Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 10/18/14

This week's show has a match where I'm not actually sure where it's from. John and Demon have worked a few cage matches, so the best I can say is that this match happened from 2009-2012. I think the two of them had a cage match in Mexico City at one point and I really would have liked to see that  as I've never actually seen John working in front of an actual Mexican crowd. I've seen a couple shows he worked where the audience was 80+% hispanic, but not a Mexican crowd. I'd want to see if he would work his usual pre-match race-baiting schtick (I saw him embarrassingly call the crowd "wetbacks" at an SF show) although it would have been infinitely more entertaining to see what would happen to him if he did that in Mexico City. Here (wherever this is) he just does some colorless  "I'm the REAL champion" stuff you've heard before.

1. Oliver John vs. Blue Demon Jr. (CAGE MATCH)

Match starts and I quickly find out it's escape rules, which is normally less exciting. Cage matches are almost always better when people use the cage as a means to violence, not as a climbing contest (and there's also a door, meaning we get a lot of "guy holding onto other guy's ankle" spots). John worked really hard here and it was easily one of his best showings that I've seen (especially in these Demon matches). He tried his best to play into Demon's strengths, which was more difficult in this match as Demon really didn't show up to do much. John's entire role was to basically make Demon look superhuman, and to make it appear like Demon was in danger even though Demon planned on taking no bumps. So John bumped all around for Demon's big strikes, flying into the cage from big chops and elbows and took some mammoth bumps off the top on failed escape attempts. The best one was Hamrick-esque, as John was tossed off the top crotch first on the top rope, and then messily bounced from there into a second bump. It looked dangerous, and awesome.

Now as for Demon, he bled. And that counts for a lot, because Demon bled a lot. He didn't bump, and he made John do a lot of the heavy lifting, but he bled. Bloody mask eyeholes is one of the coolest lucha visuals, and this delivered. There were also a bunch of cool shots of big drops of blood all over the mat where John was pounding him, so big hats off the PWR camera crew on those. The non-bumps were a little ridiculous. Demon would get caught on an escape attempt, and John would grab him to deliver a backdrop suplex, and every time Demon would reverse so he wouldn't have to bump off the top. John would grab him, there would be a false struggle, Demon would kick him off or something to send John flying, and then Demon would just hop off the top rope back to the mat (which is odd as you think he would just go back to trying to escape). After the third time it became pretty clear Demon was actively avoiding taking bumps (which is weird that they kept going to the spot). The worst was one time he teased doing a move off the top to a prone John, but then just ended up hopping down to the mat and doing a normal standing elbow drop. Teasing a big spot and then purposely not delivering seems like another item on Demon's list of "rudo acts performed by a tecnico". John eventually won when there was interference and a weird swerve with Vaquero Fantasma turning on Demon and hitting him with a chair, allowing John to slither over Demon out the door to the floor. Since John only won one of their cage matches, that means this was from the 2/27/10 King City show.

So overall, even with Demon's refusal to do a lot, I liked the match. John had a heckuva performance and Demon did hit a gusher which is a pretty special thing to see in wrestling these days so was effective here.

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Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 10/11/14

Last week's episode was a repeat of the episode shown the previous week, with the really poor Kafu match. Match so nice you had to pay to air it twice. This show was clearly an old one, as it's always easy to tell how old the matches are when the Border Patrol is featured. Since Brian Cage looked to be about 200 lb. here, you have to assume it was about 3-4 years ago. He looked like a normal human being, not one with a gassed up 260 lb. body and a lifetime of kidney problems. So I searched and sure enough, this featured match was from the 5/11/14 show in Turlock, CA, an awful little town right outside Modesto, CA, an awful larger town right outside of Manteca, CA, also an awful town.

I've talked about the poor editing of this show many times before, but this 30 minute show starts with a full entrance from the Border Patrol, and then several long minutes of mic work from Oliver John running down Mexicans. Then Derek Sanders gets mic time to run down his tag match opponents, which is a match that won't even be happening on this episode. There was nothing revolutionary about these promos. And by the time we go to commercial and get Blue Demon into the ring, we're already 12 minutes into the 30 minute broadcast. Just a remarkably poor use of time. I would think that paying money to air something would keep me in check in regards to what I show, really force me to show only the best stuff, only the stuff that was most important. Not bland mic work building a match that I wasn't going to air. It's just lazy, bad editing.

1. Oliver John vs. Blue Demon Jr.

I've talked before about how Demon always uses weird rudo mannerisms in his matches, despite being pushed as the hero to all the fans in the crowd. He sticks to that here by slapping John across the face before the bell rings. Doesn't seem like something a tecnico would do. So there is occasional weirdness like that in the match, but overall I thought the match was really good. John is a guy who has worked Demon a lot, and they pair up nicely. Demon brings a lot to the table in this match, throwing really stiff strikes and some nice suplexes. John bumps around like crazy for him, then cheats to regain control, and that kind of simple stuff always works well when done well. Demon worked stiffer than I've probably ever seen him here, really leaving some handprints on John's face with some nasty slaps. A couple of them wouldn't have looked out of place on a RINGS card. Demon also threw some really great knee lifts, holding John's head in kind of a cravat while kneeing the side of his head. They looked awesome. John took some big bumps including flying through the ropes to the floor of a running knee, and taking a vertical suplex on the concrete. Rough stuff. Finish saw John get a weapon passed to him by Sanders, but Demon kicks out of the weapons shot, and gets the knees up on a big splash attempt from John. A minute before Demon had done a double leg and locked on a half crab and I would have bet money on that being the finish, as it just seemed like the laziest "I want to go home, Imma do a double leg and lock on a whatever" but it ended up being a nice red herring in the context of Blue Demon matches. You see a sudden random lazy submission and it's easy to think "oh he wanted to end the match" and then when it doesn't it's like a shocking false finish. Fun match, would have been real good live.

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Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 9/27/14

As best I can tell this didn't air last week, or it just aired at a different pay for play time. Whatever my DVR recorded was some sort of music festival held in the parking lot of a Mexican market. There was a 7 year old girl who was pretty impressive. And a 12 year old boy who had a lot of work to do with his stage directions. He spent a lot of time not knowing what to do with his non-mic hand, and stared down at the stage a lot.

Talk about feast or famine. The last several weeks (for better or worse) we've been getting matches from PWR's most recent 2014 shows. And now we get matches from 2/27/10, almost 5 years ago! You can tell it was another lifetime ago because Brian Cage is at ringside and looks closer to my size than the freakish size he is today. Or, he actually looks like a normal human being than a bloated, gassed up freak.

