Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 8/2/14

Another match from the 5/18/14 show in Morgan Hill. Still accepting bets on whether or not they'll ever show the Liger match from this card.

1. Pequeno Halloween vs. Octagoncito

Well, this was a let down. I'm not sure what happened, but it sure seemed like Octagoncito blew up real early, and because of that needed tons of downtime in between his spots. So there was a lot of lying around, and then an ungodly amount of time spent on getting into position for his spots. Even Rachel walked into the room at one point and said "wow that is one gassed mini". It threw Peq. Halloween off his game as he kind of had to overcompensate for Octagoncito's poor execution, and this caused both to look pretty bad at times. I'm not sure when it actually happened in the match, as things started out nicely with several minutes of fun matwork. But once it evolves out of that into bigger spots, things just fall apart. Octagoncito is heaving like he just did a triathlon. At one point they set up a rana off the top, and both men were on the top for well over 30 seconds. Halloween just sitting there while Octagoncito stood on the top rope next to him, each man punching the other, then just sitting there, resting. So much resting throughout this. I've never seen anything like it. To his credit, Octagoncito does pull off a real nice tope at one point. Later Halloween does the cool sliding splash to the floor and Octagoncito moves. But any time something remotely cool happens we get more lying around. No clue what happened here.

Also, since of course they only show one match per show, and rarely have a  match long enough to fill the allotted time, they showed some absurd "Revolution Replays" after each commercial break. But they weren't so much replays, as they were the previous two minutes of match that happened right before the commercial break, unedited. So you'd watch minutes 1-6 of a match, then commercial, then the replay back from break would just show minutes 5-6 again before rejoining the match. Hilariously bad. I mean, if you want to be a real lucha show you have to have horrendous editing, so they've already figured that out. Reminded me of the AULL/IWRG that was showing on LATV some years back, that would randomly just repeat an entire fall of a match in the middle of a match. They essentially did that here with the "Revolution Replays", so it really did feel like an authentic bad lucha TV broadcast.

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Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 3/9/14

These matches were from the 5/10/13 card in Sacramento that also had a Hijo Del Santo match. Here's betting that match mysteriously never airs.

1. Willie Mack vs. Phoenix Star vs. Brian Cage vs. Ultimo Panda

Cage is juiced to the gills (working a border patrol gimmick is pretty ironic since if I saw a guy crossing the border that looked as gassed as Cage, I would instantly flag him) and what's crazy is that I've seen him on two Bay Area shows within the last month and he's gotten even more massive. If you saw the TNA gut check match with him from a year ago, and then saw what he looks like now? He's put on a dangerous amount of muscle mass in one year. For some reason whenever they have Willie Mac in one of these elimination matches he's always the first guy eliminated, which is lunacy since Panda and Phoenix Star aren't very good. Mac is perfect for these types of matches, as he's a big fat guy who has a bunch of cool offense. I've seen him work long singles matches before so I know he has a decent gas tank. Here he does all his fun stuff like big flying heel kick and awesome standing moonsault. He's also really fun working lucha exchanges as he's just as smooth as tiny guys, but seeing a big guy do a rolling kip-up is way cooler. Now they actually did something right here and started the match at the actual bell time. Usually they show every second of each guy's entrance which is hilarious on a show they pay to air. But they do something that pisses me off just as much, as Mac's elimination happens during the commercial break! This is a taped show, and it's a match that happened almost a year ago. You couldn't figure out how to air this match in full? That is unspeakably annoying. Cage has to hold the rest of this together which he does well, able to take all of Star's armdrags and advancing each spot so it isn't just an Eliminators movez exhibition. Panda's offense never looks that great and he always does a lot of distracting mask adjusting and shorts hiking, but he takes moves well and gets blasted by a Cage clothesline that looked great. Finish was cool with Cage turning a Gory Special into a kind of Sister Abigail which was a nice lucha move with a modern twist. Fun match, but it's going to gnaw at me wondering how much was edited out...

