Terry's Calling, Terry's Crying, Some Are Born Some Are Dying

Black Terry vs. Arez Lucha Memes 11/1/20 - GREAT

PAS: This was worked sort of like Arez was excited to work a Black Terry dream match, the way someone might work 2 Cold Scorpio on a Mania week show. They ran through all of the cool things Terry brings to a match, starting with Terry doing the Maestro catch and release submissions, where Arez would shoot in and get tied up with something cool, Terry would let him go, only to tie him up again. Then it spills to the floor and we get a great Terry punch out, with Arez hitting him harder then you would expect someone this old to get hit, and Terry firing back with great looking jabs and rights. Then there is a nifty finishing run with a great looking top rope back cracker. Everything looked great, it felt a bit exhibition-y which keeps it from EPIC, but Terry exhibitions are pretty great exhibitions. 

ER: I thought this was a really smartly worked almost meta Hero match, with Arez acting almost awed as Black Terry showed him close up magic llave as a crash course fantasy camp, until Arez gets tired of the maestro shit and starts kicking him. Es es unable llave, clap, nothing up my sleeves, veteran psych out. I thought Terry's snares were pretty incredible. There was no slowly applied submissions, this was all slick ankle pick sleight of hand knot tying as good as he was doing 15 years ago. It's pretty amazing really. People love his maestro submission artistry, enough that there's a loudly protesting chinga tu madre whistle over Arez's ropes course escape, protesting The New Ways. 

The fighting escalation in Black Terry Coacalco matches always manages to catch me off guard, always manages to surprise me with some of the violence. Arez can land some really forceful kicks to the stomach and Terry was taking some real shots to the torso. There was a great spot where Arez knew it was his turn to take his medicine and Terry went off with body kicks as crisp as Regal working Dave Taylor. Terry takes a backcracker down the home stretch that literally bounces him off Arez's knees, and all it does is make him want to drive his own knees into Arez. Jumping off the middle buckle to drag a man down onto your knees is crazy behavior for a man in his late 60s. In other words, a Black Terry Coacalco match. 

TKG: I really like the way this match is structured, it is almost like a backwards veteran Ric Flair underestimating upstart young Sam Houston. Arez as upstart youth puts on the first submission and makes a big production out of announcing ‘Now , that is a hold’ and then Terry just dominates on ground, putting Arez in holds at will as Arez super sells getting worked over. Eventually Arez can’t take any more and throws the first cheap shot strike only to find that Terry again can go on floor, with Arez getting in bits of desperate flurries. This isn’t an even match at all . This is about long sections of Terry control and desperate young Arez dealing with the beast.

There is a spot where Terry sidesteps a leg takedown to set up a submission that I watched multiple times. And favorite moment from the brawling was when he’s beating up Arez in chair but won’t allow the chair to tip over. Grabs Arez’ foot and goes , no I’m hitting you some more.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE BLACK TERRY

2020 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Lucha Memes 4th Anniversary 4/25/21

Tony Donati vs. Shocko

ER: Tony Donati is a really fun opening match guy. He's like if Scott Putski ever got good, or Cheetah Master ever worked heel. He works like a late 90s Chicago indy heel but with a lucha base, takes ranas nicely and throws hard strikes, stiff chops, a couple nice headbutts, big hard clothesline. The landings on his vertical and front suplex looked hard on the Coacalco ring, and his middle buckle splash landed harder for the same reason. If a guy looks like a scummy version of a late 90s WCW job guy, I'm going to take notice. Shocko took a beating well, hits a decent middle buckle moonsault, does his end of a rana well, a good guy for Donati to work his great expressive moveset against. The finish looked great, with Donati really Psicosising himself on a Shocko top rope Frankensteiner like it was 1995. Nice and definitive, making sure the greatest hits stay great. 

Perro de Guerra Jr. vs. Baby Extreme

ER: Arena Coacalco is always reliable at delivering younger guys having "here's everything I can do" matches. I'm pretty sure I've never seen either guy before and they already both showed tons of moments of being polished beyond their years. This was worked like a modern version of a classic lucha maestros match, which is a match that has seemed to be fading away as the maestro luchadors age out. Seeing guys work this primera style makes me more hopeful for lucha and that always feels good. They really built through some cool leg submissions and attacks throughout the primera, with Extreme having a cool rolling takedown and both working smoothly into maestro leg grapevines and deathlocks and bow & arrows. They didn't look like amateurs copying what they had seen, they looked like seasoned pros working through sick spinning toehold submissions. Guerra wins the primera with a running Atlantida, and it capped off a super cool round of lucha. 

The segunda and tercera got really crazy, with blood and a bit too much excess, but a ton of punishment. You all associate Coacalco with punishment, and these two knew how to live up to the legendary tin roof. They really up the crazy and turn this into a wild moves match, with several far ranging bullet topes and nasty spills. Extreme hits increasingly more cruel Death Valley drivers, running Guerra into the turnbuckles, then at extremely high speed through rows of chairs, and later back in the ring through a thick pallet for the finish. The spots get more impressive and they do hit peak indy dumb brain when Guerra hit an incredible tope into a flipping piledriver, and it kept Baby Extreme on the ground for maybe all of two seconds (and then does a kind of stupid Spanish Fly). 

And yet, I somehow didn't care? They both get busted open, Guerra gets great rivers of blood down his face, Extreme gets a cheese grater ran across his, and they integrate these weapon well because they're surrounded by sick bumps. The suplexes to the hard mat look just as disgusting as the suplex through the pallet and chairs, Extreme delivering a vertebrae smashing over the shoulder piledriver looked incredibly dangerous, and Extreme's fast body crunching Death Valley driver is a totally believable way to get a 10 count stoppage. This had excess, but these two went for it and whenever guys go for it at Coacalco, magic happens. 

PAS: I liked individual parts of this, but I didn't think they coalesced into a complete match. The running DVD into the chairs was sick shit, but it wasn't really sold as much, similar to the llave sections early, individually cool moves, but kind of one after the other. This felt like the lucha equivalent of one of those IWA-MS tryout matches in 2004 where guys try ever move they saw on tape to try to pop Ian in the back. Lots of blood, lots of huge dives and bumps, would make a hell of youtube video with metal music, but as a whole match it was basically that. 