1. Kafu vs. Vaquero Fantasma

I'll cut to the chase on this match and say that it went 8 minutes and ended in a double count out. Maybe you have a better explanation than me as to why they'd pay money to show a 5 year old match as inconsequential as this. Surely they have better classic matches than this in their archives? You could argue that both of these guys are still PWR regulars, so here's a look back at an earlier match in their PWR career. I could see that. Now, the problem with that is that both guys looked in way better shape here than they currently are. It was especially noticeable in Fantasma, who was not only way more slender but wrestled noticeably better. I've seen him live a couple of times and always wondered why he seemed better on TV than in person, and now I know. The live matches are current, the TV matches I liked him in were all from 2010. It's kind of shocking to see how much he's regressed as a worker, but there it is. He looked really good here, bringing a lot of energy and nice strikes to it. I really loved his body punches and chops, and he leaned into some Kafu kicks nicely. Kafu looked sluggish as usual. Here he was in full faux Brody mode (keep in mind he's a guy who actually said he had never seen Brody wrestle before. He just must have decided independently to wear fur boots, stomp around holding his wrist and yelling "Huss!"), meaning he threw some of the loosest stomps you've seen. Kafu wrestles like a giant power wrestler, with the problem being that he's not very powerful, and not a giant. He's 6'2" tops, and while his physique has never looked powerful, he's also never shown any kind of impressive strength that would still be possible with a meh body. He throws these dinky little clotheslines that look more like little running punches. Just bad looking stuff. So yeah, we get some guys doing stuff, before Fantasma just leaves the ring with Kafu chasing, and we get the double count out. Yay! Here's what Pro Wrestling Revolution themselves had to say about this match:

"KAFU picked up from when we last saw him and became an over night sensation. Vaquero Fantasma is on the same boat but with not the same amount of fans in his corner."

I'm…not sure what any of that means.

2. Pierrothito vs. Ultimo Dragoncito

Pretty cut and dry touring match for these guys. This is not the UD that is currently in CMLL, this guy is little smaller, slightly more stocky. But if somebody told you that you were about to watch a 7 minute lucha minis singles match, you could jot down the framework of this match ahead of time and easily predict 80% of this. We start with some fun comedy matwork, with UD being the aggressor and trying to work power moves like waist locks and headlocks, with Pierrothito tossing him all around. UD locks on some armbars which Pierrothito stands up out of, with UD getting him back down with armdrags into armbars. Pierrothito bumps nicely to the floor and we get two nice big dives from UD, one large crossbody from the top, and another tope through the bottom ropes. Back in we hit some roll-ups, with the weakest looking one (a majistral that looked like it was not easily holding Pierrothito down) winning the match even though Pierrothito clearly kicked out at two, which leads to awkwardness as even the announcers (recording this in post) don't know what to make of it at first. Seems like an odd thing to purposely include in the broadcast.

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Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 9/13/14

This was the main event of the 5/18/14 Morgan Hill show. Liger was working 2 hours away from my house and I had no clue until the next week when Phil asked me if I had gone to the show. I might not have made the trek even if I had known (120 miles each way isn't exactly "close") but I'm glad I'm getting to see what I missed. I actually didn't think they would end up showing this match, as they never showed either Hijo del Santo match from last year. Really happy they're putting this out there (yet still don't have many matches on youtube).

1. Jushin Liger vs. Blue Demon Jr.

Oddly the play-by-play guy calls Liger "The Thunder, Jushin Liger" a couple times to start. That's weird. This match had elements of a very good match but Demon was pretty clueless in his comeback timing, and also used a bunch of confusing rudo tactics throughout. Liger looked good and can now add an outdoor rodeo arena in Morgan Hill, CA to his list of "really weird places that I have worked". Best part of the match was the opening mat stuff which I really really dug. Demon did some cool reversals and other tricks that I've never seen him break out. Liger grabbed a keylock that allowed Demon to do a cool roll through into a leg pick. Both guys stretch the other in pretty cool ways, with both bending the other's arms and legs in cool ways. Demon breaks out the much missed Lasso from El Paso (don't actually know the lucha name of the submission), Liger locks in a cool modified figure 4. My favorite may have been when Liger went to lock in a surfboard and upon being stretched back Demon kicked out his legs and fell back into a pinfall. Real cool. After the opening mat stuff things got odd as Demon, being pushed as the gallant hero from Mexico, backs Liger into the corner and slaps him a few times across the face. Kind of an odd thing for a tecnico to do. Demon did hit a nice back elbow but even that felt like more of a sneaky rudo cheapshot. Later Demon would hold Liger's tights during a mat exchange which again, feels real weird for a tecnico to be doing.

Here we go into the more move exchange portion of the match, which was actually sequenced really well and would have made for a very good match, if Demon had any clue about comebacks and selling. Demon would always just pop right up after moves to immediately get his stuff in. Sometimes this can be the fault of the other guy, especially when the aggressor needs him to be in a certain position, but this was much more reminiscent of Kurt Angle not wanting to stay down for very long because it's more exciting to jump up and hit a suplex. When Liger hit palm strikes and his rolling kick only to see Demon stand up at the same time as Liger, things look funny. I mean, Demon hit a nice quebradora in this, but it felt misplaced coming right after a run of Liger offense. The worst of all was doing that right at the finish, completely no selling Liger's two biggest moves of the match and ending in the flattest way possible. Liger hit a real nasty brainbuster, got a 2 count, picked him up and gave Demon a powerbomb for another 2 count…and then Demon just gets up, charges at Liger for a double leg takedown and submits him. What? Awful finish. The kind of finish that's really only excusable if someone was about to shit their pants and had to immediately go home. Something tells me it was more about Demon not having an understanding of building drama, or very possibly just didn't care about building drama. Even if he didn't care about those things you'd think he would want to do more of an exciting finish then "I fall on top of you and submit you". Real dud of a finish that sadly ended an overall fun match. I am glad they showed it as I did enjoy the match, but man would I have been pissed at that finish had I driven 2 hours to see it.

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Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 9/6/14

This match was from the 2/22/14 show in San Francisco and really was the main thing that got us to go there live.  Thatcher is without a doubt one of the best workers in the world today, and it's extra cool for me as it feels like a real long time since Bay Area wrestling fans got to watch a really great wrestler before he moved on to bigger things. I'm not even sure who the last really good worker to come from the Bay Area was. I really liked Larry Blackwell, but he's not really a guy who worked anywhere other than the Bay Area. So who is the last acclaimed worker who can be thought of as originating from the Bay Area? Mike Modest? Cheerleader Melissa?




