Found Footage Friday: APACHE~! SKAYDE~! HECHICERO~! RAYO~! FIERA~! LUCERO~! SANGRE~! ULTIMO~! ATLANTIS~!

Gran Apache vs. Skayde DTU 4/18/10

MD: We're all happy that Black Terry, Jr. is posting matches. He's posted this one here and on Facebook, so give him clicks:  https://www.facebook.com/reel/1681600072845956. Here we got up close and personal for a super enjoyable encounter. Apache was able to keep up with Skyde on the mat the whole way through and had a bunch of thunking power moves, while also bringing multiple dropkicks, a moonsault attempt in the middle, and then the two dives at the end. There was something a little clunky about him at times. When he went over for the rolling Boston crab set up for a rowboat, he had a hard time getting over, but it never felt collaborative. It just added to the grit, and, in my mind, set up the finish where while he took Skyde out, he was spent from the effort he put in on the dives and couldn't beat the count either. 

What made this jump off the screen, however, was how sharp the holds were. They were so good at unlocking holds with little shots and bits of positioning: a twist of the arm one way so as to twist it another, a cradle that wasn't meant to be a pin but to set up the next hold, a transition from a kickout right into the next thing. For the most part Apache pressed the advantage. He had bit of a size, came off as an all arounder. Where he stumbled was not accounting for the fact that one side of the ring happened to have barbed wire all over it and he careened into it on rope running. Later on, there was a bit of added drama that for him to get a rope break on a hold, he'd have to grab the ropes on that side of the ring. It didn't play into the match too much past that but it created a more interesting environment for them to joust in.

While the crowd groaned a bit at the finish, they had no reason to complain with the action up til then. Apparently BT, Jr. is going to be posting every Monday so we'll have lots to look at over time. 

PAS: The 2010's period when Black Terry Jr. was just releasing incredible indy lucha every week (and we would get new FUTEN shows) was one of the most rewarding periods of my pro-wrestling fandom. IWRG and the smaller lucha promotions were just on fire, awesome cool matches every week with guys like Black Terry, Negro Navarro, Dr. Cerebro and many more just killing it. Lots of that stuff has been only sporadically available in recent years, and I am pretty sure this is a match which is completely new. Apache is a guy who dipped into that 2010s indy lucha world, but wasn't a mainstay, so it is especially neat to get to see him stretch, and more Skayde is also always a treat. This is a match which just fulfilled expectations, I came in expecting great looking Llave, some cool exchanges and a little Apache high flying and it just checked the boxes. My expectations are pretty high for this stuff, and while it didn't exceed them, just hitting them is pretty great.  

ER: Had I been there live this is something I still would be thinking about. Black Terry Jr. is back and puts you in the front row of lost lucha libre like few. Phil isn't exaggerating about how much the original BTJ handhelds meant to his fandom, I remember all the excited phone calls and texts about every single new upload, leading down the Black Terry rabbit hole, documenting some of the coolest lucha that had mostly to that point gone unseen by all but the most dedicated lucha heads. I don't think I've ever seen Gran Apache in any of BTJ's handhelds, and the sight of Apache in an environment like this looks totally foreign to me. It's beautiful. Live, seeing two old guys (well, 50 and 45, youthful for our brand of lucha) working llave and the hardest fucking mat possible, it's the thing I want from my lucha. We see them fully up close rolling through exchanges, Apache rolling through leg locks that get tighter with each roll, going through what feels like a 12 step process to knot up Skayde's legs. Apache's llave somehow looks more graceful while Skayde's moves more heavily. I don't mean that as an insult to Skayde's work, I thought the heaviness added to the pendulum swings of his llave, his floating majistral looking like an act of magic physics rather than fast Quackenbush precision. Skayde's single legs and cinched in crabs looked ligament tearing, and Apache is wise to just start slapping and punching him the longer we go. 

Apache's punches and slaps were one of the first things that got me into actual lucha libre, believe it or not. I was mostly familiar with lucha through WCW, and Psychosis/Rey/Juvy matches from Japan or ECW. When my family finally got cable TV in the year 2000 it wasn't long before I found Galavision, and discovered Gran Apache slapping the shit out of Oscar Sevilla in his little Sears portrait matador suit. I was fully onboard the Apache express from one match, and here every punch and slap to Skayde brought me back to those first ones I saw. I never got to see Apache live (I saw Skayde once, during a period where he had gained weight and got outshone by a 60 year old Solar) and the sound of his strikes live must have been incredible. 

