Lucha Worth Watching: Mask Matches and Family Feuds 10/12/15 & 11/8/15

Mascara contra Mascara: Molotov vs. Lestat, CMLL (10/12/15)

Two guys I don't watch that much, having a mask match. Lestat has been king of the mask match this year in Puebla, taking a mask just a couple months prior from King Jaguar. That's right. THEE King Jaguar. He's a Puebla undercarder, and Molotov is a CMLL undercarder who doesn't make TV that often but has shown improvement in the last few years. Lestat is clearly a Jeff Hardy obsessive, who potentially knows a guy who knows a guy who wants to push him to mask match glory. The match itself was poorly structured, but both men were clearly working hard. Lestat is kind of a slow motion Blitzkrieg, but worked in several fun swanton variations: a couple big ones from the top rope, a big one climbing the ropes, and tossed out a couple asai moonsault variations. The structure was all wack as we had several moments where a guy would take a big move, but then that guy would be on his feet first to deliver the next big move. It got kind of ridiculous after awhile. Lestat hits a big moonsault to the floor, landing on his feet, yet Molotov recovers faster and gets back in the ring to deliver a dive of his own. There were several moments like that. We also got a hilarious moment where Lestat yanked off Molotov's mask (Molotov had ripped at Lestat's in the primera), and Tirantes went to DQ him, and Lestat started begging and begging and getting on his knees apologizing to not be DQ'd (Molotov had won the primera so this would have meant Lestat's mask). It's a strange sight to see a tecnico doing something illegal and then begging the referee to not punish him. Who could get behind that kind of weenie?! When I was in 2nd grade, Mrs. Setterlund had a "punishment board" that was a physical three tier system of punishment. There were three levels: 1. Warning, 2. Lose a Recess, 3. Principal's Office. She had clothespins with all of our names written on them, and if you did something to warrant it, your clothespin would get moved from the "Not a Horrible Child" portion, down to the "On Warning" section, and so on. Since I was a constant chatterer, I would regularly see my clothespin moved into section 1 and 2, but never section 3. It usually took a LOT to get a visit to the principal's office. But one day I must have been particularly restless and got my clothespin moved down to dreaded section 3. And then I proceeded to run across the classroom and tearfully BEG to not have my pin moved to section 3. It was pathetic. I begged and pleaded and made promises as my mind rushed with all sorts of terrible things that would happen if my mom found out I had been sent to the principal's office. And eventually, Mrs. Setterlund relented, and I avoided further punishment, while I assume losing the respect of every single person of every age who witnessed it. And that was Lestat. Lestat was 2nd grade me. Crowds didn't want to root for 2nd grade me.

Also funny, is the longer the match went on, the more I felt like the lucha smoothness was hurting things. As in, both guys were trained a certain way. There was a certain slickness to their movements, that smoother lucha style. And I kept thinking that if this were worked in some garage but a couple of bad body guys in jean shorts, it would feel like a gritty war with tons of crazy spots and violent thud bumps. Not that Arena Puebla is a classy place, but it's an established professional arena, and the violence doesn't translate as well when done by guys in wide leg neon vinyl pants. I honestly think you can take this exact same match, hold it in a parking lot before a Raiders game, and have it between Shane Stevens and Shane "Gator" Stephens and suddenly I'd say "Man who the hell are these lunatics!?" But alas, it was not between two Shanes, and it had none of the drama of your good mask matches. Still, a man who you might not have known, lost his mask. This seems at least somewhat notable.

Dinastia Navarro vs. Dinastia Panther, All Elite 11/8/15

Alternate, more complete, but not as pretty fancam

Yay internet! I love family affair lucha matches, there's always a little added element of pride and the crowd gets buzzing for that familia atmosphere. It's structure is exactly what you expect, and it's goooood. Tons of matwork and grappling trade-offs in the primera, very short segunda with Navarros getting their submissions back, and a tercera that peaks with a beautiful dive and the two maestros squaring off. The mat stuff is predictably wonderful. Trauma I ends the segunda with his nasty indian deathlock into a violent twisting crescendo. Panther Jr. ends the primera by muscling Navarro to the ground and wrenching in a Fujiwara. BP and Trauma II go at it like men and the grappling is excellent. They both throw in little touches of professionalism, like BP slyly moving his leg away from Trauma's grasp moments before Trauma even blindly grabs back at the leg. Both lock on and slither out of nice indian deathlock variations but it doesn't feel exhibition-y, while it does feel nice and show-offy, seeing who can bust out freakier stuff. Trauma II is an absolute beast throughout this, being the only one who really laces into anybody with strikes, and BP Jr. pays him back at one point with an awesome ropewalk dropkick 3/4 of the way across the ring. Awesome spot. The Panther hits a super fast bullet tope to clear the ring, and we get the BP/Navarro showdown where they break out fun reversals and the gorgeous somewhat slower gracefulness of two masters comes into play. Navarro appeared slightly wooden in this and looked to have trouble bumping to the floor earlier, but it was clear he was saving his gas for Panther and I thank him for it. It wouldn't have taken much more for me to bump this up closer to MOTY list, just felt like it needed a couple more runs. Of the two videos linked, the top one is gorgeously clear, but has "down time" edited out. You get most of the action, but it's choppy. The second video is the whole thing, but shot from farther away, and the first 6 minutes are shaky and partially blocked by the referee. The first one you get a much greater sense of how hard Trauma II's shots are landing, and obviously all the mat transitions and work itself is so much clearer. The second video is a nice companion, as you get more crowd noise (and it appears to be filmed from a pro-Dinastia Navarro section) so you get a good gauge of how the crowd starts pro Navarro and by the end shifts to cheering both teams. I also includes what happens between the 2da and 3ra, which is mainly The Panther nicely selling the brutal T1 submission that took him out of the fall. For me, it made things mean a LOT more important to see Panther getting tended to, walking off his injury and gutting things through. Watch it, and thank the internet.