Timothy Thatcher vs. Blue Demon Jr.

I really liked this match and thought it was really the best possible Demon singles match we could have gotten. Again, this was the match that got us all to drive down to the show, a) because Thatcher is awesome, and b) I was really curious what he could get out of Demon. And at the end of the night I think it would be unfair to say that Demon was carried. I think he brought more to this match and actively tried here more than I've ever actually seen him. Thatcher had a bunch of cool armwork throughout which shouldn't be a shock to anybody. Him grabbing a guy by the wrist and stomping down on the arm is one of my absolute favorite things in wrestling. Also had some nice armbar exchanges with Demon rolling with it to try and leverage pin Thatcher. Now it's true the armwork never really goes anywhere, as Demon never sold any of it for too long, but the journey was fun. Demon threw out a lot of fun holds and Thatcher was real good at making them look engaging. I dug the Nieblina that saw Thatcher wiggling on his back so he could hook the bottom rope with his chin. Demon threw out way more strike exchanges than I've ever seen him do including some nifty kick combos, although Thatcher does noticeably hold back his shots after his first chop of the match. Thatcher backs him in the corner and blasts him, and yeah, it can't be a coincidence that the first shot was his biggest chop of the night. Still, his others look fine and Demon returns fire with nice overhands. We also get a cool baseball slide dropkick late in the match from Demon, Demon throws a great back elbow out of the corner, and Thatcher makes a Demon bulldog look lethal. Finish got a big surprise pop from me live, as Demon does a sunset flip out of the corner which seemed like the obvious and inevitable finish, but then Thatcher reverses it and holds the ropes for the win. None of us were expecting Demon to lose, that's for sure.

Now, the TV airing of the match does something real smart, as live the rest of the evening was a complete confusing mess. Demon got on the mic, demanded it be made into a 2/3 fall match, the match started right back up again and Demon immediately locks in a submission. Thatcher never taps, and ref tries to break up the hold, and the bell starts ringing a bunch, and all the tecnicos come out to pull him off Thatcher, and then Thatcher just leaves. But Demon gets on the mic again, demands more match, appearing to challenge for a hair vs. mask match, and then eventually gets Thatcher counted out of the ring. The crowd had no idea what the hell was going on starting right after Thatcher pinned Demon, so it was a real odd and confusing way to send people home that night. The TV version wisely edits almost all of that stuff out, which I think the match benefitted from.

So good job on the TV presentation as I think the match was even better here on rewatch. I had a good time watching it live, but enjoyed it even more here. Really good camera work, commercial breaks planned at good spots. Up above I included the match which my buddy J recorded live, for all of you to enjoy!

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Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 8/30/14

More non-Liger matches from the 5/18/14 show in Morgan Hill. I'm not sure Liger vs. Blue Demon would be any good, but it's obviously the most interesting looking thing on that card and it's odd how they keep avoiding ever showing their biggest matches, meanwhile showing stuff like battle royales.


1. Savanah Riley vs. Nicole Savoy

Rudo refs are just about the most boring way to get me immediately uninterested in a match, and this is a fed that really loves putting over their refs in matches. Sparky Ballard was working his rudo ref gimmick here, which meant the match was all about him, all the grinding a match to a halt with slow counts, all the rudo ref mugging. I guess eventually we'll get to see him get his comeuppance? But who cares? I have zero interest in seeing a non wrestler get comeuppance. What's the most that will happen, a tecnico will give him their finisher at one point? Kewl. In the meantime he just gloryhogs matches and makes them structurally impossible to be any good. Savoy had some cool stuff here, including an awesome capture suplex. Savanah predictably wins with a fast count roll up, but again I can't imagine anybody actually caring. Heel ref antics in 2014! I'm completely stunned this group doesn't have a rudo authority figure.

2. Ultimo Panda vs. JR Kratos

 Oof, awful structure to this one. Kratos took the first 7 minutes (zero offense from Panda) and then they flipped a switch and it was Panda's turn for the next 3 until he won. Awful. Kratos is a large guy with some impressive power spots. Here I especially liked his front powerslam, where he slammed Panda, then deadlifted him (and Panda is very tubby) up to do it again. He also at one point did a bear hug on Panda, a fact that was lost on the announcer. Kratos also did a cool spear in the corner after putting Panda up in a tree of woe. But again, it's 7 minutes of all Kratos tearing Panda apart, and then Panda just hits a clothesline out of nowhere and takes the rest of the match. Just awful. And Panda looked really bad doing offense. He clearly had trouble lifting Kratos for spots, and setting up a tarantula took an uncomfortably long time. Panda is way out of shape (which, I guess is pretty much in line with a panda bear) but man was it tough watching him struggle to lift himself up over Kratos off a missed corner charge. Panda did have a neat roll through on a Kratos chokeslam attempt, but even that was rough to start as Panda's conditioning made the spot take forever to set up and time. No selling to speak of throughout this match from Panda (except when he was moving much slower later in the match), and really guys taking their offense up front and getting there's in back is maybe a worse match format than your move-my move.

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Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 8/23/14

For this episode we go back to the 2/22/14 SF show that I was at live. My favorite match of the card was a trios featuring Drake Younger and Willie Mack, and then of course there was the main event of Timothy Thatcher vs. Blue Demon Jr. which was an interesting performance seeing one of the absolute best workers in the world go up against one of the laziest.

Oliver John & Brian Cage vs. Rocky Romero & Vaquero Fantasma

Few things can make me less excited for a match than the words "And their opponents....Rocky Romero!" Babyface Rocky is even worse as he doesn't have a very likeable face and just does more goofy faces and dancing in between his random move generator offense. But if they insist on putting him against Cage and John then obviously it wouldn't make sense to have Rocky as a rudo. Oliver John has a pretty belligerent personality so really only makes sense as a rudo and Brian Cage works well as his bloated, gassed up enforcer. But there is just not going to be anything remotely interesting enough about Rocky to make me get behind him in any way. Fantasma is most often on rudo teams in this fed, so here he's just kind of thrown onto the tecnico side (I assume due to lack of other bodies?) and doesn't really work any differently than when he's a rudo. Except that from what I've seen he has more rudo strengths than tecnico strengths. Not necessarily through personality, as he wears a mask and doesn't really bother to emote anything through the mask, but more in his actual work technique.