2. Pequeno Halloween vs. Octagoncito

Really fun match that's needlessly shit all over because of a heel ref gimmick getting shoehorned into everything. Sparky Ballard actually makes for a good heel ref, but I have zero interest whatsofuckingever in seeing refs hone their character chops. Still, you ignore eyerolling slow counts and match interrupting bullshit and you focus on Octagoncito hitting a nutso high speed dive into the dirt (match took place in the dirt rodeo arena at a county fair) and Halloween hitting his awesome under the bottom rope sliding splash to the dirt. Pequeno Halloween is killer bumping around for all of Octagoncito's armdrags and flips and flops and I kinda regret not going to this show. I mean jeez, Peq. Halloween and Santo in an outdoor fair setting. Seems like a no brainer (a quick date check shows that I was seeing Yo La Tengo in SF that night, so that's kind of a pretty good excuse).

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Uprising Lucha Libre Workrate Report 12/1/13

These matches were from the 5/31/10 show at the Sacramento County fair. Outdoor show, probably blazing hot. And also, next week Blue Demon Jr. will have a big announcement! I'll give them credit for advertising a big name the week before.

1. Vinny Massaro & Rik Luxury vs. The Polyester Express (Matt Carlos & Dave Dutra)

This match was okay, something you may be mildly entertained by if you were there live. But when you think about it within the context of "we are paying money to air this match" then I wouldn't make sense to most people to have this representing your company. The Polyester Express is one of the lamest duds of a gimmick you could possibly saddle a couple guys with. It appears to be a disco gimmick, and both guys wear white bell-bottomish pants. That's the joke. But what's the point? There aren't any disco puns, they don't wrestle as if they were kooky disco dancers, they just have names and wear the pants. Matt Carlos is super bland, and wrestles the same no matter what the gimmick, so why have a gimmick? Disco Matt Carlos worked the same as Out of Control Matt Carlos who worked the same as heel Matt Carlos. It's just a lazy, irrelevant gimmick. It's like a shitty, easy Halloween costume. "Oh I'll just throw on some old pants and a zany shirt and be disco guy!" "Look, I'm a luchador because I wear this mask and sometimes I throw a dropkick!" It's disco portrayed by somebody who not only has not heard of disco, but isn't a huge music fan. The last great disco records were released almost 30 years before this. Who is their reference supposed to appeal to? If their entrance music was some cool Arthur Russell track or a Moroder b-side I'd shut my mouth. It's completely irrelevent to dress these guys in white pants and just go "Hey...Disco! Right!?" How is that pertinent at all to any sort of audience? Unless they are looking at working up to a bunch of long term music type gimmicks where we can build up to some sort of Disco Demolition match with a Dead Kennedys team against our Disco Defenders. There, look what I just shot out! Disco Defenders. My brain just spat out a better name for the team, as long as they're insisting on shoehorning them into a braindead do-nothing disco gimmick. Within the name Disco Defenders it already is implying how passe and irrelevant it is for two guys in their 20s to be working a disco gimmick in this decade, but at least gives them some sort of vague justification of them defending disco from the badmouthing it's (mostly wrongly) received since before they were born. But nope. We get Matt Carlos in white pants, working the same spots with the same mannerisms that Matt Carlos in black tights works.


2. Octagoncito vs. Pequeno Pierroth

We get a lot of stalling at first as Pierroth is super proud of his Puerto Rican flag. But Octagoncito is super proud of Mexico. So we have some capture the flag shenanigans, and I'm not sure why a war between PR and Mexico in front of a bunch of white people at a fair seemed like something that needed to happen. They work their standard match, although something seems a bit off and I'll probably just chalk that up to a couple of guys in masks working outside on a 90 degree day. Still they hit a cool dive sequence which looked extra nutty due to no mats around the ring, just the dirt.

