Chilanga Mask Love Letters 2018

Difunto vs. Masada vs. Último Demonio vs. Wotan (Chilanga Mask, 5/20/18)

SG: Matches with eliminations give you a lot to talk about, but this is one fall to a finish. Luckily for us, it’s one of the most sheerly violent matches that I’ve ever seen. Wotan is fully unhinged even to start, cracking a giant beer bottle over Demonio’s head to some of the shriekiest of audience shrieks. Masada looks giant compared to him but is really out to give one of his most physically active performances since who knows when. Feels very much like him to not want to get shown up on the road, even if I appreciate his dickishness/desire to not do shit making him one of the few American deathmatch guys ever who wrestles with a genuine sense of hierarchy. The first half is mostly Difunto/Masada primarily pairing off in the ring with Demonio/Wotan in the crowd and eventually the merch table. 

Bless whoever had coffee mugs printed out because Wotan is ready to blast Demonio with a few, just insane. I think that he delivers about 200 headbutts in this match, all as nasty as what Black Terry did to him here a couple years before. Demonio’s refusal to not engage him in stand-and-strikes really pays off for the match in a rare occurrence because I can’t remember the last time that someone broke a mug over Ishii’s head. I’m less bothered by the deathmatch magic elves and some revealing camerawork than I could be because it adds to how grotesque it all is, because the action is already in the Bumfights territory. Like, what’s more desperate than Wotan sticking Demonio’s head with skewers that he’d already been stabbed with by Masada?

The best lucha brawls come off like real fights between broken men in bad neighborhoods, and no offense to whoever owns the Toyota dealership with which Coliseo Coacalco shares a lot, but that’s already the ennui of this shit, so why not go for the gusto? The final third breaks down, less in quality but more in depravity, as a chair table on the floor comes into play. Deathmatch magic elves and all. Masada nearly breaks Wotan’s neck with a Death Valley from the apron onto it and it just gets worse from there after two nasty powerbombs on the outside. 

Meanwhile Difunto has bled more than anyone and is barely making it into the review! His dueling beer bottle to the dome spot with Wotan goes as well as you’d expect. Finish is Demonio getting his revenge and knocking Wotan unconscious with a falling powerbomb from the top to the chair. Well, it’s sort of a finish, because Difunto & Masada then stage-dive in onto the two as the staff attend to Wotan. And then a fight breaks out in the crowd after a fan yells out that they should let Wotan die instead of getting him treatment. Impulso, there to carry his brother to the back, responded by kicking the shit out of someone who might not have been that fan. Also, Facade is here. Everyone should just know that. Sadly, he didn’t kick the shit out of a fan.

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2019 Ongoing MOTY List: San Juan Pantitlan Brawl

44. Romano Garcia/Rocky Santana/Hijo del Fishman vs. Wotan/Fly Star/Toxin BELLO 9/14

ER: Gimme some young bleeders and some crazy old men and just let them go to war baby! This was wall to wall chaos, more chairshots than I could count, too many ugly spills. Santana and Garcia are both in their 60s, and Santana has that awesome old man luchador hunch. Neither is closed to washed, and I'm in love with the amount of punishment they can take and dish out. Fishman ups the crazy to keep up with his AARP discount eligible partners, and he's the one who really takes things into the fans. Fishman and Wotan take this to the people, loved the cool spear early in the match into a regular family (4 year old curled up sleeping directly behind them), and right before the finish we get the spot of the match when Fishman hits a running death valley driver into a set of chairs. Wotan gets a hard trash bucket bounced off his head a few times, and I love how the fans allegiances change as the match goes on. At first they are loud and proud for Wotan, but as the match goes on they clearly get behind Rocky, and how could they not!? Everyone takes gnarly chairshots off the head, and there was a running game of seeing who could could take a harder shot to the chest, with plenty of contenders. Wotan blistered Garcia with a double handed chop, Fishman leveled an elbow directly into Wotan's sternum, and the crowd was responding to every stiff strike. Peak crazy hits when Rocky and Wotan started flying at each other like territorial bighorn rams, and seeing Rocky Santana clonking coconuts midair in his mid 60s means I haven't been going out of my way enough to write about old man Rocky Santana matches (although a lot of Rocky/Romano match links I click end up being just 3 minute clips). The moment of Rocky going from violent headbutt offense into classic lucha exchanges (the first of the match) was a genuinely beautiful thing. I loved that late match exchange between Rocky and Toxin, showing that an old bleeding man can still do graceful sequences. Oh, and then eat a suplex into the turnbuckles. This kicked ass.