Live Oliver John got on the stick before the match and called the audience a "bunch of wetbacks" which is a bit too mean and a not too clever racist insult. I mean, there's going to be some blatant racist schtick when you're working a border patrol gimmick in front of a crowd that's 80% hispanic. I'm about as Caucasian as you can get (Swiss-German ancestry) so it doesn't offend me, but the use of the work "wetback" is just lazy and an obvious attempt to shock. There are so many more inventive ways to insult an audience, and this just came off as uncreative and hack. I mean if you're going full on over the top racist hack, might as well just find a couple old Blanche Knott books at the Goodwill and at least fit some structured jokes into your routine. It would at least come off a little more prepared than just red-face screaming "wetbacks!!!" into a mic. Although the hispanic teen girl in front of me was clearly not expecting to hear that word, silently turning to her friend with her mouth and eyes wide open. So...mission accomplished, I guess? Wisely, the TV actually leaves off the opening mic work, which they normally include (you GOTTA include full entrances and middling heel stick work when you're paying for the time!).

Match itself was as okay as a match featuring Rocky Romero is going to be. Cage has packed on so much mass that he's not nearly as mobile as he was even a year ago, but he can still occasionally surprise, like when he bumped nicely for a Romero rana. Romero for his part hit a real nice dive. As with a lot of PWR matches there just isn't a lot of substance. The matches always seem to take a long time to get going, and then they end right when they seem like they're going to roll. There's often a lot of bullshit and rudos taking powders on the floor, some threatening to walk out, some regrouping, and then rudo control segments with holds. The formula works to a degree, and sometimes it doesn't take much more than that. But there needs to be a certain quality level of the workers involved and a lot of guys in PWR aren't at that level. Oliver John is a good heel and I've enjoyed his work in the past. Brian Cage is gassing himself to full Scott Steiner levels of immobility. I mean like he's literally bigger and bigger at every single show I see with him. But he's still young and has ability, so he's still athletic enough to overcome things like not being able to put his arms down all the way. But these two just had nothing to work with opposite Fantasma/Romero. Romero had one hot 15 second bit with a nice rana and that dive, but the rest just shows he has no idea who he is or who he's supposed to be within a match. Him at one point doing horrible "he's standing right behind me, right?" comedy, blindly feeling behind him and discovering Cage was there, is not even normally a babyface spot and yet still was so badly executed that it was embarrassing to watch. I mean this isn't exactly news in 2014, but Romero is just completely clueless as far as working any sort of compelling characters to build drama within a match. Just an awful worker. I could see Cage/John working well with more capable faces. These weren't they.

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Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 8/16/14

Another match from the 5/18/14 Morgan Hill show.

Atlantis, Gallo Tapado Jr. & Mascara Sagrada vs. Damian 666, Zokre & Vaquero Fantasma

Gallo Tapado Jr. may be the weirdest lucha fly-in I've ever seen. I'm unsure how big a star his dad was, but his dad likely retired in the 80s or early 90s. I think I've seen this guy on an IWRG undercard, maybe. But that's a weird way to bring in guys. "I think this guy may have worked an IWRG undercard before! Fly him in!" Damian gets on the stick and talks for a few minutes, and literally 80% of what he says is muted. Then Sagrada grabs the mic and the same thing happens. I have no clue what they said, but apparently it was a) bad enough to be unsuitable for TV, and b) so important that it had to be left on the broadcast, even if you couldn't understand what they were saying. And so here we are, 10 minutes into a 30 minute broadcast, with no wrestling having occurred. This would be like Raw starting their first match at the 40 minute mark. Is this why the "Revolution" is in Pro Wrestling Revolution? I'm still completely unclear about what exactly is supposed to be revolutionary about any of this. It's a name that's dumb enough to get angry about if you actually think about it. How, in any way at all, is anything they do revolutionary, or even just a change from the norm?

Match itself was not great, but decent. Sagrada looked enormous here, and I've seen him before in this fed and he was as lazy and selfish as you remember him being. But here he really busts butt and seemed like he was really trying to not dog it. He was slow (his majistral took forever) but he took some big bumps for a fat guy crammed into a bodysuit (nice backdrop bump and a nice spill into the ropes) and while he didn't look great, he tried and that's worth something. Gallo Tapado was probably the best of the bunch here as he really worked from bell to bell, always doing something. It was not a performance I was expecting and he really tried to make this match into something more than "let's work around Damian stooging for Atlantis". He really worked hard to turn it into a tecnicos vs. rudos battle, threw some fine armdrags, nice apron work, did a nice springboard body press onto Damian onto the ground (which always looks extra great when it's outdoors and into dirt, like this was). So yeah, sorry for making fun of you up above Tapado. Damian kind of worked like 2014 Damian would work, which is wander around and punch people, take a couple spots from Atlantis, and then hit the floor to jaw with fans. Zokre had a weird billy goats beard sticking out of the bottom of his mask (unsure if it was real beard or beard on mask) but Atlantis had several fun spots involving him ripping at the beard. I especially liked Atlantis holding the beard while climbing up to the top, then doing a cool leverage "beard drag" jumping off and flinging him. The whole match is essentially arm drags, leading to multi-man pinfall attempts (the estrella, the triple sunset flip, etc.), with the big springboard body press by Tapado being the big high spot. Not a mind-blowing match, but fun enough to air for sure.

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Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 8/9/14

More matches from the 5/18/14 show in Morgan Hill.

1. Los Campesinos vs. The Persian Dynasty (Kia and Cyrus)

I'm not sure I've seen either team here before (although I have seen Welsh indie pop band Los Campesinos before…), but I immediately appreciate that the show starts with the Persian Dynasty attacking Los Camps at the bell. No ring entrances, just brief intros. That's maximizing your short time! Good. Campesinos are called Numeros Uno y Dos. Not sure which Persian guy is which. One has a mask and the other doesn't. Camps wear full red and white body suits, and I think I've maybe seen the chubby one before. Match itself wasn't much to write about. It went about 6 minutes, nobody looked very good. The fed really pushes itself as lucha libre, obviously, but it's weird as most guys in the fed don't work anything close to a lucha style. It's pretty standard wrestling, only the guys wear masks most of the time. I mean…I guess Los Campesinos did dropkicks at one point, but they were kind of sloppy. Both teams were pretty sloppy in general. Persians controlled with bodyslams, Kia (I think) hit an ugly leg drop at one point, and some not good chops and wimpy elbows in the corner (but they kinda looked like the type of elbows that look really bad, but probably actually hurt the other guy). Kia hits a nice yakuza kick at one point. On the hot tag one of Los Camps does these goofy uppercut things, that I'm not actually sure what they were supposed to be, and the match ends shortly after with double sunset flips. Huh. This was not good.