Makabre vs. Toxin

ER: Another fun probably too long but oh well Coacalco match, where perhaps both guys do too much but it's always fun. Makabre is an under the radar Guadalajara legend, a very solid pro in his late 40s. And I thought the earliest parts of this were really great, before it turned into a more junkyard skewers match. Makabre works like a luchador Brian Kendrick or even Chris Hamrick. He ripped at Toxin's mask, worked stiff leg submissions, exchanged heavy hands, and flew with a beautiful tope. Both guys are willing to bump in painful ways around Coacalco, eat shots with a wooden crate, get gouged and stabbed and busted open, and that's all fine. But I really liked them working more traditional lucha, and thought they were more interesting doing that than what the match devolved into. Both got good reactions from the very full arena, so I'm not going to take that away from them. Makabre could be a cool Apolo Dantes type and I don't think he needs the garbage to do that, just keep taking sky high backdrop bumps. This was another "Coacalco Guys go all out" match and as a rule, those rule, so even the lesser ones like this have that nice high floor. 

Drako/Corsario Negro Jr. vs. Kastigador/Vengador

ER: This went nearly 20 minutes and really could have been a sick 12 minute tag. This match more than most Coacalco matches just did not need the superfluous weapons stuff. Drako and Corsario Negro are both really good, hard hitting rudos (well, they were treated as tecnicos by this crowd, but they are clearly the rudo team) and the parts of the match where Drako was throwing great punches and lariats, Negro was throwing hard lariats, and both were just crunching the fliers with doubles teams were WAY more interesting than the boring ass stakes getting pounded into their heads. The wrestling looked way more vicious than the weapons, and I must wanted more of Drako working as pudgy Halloween. I had already been thinking he was pudgy Halloween, and then he goes and slides on his belly out of the ring to squish Kastigador. Everyone bleeds, and pudgy guys bleeding is one of the best thing in lucha, and some of the rudo double teams are truly sicko shit. Drako has no qualms lifting both tecnicos into the air and dropping them in disgusting ways over Negro's knee. I really love how Corsario catches dives like it's a game of chicken. He doesn't even use his hands! He literally takes dives with his arms at his sides, like he knows exactly where to be to slow someone's momentum. It's risky as hell but Vengador survived both of his dives so it merely looks cool. Vengador hit a tope con giro and a huge moonsault to the floor, and seeing Negro not even bracing to catch a moonsault was just incredibly cool. Vengador's moonsault looked great, but seeing Negro stand straight and shrug it perfectly off his shoulder, followed by a great kip up from Vengador, very cool shit. Both rudos take suplexes in the dirt, match devolves into some silly flipping piledriver nonsense, but all worth seeing for Drako and Negro. 

Jimmy vs. Aramis

ER: Not good. Did Jimmy get hurt in Japan or something? Because for such a young guy he turns in a very lazy and slow performance here. Dragons Gate has a ton of rope running so maybe when he's not in DG he does the opposite and moves incredibly slow through sequences and locks on a couple of go nowhere chinlocks within the first 5 minutes of a 10 minute match. The guy looks bored to be there, and it doesn't matter how many cool handsprings and rope feints Aramis does, if one guy is bored then it will almost always be a boring match. His lack of effort is almost offensive. I've never seen someone put so little strength into spots. At one point he catches a rana and is supposed to powerbomb Aramis into the corner, but Aramis has to lift himself up just to be powerbombed! There are several of those spots where one guy hits a big move, there's a kickout, and then both lie on the mat for 20 seconds. Just brutally boring stuff, and in between Aramis is trying his damndest to spark something but cannot motivate Jimmy. The dance rehearsal kick exchanges were so bad, real slow motion stuff, that it doesn't matter when something occasionally looks good. We also get a silly finish with Aramis accidentally superkicking the ref, just bad all around. Easily the worst match on the show. 

Latigo vs. Tromba

ER: This was at its best when they didn't get too cute, with some genuinely great stuff mixed in with some less interesting thigh slap missed kicks. I actually liked a lot of the rehearsed chair spots as they always found interesting twists to throw in, not just repeating Tanaka/Balls spots from 20+ years ago. Tromba used his chair like he's in Master of the Flying Guillotine, using the open back to hook Latigo by the ankles a couple times, wraps it around his neck and runs him into the ringpost, then keeps it around his neck to drag him through the dirt. Not sure what chamber of Shaolin a man with a folding chair would be, but I dig it. They do some nice fighting right in front of the front row Coacalco mutants, exchanging some nasty headbutts that makes one woman stare frozen in horror, hand to hairline. I liked Latigo running Tromba into a ringpost and sliding in on the apron with a kick, then hits a crossbody off the apron to a seated Tromba. Tromba gets nice impact on his middle rope frog splash, both clearly have nice chemistry with each other, and we get a fun little match out of it. 

Toro Bill Jr./Rey Apocalipsis vs. Avisman/Judas el Traidor

PAS: Really great old fashioned Coacalco brawl. Bill and Apocalipsis are Puebla guys who came in to beat on the pair of Naucalpan veterans. Traidor looks great with the bald head and salt and pepper goatee. I loved how Avisman and Traidor just fling their body into the rudos while they are sitting in the crowd. They hit each other with dirty garbage on the floor, Avisman bleeds a bunch, and Puebla team hit very cool submissions to get the win. This match got a bunch of juice from the Arena, so cool to watch guys brawl in outdoor filth and really go for it.

Black Terry vs. Ricky Marvin - EPIC

PAS: When Black Terry was having his incredible early 2010s run, it was this incredible swan song on an amazing career, here was a guy who was in his early 60s who was the best brawler in the world. Now it is nearly a decade later and Terry is 68 years old and this is as good as the IWRG trios matches or his Wotan brawl. Marvin has been tremendous over the last couple of years and is a hell of a foil for the Terry dirt floor war. Marvin jumps Terry early, opening him with a post shot, and really stiffing him with punches and kicks, giving him a spin kick right in the heart! Terry is older than Giant Baba, and this is like Kawada hitting Baba as hard as he hit Misawa. Terry fights back with great looking punches of his own, but is really only able to take control when he cuts off a Marvin tope by obliterating him with a wooden crate. We then get some really great back and forth bloody punching, before Marvin distracts the ref and obliterates Terry with a guitar shot. Incredible stuff, easily the best brawl in the world in several years (maybe Wagner vs. Demon, but arguably since Terry vs. Wotan). Terry continues his improbable AARP run, and Marvin proves what a legend he has become.