PAS: Wotan must have really hated his grandfather, because any time he is in the ring with a senior citizen he is unleashing hell. This isn't as good as the Wotan vs. Black Terry match (although maybe 20 matches in the history of wrestling are), but is still a heck of a grizzly brawl. There was some sort of broken concrete in the ring which made even the simplest bumps look super painful. There was way too much head trauma, I mean Garcia and Santana are already at the age where the average person forgets where their keys are, add in all of those chair and bucket shots and they will be drooling in their pudding in a couple more. There was a couple of modern wrestling moments which looked off, random Toxin Canadian destroyer and a tower of doom spot which took forever to set up and looked bad, but when they kept it simple and violent, it was simple and violent.


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Lucha Worth Watching: Wotan vs. Fly Star! Hijo de Canis Lupus! Dragon Bane!

Wotan vs. Fly Star FILLM 3/16/19

ER: Hey, it's 13 minutes of grimy indy lucha asskicking, bleeding, and nasty spills onto concrete. I love those things in my wrestling! This is a super libre which should always be code for "covered in blood" and wouldn't you know, that code is still active! Wotan starts by throwing Fly Star violently into, onto, and through some chairs (those hard ass old wooden arena seats), ripping a chair back loose for later, and hitting quick and mean headbutts whenever Fly Star puts up a fight. By minute 3 of what we have here, Fly Star's face is already covered in blood. Wotan is obviously going to keep headbutting him and punching him in the face, and the great thing about Wotan is even though he might beat the blood out of you, he will happily donate his own plasma to the bottom of your boots. Fly Star hits him with a dropkick on the floor that sends him tumbling, punches him in the head, and eventually tries to do a corner dropkick that had to be Fly Star seeing just how hard he could run and kick Wotan in the jaw. I love when Wotan's mask is ripped and loosely covering only his mouth, blood running everywhere, and both guys still decide who hits harder. I dug Wotan just wasting fly Star with a double chop, with Fly Star taking it as if he'd been hit by a truck, and I imagine Star's chest and neck were already tender, because Wotan had thrown 5 of the hardest possible lariats up to that point in the match. Both guys take HUGE violent bumps to the floor on missed offense, with Fly Star crashing hard on a slingshot senton, and then Wotan crashing hard on a somersault senton off the apron. These guys are dying out there, but neither man really got finished, the batteries just kind of ran out or just plain broke. It looks like we'll have to run this back again with another violent stip.

Dragon Bane/Hijo de Canis Lupus vs. Aramis/Imposible IWRG 4/28/19

ER: Super high octane sprint, that made smart use of partner saves to keep the crazy spots turned up without making for any eye rolling kickouts. They also figured out that the best way to make a stupid dance-y sequence look good is to just work stiff. Spinning around someone and hitting a superkick is fine by me, as long as you're Aramis here and look like you realign a jaw. The dives were expectedly spectacular: Bane and Lupus took both tecnicos with them on bullet topes into the front row, Aramis hits a gorgeous dive past the ringpost in the segunda, Imposible wears impossibly small trunks, etc. They throw in some fun visuals, like Bane running around the ring away from Imposible, only to get caught with a quebradora from Aramis, both Bane and Lupus taking vertical suplex bumps on the entrance ramp, and the saves all got great reactions from me as they went to big moves early and didn't turn the match into a bunch of kickouts and lying around. Hijo de Canis Lupus looked really good, had that same vibe Los Traumas had when they started to get noticed more. Lupus hit some of the hardest damn corner clotheslines I've seen this year, and the forcefulness of many of the strikes and running shots really added to the match. We also got a couple nice powerbombs, including Lupus tossing Aramis onto his partner with one, followed by immediately rolling him through to hit his own sitout powerbomb. The breakdown at the end was fun, and the way they staggered the pins was nice. Aramis surprised me with an awesome ankle lock to finish things, suddenly making me want to see Aramis work a Bloodsport show.