2. Battle Royal!

Bunch of people coming out for this, with Ultimo Panda, Famous B, JR Kratos, both of the tag teams from above, Savanah Riley and another woman. Kratos immediately goes after a woman, which is a really odd thing for the biggest face in the match to do, considering there's at least a 120 lb. difference, and there are several actual males in the match. But yeah, good guy, you go grab that woman by the hair! The ring announcer also regularly states over the mic for parents to keep their children in their seats so they don't get hurt. Where would both the children and wrestlers be going during this battle royal that would involve children getting hurt!? This was a pretty standard battle royal (read: not interesting to live crowd or television viewers) with people wandering around until it was time for eliminations to take place. Pistolero tried bringing extra stuff to it by attacking women, and then women getting their revenge. Famous B also tried bringing some personality by hiding behind Savanah. Spot of the match was probably JR Kratos press slamming the other gal out of the ring onto one of Los Campesinos to eliminate her. So…I guess all the good spots involved men beating up women, which…yeah.

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Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 8/2/14

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

1. Pequeno Halloween vs. Octagoncito

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

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

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Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 7/26/14

This is pretty shockingly from one of their most recent shows, the 5/18/14 show in Morgan Hill which featured a Jushin Liger vs. Blue Demon Jr. match that I'd actually be really interested in seeing. The odds are that we'll never actually get to see that match. I'm still waiting on the Santo matches they ran a year or two ago.

We immediately start with a tremendous use of paid for TV time, as we get the audience standing during a recording of Whitney Houston singing the National Anthem. La Migra then interrupts the Mexican National Anthem with their entrance, but I guess we needed the full context of what happened to really show how dastardly they are. This promotion is oddly obsessed with showing full entrances and time killing mic work, often starting a match 10+ minutes into a 30 minute show. And sure enough,  we get the bell here at the 13 (!) minute mark of the show. I guarantee the match would have been just as enjoyable if they just opened from the ring bell.

1. Derek Sanders & Colt Stevens vs. Los Gallineros

I assume these are the same Crazy Chickens from Lucha VaVoom (they ARE wearing tights that say Lucha VaVoom after all) but I don't remember who they were at this point. TJ Perkins? Rocky Romero? Scorpio Sky? All possible. One of these chickens seems chubbier than other chickens I've seen, so who knows. Also not sure who Colt Stevens is, maybe a Bay Area guy I've never seen before. So…this match happened. Wasn't bad, wasn't really good. It was a 12 minute match stretched out over a 30 minute show. Sanders is always solid if unspectacular. Best part of the match was probably when he leveled a chicken with a clothesline and that chicken flipped over and bumped in nasty fashion. Couldn't get a good read on Stevens here as he didn't get to work much of a match. Chickens matches tend to be built 85% around chicken comedy spots. They don't ever seem to spend too much time in danger, so it's mainly the rudos stooging, or taking offense from the chickens. Great for kids, probably more fun live, didn't do tons for me on TV. Chickens do have some nice spots, including a great double springboard somersault sentons, but it's tough to get too invested when the match is formatted for minimal drama.

This show, man.

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Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 7/19/14

This week they show more matches from the SF show we went to on 2/22/14. At least they're showing matches, plural, as opposed to stretching an 11 minute match out to fill 30 minutes.

Pistolero vs. El Campesino

I believe both of these guys are Pro Wrestling Revolution trainees. I've seen Pistolero before and he seemed fine, and this would be my first time seeing Campesino. We did not see this match live as we felt it was more important to savor our delicious meal at Papito than rush over to see an opener. I'm pretty sure this was the only match that happened before the woman's 3 way (that I wrote up a couple weeks back). I really liked Pistolero in this. He doesn't really work a "lucha libre" style but instead more of an American indy style (especially with his snap mare into big kick to the back), but he has nice chops, cuts low on a clothesline, commits to missing a big elbow off the top, feeds Campesino's armdrags well, and hits a mean Tenryu-style falling clothesline that had a bunch of speed and force behind it. Campesino didn't show me tons here, but didn't look bad. He didn't really have offense, instead doing some armdrags and sunset flip variations to win. I'd really like to see Pistolero against somebody else. His style would work easily with almost any worker, and while I'm not sure how long he's been working, he definitely had some polish.

El Mariachi vs. "La Migra" Derek Sanders

Live I remember this match being an evenly worked affair with no cheating, just two guys working a normal match, and with Mariachi coming off like the whiniest tecnico possible always whining about not getting a fair shake during the match. Here's what I wrote the other week about the promotion always making tecnicos look weak:

"Later in the live card there was a match between Border Patrol member Derek Sanders, against clear tecnico El Mariachi. I mean, he was the obvious tecnico, coming out in full mariachi gear in front of a 85% hispanic crowd, doing a stylish zapateado with his intricately dressed valet, facing a guy who came out shouting about sending Mexicans back home. And all through the match you had El Mariachi yelling at his valet, complaining about interference to the ref, and then threatening to break up with his valet when he lost. The thing is, there WAS no interference, and he lost 100% clean to Sanders. So your big tecnico just whined the whole match and then blamed his loss on his chica, and the promotion genuinely thought he would leave to a polite ovation from the fans. I mean just a completely clueless way to book tecnicos."

Watching the match again and match itself was better than I remember, with a finish way more confusing than I originally thought. Sanders looked good in this, working around the limited Mariachi. Mariachi worked a lot of headlocks and Sanders actually found ways to make them amusing. Another decidedly non-lucha match in a "lucha libre" fed (for the most part the only lucha thing in the fed is that they broadcast on spanish-speaking TV stations and a lot of their wrestlers wear masks). Mariachi's comeback is really just two clotheslines (nice ones) and a nice body press. The confusing moment I mentioned comes at the end, with Mariachi suplexing Sanders back into the ring, with Mariachi's valet then holding Mariachi's legs, allowing Sanders to fall on him for the win. I could not see that from where I was sitting. We were directly across the ring side that the "interference" happened on so from our angle it just looked like Sanders reversed the suplex for the win, and then Mariachi complained about interference that didn't happen.

