PAS: Big old fashioned Villano brawl. The two baby Villanos (Villano V Jr. and Rocambole Jr. are the sons of V5, formally Kaving and Kortiz) look exactly like their father and uncle and wrestle just like additional Villanos (they really dropped the ball, by not just naming the Villano VI and VII). They dominate early eventually getting DQed for ripping off T2's mask. The second fall has the Traumas and the former Charley Manson (RIP) firing back and smashing the Villanos with chairs. Rocambole starts leaking and it gets more frantic. I think a slightly better finish would have gotten this on a MOTY list, but it was a bunch of fun nonetheless.
ER: For some reason IWRG thought it would be a cool idea to do their whole new years show in a cage. It's probably because they just didn't want to assemble the cage for the main event, which makes sense because sometimes I just drive home from work with my emergency brake on because I know I'll just be using it when I get home anyway. Brother, you ain't seen dumb until you've seen the annual Reyes del Aire...inside a cage. I would prefer to see literally any match on this show not inside of a cage, but this one probably works the best within the stip. The cage match does spoil the winner, as one look at Ovett and you can bet when his choices are between "get a haircut" and "climb a tall cage", dude is not climbing that cage. The cage means that we don't get a classic Chico Che dive, but you get classic Che stiffness, big headbutts, big bleeding forehead, big overhand chops, and his huge torpedo splash. Ovett made this a garbage match, literally, by going for a chair, twisting off some sharp metal piping to stab Che in the head with, and dumping out thumbtacks. Ovett hits a huge fat guy senton, and later misses a fat guy moonsault right into those damn tacks. Match hits peak gross when Che stomps on the back of Ovett's head, right into the tacks, and Ovett comes up with a forehead full of thumbtacks. That's a flat out dumb and bonkers spot. While getting his head shaved the barber attempts to pull a couple tacks out of his hairline and Ovett understandably does not look like a happy camper.
ER: This match is pretty notable just because of the ridiculous beating that Demon takes. I've seen Demon in some damn lazy performances, and here he just gets pummeled. This performance made me feel sympathy for Demon, and somehow root for him. That's never happened before. Park and King just start beating on him with hard plastic chairs, and even throw him 4 rows into the crowd. Demon takes a man size bump getting tossed through a bunch of chairs, really crazy and out of character for him. He disappears for awhile after getting absolutely wailed on, and then we get more of a Park/King brawl. King hits his middle rope dive to the floor, Park gets launched into the crowd and takes an even more brutal bump than Demon. Eventually Demon makes his triumphant return and waylays dudes with chairs, masks get yanked up, DQ's happen, and I weirdly earned some respect for Demon. Strange for him to turn 50 and start taking furious beatings. I mean, I was at a Timothy Thatcher/Blue Demon match where Thatcher started the match with a stiff chop and Demon clearly leaned in and told him to back off, as Thatcher then held way back on every strike the rest of the match. And here Demon isn't even in Arena Mexico and he's getting beaten like he owes money. Crazy choice, but respect.
ER: Blue Demon is now apparently this past his prime southern brawler, still working indies and paler and fatter than he was in the 8x10s he's selling, taken in his prime 20 years prior. Blue Demon comes out slowly, with his shoulder in a sling because of what happened up above on this electronic page. He immediately gets sucked into a brawl on the floor with Escorpion, who is pretty much the worst guy in lucha to get sucked into a brawl with. He'll beat the skin off of your face. And immediately he's beating Demon into the crowd, hitting him with chairs, kicking him through other chairs, Demon is falling around on concrete with one arm, getting thrown over the railing, just taking another beating. Later he gets to stand tall in the ring, bravely going up against everyone like he had two good wings, bending Rockstar into a nice, violent cloverleaf with his good arm, great triumphant tecnico moment. Xtreme Tiger lives up to his name and hits a rana from the top rope, onto Escorpion on the apron, and landing on his feet while Rey took a violent bump into the narrow and hard ringside area. Good lord, guys. Cibernetico is kind of a poor man's Pierroth in this, a rigid gassed up stiff working dude. But, that's an easy step up from typical Cibernetico. Golden Magic also stood out to me for the first time, even though I've seen him probably 6 times already. He's a generic tecnico but hits some nice generic tecnico spots, big rana and nice armdrag. He's got a cool mask and a good look, nice guy to have on the cards in a trios. I usually don't expect a good match when Blue Demon AND Cibernetico are in it, but this was a good one. I don't know what's wrong with me, suddenly becoming a Blue Demon @ 50 fan.