7 minutes into this I yelled "There's barbed wire in there?!" to my living room, as BT Jr. had kept that angle hidden. There's a whole side of the ring with barbed wire around the ropes and while these men mostly stay away from the wire, Apache does accidentally hit it once and yelps loudly, a hilarious camera reveal. It also leads to my actual favorite shot, late in the match, as Apache punches Skayde in the face. The afternoon sun glows behind them and The Barbed Wire Side of the Ring looms in the foreground unused, the kind of lucha vision only seen in outdoor tent lucha. Now that BTJ is back, who knows how many more similar visions we will see. We'll write about every one. 

Caifan Rockero I vs. Rey Hechicero 2/13/09

MD: Likewise, Rob's gone through a channel posting a ton of things and pried out what seems to be new or lost or recovered, perfect for us. And for us, it doesn't get too much more perfect than an incredibly blurry match between Caifan and Hechicero from 09. I'm pretty certain AEW fans have no idea how old Hechicero is and how long he's been doing this. I saw my share of his stuff back when I first started getting into lucha, including an apuestas match with Caifan from a year after this one, so this is like going home in some ways.

They go almost 30 and it feels like a series of a hundred mostly disconnected exchanges, each one interesting and experimental in its own right. They're all full of struggle. For a lot of it, Caifan is the aggressor and Hechicero has to get out of something, though he has his share of hefting Caifan up as well. Sometimes it's clear what they're going for and it works beautifully. Sometimes you're left to wonder. There's a shoulder breaker Hechicero does twenty minutes in where I'm not sure if that's what he meant to start with. Other times, though, the struggle is wonderful. When Hechicero went for a tapitia, he only got it after slamming Caifan's head into the mat a few times in a way that I'm not sure I've ever quite seen; simple but it worked very well within the sequence. Caifan hit his arm cradle suplex twice. There was a bit more of a sense of build for the second one, but you still wonder about him having to go to the well in such a long match like that.

They did escalate to rope running but then they'd take it back down. So much as there was a narrative, it was one of increasing exhaustion and damage over time. You believed it because they were doing so much. The moves did get bigger to a degree, more off the top, for instance. When Hechicero finally stunned Caifan enough to get the hold he really wanted, it felt more like him outlasting Caifan than anything else. I wouldn't call this particularly focused, but it was certainly imaginative and fun. 

Atlantis/Rayo De Jalisco Jr./Ultimo Dragon vs. La Fiera/Sangre Chicana/Charles Lucero 9/6/92 Plaza De Toros Monumental

MD: Lucero was a replacement for Tugboat Tyler. They didn't even update the graphics. But he's part of what made this fun. We've seen the rest of these guys go at it, and yeah, I'll always be glad to see Chicana and Fiera, but a relatively young (relative to a lot of the footage we have of him fifteen years later) Lucero in the mix was novel.

A lot of this is the rudos stooging all over the place, Lucero pretending Atlantis fouled him, Fiera having Ultimo run over his back, everyone playing into Rayo's act. Again, some of the novelty is seeing Lucero feed into it. Eventually Chicana punches Rayo in the skull while he has a hold on and the rudos take over. Atlantis comes back with a chair on Chicana and it feels a little unwarranted maybe but who knows what these guys were up to otherwise. The tonal shift is especially weird as they go into everyone-in-a-headlock-at-once and la estella and a celebratory finishing bit for the tecnicos but hey, we're not going to complain too much about mean Atlantis chairshots. This too, like everything else this week, was fun. 