JR: I feel as though I’ve been beating the drum for Ricky Marvin’s brilliant second act about as long and as hard as anyone, and aside from the Keyra match, this might be his standout performance. Really, this whole weekend is a showcase for Marvin, who is both a specialist and an incredibly versatile performer. On night one, he wrestles Villano 3 Jr. and does a credible impression of Daniel Bryan’s mid aughts indie work, and then follows it up with a truly harrowing brawl.

I don’t even really know where to start with this match. It’s one of those matches that flows wonderfully and organically to the point where transitions are hard to spot. Large portions of it remind me of the fight scene from Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac, where two men just run in to one another over and over and get progressively dirtier and more tired. It has a visceral quality that is wholly unique.

This quality makes the moments that do feel like more standard pro wrestling stand out as noteworthy. The missed dive, which marks the first true change in the match, is something that seems obvious even as it happens but manages to feel “real”, as though Marvin really has no other choice but to try and dive, even when everyone in the world aside from him will know it will fail. Of course he will be hit by a weapon he introduced. He will be hoisted by his own petard. That's irrelevant. It's something he must do.

In some way, this is more of an experience than a match. Both Marvin and Terry are loud performers, grunting and panting and shuffling around in ways that almost force you to watch them at all times. Once he starts bleeding, Terry looks dead on his feet, going purely on instinct and that instinct is enough to still beat almost anyone. Marvin looks perturbed throughout, the pissed off look of someone whose head hurts in a way that is truly unhealthy. He moves as though he wants this to be over because if it continues he likely will be hurt in ways he can’t come back from. It’s two unstoppable forces bouncing off one another and falling into a cloud of dust and blood. It’s incredible.

ER: What an incredible fight. Just when you expect Black Terry to fade off and become and actual old man, the King of Coacalco manages to reign supreme. This is a classic Terry brawl, with a major difference. In some of the greatest Terry brawls he can come off as the real punisher, the way Satanico is often left old, bloody, and grinning over his opponents. Black Terry is savage enough that old man sympathy doesn't always play into his matches, as he is often the one causing the worst violence. I'm not sure he's had someone try to bruise up his body the way Ricky Marvin does here. Marvin looks like a man who is casually trying to retire Black Terry, whose eyes keep getting wider the longer the match goes and the longer Black Terry is still fighting back. 

It's great seeing the love Terry gets from the crowd during his entrance, and that love is present but changed later when he is getting dirty on the Arena (yard?) floor, taking punches to the eye and kicks that seem to be aiming for individual internal organs. Marvin is a total casual killer, hitting super hard and utilizing a Finlay approach to using his surroundings. This match was filled with sick violence, but the "small" violence played as mean as the big violent spots. My favorite part of the match might have been when Marvin was forcing Terry's head into a ringpost, interlocking his fingers to get a better grip on Terry's head as he looked to change the shape of Terry's skull. But we also get so many up close magic displays of hard punches, stiff elbows, loud slaps, and all of the sounds of the strikes and the men are amplified in the environment. Both are really great at selling the punishment of their strikes, elevating the strike exchange far beyond the played out strike exchanges we've grown accustomed to this decade. There seem to be stakes in their fighting, you keep waiting for Black Terry to get dropped by the younger fighter who is hitting harder, and yet he keeps finding his way back in. 

Marvin diving headlong through a wooden crate (that he brought out, naturally) and essentially landing head and knees first in the Coacalco dirt is Terry smelling all of the blood in the water, and when he picks up one of the splintered stakes from that crate you get the sense that there are too many parts of Marvin's body that Terry could have started slicing. All of the brawling on the floor is fantastic, and since the crate worked so well for Marvin, he also introduces a guitar. I loved all of their fighting around who would be taking the guitar shot, who would wrestle away and use this heavy guitar, and Marvin winds up really braining Terry with a shot. My initial impression that Marvin was aiming to retire Terry in this match is only backed up by that guitar shot. This delivered beyond what could have been reasonably expected, an exciting on paper match up that kept surprising in the most painful ways. The rain pouring down during the climax of a fight, potentially putting an old man out of commission, gave them their Coacalco Blade Runner moment. 

Iron Kid vs. Demus

PAS: By the time they start this match it is pouring rain and Demus jumps Iron Kid and starts jabbing him with a bottle and fork while folks are setting up the ring. They brawl in the wet dirt (it wasn't mud yet, but getting there) with Kid getting a bit of advantage when he throws a beer in Demus's face. They finally get into the cage and they both smash each other through wooden boxes. Demus teases leaving the cage a couple of times, and they do some stuff where he beats up the ref. Kid is a bit along for the ride, although he does do a cage dive, which is really crazy seeing how wet everything is and how slapdash the cage was Demus is a force though, what a seedy little psycho. 

2021 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2018 Ongoing MOTY List: Hechicero vs. Aramis

40. Hechicero vs. Aramis Lucha Memes 7/22

PAS: Another awesome CMLL star visit to Coliseo Coacalco. Really well done power vs. speed match, with Hechicero using his strength to stretch and throw Aramis, while Aramis hits a bunch of crazy flips and dives. The seats in Coacalco are a ways away from the ring, so it is even more awesome when an Aramis tope drives Hechicero into the fans (including a guy with a bandana, locs and a 40 oz, he looks like he is about to ask Ethan Hawke if he ever had his shit pushed in), Aramis also hits a great springboard flip plancha into the chairs. Both guys get more and more covered in dirt as they land on the floor. There are some great Hechicero power moves too, including a short arm scissors lift into a slam, and multiple Hechicero rana catches into big slams. So much fun, Aramis is two for two against cool CMLL wrestlers getting to stretch their legs.