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2018 Ongoing MOTY List: Demus vs. Wotan

37. Demus 3:16 vs. Wotan Club Apolo 4/1

PAS: Small show dirty floor, possible staph infection Demus brawls are my single favorite type of match in 2018. This one was a little lightubey for my tastes, although at least there wasn't any long construction spots, and more just smashing each other with tubes, they used the tube shots in the place of strikes, and I wish they just used punches. Lots to love in this though, Demus is such a persistent fucker, he is like a wolverine who smells blood, and I love all of his takedowns into headbutts and punches. I also loved Wotan grabbing him and just fireman's carrying him into a discarded pile of tubes, felt more like a spot in an action movie fight, then a garbage wrestling match. For some reason these guys are incapable of having a decent finish, as this had a loooong double count on a vertical suplex and then a Demus low blow, two in a row between these guys soiled by a stinko ending.

ER: This goes to the floor about a minute in and I already knew Phil would be way on board at that point. Not long after that and Wotan is bleeding from bites, and we're in our Demus small show comfort zone. The tubes are distracting, as there are tons of them set up, and I too would rather just see these two bleeding weirdos punch each other. They do, that, and I did like the moments where the tubes came into the match a bit more organically: Instead of one guy grabbing one while the other waits, we had a big moment where Wotan hefts Demus up and drops him with a death valley driver into a pile of them, with Demus following with a double leg takedown into the tubes. A pile of tubes that required no match pausing for spot set-up, that I can get behind. Chairs get flung, a big stack of connected plastic chairs gets used, children get protected by grossed out mothers, it's definitely a small show Demus match. My favorite moments of the match are the quieter ones, like Demus celebrating only to have Wotan run up behind him and punch him right in the kidneys, then deliver a few more great body blows to drop Demus in the corner. Demus really is one of the all time great bleeders in wrestling, and both guys bleed all for one of the most putrid match finishes of the year: The match was last man standing, supposedly, even though pinfalls had been counted all match, and a vertical suplex just leads to them lying there, fans confused about the finish, Demus improvising a new low blow finish, total confusion, match basically just ends. So awful. How can they not think of a better finish to a match!? BUT we had 10 minutes of guys pasting each other before that, and this match wouldn't have made tape a decade ago, so sit on it.


2018 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2017 Ongoing MOTY List: Demus vs. Wotan! Beard vs. Hair!

89. Demus 3:16 vs. Wotan Generation XX1 12/18

PAS: This was a hair v. beard match which adds to Demus's under the radar wrestler of the year candidacy. Wotan is too enamored with goof lightube shit to really be on a list of the greatest wrestlers in the world, but a couple of times a year he puts that to the side and just has these filthy hellacious brawls and they are awesome. We open in the crowd and Wotan is already bloody and Demus is throwing him recklessly into walls and chairs. I love how Demus uses his tiny body, he will just hurl it at whoever he is fighting, at one point they are both on their knees throwing punches and Demus just pounced forward into Wotan with a tiny tackle. I didn't love the finish, lots of setting up a particle board on some chairs and the Demus misses a splash and gets pinned, still there was plenty of this to love, and I am super sad about Demus shaving his awesome beard.

ER: I don't believe I have ever seen a mask vs. beard match, so it was weird seeing "Barba vs. Cabellera" at the top of the screen. It's also weird that a guy with a mask is putting up his hair, and a guy with hair is putting up his beard. Did Albert ever work a back hair match? If Lucha Underground never does a beard vs. beard match with Mrs. Madness and Mrs. Havok's sons then they're idiots. Joey Ryan feels like someone who should have already been touring with a "I shave ALL my body hair if I lose" match. Santino could have worked a unibrow match. Really, now that we know that a beard match is a thing, it just highlights how uncreative every other apuestas match has been, with proper credit given to Bill Dundee putting up his wife's hair.