ER: I love when 15 minutes of VHS tape trader quality lucha shows up, talk about a trip back. There's always something new to observe, always somebody who stands out that you weren't thinking about earlier that week, month, or year. Charles Lucero was someone I didn't know about until his matches with Hechicero, Rayo a lot of people didn't know about until he was older and lazier and up his own ass (complimentary, and pejoratively) and here they're both a perfect set of rivals. In the primera there's this great early moment where Rayo is teasing his matador attacks on Chicana, before just rushing past him to double hammer fist Lucero off the ropes to the floor, just swinging that Mexican Polish Hammer into his chest. His misdirections to throw off Lucero's timing are wildly entertaining. I enjoyed old conceited Rayo but whenever I see the stop-start routines done in younger Rayo speed it feels like some of the best lucha trickster work we have. La Fiera was also a standout, because early 90s Fiera is always going to be a standout, and here he was especially gifted at making 1992 Ultimo Dragon's offense sing. Great pairing, an accompanist who knew how to make a guy feel like a star.  

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Will Ospreay is 12

AEW Dynamite 4/17/26

Will Ospreay vs Hechicero

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AEW Collision 1/10/26

Mark Briscoe vs Hechicero

There's nothing quite like pro wrestling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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D3AN~!!! Day 1: MAESTROS~!

DEAN~!!! 3 9/6/25

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

This exceeded every expectation.

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

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

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

BUT STILL...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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2025 Blue Panther Double Feature: Hechicero! Ultimo Guerrero!

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

Blue Panther vs. Hechicero CMLL 1/10/25

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2025 MOTY MASTER LIST

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

AEW Collision 8/16/25

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CMLL 8/15/25

MJF vs Zandokan, Jr

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

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

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

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

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

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

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2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Hechicero vs. Danielson

 

2. Bryan Danielson vs. Hechicero AEW Collision 2/3/24

ER: One of the things I really love about AEW, is that a guy like Hechicero can unexpectedly show up 5 years into the whole thing and get placed directly into a match where he gets to spin off into his thing more than maybe any time since I called him Rey Hechicero. I don't think I ever stopped calling him Rey Hechicero. We wrote a ton about Hechicero in the 2010s. I was enough of a maniac to write up weekly episodes of more than one CMLL TV show, and Phil and I were adding Hechicero matches from all over Mexico to our 2014 MOTY List. It felt like I was writing about Hechicero literally every week, because I was. And now 10 years later, there's a fed that can bring him in and let him get a whole new bunch of people addicted the way he hooked us. Honestly, I don't know of a match where Hechicero does go off into his thing more than this one. This was the one big singles match in his entire AEW run (so far?) that was allowed to Deliver. This was the match the most people wanted to see, and it delivered in a way that even those who knew what Hechicero was capable of couldn't have anticipated. 

I didn't go into this match expecting anything, really, but I didn't expect it to be such a Hechicero match. This whole thing felt designed to make Hechicero a star which is pretty incredible. I don't think there are any actual plans to bring in and use Hechicero on a regular basis, and the idea of bringing a guy in who is Not Yours just to make him look like a superstar and then hang around to wrestle AEW Miz is a weird mainstream wrestling thing that never would have happened before AEW. This was not Hechicero working a Danielson match. This was Danielson trying to work a Danielson match but instead being constantly foiled and taken for a ride by Hechicero until barely escaping with a win. Danielson looked like a guy who knew he escaped with a win. That's cool as hell. 

I love how Hechicero had an answer for all of the Danielson stuff, as if during all these years of Danielson talking about wrestling Blue Panther, Hechicero was actually doing the same and preparing to wrestle Danielson. If he didn't have an answer for it, he calmly withstood it. He walked through kicks and backed him down while also working two steps ahead of him on the mat. When Danielson started realizing his shit wasn't working - maybe after Hechicero held onto Danielson's ankle during a surfboard escape and crept into his own rolling surfboard and then later surfboard wheeled him into a rear naked choke - Danielson just started punching him a lot, and even that didn't work. Hechicero just withstood, forcing Danielson to go to more punches and headbutts. The knot he tied Danielson up in after snaring him on a missed diving headbutt was getting so painful that it looked like a spot that was actually getting away from Danielson, like Hechicero came into the Rio Grande Valley and started shooting. 