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Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 9/29/13

So this was from a fairly recent show, happening in May 2013. Which means we jumped from airing 4+ year old matches on up to present day. We're never going to see those missing 4 years of matches, are we? Still that actually gives me hope that Santo's 2013 appearance from the same show eventually turns up on this show.

1. Persian Prince vs. Pistolero

I know Pistolero is a PWR trainee (there's a cringe-y statement from him on the Pro Wrestling Revolution site that seems written by the owner of PWR, talking about how they were a great place to train, but with a bunch of petty thinly-veiled digs thrown in at APW, who I think started training him before he moved on to be trained at PWR. He even calls them "that school up north" which tickles me to no end) and I know nothing about Persian Prince (I could not locate any internet flame war letters that he wrote). Match seemed kind of built to showcase Pistolero, and I dug what I saw. Nothing flashy but I don't believe he's been working for long. He had nice elbows and forearm strikes, took a big bump off a reversed bulldog, and did a cool deadlifty German suplex. Couldn't get much of a read on Prince, but he did ragdoll and fold up nicely for the German suplex. Match ends suddenly and flatly on Prince's first offensive move, a flying shoulderblock with some wonky timing. Something seemed off and Pistolero landed funny taking it, then they just went to the pin. Crowd seemed confused. I seemed confused. Rewound to see what happened, still couldn't really tell. Prince threw a shoulder block, Pistolero bumped kinda fast and awkwardly, match ended.

2. Pequeno Halloween vs. Octagoncito

On paper this was one of the more exciting matches I've seen on a PWR card. And the match delivered and would have been killer live. We get 4 minutes of cool matwork stuff that is kind of exhibition-y, not so much mat struggle as "here's some cool stuff we can do" but that doesn't really matter here. Halloween busts out plenty of cool intricate twisty submissions where he has 3 limbs tied up all at once with all of them doing different things, and Octagoncito has some cool roll ups to get out of them. It builds really nicely to maximize the crowd getting into it, leaping into a couple of really hot dives and big bumps from both guys. Cool spot where Octagoncito tries something from the apron but Halloween hits a drop toe hold, then dropkicks him to the floor and follows up with the Halloween face first slide bump but does this one as a splash on Octagoncito. The match was as good as I hoped it would be. Aside from a couple flubbed headscissor spots everything looked cool, and Pequeno Halloween still looks just as good as he did when he was making tape more regularly in 2007-2009 (when I thought he and Pequeno Damien and Bam Bam were three of the best workers in the world). Pretty impressive that he's kept his work up to that level while working as a freelancer. I just wish he showed up more often.

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Then Cassandro Disintegrates Between a Wall of Clouds

Cassandro/Faby Apache/Mini Abismo Negro/Alfa vs. Pimpinela Escarlata/Cinthia Moreno/Octagoncito/Oriental AAA 7/15/07 - EPIC

I love these matches. Exotico/Lady/Mini/Dude matches always entertain me to no end. Everybody seems to work up a notch and their is always constant action. There always seems to be a game of one-upsmanship going on and this took place at Triplemania, so they were working in front of a pretty large crowd. Pimpi and Cassandro start and Cassandro has a crazy Justin Beiber haircut. He and Pimpi tie up and do a great hair toss sequence where Cassandro's Beiber 'do just comes right off!! Ah, that's right, he lost his hair the night before in a giant cage match that will never ever see the light of day. So Cassandro is totally buzzed under his Bieber wig. His fury and embarrassment over losing his beautiful locks drives him to completely OWN this match, putting on possibly the greatest performance of his I have ever seen. Every time he's in he just does the most insane things known to man. After his initial exchange with Pimp he takes a monstrous bump over the top to the floor at an incredibly fast speed. Later he charges right at Oriental and takes his trademark insane bump off the ring post to the floor. Throw in an out-of-control Asai moonsault and some great miscommunication spots and he was just on fire here.

Cinthia Morena is always really fun and always matches up with smaller guys impressively, and I always love Faby Apache. Mini Abismo Negro bumps all over the place for everybody and Octagoncito does a crazy hurracanrana to the floor. It's all action all the time and there is not one bland moment here.