But this finish was somehow even worse than that. What they did here was book Mariachi's own valet, who was not established in the least or had any sort of history with this audience, to turn on Mariachi…but then show immediate remorse and apologize to Mariachi. There was nothing whatsoever indicating that she was working with La Migra, and what would her motives be anyway? Is this some sort of far reaching plan that's been in the works for a year, just so Sanders could win the 3rd match on a card at some point?  She's wearing a traditional Mexican dress, does nothing to help Mariachi throughout the match, and apparently was only there to lead to a SHOCKING finish which nobody whomsoever could possibly care about. Just because something is unexpected doesn't make it good, or interesting. What could possibly be gained from telling an audience "Hey here's Mariachi's valet! SHE TURNED ON HIM! They're back together." All told over the span of 10 minutes. Introducing a character for the sole purpose of turning them is one of the cheapest, most narratively bankrupt ideas a writer can do, and here they didn't even have the balls to go all the way with it. Instead they pathetically tried to go for something deeper, really focusing on the valet's tortured facials as she held down Mariachi's boots. The ANGUISH she was going through! Hand to the temple, what had she done! Was it all worth it!? And it's not like this fed runs shows very frequently, so if god forbid this lamebrain story is something they actually intend to come back to, it will be months and months before the next chapter in this thrilling tale of betrayal. Truly one of the more clueless ways they could have chosen to finish this match. Unless they're really targeting a demographic of Mexican American males who feel like the only thing holding them back in life is their traditional Mexican spouse. That seemed to be the lesson I learned from this. Mariachi was making a name for himself, and about to win the title, until his traditional Mexican spouse held him back and crushed his dreams. Were men in the crowd supposed to go "hey yeahhhhh. My life would be WAY better without my woman holding me back!" So, so much dumber than I initially thought.

Thanks Pro Wrestling Revolution!!

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Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 7/5/14

The last several weeks they've been showing reruns of this show, but now they're back to showing fairly recent stuff (which is a nice trend compared to them showing 4 year old matches). This match was from the 2/22/14 show in SF that we all attended. We ended up running a little late as Tim wildly took a turn like he was trying to shake a tail, a turn nobody suggested he take. It's possible Tim is leading a secret life and was trying to avoid running into his secret family or something. So we walked into this match right when the bell rang.

1. Cheerleader Melissa vs. Christina Von Eerie vs. Savanah Riley

Pretty disappointed when this was announced as a three way. Three ways are always a mess, lead to tons of awkward exchanges, tons of weirdly shoehorned three person spots, one person disappearing for way too much time, just bad. I much rather would have seen a singles match with any combo of the girls. I'm unfamiliar with Riley, but she worked the crowd better than the others, threw some nice forearms and chops, seemed fine. I've seen Von Eerie a lot more, and she is not very good. Really sloppy (she almost spikes herself delivering a sunset flip) and the "Oi" chants seemed a little lost on the audience made up mostly of hispanic children. Though I assume (if it hasn't happened already) that Colt Cabana will be using an Oy chant in a similar way Daniel Bryan does the Yes! kicks. This match had plenty of nice individual moments. Von Eerie took a nasty bump off the apron to the floor, letting Melissa/Riley work solo for awhile. Melissa bent Riley in half with a vicious indian deathlock/boston crab combo, and threw some cool axe kicks. The times the match fell apart were when they shoehorned  in 3-way spots, like the dreaded "superplex/powerbomb" which took a loooong time to set up for the payoff. Riley and Von Eerie kind of just had to freeze time, standing on the ropes waiting for Melissa to wedge herself into position to do the powerbomb, but Von Eerie is tiny so there really wasn't much space for Melissa to fit into. Just a predictable spot that rarely looks good, and really needs to be retired.  Brian Cage interferes on behalf of Riley, and Melissa takes him out with an awesome, out of control dive off the top, allowing Von Eerie to win the title back in the ring. Pro Wrestling Revolution always has a hilariously misguided and bad knack for making the good guys look bad in matches. Here they clearly wanted a big moment for Von Eerie, but they have her win the title by pinning the person who isn't the champ, while the actual champ (Melissa) dominated the whole match and was only out of the ring because guy twice her size interfered. Quite a special moment.

Later in the live card there was a match between Border Patrol member Derek Sanders, against clear tecnico El Mariachi. I mean, he was the obvious tecnico, coming out in full mariachi gear in front of a 85% hispanic crowd, doing a stylish zapateado with his intricately dressed valet, facing a guy who came out shouting about sending Mexicans back home. And all through the match you had El Mariachi yelling at his valet, complaining about interference to the ref, and then threatening to break up with his valet when he lost. The thing is, there WAS no interference, and he lost 100% clean to Sanders. So your big tecnico just whined the whole match and then blamed his loss on his chica, and the promotion genuinely thought he would leave to a polite ovation from the fans. I mean just a completely clueless way to book tecnicos.

Another major problem I was hoping the fed would fix on their TV hiatus, is the actual time management of their TV show. But my god it's as bad as ever. They have 30 minutes, and that's not a lot of time. But most weeks of television are one match stretched to fill the 30 minute run time. This three way was 11 minutes long, and it's the only match to get shown. We get 7 minutes of ring entrances, 11 minutes of match, and then 3 minutes of highlights of the match we just watched. Just a brutal and wasteful use of your 30 minutes. I know they don't have an extensive library, but their insistence on showing full ring entrances is maddening. This is time that can be much better spent showing some short features on your wrestlers, wrestler promos, promoting upcoming events, anything. But stretching an 11 minute match over the 30 paid for minutes is so, so foolish. It should not take 6 weeks to show one event's worth of matches, but I know they're going to milk this whole damn event, match by match. It's stunning how clueless this fed is when it comes to their TV.

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Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 3/9/14

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

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

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

2. Pequeno Halloween vs. Octagoncito

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

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Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 2/15/14

This is appropriate as this match is from their 2/23/13 San Francisco show at John O'Connell high school, which is exactly where I am going tonight to see them. So they're showing the main event to their last show there, right before the next show. That's a cool idea. Good work, guys. They had a couple full commercials advertising tonight's show as well, though oddly billing Rocky Romero as 2nd from the top. You obviously lead with Blue Demon Jr., but I would think Super Crazy would be your 2nd lead. Who even knows who Rocky Romero is?