Hechicero has such explosive violence on all of his impact spots. I don't know if Danielson has done a Busaiku knee as well as the Average Hechicero Running Knee. Hechicero mangling his way through Danielson with a flying knee as a means to hook a sleeperhold from the apron is as violent as Bill Dundee's best clotheslines yanked into a sleeper. The way that he keeps twisting Danielson into different llave stretches takes me right back to that space when I was getting fully into lucha 25 years ago and branching out into older and indy lucha. Bihari's Skayde video, seeing IWRG Negro Navarro, Solar matches; Hechicero always brings that feeling but combines it with Shocker's charisma and movement and impact. Shocker was one of those guys whose best years coincided with my favorite wrestling years, where I was tape trading more than ever and seeing more new things than ever. Hechicero has the physical spark of those best years of Shocker, while also feeling like at all times older man Negro Navarro. His final roll through three different submissions and two different pinning combinations, with his arms and legs moving for constantly better and contrasting positioning, was brilliant. It's the kind of fun twisting lucha that you'd find on a 4 minute YouTube video inappropriately scored by something off Tool's Lateralus. 

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 2/5 - 2/11

AEW Dynamite 2/7/24

Bryan Danielson/Jon Moxley/Claudio Castagnoli vs. Hechicero/Volador Jr./Mascara Dorada

MD: This had a number of (what I consider to be) lucha trios trappings and really it did just make me want to see the 2/3 falls Arena Mexico version. I have no idea how they came to the hybrid middle ground that they did, whether it was just the two teams trying to come up with a match in the back or if some agent (maybe Sarah Stock who because of her language skills sometimes works with the luchadors?) intervened or if it's just the lucha that a guy like Danielson, having likely watched more tape in the 00s than the 20s is familiar with, but it was a pretty effective Frankenstein's Monster.

They started with measured and focused and disciplined exchanges with clear beginnings, middle, and ends (as opposed to control on one wrestler or one wrestler shining against the entire side). Hechicero and Danielson picked up right where they left off on the mat. Claudio got to base early and often for Dorada, and Volador got to look flashy and tough against Moxley. I wouldn't say it had a central pairing (no captains, not that captains have to be the central pairing anyway) as the underlying storyline was one of gang warfare instead of a direct rivalry. Case in point, I would have wanted the rudo beatdown to start after Volador's dive onto Moxley where the BCC came in to swarm in the aftermath, but instead they played the spot back with the CMLL guys swarming after Moxley's subsequent dive to send it to commercial break. 

I would have liked for them to cycle through the tecnicos and have the BCC beat down one after another, but this segment was pulled more towards Southern Tag trappings and building to a hot tag instead of an overall momentum shift. I think the former, if they could have made it intense and believable enough, would have led more to the overall feel they were going for. The latter did still mean that we got to see a "Mascara Doroda vs the World" bit where he outslicked two opponents at once. Then, the finishing stretch had a bit of a cycling tercera feel, with Hechicero locking in hold after hold on different BCC members with people breaking it up as opposed to it being alternating holds from a member of each team.

I came in to lament that they didn't fully and entirely commit to a full CMLL trios styled match on a random Dynamite in Arizona but I have to admit, after thinking it all through, the compromise that they came up with was both artful and effective. I just think it might have been a little more so if they had gone into a more definitive beatdown just a little earlier, cycled through the CMLL guys during said beatdown, and then had a bit more focused of a central pairing (Danielson vs Hechicero). Hopefully what we got was a still impressive step in that direction.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 1/29 - 2/4

AEW Collision 2/3/24

Eddie Kingston vs. Bryan Keith

MD: I'm pretty sure I first encountered Keith back in '21 with the Kevin Ku match. I'm almost certain that was DEAN's doing, because he, in his retirement, was watching literally everything there was to watch and he'd force certain things everyone's way and who were we to say no? That was an excess-laden spectacle where they simply wouldn't bend or break. They kept coming at one another, escalating the violence more and more. I've not heard enough interviews with him to fully understand his influences, but between noting how important his recent (first) tour of Japan was personally and the fact that his finisher is the Emerald Tiger Driver, well, you get some sense of it, right?

It's a testament to both men that this didn't feel performative or like a pale shadow. Instead, these were two fully fleshed out characters (people even; let's go with people, characters only in the narrative sense), who were looking for any advantage they could get in the moment. It was organic and natural and uncooperative in the best of ways. You could see it right from the opening; Keith slapped Eddie even though no one had really been able to break him lately. He blocked the Uraken, ran right through a chop. He wasn't trying to break Eddie, not really, just throw him enough that he wouldn't be able to tell which way he'd come at him next. Keith was strong and tough enough to stand with Eddie, but he couldn't take him down that way. He didn't have to. He just had to last long enough to see an opening, going low with a dropkick to open Eddie's face up for a kick. He'd spend the whole match enduring punishment to find that opportune moment; that was Kingston's own trick. 