Cassandro/Pimpinela Escarlata/Super Fly/El Angel vs. Jesse/Nygma/Polvo de Estrellas/Yuriko AAA, 10/26/07 - GREAT

Night Queens are wearing their ridiculous apricot-colored jammies and are all about coming up with new ways to smack the tecnicos with trash cans in this one. They start off by pummeling Super Fly and dumping him butt first in a trashcan, then putting the can up on the apron with him in it, then double baseball slide dropkicking it to the floor with him in it, landing him in all sorts of pain. Pimpi is the next to take the pain of the trash can, as he comes jumping off the ropes and gets clonked in the side of his head while his body goes splaying. We get some fun dive sequences, we get Cassandro and Pimpi doing their stereo sassy ropewalking into a hurracanrana and a flippy armdrag (respectively), followed by them doing an awesome hopscoth double-dutch tandem dance-off ending with a butt bump that makes you jealous that you don't have someone in your life to work on dance routines with you! Yuriko screams hilariously when he is about to take any sort of offense, Jesse wears the most garish pants ever made (some sort of apricot Zubaz pants with apricot plaid patches), and Cassandro KILLS himself at the end going for a dive as trashcans come back into play. Cassandro sets up a huge dive and one of the Queens holds up a trash can at the last second and Cassandro dives INTO the trashcan. He didn't get hit with it, he swooshed right into it and then got stomped while in the damn thing. Cold. Polvo kicks Pimp right in the balls to end it and this was all sorts of awesome.


Cassandro/Pimpinela Escarlata/Billy Boy/Mascara Divina vs. Jesse/Nygma/Polvo de Estrellas/Yuriko AAA, 1/19/08 - SKIPPABLE

Cassandro and Pimpi are wearing their totally awesome black widow spider outfits and Cassandro has the coolest headdress in the history of humans wearing cool headdresses. The match never really gets going. I don't much care for Divina, especially now that he no longer works his "awesome" Televisa Deportes gimmick (which would be the equivalent of a U.S. worker being named ESPN Sportscenter), and Billy Boy doesn't do too much here. Polvo can be kind of a load at times and while there were fun moments, there was also plenty of patented AAA "Show a shot of people in the crowd while clipping". Still, it does have it's moments, but it is rather short and forgettable.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE CASSANDRO

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Queens Lucha Libre ROAD REPORT 11/23/09

PAS: I wake up at 6am (7 hours earlier then I usually get up on Sunday) and head down to the Greenbelt metro station to meet Childs. Tomk is surprisingly only 15 minutes late and we head off to Queens.

TKG: It is Sunday and it took me longer to get to Greenbelt than I expected. At every bus stop there is an old lady carrying a full grocery cart on to the bus. We get to Queens with plenty of time to spare. Every time Phil says ”we’re making good time” I tell him not to jinx us and we immediately get caught in a goofy detour or mess. We find the location, confirm that the show is taking place and get some food to eat. We are all Allen Iverson fans.

PAS: Long line snaking around the block, it gets split into two lines and the start of the show is completely disorganized as people don't even start getting in until 2pm.

TKG: Security seemed surprised by the size of the crowd. There were three levels of tickets sold ( $85-75, $50, $40), plus people who were buying tickets on day of show. All of them were in the same line. To keep the line from snaking around the block they separated into two lines and then couldn’t figure out order of people. They seemed to be letting in ten people at a time. There also was a required coat check which slowed stuff down. It was a large dance hall space (approximate 800 capacity without ring-700 with the ring), with good lighting rig and sound system set up (they had the guys from Sonido Caluda running the sound), a mask table inside, two bars, a food vending area, beer girls walking around, girls running a clamato promotion, girls offering you prices on pictures with the wrestlers (back room set up for pictures), a bathroom with a really fancy trough urinal ( I don’t think I’ve seen a trough that elaborate at any baseball stadium) and a bathroom attendant, and Super Porky in sandals running a gimmick table in the back.