ER: Oh the wonders that Hechicero will do with a ragdoll-y young flier. Coliseo Coacalco is like my ultimate wrestling match Mecca, and (as long as the picture is still the same) it has a great image representing it on Google Earth. It looks like an abandoned lot in an alley that I would likely feel at least a little cautious driving down. And yet inside it's a magical dirt caked terrain that's the site of some of my favorite wrestling of the decade. Not much is going to top Aramis' bananas match against Casas, but on paper you knew Hechicero was a match made in heaven. Hechicero is great at muscling around guys his size, so you know he's going to have a blast with a ragdoll. Aramis gets great height on everything and has impressive body control on his ranas and movements. It's weird to say "I like the way this guy moves", but I like the way this guy moves. And Hechicero knows how to move perfectly around him. There was a Hechicero regular spot in here that I don't know if I've seen done better, when he grabs a leg of a leapfrogging Aramis out of the air, whips him to the mat, and then violently rolls into a sub. The dives in Coacalco are always a treat, as you see Aramis fly inches past a support pole, and his springboard flip dive is excellent, as is both men rolling through dirt. There's a little clunkiness as Hechicero was going for something on the apron but Aramis didn't know what so kinda froze while Hechicero awkwardly moved his body into position in what felt like an eternity, but the payoff was big as Aramis gets planted on the apron and tumbles recklessly into the dirt again. Back in the ring and Hechicero really pulls off some cool slams and reversals, and Aramis is nice and pliable so makes Hechicero's nasty bow and arrow choke look great. I loved him against Casas and this officially lands him on my radar as a guy to seek out. I'm really digging the dust storms this kid is whipping up.


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2018 Ongoing MOTY List: Casas vs. Aramis

3. Negro Casas vs. Aramis Lucha Memes 3/11

ER: Hot sprint from the greatest live wrestling venue in the world. Casas don't care about no pesky January broken rib, he's gonna go go go against a flier half his age. Casas is molten lava in this match and matches up improbably great against a young speedster, really working as quick as I've ever seen him work. The fast armdrags are the early sign that they're going for speed, and they cram tons of cool stuff into 8 minutes. All the transitions were smooth, fast, and explosive. Casas had all these great high kicks to the face, like he was the world's tannest Rockette, great kneelift, big dropkick in the corner, slick small package reversal off a vertical suplex; I don't think Casas did anything out of the ordinary here, but damn was he working fast, like he had something to prove. Match peaks with Aramis landing a couple kicks on Casas and dropping him to the floor with a dropkick, and AS IS WRITTEN in an insane Coliseo Coacalco edict, "Every young flier must be chucked into a support post". Aramis hits a horizontal dive that goes vertical, sending Casas into the chairs and Aramis screaming into the post. My sweet heavens. A boisterous fan amusingly starts hugging Casas to see if he's okay (who cares about the guy that just crashed into a pole, right!?) and Casas breaks, laughing at the man's excitement while still paying service to his ribs. We get a couple solid nearfalls, a super cool rolling kneebar from Aramis, a gorgeous standing rana from Aramis that gets reversed into a powerbomb after he tries another, and we get Aramis returning the favor with a nice seated powerbomb. Aramis cannot escape La Casita (and my oh my was this Casita a real byoot), and Casas heaves through a promo after the match congratulating Aramis on what he put him through. This was as fast as I've seen any luchador work, ever. I really need to see a show at Coacalco. These jerks got the Casas sprint that *I* was supposed to see!

PAS: This was so good, Casas comes off a broken rib (which has to kill your endurance and effect your breathing) and works a just break neck paced match against some kid young enough to be his grandson. Nothing unusual about oldster luchadores having great matches, but how in the fuck does a 58 year old man work this kind of sprint, Casas looked like 22 year old Juventud Guerrera for shits sake. Aramis is obviously a little green, but I though he was pretty great in this, landing some awesome leglocks, which Casas would counter beautifully, he also breaks out a nutso tope, right into the stantion, and crushing Casas into the seats. Finish was super cool too, with Aramis making the fatal error of trying to Casita, Negro Casas and Casas rolling through and wrapping him up with a gorgeous Casita of his own. Absolutely loved every second of this.


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2017 Ongoing MOTY List: Iron Kid v. Demus

7. Iron Kid v. Demus 3:16 Lucha Memes 6/18

PAS: Just a hellfire of a short violent sprint, and for pure fun as good as anything I have watched this year. Match has one of the best opening spots I can remember seeing, as Iron Kid goes for a dive, Demus catches him and just recklessly throws him into a support beam. Zero consideration for the health and wellbeing of his fellow man. Demus then breaks out a fork and rips IK's mask and starts poking. We get some really great violent hurls by Demus, and some crazy dives by Iron Kid who gets just incredible height, like maybe higher then prime Freelance, he is floating in the air and the crash awesomely on the dirt floor. Classic tale of plucky technico being mauled by some sort of psychotic troll.

ER: Wow wow wow wow! Is this the greatest WCW syndicated match in history? Maybe! What an absolute 7 minute banger. The match STARTS with Iron Kid trying to hit a tope on Demus while Demus is walking to the ring, but Demus in all one motion catches Kid mid-dive and just bucket brigades him into the crowd, with Kid's body hitting a woman, a support pole and a couple of chairs, all at once. If the match had been as paint by numbers as possible after that start, we still would have found room for it at the bottom of the list somewhere. But the match never slows down from there. Demus beats him through the crowd and bashes him with a chair, gets out a fork and stabs at him with the best fork shots you've seen. Iron Kid eats tons of spinach and lentils and broccoli and Iron jokes though, so you know he's gonna make a big comeback, and wouldn't you know Demus wraps him around a ringpost and Kid hits some gorgeous dives. He hits a Aerostar-esque flip dive where he vaults off the middle rope inside the ring with one foot and just soars into Demus, crashing onto Demus' back and shoulders. Both men get dusty and dirty in this Lucha Memes lot that I NEED to see pro wrestling at (the same site as the infamous Terry/Wotan gravel brawl and a zillion more matches of grimy lucha perfection). Kid smacks him into a chair and plows through him with a tope con hilo and you know this thing is the best. This is peak Demus, and Iron Kid has a savage death wish, and the finish is excellent: Kid moonsaults painfully into Demus' legs and it's rough, like that physics defying moment in the Aja Kong/Meiko match from a year or two ago. Kid just gets stuck on those legs and Demus follows up with the most dangerous double underhook piledriver/powerbomb, the kind you would feel bad doing to your Wrestling Buddy as a kid. Afterwards Demus gets jumped and eats a nasty chairshot and bleeds all over everything. This match, this venue, these guys, all of it. ALL OF IT!