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MLJ: Cavernario Spotlight 4: Bárbaro Cavernario © vs Esfinge [OCCIDENTE MIDDLE] & Bárbaro Cavernario, Disturbio, Hijo del Signo vs Black Metal, Metálico, Molotov

Taped 2013-03-05 @ Arena Coliseo Guadalajara
Bárbaro Cavernario © vs Esfinge [OCCIDENTE MIDDLE]

7m43s in

This is really just clips from the tercera, but we skipped 4 months since the last match so I thought it was important to at least look at it. In the form we had it, this was pretty damn exciting actually. It's a shame we don't have the whole thing because you definitely learn different things from singles matches, especially title matches, than you do from trios. The dives with Cavernario missing his crazy flip but then finding a way to catch Esfinge from a prone position, were pretty nuts. The fact he managed that, protected his opponent, but still made it look good deserves a lot of credit. He really put a beating on his body, though, not just missing the dive but eating a Hamrick bump through the ropes which lead to another great Esfinge dive (this time a no hands Asai Moonsault to the floor). The finish was fairly clever as Esfinge gloated after his success, opening himself up to La cavernaria. There's so much ebb and flow to title matches that you can't get a good sense of them through clips, but what we saw here made me want to see more at least.

Taped 2013-06-23 @ Arena Coliseo Guadalajara
Bárbaro Cavernario, Disturbio, Hijo del Signo vs Black Metal, Metálico, Molotov

To sum up, there are five guys in this match I've never seen before. I find these opening matches on cards interesting because you get a lot of hard work and more attempts at innovation and trying different things. The flip side is that the work is both more collaborative and sloppier. More than that, though, a lot of the transitions and timing end up stilted. There's a lack of polish. One of my favorite things about lucha is that you rarely ever see the strings. Here you do.

So, five wrestlers I didn't know. I'm not sure I had a great sense of all of them by the end. Molotov has been wrestling for about ten years and I thought he was notably agile, but his opening matwork with Disturbio felt a lot like them just collaboratively trying to get to the next hold. Signo had a decent enough Fuerza act but it felt a little like a pale shadow. Still, he had the most distinct personality of the match outside of Cavenario. Metalico and Black Metal felt sort of interchangeable to me. They were both fairly capable as tecnicos drawing the crowd in and had a couple of good spots, which I'll mention in a minute. Disturbio was funny teasing a crane kick, but was fairly unmemorable in general.

The match was ultimately a mix of fun spots and good ideas and things that were blown. Black Metal let the rudos take over by foolishly running up their turnbuckles to hit a moonsault. He got punched repeatedly and knocked off the ropes instead. That started the beat down. I have in my notes "Molotov vs the world," which is usually when a tecnico fights off multiple rudo opponents; it's followed immediately by "world wins," which was followed by a couple of nice corner clotheslines and a boring Cavernario pin for the primera. He made up for it later though, because in the beatdown, his intensity really shined through. Cavernario, just by the way he worked his gimmick, can make a match like this feel more interesting. It's not stiffness necessarily, but angle of attack, if that makes sense. The way he comes at his opponent is just outlandish enough to stand out. His character work was definitely developed by this point. He was just an unfrozen caveman, but one savvy enough to point one way and watch as his partners swarmed the unassuming, fresh tecnico during a beatdown. He also did a Niebla-style comedic fall off the apron spot that seemed to get over pretty well.

The comeback was pretty tepid, just the usual ducking of a double clothesline and a rana. There was a bit of a revenge beatdown on the outside between falls, but we didn't get to see much of it before they went into the tercera reset. Here we had a decent amount of showcase sequence, with Molotov looking agile again and Metalico matched up well with Signo. He did do the most ridiculous spot, though, slowly rolling into a back somersault on the apron so that he could put on a headscissors takedown onto Signo who was on the floor. It was like watching horribly colored paint dry in the worst way. Ultimately, Disturbio and Black Metal had a pretty good set of pin exchanges, before they got each other eliminated on a double pin, which is not anything I've seen before in a trios match but it actually made a lot of sense and should probably be used more. From there, Cavernario and hit each other with a double clothesline and they teased another double pin as the opportunistic partners rushed in before clearing ther ring for Disturbio and Black Metal. That was followed by gallant (a really nice sunset flip done by hanging on to the midsection during a back drop in a way I've never seen before) and goofus (a really flubbed Alabama slam out of the corner), before Metalico locked in a nice submission for the win.

It's hard to rate matches like this relative to what I usually see. On a quality standpoint, they're not better, not even in the ballpark. On a fun standpoint, they can come close, though. What they are, first and foremost, is interesting. You see different trends in watching opening matches like these, some positive, some negative. What does stand out is how Cavernario, even more than a year ago, just popped in them, though.

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