1. Brian Cage, Derek Sanders & Phoenix Star vs. Blue Demon Jr., El Dinamita & Kafu

Kafu is billed as being 6'4" which is hilarious as that means Demon would be about 6'1", and if you've ever stood next to a luchador you know the odds of them being over 6' are slim. We get a lot of ganging up on Demon to start which is cool, as most Demon matches I've seen don't see him selling or showing much ass. But all the rudos here get to take turns chopping him while he is helpless. Brian Cage is freaking massive at this point. He's close to Jon Anderson levels. He has a look that would work well in WWE, if they didn't do wellness testing. You know who may be a worse wrestler than Blue Demon Jr.? Kafu. I remember when this guy broke into APW and had a silly capoeira gimmick, and then went through his long Brody gimmick, and now is just some sort of semi-Brody who has been working 12 years and can't throw a clothesline. I don't think I've ever seen a match of his where he was anything but the worst guy in the match. Gotta tip my cap to Demon in this one as he clearly has his working boots on in this match. His kicks on Cage look real nice, then he does a nice double dropkick to clear Cage/Sanders out of the ring, and then actually breaks out a spinning headscissors against Phoenix Star! Follows that up with a nice baseball slide dropkick to the floor with a cool uppercut I've never seen him use. Who the hell is this guy? I hope he shows up when I'm there tonight. The match itself was fine, if not a little predictable. Once the tecnicos took over at the 2/3 point there was no real looking back. Not excited at all for the feuding refs things they have going on between Sparky Ballard and Tom Castor. Match ends with Sparky pulling up lame during Blue Demon's likely pinfall victory, but then Tom Castor saves the day by running in and usurping Sparky's authority. Man I don't want to see feuding refs. Maybe if the good guy ref was like a local kid with cancer or something and he got to come in and be the hero. I think that's the only thing that could make me enjoy that spot. I want my refs to be wallpaper, not focal angles during a match.

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Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 2/1/14

This is from the 1/27/13 show in Watsonville, CA, so we're at least getting stuff within a calendar year. So, I've done over 15 reports on this TV show. You readers that actually read the reports have probably noticed that I bitch and complain about how lousy (for the most part) this show has been. This is not hate-viewing on my part, I just really, really want this show to actually be good. They're a local fed with some workers that I like and it's rough watching them botch so many things in regards to the TV show and presentation. I don't think they're maximizing their opportunity. Over the last few episodes they've at least advertised the dates of their upcoming shows, which should have been a no-brainer from the beginning. They don't do any interviews or background on any of the wrestlers, the spend WAY too much time showing entrances (more on that in a bit), they often feature workers that haven't worked the fed in 2+ years, they put over the referees way too much during commentary. It's like the only lucha they've watched is Guadalajara, as it genuinely feels like the only episode-to-episode continuity they're building up is a potential Tom Castor vs. Sparky Ballard referees feud. There is no rhyme or reason to the matches they air. The dates of shows jump around wildly. The last three weeks have been one match each from one card in July 2012, the week before was some random matches from May 2010. One of the matches was not even particularly good. I'm unsure the benefits of showing almost 4 year old material, but there can't be many if the material in question isn't even good. "Hey, did you hear this Stone Temple Pilots album from 2010? It was horrible! But you should check out their new stuff!" Who are you? Why are you talking about a bad album from 4 years ago?  Why are you talking about STP? But then add to that the fact this is a PAID timeslot. They are paying to show this stuff. So if you're not showing your most recent stuff and making people want to see your current product, you'd likely want to showcase your best all-time matches. A mixture of both would make a lot of sense. "Here's some of our current roster, and here's a classic example of the kind of action you can expect LIVE!" It seems so simple. And yet...

1. El Mariachi, La Pantera & Ultimo Panda vs. Famous B, Fantasma de la Opera & Persian Prince

Over the last few weeks they've gone in a simple presentation direction, either as a way to focus more on specific guys, or (more realistically) as a way to milk their recorded footage to cover more airings. To do this they've been airing just one match per episode, regardless of match length. Thing is, I don't know if I've seen a match in the promotion go over 15 minutes, which means they have one short match stretched out over a full 1/2 hour of programming. It happened the other week with the Lady Apache match, and here we go again. We get FULL wrestler ring entrances and full announcer introduction. Each wrestler comes out separately. Slaps fives with the fans, walks all around the ring. We see ALL of this. We get to the 11 minute mark. Still entrances. We go to a commercial break. Long story long the first actual physical exchange does not happen until my DVR reads 16 minutes. 16 minutes!! Of a 30 minute show that you PAY TO AIR! How is this even possible!? Even then we get a lot of stalling to start, leading us into another commercial. So essentially most of the first 2/3 of their money was spent on guys walking to the ring, standing in the ring, and then doing "who can get this side of the crowd to cheer louder!?" spots. Good lord.

Match itself was fairly decent, as decent as a 9 minute match hacked by commercial breaks into 3 parts could be. La Pantera is not *THEE* Pantera, so pretty lame choice of name there. Panda is a smart gimmick by the promotion of putting a chubby not-very-good guy into a Kung Fu Panda costume. Doesn't matter that he's not good, the kids love it and it gets easy pops. Smart move. The rudos (team with Famous B) don't really get much offense, which is another thing that's really starting to grate on me about this promotion. Most of the matches are just extended tecnico squash matches. It's fine to have those on the card, give the kids something to cheer for, but 80% of the matches they air are tecnicos running wild on rudos, rudos rolling to the floor, and then tecnicos winning. Hardly any times in peril.

Why am I paying money to see these goofs live this weekend? Well, because they booked Timothy Thatcher and Super Crazy. But also...Rocky Romero Workrate Report coming this weekend!!!

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Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 1/25/14

There's a Pro Wrestling Revolution show in SF in a couple weeks, with Timothy Thatcher vs. Blue Demon Jr. as the main event. Oliver John is also on the card so this kind of acts as a sneak preview of what I'll see if I decide to attend (even though this match was from 7/28/12). This match may also serve as a move-for-move blueprint of the singles match I might see. It would not stun me at all to find out Blue Demon Jr. has exactly one singles match that he works with gringos. Oliver John is a good worker but Thatcher is clearly superior in my book, so if this match turns out decent I'd have high hopes the Thatcher singles could be better.


1. Oliver John vs. Blue Demon Jr.

Demon always does a bunch of rudo things even though he's a constant tecnico, similar to Hogan always using stuff like eye rakes when he's the ultimate good guy. Here we immediately start with Demon slapping John on a clean break and the crowd actually reacts like they're totally confused. John rolls to the floor and in an awesome moment threatens to slap a kid across the face, while another kid belts John in the head with his vuvuzela. He honestly could not have planned that better. Demon is capable enough on the mat and doing leverage exchanges that the opening stuff is compelling. He also is actually showing ass here which normally doesn't happen. I knew as soon as I wrote that stuff about Demon's exchanges being compelling it would bite me in the ass. Immediately after typing that Demon goes into the loooooong portions of his singles matches where he slowly gets his opponent into position for holds that don't look very painful, and then just lies in each of them for minutes at a time. John tries his damndest to make them look dangerous but nobody is buying it. We also go into our long stretch of the announcers talking about referee Tom Castor, who is a referee you would never at all notice if they didn't constantly point out that he's just doing his job. Ending is a rushed mess with the other members of La Migra running in, pulling out the ref, and John winning on a quick roll up counted by a second ref. John has a lot of personality so in the right spot he can look really good, but Demon was giving him next to nothing to work with, so this was what it was.