2017 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2017 Ongoing MOTY List: Satanico v. Hechicero

103. Satanico v. Hechicero Lucha Memes 6/4

ER: Satanico doesn't pop up a ton on tape anymore, and he's always going to be a guy I go out of my way to see. I think there will likely be a yearly 12 minute singles match that pops up on the lower part of our list, just an expression of our happiness that somewhere out there Satanico is somewhere out there still being Satanico. He's older and slower and not quite as vicious, but he's Satanico. Hechicero is the perfect modern foil for him, and in a lot of ways he comes off like a modern Satanico. He taunts Satanico all match, punches him in the head, rips at his arm, takes him to the floor and bounces his head of chairs, hits a springboard elbow, all nice stuff. Hechicero peaks with a crushing stair climb knee to the back of Satanico's head in the corner. Brutal. Satanico is crafty though, and I love a crafty old guy in wrestling. I loved an early moment where Hechicero was working an armbar, and Satanico grapevine Hechicero's legs and used the leverage to escape. Satanico takes a beating but we build to a huge moment where he reverses a whip into those heavy as hell old theater seats, and Hechicero takes a massive upside down spill into them, breaking them loose, and Satanico picks them up and smashes them down onto Hechicero like the Incredible Hulk. That was the peak dastardly old man Satanico moment, but we still get to see him throw some big punches to Hechicero's chest and some smooth armdrags before he succumbs to a complicated Hech submission. I just can't not love seeing Satanico's devilish grin on my TV.

PAS: So much fun to watch Satanico do his thing, even deep in the twilight of his career. My favorite part of this was when Satanico backs Hechicero into the corner, and give him a little condescending pat on the cheek, Hechicero gives the condescending pat right back, and they eventually start slapping the shit out of each other. Great bit of character work from both guys, Hechicero refuses to be punked, and Satanico losese his cool. Got to love Hechicero flying upside down head first into the chairs, and the finish set with Hechicero running knee to the back of Satanico's head into a torture sumbission was great. Nifty match.

2017 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2017 Ongoing MOTY List: Niebla v. Caifan

27. Caifan v. Mr. Niebla Lucha Memes 11/20

PAS: Talk about an out of nowhere gem! Niebla has spent the last 20 or so years, drunk and fat and coasting on comedy spots, Caifan comes out as says "fuck that we are spilling blood" and we get a great grimey Arena Naculpan bloody brawl. Caifan rips Niebla's mask and cuts him, smashing him with chairs, a case of beer and some great knuckle punches to the wound. At one point he even uses Niebla's blood as face paint. Niebla gets a great comeback, opening up Caifan with a chair shot and a box, and even hits a great fat boy tope. I also loved Niebla using his Pesta Negra dance moves and loogie spot as a Dusty style dancing babyface comeback.  Loved every second of this, and on paper this would have totally been a skipper.

ER: I think the last Niebla match I actually wrote up and recommended was from early 2016, and that was a 4 minute tournament lucha match. Now, it was a really fun tournament lucha match that I think would be a legendary WCW WorldWide match, but that's still a rough recent track record. And here, suddenly many of the things that make Niebla FF material in 2017 work to his benefit. He's not hammy, he's fat and vulnerable, and Caifan jumps on him and acts like a total prick for the first half of this. He jumps Niebla at the bell and violently rips his mask, and a violent mask rip always looks great and makes me cringe. My neck can ache if I hold a phone awkwardly or sleep weird, so picturing my head and body being yanked around by something I'm wearing on my face, and not just wearing but using my neck and arm muscles to try to keep it on my face, just makes me hurt. Caifan has his hands taped up with white tape, so you know you're gonna see Niebla bleed, and he bleeds, and Caifan continues beating on him, bashing him with those hard Naucalpan chairs, braining him with a wood crate holding empty beer bottles (with a great glass clank as it hits Niebla's head), and back in the ring Niebla gets his head smashed through an empty wood crate. Caifan is a royal jerk dragging Niebla around, painting with his blood, and for the first time in ages (ever?) I found myself really really rooting for a Niebla comeback. And it was a good old fat man comeback. He pops Caifan with his big swinging left, lures him into dropkicking the ref, lures him into wrapping himself around the ringpost, and then follows up with a great middle aged fat guy dive that sends Caifan into the front row near a guy holding a baby. We get a great bloody standoff in the ring with Caifan making these bloody tear facials, all that early match confidence gone. And, miracle of miracles, for the first time ever I totally loved Niebla's hip wiggling loogie spitting comeback, treated here like Lawler dropping the strap or Popeye downing a can of spinach. What a total surprise, what a total treat. Shock gem of the year.


2017 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Matt & Eric, Two Men Discussing Virus, Separately

2017-03-25 @ Arena Coliseo San Ramón, Puebla, Puebla
Virus vs. Prayer

MD: This dropped a few days ago even though it's from a Lucha Memes show back in March. I couldn't tell you the first thing about Prayer, but Virus was, of course, my #10 on the GWE poll last year, which felt crazy at the time and still feels crazy, but was very much a testament to the power of footage (we've got him almost weekly for the last many years, even if he's just in low card trios). I'll say this: after watching this match, I feel all the more validated with the placement.

We're lucky to have as many maestros matches as we do. In those, what they do is so logical and so intricate and so interesting and (probably most importantly) so full of struggle and commitment, that we forgive the half speed nature of so many of them. We see it as part of the fight, that locking a hold on to someone as expert as Blue Panther or Negro Navarro just takes that much more pressure and effort. It takes longer. In some ways, it's a testament that they can go that much more slowly but still make none of it seem collaborative, like playing a song very slowly and thus having to perfect each and every belabored note. 