In some ways, it was like Eddie was facing a version of himself from a year or two ago, which is what made this so compelling. That and the selling. Yes, there was plenty of fighting spirit to go around. Yes they pushed through strike exchanges and throws. Yes, Eddie kicked out of the Emerald Tiger Driver even, and that was with a couple of minutes left to go in the match (thankfully, Keith had Diamond Dust in his back pocket so there was still a potential point of escalation left for him). But they were registering each and every shot. When Keith absorbed three to hit one (the only way he was going to hit that one), you could see the cost on his face and in his movement. In this regard, being slightly distanced from that true "purity" of the source material allowed them to take a more hybrid approach and the match resonated more for it.

Bryan Danielson vs. Hechicero

MD: The height of me getting into lucha was 2014. And when I say lucha, yes I primarily mean CMLL and certain indies. That's when I started writing on the blog. That's when I was writing up three matches a week to try to make sense of it all. I was watching while exercising and while laying on the floor of a toddler who wouldn't go to sleep if I wasn't there, and I was sneaking the live streams on the laptop while the TV was going before bed like the stereotypical kid slipping a magazine into his textbook at school. There was a wealth of riches: RUSH coming into his own and dragging Sombra and Mascara with him; Casas and Shocker standing tall as beloved rudos; Virus defending the Lightweight title; Porky comedy matches; Toro Bill and Rey Apocalipsis undercard matches on Monday nights, and so on and so forth. But there was the 2014 Busca too, with such a class, including Cavernario, Cachorro, Dragon Lee. And yes, Hechicero. It was always a little weird as they did mix young guys with guys who had been wrestling for over a decade, but that's CMLL for you. In some ways it felt like Danielson or Low Ki in the original NXT, guys that you never expected to make it in the mainstream filling out a side full of guys the company wanted to support.

Coming out of that, when everyone was, probably rightfully, focused on Dragon Lee vs Kamaitachi, I was just glad Hechicero was still drinking his cup of coffee and getting his payday. It already took a certain sort of obstinance to follow CMLL in the first place, but to follow it and then focus on a guy who they'd probably never push was just setting yourself up for headache if maybe not heartache. And he's made a good career of it, a nice reliable hand with the right amount of balance and flourish and crowd interaction that you could put with guys with names like Mephisto and Luciferno and Ephesto in a post Averno world, someone who can base for midcarders and show a tenth of what he can actually do but still be effective nonetheless. He was even a pandemic champion with a title that never means as much as it should which I think he got to defend in over a year's time maybe twice? I'll admit that I haven't followed as closely over the last few years. If you read the blog, you see what I'm watching and I'm pretty full up. In a world where I didn't get so into AEW in 2021, I probably would have been following along more with the CMLL resurgence of the last few years, but it sure got pretty depressing in the few years before that. I'm glad that people are enjoying it now. I'm always going to have a soft spot for it.

Here's where I'm heading: being a Hechicero fan, while a no brainer for some, was a niche of a niche. He was a guy who could show you something amazing on the indies but that would rarely get to do it on a bigger stage. You were glad for his steady paycheck and the ability to see him a bit more easily or more frequently but sad that he wasn't out there being an absolute artist on a weekly basis. There are dream matches we all have in our head. Obviously for years it was Blue Panther vs Danielson. There are matches that are possible and matches that are maybe probable and matches that are just so out there and so outlandish that you couldn't even imagine them. Extrapolating back to 2014, when you could watch a handful of Hechicero matches against Caifan or into 2015 when you could see him against Navarro or Black Terry thanks to Black Terry, Jr., and when Danielson was absolutely on top of the world and main eventing Mania, it was a wild fever dream. Even if Danielson got free and ended up in the wild, even if he ended up at Arena Mexico, there's no way they'd book him against Hechicero. Most likely we'd get the Volador match which would look like a lot of the other Volador matches we've seen. Big spots, quick action, rote exchanges, good execution, something you could so easily imagine in your head that you'd never actually have to watch it. 

