him as the biggest threat, as the one he'd never faced off against (only teamed with). And Nigel? Nigel may be a sympathetic figure given his journey, but there's something of the rogue within him, of the scoundrel, but even more than that, the stone-faced realism of a man that has been through life's wringer. When his opponents were in simultaneous submissions, he laid in an opportunistic stomp to break it up. In a similar moment, he dropped an elbow on Garcia. And then, when it seemed like Garcia had his Scorpion Deathlock on while he himself had the London Dungeon locked in, he threw a nasty, chippy, possibly even underhanded elbow, flooring Garcia. It wasn't personal; in fact, it was even regretful on some level, but it was life, the only life Nigel knew and the only life that he could possibly have left.

And all throughout, the technique was as compelling as the personalities. Handfighting, moments of leverage, tricked out takedowns, lightning fast pin attempts that never felt like needless waterfall spots existing for their own sake. They solved the problem of someone laying out by almost constantly having wrestlers paired off, and here it worked because success for one wrestler didn't mean a headdrop or huge bump but instead gaining advantage over a limb or locking in a hold. 

While watching this, I had the sense of something incredibly rare in 2025: the feeling of watching something brand new. Usually things that are touted as new are instead just "more." Bigger spots, more excess, more people, more risk, brighter colors and flashier fireworks; adding another few floors to a tower that already exists. Here though, even the foundation felt new. This feels like something that could be done again with the same wrestlers or different ones, with huge stakes, incredible techniques, and opportunities driven by personality.

They could have done this the old way, could have had all of the holds be tandem things, could have done so many more suplexes, could have slipped in a tower of doom spot and some dives, could have gone around the world a few times with all of their finishers. That would have been safe as crowds tend to be more favorable towards those things than I am. This was not safe. It was brave and it was daring and in its own way, it was brilliant. So much of that was on the courage to trust that the crowd would come along, that their own skill and personality and commitment would win the day. But win the day it did, and in doing so they broke ground on something that felt brand new and very worthwhile.

CMLL 8/15/25

MJF vs Zandokan, Jr

MD: Another data point has arrived from Arena Mexico and the results are conclusive: the system works. Pro wrestling is a wonderful, gripping, engaging, vibrant art form, and it is as strong as ever in a fabled place where the fans can live and breath on every heroic and villainous act and find exhilaration in every single punch (yes, there are punches there too, not just chops and forearms).

The combination of MJF, with Jon Cruz at his side, in Arena Mexico, is the best act in wrestling today, and so much of that is due to the sheer commitment to everything that's always worked, the timeless, universal elements of pro wrestling, an appeal to the heart based on morality and identity and pride. 

This replicated a number of the elements from MJF's previous appearances in Arena Mexico, most especially the recent title win over Averno, but in every way, it took the act even further. Now Cruz was out dressed like Abraham Lincoln, still taking editorial license on MJF's insults stretching them this way and that, as his twisted, fawning C-3PO. Zandokan's response was perfect, shutting it all down instantly so the match could begin and getting a crowd that was already inclined to support him due to his upstart rudo charisma fully behind him. But then, of course, Max hit the floor to massive boos. The game had begun.

And what a game it was. At Zandokan's first touch, Max rolled back out and complained (on the mic with translation) about hair pulling. Then, of course, later, when it came time to cut Zandokan off, he pulled the hair and mask himself. Perfect hypocritical pro wrestling symmetry meant to get heat. When Max was in control, he made sure to punctuate each and every offensive move or cut off by rubbing it in the face of the fans, and they booed huge. Whenever Zandokan fired back, MJF sold for the back row and the back row was duly elated. Cruz intervened all the more which meant that when it was time for Zandokan to really come back, Cruz got to bump huge for him as well. Chekhov's Gun was loaded and fired and the universe was placed in perfect balance. 

The dive, when it came, was singular and spectacular, smashing MJF who had been draped on the guardrail (again a likely unintentionally but wholly meaningful parallel to how he lounged on it when he ducked out of the ring a first time). And they build to an exciting series of finish attempts before Max had to go an extra mile to get the ref out of position so he could hit another foul and steal the win, a payoff to the match and a set up for the post-match Mistico challenges to come. 

With so many different opponents each with their own quirks and history (imagine him against Blue Panther or Ultimo Guerrero or Barbaro Cavernario, etc.), this match, as much as anything else, was proof positive that the act isn't just one spectacular firework meshing old and new, but instead something with real legs and that can bring real joy each with each and every outing. 

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