Thought I'd try to find a Charly Manson match worth watching since he just was released from jail and worked last night's Elite show. I hadn't gone deep enough into Los Invasores to find him in 2010. Now I am. Plus it's a Casas apuestas match I didn't even know existed and it links into what I had been watching in 2010.
According to Cubs, this was part of a grand CMLL plan. An Invasor goes over in an apuestas match. A CMLL guy (Rey Buccanero) goes over a few months later, and then they face off. Unfortunately for Rey, really, part of a long string of unfortunates in his career, Manson left shortly after this. I can't imagine that made Casas too happy considering.
This was interesting though, and in part it was interesting because CMLL was introducing the insidious notion of the rudo referee, Tirantes in this case. It was very blatant, very straightforward, and while I loathe the concept in general because it dilutes the heat and is heavily overused, here it felt novel (to CMLL at least), and Negro Casas' reactions made it work when in general, it shouldn't have. That's not to say it was sustainable, but here the goal was to build heat for something later, and in that and through a quality performance or two it suited.
Manson's gimmick, in 2010, as a Marilyn Manson clone, was a little surreal. His hair was thinning at this point. He did have two-three pockets in the crowd either dressed in his facepaint or carrying his a banner for him. I think it was less support than they made it seem by cutting to these people all the time. The gimmick felt like he'd had it so long that it was self-referential now, kind of like how Hijo del Fantasma isn't exactly linkable to a newspaper comic strip in any discernible way.
This began with Los Invasores coming out with Manson and a bevy of CMLL tecnicos (including Sombra) coming out with Casas. There were people dancing and Zacarias being kind of awesome. It was a fun scene.
And here are the Manson fans, who we'd see again and again:
While there was a competitive your team vs my team feel to the first two falls and I think a novelty to the pairing, a freshness to it, it was really lacking the sort of heat and hatred you'd expect from a match like this. There was a bit too much wrestling in the primera and while there was a sense of fight, it felt almost more like a title match at first than an apuestas match. Really, the primera was just there to build to a big moment, Manson faceplanting Casas with running kicks to the corner and then Casas catching the foot only for Tirantes to distract him. That allowed for Manson to take over, hit the pick up/drop down (clumsily), and lock in a nice submission for the fall. It wasn't a huge twist or anything but it was a definitive moment of Tirantes asserting himself that'd set the stage for the rest of the match. The segunda was still heated but hardly in a bloodfeud sort of way. Casas launched Manson with a couple of armdrags and then hit La Casita for the three. Tirantes counted slow but still made the count.
So the primera and the segunda were just sort of there. Manson held his own and was a very different sort of opponent for Casas but it didn't stand out. The tercera, though, with Tirantes being a focal point, did. That was because there was a real sense of desperation out of Casas. After one more kick to the face, Manson put his foot on Casas for a pin and Tirantes counted as fast as he could. The look of exasperation on Negro Casas' face afterwards was gold. He tried to do the same in return and the count was as slow as you could imagine. From there on in, it was all he could do not to get pinned again and to try to get a submission out of Manson since he knew it'd be almost impossible to pin him.
And this was a lot of fun. Casas kicked out some submissions I'd never seen him do, from simple ones like la Cavernaria to some complex rolling ones Tirantes helped Manson whenever he could and the crowd and the announcers veered more and more into a state of disbelief. There was a great camera angle on a Manson tope and a fun moment where Casas went for the spin kick one too many times and had his leg jammed on the rope for it. Ultimately, Manson was too cocky and lost his control of the match to an out of nowhere Saito suplex, but Tirantes jammed two or three Casita attempts allowing Manson to lock in his own with another fast count and steal the win.
Given how outlandish this was relative to CMLL at the time and Casas' sheer charisma, I'm kind of amazed there wasn't some sort of riot here. I think that while the first half of the match wasn't much and the last half, while being quite a bit relied so much on smoke and mirrors, it was still hugely effective in doing what it was supposed to do and the eventual Rey Bucanero vs Charly Manson match could have been a surprisingly big deal, even if it was 2011 Rey we were talking about. Ah well, it's CMLL, what do you expect? Still, this is a good match to watch if people want to get a sense of what Manson can do in a CMLL context.