This was not that at all. For the first two thirds of the match, they were primarily on the mat. There was struggle. There were intricate leverage moves. There were counters and escapes. It was done at far faster pace, was utterly believable, and didn't miss a beat. They were able to portray that same level of mastery but turned up about three gears. So much of this was Virus. You watch him and you wonder just how he sees the world, if time slows down and he can extrapolate out the ways limbs might twist and contort like an sculptor envisioning a masterpiece or a chess champion looking forward six moves. Prayer kept up well enough; he had to do his part, for Virus just manipulating him wouldn't have allowed for this level of speed or sharpness. Ultimately, though, this was a showcase for El Pequeño Gran Maestro, and since he no longer gets as many singles matches in CMLL as he did a few years ago, it's one we're lucky to have.

A few words about the escalation in the match, too. When they went to spots towards the end of the match, none of them were too excessive. None of them needed to be. Staying on the mat (even while increasing the level of peril) meant that a springboard low dropkick could mean as much as a headdrop or a giant dive. It created believable near-falls when that might not work at all with a less disciplined match. Just the testament of someone who really understands how to imbue meaning into his craft. 

I'm glad Virus is still getting opportunities to have matches like this, even if only on the indies, and I'm glad this dropped, even if it dropped a few months after the fact. Check it out.

Virus/Sagrado/Skandalo v. Soberano Jr./Triton/Esfinge (CMLL 3/28/17)

ER: Virus has to be the king of noteworthy performances in throwaway undercard matches. This falls apart a bit in the segunda/tercera, and Skandalo kind of stumbles around and gets in the way through much of this, Sagrado is really quite good as a rudo so I enjoyed all of his moments (his rudo offense is really great, especially that sunset flip counter, a double stomp into a few elbowdrops, hell yes)...but this was all about Virus. The Virus/Esfinge mat stuff that opens the match is really cool, subtly flashy, all of it compelling; but him picking on Soberano is the money of the match, as they work some fast sequences that end with Virus hitting a stiff shoulderblock that sends Soberano bumping backwards and upside down to the floor, then we cut to Sagrado clotheslining Esfinge's shins out from him on the apron, and then back across the ring to catch Virus hitting the mother of all baseball slide dropkicks on a just-waking-up-on-the-floor Soberano. We get another fun Virus/Soberano segment in the tercera, but it's a shame the rest of the match couldn't hold up the level of the primera. But a match with a floor of "So how good is Virus, right?" is still something with value.

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2017 Ongoing MOTY List: Navarro vs. Sabre

15. Negro Navarro v. Zack Sabre Jr. Lucha Memes 4/28

PAS: I have seen Navarro work this Maestro match against a wide variety of opponents, from fellow oldsters like Solar and Panther, to indy lucha scuzz like Electroshock and Angelico, it was cool to watch him work that match against an indy fake WOS guy. I thought Navarro looked awesome, as he found interesting ways to counter all of Sabre's spots, into really painful looking twists and pulls. I also loved how when Sabre started to throw hands Navarro escalated and cracked him even harder. Finish was cool with Navarro putting on some nasty arm lock and Sabre throwing a hissy fit after getting tapped. Really showed the difference in craft between a guy like Navarro who was trained by Florintino Martinez in a garage in a slum in Mexico city, and a guy who watched a bunch Johnny Saint tapes.

ER: I saw people talking about how Sabre got tooled by Navarro here but that really seems like wishcasting, as there was nothing close to unprofessional, Sabre didn't need his hand held, it was just a bunch of fun call and response mat counters. The whole match Sabre came at Navarro with flash, and there would be that moment where it was working, and then Navarro would find some trippy way to clamp down on Sabre's leg with his leg, or trap Sabre's arm unexpectedly; I thought Sabre did a great job getting slowly more and more frustrated, as Navarro always had an answer to anything Sabre would toss out. Sabre starts finding cracks in the armor and I especially liked him making Navarro yelp by bending his wrist back in gross ways. We've seen some of these Sabre subs before and it was a blast watching Negro get out of them or twist the leverage in ways that nobody else has done.

2017 Ongoing MOTY List

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2016 Ongoing MOTY List: Hechicero v. Virus

22. Rey Hechicero v. Virus Lucha Memes 5/14

PAS: One cool thing about 2016 wrestling is the number of lucha feds running dream match lucha. It is almost a Mexican version of the way US Indy wrestling was in 2005. These matches run the gamut from pretty great to disappointing, we haven't had the true all time classic from these fed yet. This was more in the pretty great realm too. It goes about 10 minutes, and we get some really great mat wrestling, with Virus especially looking brilliant, they have a cool stand up run with Hechicero hitting his spinning hammerlock backbreaker about as nasty as I have seen it hit, and an awesome submission finish. Still this was more like an awesome Smackdown match, rather then a big epic clash, and I really want Lucha Memes or Chilanga Mask to let these guys stretch out a bit.

ER:  Phil's right, we have been getting an absurd amount of dream match lucha, and it's almost all been worked like one off WCW syndicated matches. That isn't a bad thing at all, and it's hard to complain about getting indy lucha in crystal HD video. And not just the clarity, but the way they film lucha is far more desirable than AAA and CMLL. I know larger arenas have to be filmed a certain way, but it's a treat to see these two work so up close. And while this was a simple match, these two are so skilled that just watching them run through the basics for 2/3 of a match is engaging. The mat work and even some of the standing exchanges are simple, yet while there's never any sort of hint of either man being uncooperative, everything they do has weight. We get a lot of roll throughs and floatovers and other grace on the mat, but it all feels like neither man is allowing the other to get away with it very easily. There's none of the Dean Malenko assisted pinfall/kickout nonsense, just guys doing simple leverage stuff with real meat behind it. And it's not just mat stuff that had weight, we had heavy slams, a heavy elbow drop off the top. blame it on the seemingly concrete mats, or give credit to these two. I love how these two move so it was great seeing them once they started with some standing exchanges. We even get a strap removal/shirt off spot which I'm a mark for. Hechicero throws some wicked chops (and I always end up loving how loud indy crowds get for Hechicero, he's a real man of the people down there), hits a big leaping kick on Virus, and Virus always looks so effortless on his feet that you get the sense he could lose his eyesight and still be able to work at 80%. Let's hope these guys keep getting these kind of gigs and they keep popping up, more and more stretched.


2016 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Lucha Memes 12/25/15 Review

Lucha Memes is one of the super indies which have shown up in Mexico lately booking matches out of my brain. A lot of the time they don't live up to the on paper possibility, but always worth checking out. 