Still on the fence on whether or not I'll go see them live in a couple weeks. It's only $10, it's about a mile away from one of my absolute favorite restaurants (Papito!!), Thatcher is probably my favorite Bay Area worker, and the show also has Super Crazy and Willie Mac. Buuuuuttttt based on my previous live experience with them, the show will be a neverending hype show for a local hispanic radio station (so many "we'll give a free t-shirt to the loudest section" moments, even during the matches!), and also for every guy I'm excited to see live there's a dud like Ricky Romero or Blue Demon working opposite him. What to do what to do.

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Uprising Lucha Libre Workrate Report 1/18/14

This is another match from the 7/28/12 Watsonville show. Looks like this will likely be the only match shown on this episode, which is fine. You bring in two different workers from Mexico, you should be highlighting them (although they really should have had some sort of bumper the week before running down that this match would be shown next week). They are getting better, as in the new year they've at least been advertising upcoming live event dates. They even had a promo for an upcoming February card in SF, but seeing as the main event will be a Blue Demon Jr. singles match I can't really see heading out for that one personally. Still, they're smart and they get a bunch of local Mexican restaurants to sponsor them and I'm sure Blue Demon Jr. as a name plays well.

1. Lady Apache vs. La Diabolica

It's a bummer they have a 30 minute show and stretched a 13 minute match out to fill all that time. It made the whole thing feel pretty chopped up. Also, this struck me odd: The in-ring announcer announced Lady Apache as "One of the best wrestlers I have ever seen...Lady Apache!" Which is true. I can't think of many female workers, let alone luchadoras, who have had a better career than Lady Apache. But it seems bush league and fanboyish to have the ring announcer say "Gee this wrestler is good at wrestling!" Have the announcers do that all you want (although they were really busy doing their trademark move of pointlessly talking about the referee most of the match. I have no clue why they are making that a thing), but a ring announcer shouldn't be opinionated. I've never heard them do that for another worker, so why now? Feel free to announce credentials for a worker, but why give personal thoughts during ring intros?

Anyway, opening matwork was real good and the best part of the match. Apache has some cool leg picks worked in with smooth floatovers and Diabolica works with it well. The control segment gets kinda hacked up. It feels like we got all of it, just commercial breaks cut into the flow. Diabolica hits a big bronco buster and scrapes her shin across Apache's face. Tides turn with Diabolica taking a Cassandro bump around the post and then getting hit with a big Thesz press off the apron. Back in and Apache hits some alright backbreakers before Diabolica gets the win with a Gory bomb. Have to say I did not see them putting the title on Diabolica. I mean, she's in her late 40s and lives in Mexico City and won't actually draw too many additional fans to a card. I'm not even positive she's worked for the promotion after this, which would just continue a long indy tradition of putting a title on a non-regular. Match itself was perfectly fine, but again too bad it couldn't have been edited into the show format better.

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Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 1/11/14

According to Pro Wrestling Revolution's website, this 7/28/12 show from Watsonville, CA was a show "that Watsonville, CA will never forget!" So either Watsonville had their socks knocked on their ass by some awesome wrestling, or there was a horrible tragedy that will necessitate in memoriam t-shirts printed up so that they never forget that one horrible, tragic day in Watsonville.

1. Kafu & El Dinamita vs. Rik Luxury & Famous B

Man Kafu just brings nothing to the table. He's sorta big, he has no presence whatsoever, almost all of his moves are horrible 2008 Roderick Strong backbreaker variations (a chokeslam into an over-the-knee backbreaker is so fucking stupid that he deserves crippled arthritic knees in his late 30s. That is the most indy-riffic move I have seen in a looooong time. I'm surprised it wasn't a chokeslam into a backcracker), he throws some wimpy clotheslines, he constantly telegraphs his spots, etc. He's just a bad worker, and he's not only been working for over a decade, but he's been pushed as a top Bay Area indy guy for almost as long. He was signed to WWE developmental  and worked as a doofus Brody clone for awhile. He wore big fur boots and did every trademark Brody spot, and then hilariously claimed in an interview that he had never heard of Bruiser Brody. I wish I could find some Brian De Palma interview circa-"Body Double" where he claimed he had never heard of Hitchcock, never seen "Rear Window, only heard of "Vertigo" in reference to dizziness. It should be noted that I *LOVE* Brian De Palma, and have never enjoyed a Kafu match in the slightest, so any "Blow Out" fans out there don't get all worked up thinking I was making a direct De Palma/Kafu comparison.

Pro Wrestling Revolution seems really obsessed with getting over their referees. The announcers talk about them constantly, way more than they mention the workers by name during a match. Sparky Ballard and Tom Castor, Sparky Ballard and Tom Castor, Sparky Ballard and Tom Castor. Tom Castor is a hispanic referee who works like a totally normal referee, but the announcers talk about him so much during the match it comes off really strange. You would never even notice him as a referee if they weren't constantly talking about him. It's so bizarre. A tecnico will take a big move, kick out, and the announcers will praise Tom Castor for being in position to make the call. Can you imagine CM Punk kicking out of the RKO and hearing the announce team put over Mike Chioda for counting? WWE has fucking Scott Armstrong as a ref and he's only even been referred to by name a few times over the last 8 years on TV. You know why? Because nobody watching pro wrestling gives a flying fuck about who is refereeing the match, even if it's somebody fucking killer like Scott Armstrong. Refs are fucking wallpaper. Keep that shit in the background.

Tag match itself was pedestrian. Kafu stinks, and Dinamita is a slightly better Kafu clone (they look really similar, Dinamita seems more athletic). Match structure is kinda killed as Famous B/Luxury have to act like Kafu and Dinamita are giant monsters, but Kafu and Luxury are essentially the same size, so you get a lot of fear stooging, but Kafu doesn't have an ounce of fearsome presence so this is kinda dead on arrival.

Also, not one second of lucha libre in this (there was an armdrag, so...there you go). I may have to retitle these "Uprising Lucha Libre: Not Sure What They're Going For Here" since I find myself saying that outloud whenever I watch it.

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Uprising Lucha Libre Workrate Report 12/1/13

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

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

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


2. Octagoncito vs. Pequeno Pierroth

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

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