LOCAL v LOCAL: AZRIEL v DANNY DEMANTO v BANDIDO JR

TKG: First match was advertised as local v local. Phil predicts this will be Danny Demanto v either Azriel or Bandido jr. It turns out to be Demanto v Azriel and Bandido Jr.. They then introduce heel ref Jaquetas. I got the sense that the JAPW guys intended to work a three way dance and Jaquetas forced them instead to work an elimination triangular. When we went to the Delaware show I talked about the misscomunication between U.S. indy ref Brice Rensburg and the Mexican workers. That was nothing compared to the misunderstanding between US indy workers and heel Mexican ref. This match was totally defined by that misunderstanding. The JAPW guys tried to have a match whithout getting sidetracked by Jaquetas stuff. Jaquetas would try to set up heel ref spots, pulling Azriel’s hair, holding back his punches, fast and slow counts. The JAPW guys didn’t know how to work those spots and tried their damnest to keep it from throwing them off their game. I don’t think Bandido Jr was supposed to eliminated at the point he got fast counted out of match.

PAS: I enjoyed Danny Demanto as tubby stooging heel, a lot more then enjoyed him as tough guy kicking out of burning hammers in JAPW. Despite that this was a total mess. It felt like you JAPW guys were trying, but it didn't matter what they did this match was going to be about Jaquetas. I really can't stand heel ref lucha, I remember five years ago or so, Alfredo would get in DVD's of Arena Coliseo Monterrey shows, and they would have these amazing looking match ups. You would be excited to see Blue Panther v. Felino and what you would get was Blue Panther and Felino working spot with El Mulatto the heel ref. Azreal and Badido Jr. are not Blue Panter and Felino, but I still would have liked to see what they could have done without Jaquetas shitting all over the match

SWAT KAT v BAZOOCAA

TKG: Swat Kat and Bazoocaa are both Chicago luchadors and got the impression that they have lots of experience working matches with lucha heel refs. No culture clash here as they really knew how to work those heel ref spots and work a match around the heel ref being the real star. It doesn’t make it any better but they knew that formula. They hit some nice stuff early on: Swat Kat hit a huge tope into a woman holding an infant, followed by rana’ing the large heavyweight Bazoocaa into a woman holding a newborn. But this match went on forever (2/3 falls) and really was completely formless. Not completely formless…just totally built around Jaquetas. Non ref interaction sections had any rhyme or reason and there was a lot of bad execution. At one point Swat Kat decides the match needs blood and raises some bruises on Bazoocaa’s forehead and then squeezes them the way you would squeeze a pimple. Some of the Jaquetas spots might make for amusing comedy but three falls of it was really dull and had drunk patron attacking him.

PAS: I thought this was close to the worst match I have ever seen live. Not only did we have more endless dull Jaquetes horseshit, but the execution on the wrestling the guys actually did was abominable. It must have gone close to 30 minutes and outside of the rana into the baby there wasn't a single redeeming moment. Some real awkward obvious moments of cooperation and there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to when El Jaquetes would count fast and when he wouldn't.

TKG: After this we go to intermission, and Blue Demon’s merch table is set up. Show advertised Cassandro v Aguila del America, Mascarita Sagrada v Octagoncito, Super Porky v Hurricane Ramirez Jr. Two matches and an intermission, I don't know how they'll make it through the rest of card and still get to Jersey.

PAS: There are scantly clad waitresses coming around with free shots of Clamato. I have done some nasty things before for and to pretty girls, but I can't see why you would drink the clam juice in shot form.