Alas de Acero, Aramis, Iron Kid y Demasiado vs Suicida, Freelance, Súper Mega y Séptimo Rayo

PAS: This is a spotfest opener, with a mix of cool and blown spots. Suicida and Freelance are always a welcome sight and they break out the two coolest dives of the match with Suicida going horizontal on a tope and Freelance getting thrown to the celling by his partner in a tope con hilo. There was some pretty bad construction Ric Blade stuff with chairs for the finish, much more of a chance to see some fun guys then a good match

Arez, Impulso y Belial vs Decnnis, Toscano y Zumbido


PAS: This a vetrans vs. young hot shot luchadores Indystrongtibles. The young guys have some fun spots, and I enjoy Zumbido, but parts of this were pretty bad. Toscano especially was clearly just mailing this whole thing in. Not enough good to recommend, most time your veterans work hard on these indy shows, not here.

ER: This wasn't good, but I did think Zumbido was actually really good in this. Not good enough to lift up 5 other guys, but his stuff looked like Zumbido's stuff, which is good. Loved him leaning jaw first into a Belial superkick, taking his huge flip bump to the floor, dragging a guy to the apron to paste him with a DDT. I thought he was a bright spot. Skip to those spots. 

Negro Navarro vs Virus

PAS: Maestro match of the year, and just beautiful grappling. No catch and release stuff, all nasty twists and counters. Both guys are like a pair of jazz masters just riffing, Navarro tries an attack, Virus comes up with a trippy way to get out, and Navarro counters his counter. Virus does this awesome thing where he is stuck in a submission and he just shifts his weight around until he finds a weak spot in the submission. Lesser mat workers will just go from hold to hold, you get to see Virus show his work. Navarro is especially great at setting up a submission and have an extra crank, he gets everything lined up and then BOOM here comes a quick extra violent twist. I loved this so much, it is a match up I dreamed about for years and it has always lived up to expectations. 

ER: This was just constant, and so damn impressive. Phil mentions most guys going hold to hold, and it's totally true. Submission, break, start over. Submission, let other guy go, start over. The stuff is impressive, but never advances things. This is constant advancement. There's a rope break and a truce off of it, but most of it is just two men wanting to roll and wanting to beat the other without strikes. It's a benefit of a una caida match, although most una caida matches are just worked like shorter, lesser matches. I can't fathom some of the predicaments each man ends up in during this match, even though they pretty clearly intentionally get into those positions. The foresight is incredible. Navarro on his back with Virus standing, Virus appears to be stepping around to get in the mount, but instead he's just slyly hooking Navarro's leg with his own leg, then dropping down and falling to his left, the momentum naturally rolling Navarro up a bit, as Virus is already focused on clamping down his leg at the knee over Navarro's leg. It's smooth, fast beautiful and the match is full of little things like that. No robotics, just too experts with incredible instincts who make this kind of stuff look easy. We know it's not easy, but you'd never know watching these two. Also let's give a shout out to the awesome ref in cool glasses, bowtie and short sleeve pink shirt. That man is almost distractingly cool. 


Dalys vs Keira


PAS: This was pretty bad, Dalys was a last minute replacement for Marcela and that would have work a lot better as Dalys can't do this kind of workrate joshi luchadora match at all. She is pretty Sexy Starish here, the rollup section early looked totally amateurish. She works kind of stiff but that is her only positive. Double pin finish just adds to the turd sandwich. 

Dr. Cerebro vs Negro Casas

PAS: What we got of this was pretty great, Casas is a wrestling genius and Cerebro is one of the more underrated guys in wrestling history. There was a great strike exchange with both guys laying into each other and doing a great job of selling each shot, Casas especially can write a novel with every expression. Still this goes 5 minutes, which is barely enough for a first fall, much less an entire match. I have no idea why you book this and give it such short shrift. Negro Casas is at the show, you booked a cool first time match, let him do his thing.

ER: I've always been curious about how things like this happen. I don't know how lucha payouts work, but I have to imagine Casas can demand more than your average luchador. So how does this happen? There are a few scenarios, so we can figure out which is the most likely: 1) Casas calls up and says "Hey I'm gonna be in Naucalpan, any room for me to pop in and work a really short match? I won't charge much." 2) Booker in the back says "Alright boys, go out and give me 4 minutes, and NOTHING MORE." 3) Both men just happen to work a short match, get into a shouting match with booker in the back who expected them to go longer. 4) Potentially all three of those things. 


Trauma I y Trauma II vs Black Terry y Negro Navarro

PAS: These two teams had one of my favorite matches of the decade in 2011 and this match hits a lot of the same beats. The match starts with cool mat sections between II and Terry and I and Navarro. Navarro and I were doing some catch and release stuff which I don't usually love, but works fine with a son trying to upstage his father. Navarro ends one mat section with a little tap on the head, and T1 responds with a nasty slap to Pops ear. This causes Navarro to do this great semi concussed selling, and it gets nasty from there with both sons trying to take out their father and their dad's old drinking buddy. Both oldsters are great brawlers, and there is a point where Terry has II in a full mount and is just punching him right in the jaw. I admit it is a little unnerving to see Trauma II slap someone he loves, but I suppose I should divorce art from the news. Finish kept this a bit below the 2011 classic as Navarro gets eliminated and it comes down to Terry v. both Traumas, considering the whole story was patricide, it is off to have Terry be the last man standing. Still Terry is a great last man standing as he opens up his own forehead with a headbutt before succumbing to the spinning figure four.