It's hard to criticize Bryan Danielson. When you make the "greatest wrestler ever" argument, he's got such an amazing case that it's hard to chip away at him. One of the angles to potentially try, however, is that sometimes he let's his opponent define too much of the match without putting his own stamp on it. That doesn't mean that he gives his opponent too much of the offense, more that he seems to let his opponent shine in a way that doesn't feel like the merging of two worlds to create something more special than either world could be on its own. On some level, for instance, I though the Bandido match didn't take enough advantage of what it might look like if someone with Bandido's unique style and skillset met someone with the mythos and presence of Bryan Danielson. You really got to see what Bandido could do but a lot of Danielson's contribution in interacting with lucha spots came off as predictable in their own way, of Danielson playing in a different pond but in the most predictable ways. The alchemy isn't there necessarily. It doesn't make for a bad match by any means, but it doesn't raise to the level of uniqueness or specialness that you'd want someone who is potentially the greatest wrestler ever to distill from this sort of a once-in-a-lifetime pairing. Again, that's the problem with thinking critically about Danielson. Opportunity was left on the table. You have to hold him to almost impossible (Bockwinkel-ian) standards because of the discourse around him. 

That's part of what made the Hechicero match so special. The alchemy was there (maybe not surprising given that a very self-aware alchemist was facing Danielson). What made this work, more than anything else, was that Danielson drove so much of it. That's not to say he was in control offense-wise . He wasn't, but he was always active, always creating motion, always pushing things further with what makes him come off as formidable. He wasn't a cipher in this match. He was every bit his legendary self. And he had Hechicero counter him time after time after time. If he had given anything less than his best and if he didn't react with such abject desperation, this wouldn't have mattered nearly as much. Instead, he used up all of his pro wrestling capital to get the skill of Hechicero over. (I always point back to Demolition Ax begging off from Bret Hart getting a hot tag at Summerslam 88 when heel Demolition hadn't backed down from anyone in over a year as a great example of this; Hart was smaller but needed to be established as a babyface threat and by backpeddling for the first time in a year, Eadie made him come off as a huge threat in the eyes of the fans. There are plenty of examples though).

It started simple and Danielson was able to hang. The fans chanted lucha libre. They didn't fully know what they were getting into. Hechicero escalated into more advanced but still familiar exchanges, putting little twists on them, like rolling with the tapitia instead of just holding it as Danielson did. He had simple answers for Danielson's complex problems. As they went down into the stretch, starting with Hechicero catching Danielson out of the diving headbutt attempt, Hechicero turned the complexity up to max. Suddenly the fans and Danielson both were left with gaping jaws as limbs were contorted in ways that defied the laws of human anatomy. The match built to this. It didn't lead with it. That's what made the dramatic moment of Danielson reaching his wits' end so effective. He was able to sneak a win that didn't at all feel like one and live to fight another day but the emotional damage that he suffered in being unable to lean into his traditional strength along the way did so much to get Hechicero over. 

In the reactions, it was great to see so many people note that the match expanded their idea of what lucha libre can be. I hope at least subconsciously they recognize the emotion at play and don't just substitute the idea of tricked-out matwork for tricked-out highspots in their mind. We're not quite there to the point where everyone realizes the true wonder and joy of lucha libre can really and truly be in the momentum shifts and the emotion underlying the pairings, and that all of the spots and the contortions and the dives are just means to the emotional end. It'll take undoing two and a half decades of conditioning for that, but the more they see a CMLL presence, the more hope I have that they'll get there. That's saying quite a bit actually considering this encounter was for years absolutely beyond my wildest hope. 

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Lucha Worth Watching: Leyenda de Azul Cibernetico

Leyenda de Azul Cibernetico (CMLL 12/22/17)

ER: Ciberneticos are a fickle creature. It doesn't take too much in one direction to make them good, and it doesn't take much in the other direction to make them totally skippable. This one already starts as a win as Mije and Zakarias sit on the entranceway steps with their heads in hands, as if they're sitting on a curb waiting for their parents to pick them up after soccer practice. Then you see that referee Edgar is sporting cornrows and you know it's going to be a great cibernetico. The strength in a cibernetico is always the action that happens before the eliminations. Eliminations typically come quick and are predictable, and often unsatisfying (and you know there's going to be a double elimination), but the work that takes place before pinfalls start is gonna make it worthwhile, and this had some great action.