SUPER PORKY/TZUKI v AGUILLA DE AMERICA/OCTAGONCITO

PAS: Aguilla de America comes to the ring with his kids, one about 4 and one about 8 in matching gear. The 8 year old is pretty much the third guy on the rudo team and significantly better then his father. Aguila de America has to be the loosest wrestler I have ever seen live. I mean nothing made contact at all. The match was pretty much built around Porky and Tzuki sticking their nuts in the rudos faces, lots of different variations of nut facing dudes. Pretty uncomfortable to watch a match like that, when one of the rudos is 8 years old, added a weird tension I really felt like I was about to witness a molestation, it was like watching the scene in Happiness between Dylan Baker and his son. Porky is charismatic as fuck, but seems to have lost a little something off his athletic fastball, he was getting no height on his splashes and was moving way slower then last time I saw him. The mini were really mailing it in too, mostly working comedy spots and not athletic spots at all. It was like Tzuki remembered Vince bringing him in and told Octagonicto "this is how midgets work in NYC."

TKG: Porky tried to hold something together by working blue on the mic and doing his filthy vaudeville spots in the ring… but yeah the whole match was being built toward child molestation spot, to where you were actively surprised you didn’t get it. Every other heel in the match got repeatedly fondled, teabagged, covered in soda and spanked with a belt, etc. Eight year old thankfully manages to avoid that fate. The eight year old does do a dive on Porky who then chucks him into the crowd. Perhaps he was manhandled by the audience then. Tzuki and Octagoncito are essentially doing nothing but Cuije v Chuukky house show spots. But its Tzuki, and he’s one of the fastest wrestlers in the world…so his teabagging spots are really fast and vigorous.

HIJO DEL SANTO v BLUE DEMON JR v BORDER PATROL OLIVER JOHN

TKG:Oliver John comes out first as Border Patrol gets on the mic talks about all the illegals in the audience and how they all need to show him there green card and how some people say Blue Demon is a legend but he is just another illegal who needs to be deported. Basic cheap heat gimmick that works at riling up the crowd. Then Blue Demon as Mexican Savior with the Mexican Flag comes out to great musical fanfare and does some mic work, then Hijo Del Santo comes out and the announcer poorly explains the concept of a triangular match. Santo has to ask for mic and then explains the rules of the match to crowd. Referee is Jaquetta and while normally your rudo ref will not engage in shenanigans to help a foreigner (nationalism comes before rudoism) here he seems to interfere against Blue Demon no matter who the opponent. Demon and Santito do their awesome opening matwork exchanges and Santo whips out his scarecrow climbing stuff that I really like (standing choke into octopus variation etc), Oliver John does a bunch of stooging bumping and flies around for Blue Demon’s hand clapping strikes. John gets eliminated and then comes back out in Santo mask to cheer on Santo and interfere in match on Santo’s behalf which pisses Santo off. Post match Blue Demon challenges Santo about how he can’t win without outside interference andis always running from facing Demon one on one or in a mask match, challenges for a mask match back in NY, Santo counters with challenge for MSG and actually does a nice job convincing me that I should call all my friends so we can fill up MSG for that match, Blue Demon accepts and calls for the support of his Blue Demonites and then Blue Demon challenges Oliver John to a title match. Oddly booked match where Santo does all the work and gets the win but still is booked as secondary star.

PAS: This felt like a show money marked by Blue Demon, as Santo came off as an attraction, but not the big deal. The way Beastmaster Rick Link might bring in Wahoo to tag with him, Wahoo is the star, but Rick Link is the focus. It really makes no sense, nor does flying in Oliver John to work your generic Border Patrol heel. If for some reason you have to make this a triangular, just stick Danny Demanto in Border Patrol gear, it isn't like John did anything Demanto can't do, and then maybe you could have flown in Cassandro like you fucking advertised. Santo is always worth watching, this was Santo by the numbers, but they are awesome numbers. We got the Santo tope and plancha, plus some pretty sweet mat exchanges with the carriable on the mat Blue Demon. Demon isn't worth a shit on his feet and has some of the most obvious hand clap punches I have ever seen. Still as much as he sucks I would still be all about MSG. Maybe put Bruno v. Perro Sr. on the undercard.

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