ER: Weird, cool match that had strange undercurrents to it. I was not expecting that slap to Navarro, and Navarro either did one of the all time great sells or he wasn't much expecting it either. Navarro acted kind funny and bell rung the rest of the match so who the hell knows. But things clearly changed after that. Now Navarro did work a tough match earlier in the night so maybe he just needed a reason to sit out a bit, but I bought it no matter how odd it was. From there the structure was odd, as instead of matwork gamesmanship, with guys working holds and then letting the other guy go, you had brawling gamesmanship. Terry would come in, slap around Trauma I for a bit, then let up. Then Trauma II would come in, slap Terry around a bit, then let up. I thought Terry looked great throughout this and drove the story along with his facials, and then doing his own amazing selling. Him dropping to his knees after a strike exchange reminded me of Lawler/Dundee. Loved him holding onto the headlock a couple times with Trauma trying to push him off, with Terry hitting the breaks and dropping down to the mat. I love headlock spots where the guy holds on. And those mounted punches to Trauma II were some of the nastiest strikes I've seen this decade. Terry might still be the best damn brawler in the game, which is crazy considering he's the age of my father. The two of them each have similar mustaches, one of them is the arguable best brawler in wrestling, the other is thinking of how best to retire from his dentistry practice. So we had a weird match, not the match I was expecting, but a match with tons of nasty charm. 

Atlantis vs Caifán

PAS: This match is a real example of the value of blood. Atlantis is a wrestler who at his prime was a graceful athlete, he has lost almost all of that (there is a bodypress in this match which is really bad), but still has great timing and a sense of a match. Caifan goes ahead and sprays blood out of his head and bumps into the crowd and tries really hard to make this memorable. Don't know he completely succeeds, but I mostly enjoyed it.


***Navarro/Virus was awesome and was an easy addition to our 2015 Ongoing MOTY List***

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MLJ: Chairo II: Negro Navarro vs Virus

2015-12-25 @ Arena Naucalpan
Negro Navarro vs Virus

36:35 in

Maybe more Sombra next week. For now, Chairo II finally dropped and while I haven't been able to watch it all yet (it begins with a bunch of spot heavy matches with wrestlers I'm not super familiar with), I did jump to Navarro vs Virus. This was the card where Navarro had to work twice because of El Dandy's health issues. He teamed with Terry against the Traumas later in the night. It also has Atlantis vs Caifan and Casas vs Cerebro. I'll check that stuff out later but I'm not sure I'll write it up. We'll see.

I wanted to tackle this, however, because I'd read some criticism recently on Virus, on his matwork looking particularly cooperative. Now, it was in the midst of DVDVR March Madness which is an interesting (if frustrating) time, because you get a lot of people watching lucha who aren't very familiar with it or accepting of the quirks of the style. Still, it was someone I respect, and criticism is criticism and I wanted to take another look.

This was a maestros match, one fall, and it was the most subdued and focused I've seen Navarro work in his later career. Usually, his matches, even in this sort of setting against this sort of opponent, are about his charisma and striking and attitude. This was extremely straightforward and was really the best look I've had at his mat skills, far better than a lot of other matches where you'd expect a showcase. He more than held his own, but it probably still would have been a slightly more compelling match if he had been a bit broader. At the same time, some of that broadness leads to him not taking elements of a match seriously, and he absolutely took everything seriously here, so it's a trade-off.

And hey, you know what? Virus was great as always. Wrestling is symbolic. That's its nature. Nothing is literal. Lucha tends to be slightly more symbolic than other wrestling. Virus, whenever he sets up a move or whenever he gets out of one, earns it. He doesn't just slip out of a hold; he criss-crosses his legs so that he can gain the leverage to turn his way out. He doesn't just put on a hold; he works his way around to get the right positioning and does something a little extra for leverage. He does this again and again and it creates a sense of struggle that's tonally different than what you'd get in a shootstyle setting, for instance. With this matwork, there's a lot of effort made to tying up your opponent so that he can't utilize any of his limbs or leverage, but in doing so, too much effort is exerted in the holds. That's why they can't always be kept. The flipside is that when it's not done, reversals happen through openings. It's not true of all lucha matwork, but it was true here and it created a really satisfying sense of symbolic competition. If you go with it, just a little, like you have to do with all wrestling in one way or another, it really pays off.

As Navarro works in the same way for this match, earning every limb he picks and trying to make the most of it, it turned out to be a good, little match, one that was worth the wait of a couple of months for them to release. I'm glad we got to see it.

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MLJ: Black Terry Boot Camp 7: Black Terry vs Virus

2015-11-22 @ Arena Lopez Mateos (Lucha Memes)
Virus vs Black Terry

This was a hell of a maestro match between two of the best wrestlers of the last ten years. It's exactly what you'd expect and every bit as good as you'd hope for. I'm not going to run through any sort of play by play here. That'd be doing it a disservice. Instead, I'll just note a few things that stood out to me.

The first is the notion of ego in Black Terry matches. He's physically unimposing and not as hugely charismatic as Navarro, for instance, but I've found it very tangible in these matches in a way I don't always pick up on with other wrestlers. Pride might be a better term, but there's a level of hubris to it as well when it comes to the complexity of the submissions. Here there were a number of completely unsustainable holds that both wrestlers locked in to cause a short term amount of damage or just to show that they had control of the situation. Virus repeatedly went for a version of the Scorpion Crosslock and I think each attempt, as he wasn't able to get it on, cost him within the narrative of the match. Also, Terry was the first one to go to a "move" after ten minutes of grappling, and while it bought him an advantage, it almost felt like it cost him something to blink first in that way.

As for the actual matwork, what stood out the most was the constant contact. There weren't just escapes, but escapes into reversals. It wasn't enough to kick out of a pinfall or break a hold. In doing so, the person escaping would almost every time grab a limb and find a way to transition into a counterhold. They made it look like the most natural thing in the world while still making it seem like a legitimate struggle. I've seen it before in matches, but rarely so endemic. It was the circulatory system of the match, the river connecting one moment to the next. Advantages were hopelessly fleeting because both men were just that skilled. Moreover, that sense of contact meant that any minor flubs ended up feeling more like resistance and countering attempts than mistakes. Nothing says skill quite like creating a mist of competence covering a match so well that mistakes come off as believable and intentional.

The crowd was appreciative, but in a way I've rarely seen in lucha. It reminded me more of Japan, actually, where occasionally, a crowd will appreciate whoever manages to be on top in the moment. There were dueling chants early, but as the match went on, support seemed to be given, not necessarily to a personal favorite, but in appreciation of whoever had scored the last escape or had locked on the present hold. That added to the tone of the match as well while still keeping it feeling like a competition and not an exhibition.

I'm not sure I'd put it at the very top tier of what I saw in 2015, but it's something everyone should look into checking out if they have a few dollars to spare.

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