Ultimo and Euforia start of with some fast matwork, the kind that UG doesn't often do in CMLL, and it's fun as I don't recall these two ever going opposite each other. It never gets mean, but it's a good exhibition. Bucanero and Terrible do more of the same and we get a nice fun engaging scrap to our cibernetico. Stuff bumps up when Kraneo splats Vangellys with a big legdrop, but then gets backdropped over the top to the ramp, Kraneo taking an awesome big fat guy bump to the ramp and down the side stairs, with Vangellys immeditely shifting his focus and hitting a big dive on Misterioso.  We get a fat guy showdown between Niebla and Kraneo, and Niebla had a pretty nice showing. Maybe the key to Niebla now is just thinking of him as the new Super Porky. Don't be mad at him for having trouble standing up or kind of standing still while people get into place around him, just get excited for the 1-2 matches a year that he shows up for and just enjoy him slapping dudes the rest of the year. With this match and the Caifan match this is two straight Niebla matches where he utilizes his hip swiveling and silliness much more like Dusty than just a fat goof. It's a fine line. But I loved Kraneo slapping him, with every slap leading to Niebla turning around and slapping someone else on the apron. He and Kraneo are the fattest in the match, so I'll always love the two bigguns exchanging armdrags. Shocker has deflated a bit so he's not as fat (you can really see it in his arms, Shocker has really small arms now). Vangellys is the sneaky pick to be 2nd fattest in 2019. Nobody is getting as fat as Kraneo, I really don't think there's a luchador in history who is as big as Kraneo. But if something stressful happens in Vangellys' life, I could see him hitting the tortas pretty hard. Later on Niebla works a couple complicates armdrags with UG, and does a fired up Dusty act against Bucanero, swiveling his hips and pop locking with his legs, even flicking his own nipples. I don't think I've seen the nipple flick before. I'd much rather see that than the loogy.

Hechicero was treated like a big deal here, so much so that I thought he would win. He had a cool run  where he did his nice middle rope dropkick to knock Sanson to the floor, then gets Mascara Ano Dos Mil to the floor, then taps Vangellys with his awesome inverted bow and arrow choke. I was the drum beater for Pierroth the last couple years and haven't run across too much recommendable Pierroth this year, but I really liked him here, easily best Pierroth moments of the year. We get a nice old guy battle with he and Mascara, we get an actual Rush/Pierroth face off which is something I've never seen, with Pierroth actually soccer kicking Rush before they stand up. Then, he sweetly brushes the hair out of his baby boy's face, and tenderly kisses him on the forehead (much to the hate of the Arena Mexico crowd). Later he helps Rush pin UG from the floor, grabbing his son's hand in a perfect Schwarzenegger/Weathers Predator handshake to give Rush pinfall leverage. I wish Kraneo and Rush got more of a showdown but we did get one, with Kraneo bumping big for him and getting a soccer kick as a thank you. We end with Euforia/Rush and I was rooting for Euforia. He's got kids, man. Euforia takes his always nice ringpost bump and eats a Rush flip dive, and the Rush win is academic. Afterwards Rush stomps on the Blue Demon plaque and HOW COME I HAVE NEVER SEEN THE HORRIBLE BLUE DEMON BELT BEFORE!!?? Has this awful thing been around for years and I somehow keep missing it? Or did I always just stop watching the match after the pinfall and never watch the award ceremony. Oh man that belt is awful. Wearing it essentially gives you a Kuato growing out of your torso, or turns you into Krang's mechanical suit. Just Blue Demon torso flexing around your stomach. It's awful. And the best way to end this cibernetico.