And aside from an absolutely terrible, woeful ending, this match was awesome. Both guys are big bleeders, and the first shot we get of Wotan is him already covered in that deep, dark cherry blood that luchadors wear so well. We've already seen Wotan in maybe the best brawl of the decade, and sadly for him his best performances seem to come when he's opposite a total powder keg who will bring a beating to him. And Demus is certainly the most powder keg guy around these days. Demus-as-projectile is a guaranteed win, he's like this heavy medicine ball getting thrown at opponents. His cannonball always crushes, he flies into splashes and sentons, and he looks exactly like one of the aliens in Critters (seriously, tell me I'm wrong). Wotan has some nice offense (I really like his ankle roll senton, like Brad Attitude does, but with a little more lucha flair) and is a huge bumper (watch him fully commit to a massive missed dive as Demus sidesteps him). Both guys bleed buckets and throw big bombs into cuts, and really this match could have ended with both men just punching each other out and it would have landed in our top 25. But my heavens this ending was bad. We had an interminable prop set up, with the flimsiest board getting set up limply on 6 chairs, with the REF getting involved to help Wotan set up this spot that was never going to look good. Demus is selling this whole time, finally gets up and punches both men, then Demus takes time to readjust the awful prop, tries to splash Wotan but crashes through it and gets fast counted. What a terrible finish tacked on to a tremendous brawl. We would have been so much better off getting the video cut off and missing the finish. The match would have gone down as this legendarily clipped brawl and "Oh my god if only the match was complete!! Who knows what greatness we missed!?" Sometimes it's just better not to know.


2017 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Lucha Worth Watching: Nuevos Dinamitas! A Mask Match! More Wotan!

El Cuatrero/Forastero/Sanson v. Blue Panther Jr./The Panther/Pegasso CMLL 11/8

ER: Man I am loving Nuevo Dinamitas! This is a quick but action packed 2 falls finish. Una caida is standard but with some notable moments from Dinamitas, with their cheapshotting and great pratfall apron bumps; segunda kicks into high gear, with Dinamitas doing one of their huge press slams, Cuatrero and Forastero bumping big into the crowd (with Forastero booting a fan in the face on his way over), all the tecnicos hit massive dives, and later we get the Dinamitas hitting badass dives of their own. I love how the Dinamitas bump around, the way they do classic lucha bumps like the backwards one through the ropes to the floor, or how they take ranas, or how they throw big overhand chops and cut low on clotheslines. It's a classic style done by guys in their mid 20s, making it look great. I'm thinking Cuatrero is clearly the best at this point, but as with the Oficiales several years ago I look forward to monitoring them to see who makes gains.

Delta v. Galactar MDA 11/26

ER: Man did this stink. It was really, really bad. But I think this qualifies as "worth watching", because I hated it, but saw that it had popped up on a few year end top 10 lists. I can't see any explanation for how this would end up in a top 10 of any given month, let alone year, but if you have a spare 40 minutes you'd like to spend watching a match you may hate, then you should watch this. Delta - who you know from being the 5th or 6th best man in a CMLL trios match - versus Galactar - a man whose post-mask career you won't bother following. Spoiler alert. We get a quick primera and quick segunda, with Delta starting the segunda with his amusing rope flip headscissors to the floor, and after that he shows that either he can't properly do another move without stumbling the rest of the match, or that Galactar can be awkwardly out of position for nearly every move. Man Galactar was bad. He was good at taunting the crowd. That's important. Otherwise we would have two guys doing moves in a vacuum, as Delta sure wasn't acknowledging the crowd much. Galactar would at least hit a move and soak in the boos or adulation. It was everything else he stunk at. It seems like he blew up pretty early, and would just be so damn lazy on so many moves. Watch him Irish whip Delta, and by Irish whip I mean he kind of pats Delta's lower back and Delta runs across the ring on his own. This happens at least 4 times. We get a few big dives, always almost completely missing. Galactar hits an insane moonsault to the floor, and mostly hits a moonsault to the floor. His head somewhat grazes Delta. Delta hits a bullet tope and falls mostly short. Galactar has a much easier bump falling back into the seats. 