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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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Lucha Worth Watching: Your 2017 CMLL Midcard

Virus/Disturbio/Okumura vs. Pegasso/Soberano Jr./Fuego (CMLL 2/3/17)

ER: We get more of 2017 tecnico superstar Soberano. He's really connecting with the Arena Mexico crowd, and it's always exciting when a crowd starts really reacting to a wrestler, the excitement in a worker's movements when he's getting loud reactions are palpable. Here he gets to show off a lot of flash, and also shows his bump freak side. The bump freak side is my favorite side of his, with him flying recklessly to the floor in the primera off a bull rush shoulderblock from Virus, taking an Okumura lariat on the side of his head, taking a hip toss from the ring to the rampway, and the bumps all lead to bigger reactions on his comebacks. Rudos really take a back seat to tecnicos here, with all three just trying (and succeeding) in drawing heat from the crowd verbally instead of just hogging all the offense. I mean, Virus is always going to look good, but here he hangs back, mostly keeping his offense to simple things (big shoulderblock, sharp elbow drop to the "lower abdomen", big lariat). The finish gets wild with Pegasso hitting a tornillo, Fuego hitting a missile dropkick followed immediately by a springboard missile dropkick, then pins Virus with a cool crucifix variation. Soberano clears the ring with a springboard rana, hits a smooth as hell tornillo off the top, and a moonsault off the middle onto a hanging Okumura wraps it up, crowd flipping their lid the whole time. Fun stuff.

Hechicero/Sagrado/Misterioso Jr. vs. The Panther/Guerrero Maya Jr./Blue Panther Jr. (CMLL 11/17/17)

ER: I really like this rudo team, they same to show up fairly regularly together and they all mesh nicely. They're good at being jerks and bullies, and they're good at allowing openings for any tecnicos that want to grab them. The rudo antics in this one are as good as expected, like The Panther sending Misterioso to the floor with a rana, so Misterioso responds angrily yanking Maya off the apron and then chucking Kemonito into the front row. Just as Stan Hansen turns a pinfall save into an opportunity to beat the hell out of the guy pinning his partner, I love and appreciate how Misterioso took out frustrations on the other team. We get some big bad triple teams too, like Hechicero doing his weird inverted monkey flip to Panther while Sagrado and Misterioso dish kicks on the way down. The tecnicos get some big dives and get to show some stones, like when Hechicero hits his cool moonsault to the floor, and he then gets jumped on the floor by the other two opponents. You don't normally see that from a tecnico team. Guerrero Maya peaks things with an insane tope con giro that sends him flying into the second row, The Panther keeps getting better, and these rudos know how to get an Arena Mexico reaction, and I love when these midcard acts go out of their way to get noticed on a nostalgia show.

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2017 Ongoing MOTY List: Hechicero v. Valiente

42. Hechicero v. Valiente CMLL 10/6

ER: Really cool lightning match, and really Hechicero should be a guy who should just work a lightning match challenge gimmick. He's got a deep tool bag and is probably the best-equipped guy in CMLL to work weekly 10 minute singles matches (Negro Casas would also obviously be great at this). Hechicero tools Valiente on the mat, working some nice headscissors spots, really making it look like Valiente couldn't move if he wanted to. He ties him up, wrenches a nasty armbar with headscissors, does a sick rolling drop down allowing him to snag Valiente's ankle, all nice stuff. It's capped off by a cool German suplex variation where he lifts Valiente vertically and then just kinda drops him. He gets cocky and goes up top, leading to a rough spill to the apron that sees his knee getting hung on the top. Valiente hits a gorgeous rolling armbar that splats Hechicero to the floor, then we get a high speed Valiente tope and his still fantastic Valiente Special moonsault to the floor. We get Hechicero coming back and removing the straps (!) and breaking out tiny things I've never seen from him (like his leaping side kick under Valiente's chin). The ankle comes back into play as Hechicero locks in a rolling ankle lock, and actual effective rolling move as each roll looked like it was adding more pressure.

PAS: Total blast of a shortish TV match. These two had a great match in Monterey about a decade ago which was pretty much everyones first intro to Hechicero, and both guys seemed to have not aged a bit. Glad to see Hechicero get a chance to shine even in a truncated format. Really liked all of the aggressive early matwork, especially all of Hechicero's takedowns. Also it was nice to see the return of bump freak Hechicero as he really takes a nasty fall to the floor off of Valiente's armdrag, which leads to a great tope and gorgeous Valiente special, which is still one of the best highspots in wrestling. Loved the finishing rolling ankle lock as well, about as good a 8 minutes of lucha as your are going to get, would really love to see these two get another long showcase match.


2017 MOTY MASTER LIST

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