We get a few moments of them holding each other for balance up top, nobody even pretending they were opponents, just helping each other maintain footing so they could perform another move that would get another 2 count, BUT then give strength to the person taking the move, enough strength that they can stand up and do their own move right back! I mean, not RIGHT back, because they have to lie motionless on the mat in between all of these 2.9zzzz. There must have been 10 total minutes of "lying on mat" time. So they overly sell these moves by lying motionless for so long in between moves...and then they stand up and don't sell at all! It's an interesting, and horrible, approach. Moves mean nothing as they become entirely too predictable, way too quick. There is no drama as you know each close nearfall will just result in the guy who barely kicked out and lied in an exhausted heap, stand up and do a move of his own. For about 20 straight minutes. We get a false finish, and you all can guess that the first move of the restart is what was going to get the win, even though the move looked no more or less devastating than any other moves that got 2 counts the rest of the match, only this one came after a 3 minute break where nobody was taking moves. This was a really shitty match. It was 35 minutes long. 35 minutes of shit.

Wotan v. Impulso WMC 2/11/17

PAS: My quest to find the second great Wotan match continues. This was overall pretty enjoyable, although it had some of the same garbage match elements which made Wotan v. As Charo a chore. Early on in the match Wotan hits this crazy twisting tope which sends both guys into the 6th row, totally out of control and awesome looking, they also have this cool section near the end where they just throw big shots , chops and headbutts on the floor which was pretty violent. Still this had a bunch of stuff with lightubes, some cool and some awkward looking, a spot with a spiked pineapple which looked dumb and the finish which had Wotan light a table on fire, which goes out by the time he hits a top rope move. Wotan definitely has a set of skills but it may take a Black Terry level guy to shepherd it together.

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Lucha Worth Watching: Fuerza, Still Doing It; Y Tu, Wotan?

Fuerza Guerrera vs. Octagon (Liga Elite 9/9/16)

ER: This is a match up that has happened dozens of times in lucha history, and originally one of the reasons that Octagon was even a thing was because of how good Fuerza made him look. And it's still happening. He's still doing it. This match-up doesn't show up as often as it used to (a quick check shows that it hasn't shown up on tape in 4 years, but no doubt it happens often), and Octagon has gotten chubbier and slower, while Fuerza is just as nutty as ever. This is predictably a total Fuerza show, but an impressive show. Fuerza does all the work on everything, as the slo mo camera reveals; what looks like some violent tilt a whirl backbreakers in normal speed can be seen as Fuerza violently whipping himself into Octagon's knee, while Octagon doesn't even go into a full knee bend. But Fuerza makes them look great in regular speed. Octagon can still spin fast on armdrags, and Fuerza bumps fast for all of them. To make up for Octagon being able to do much of anything, Fuerza even hits a big time gusher, bleeding all over the ring, hitting a big flip dive (that Octagon mostly bails on) with blood dripping down his chest, kicks balls, and just keeps making Octagon look better than Octagon should look, 25 years later. You'd think this would have been annoying to him in his 30s, and that somewhere along the way he would stop trying so hard, but here he is in his 60s, still trying hard, still doing it.

Wotan vs. As Charro Innova Aztec Power 8/7/16

PAS: Wotan was in our 2016 MOTY, so when Powerbomb.tv dumped a bunch of indy lucha on the internet, I wanted to check out more Wotan to see if he is great on his own or a Black Terry creation. Verdict after this match is closer to a Black Terry creation. This has got to be As Charro Jr. or something as the original was super old in the late 80s. This starts out with some pretty good matwork and some nice brawling, but really falls apart when they break out the light tubes. After that it is some geek show jabbing and poking and some of the most egregious your turn my turn stuff I can remember seeing. For example As Charro hits a running death valley bomb into the turnbuckle and the very next move is Wotan hitting the same thing on him, didn't even bother to pretend to be hurt. Finish was a nothing run in too, I do want to check out a couple more Wotan matches, but this wasn't a good start.

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Black Terry Ordered the Jugs Filled With Water

Black Terry v. Wotan v. Canis Lupus v. Caifan Titanes Del Ring 10/30/16 - GREAT

PAS: Wotan and Terry had a stone cold classic earlier in the year, this wasn't that, but it had it's moments. Wotan and Terry didn't square off as much as I hoped they would, but I liked the Wotan v. Lupus sections, both guys bleed a ton and really wailed on each other. Terry matched up with Caifan and it was pretty great including old man Terry taking a case of beer bottles to the side of the head. There wasn't a ton of structure, but a lot of wildness. Finish pulled it down a bit as they did a weak double elimination on Terry and Caifan and then a low blow ref distraction pin. Felt a little house showish, but I enjoyed a bunch of the performances.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE BLACK TERRY

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2016 Ongoing MOTY List: Terry v. Wotan

1. Black Terry v. Wotan Chilanga Mask 8/21

PAS: Necro Butcher has pretty much disappeared over the last couple of years, and with Nick Gage back in jail there really hasn't been that kind of unhinged bloody slightly dangerous brawler around anymore. Enter in the sixty-three year old Black Terry who is the Necro we have been looking for. Terry has been having a hell of a year bleeding and brawling through a bunch of tiny gyms across Mexico, this weekend he even no showed an Arena Mexico event so he could bleed all over the rocks and dirt at Coliseo Coacalco. Wotan is a DTU guy and is perfectly willing to smash his forehead violently into Terry's he also had a pretty nice tope, and took a hard backdrop on the ground. Terry was a machine in this, hitting backfists, right hands, coconut headbuts. There was one hinky spot where Terry had to hold a chair on top of himself so Wotan could dropkick him, but otherwise everything was pretty flawless. By the end of the match both guys are rolling around in gravel and chairs punching each other in their bloody heads. Gritty violent and awesome.

ER: Ummmm. What. The hell. I have no idea who Wotan is, and I have no idea why he hates Terry but brother did I buy it. What the hell. This is easily one of the most violent wrestling matches I have ever seen. And the violence just keeps ramping up until I was just kind of staring at my computer screen with my jaw slack. It starts like a normal, expectedly violent Black Terry match. You've seen this backyard flea market before, you've seen these nasty headbutts, and then Wotan starts bringing out the nasty chairshots. He blasts Terry with a couple awful ones, really wings a chair at Terry's face.  This whole time the chops from both men are landing harder, super loud, the short punches are getting meaner, the simple kicks to the stomach are landing with a crack, Terry is throwing pointed knees right at Wotan's face, and then more chairs. Nasty shots. Terry holding a chair may be somewhat suspect, but that dropkick Wotan lands through the chair makes you start wondering if Terry is going to come up headless. And that's when Wotan just holds a chair in front of a kneeling Terry's head and punts it. HARD. Holy shit. If I didn't see on the match timer how long it was, I would have thought it was over right then, because god damn that kick. But Terry is crazy (seriously, Terry must be crazy) and he fights and he comes back mean and soon things spill out to the floor, back to where they started, and that's when things jump up to a level I couldn't believe. Wotan appears to be running fast away from Terry, Terry chasing, and then Terry comes around a corner just in time for Wotan to throw a chair HARD right into his face. Wotan hits a great tope and Terry goes sprawling into dirt and chairs and people. Both men are bleeding and dirty and bruised and cut. Wotan takes an insane backdrop bump into dirt and rocks. And then these men beat each other more violently than almost anything you've seen in wrestling. Literally fighting on the sharpest most annoying rocks, rolling through chairs, cutting up their bodies, punching each other over and over and over while women yell and people look on almost horrified. Terry grabs a beer bottle and bashes Wotan in the face with it a couple times. As Terry sat their beating Wotan's face - blocked by the camera - I was thinking that this video might become Exhibit A soon after. Match gets thrown out, both men stagger back up and fall around, fans want more, and yeah, this was insane. I genuinely don't know what it would take for another match to "out-violent" this one.


2016 ONGOING MOTY LIST

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