Found Footage Friday: MORE BRAZOS IN PANAMA~! IWRG RETRO~! EXTRA EL BRAZO~! BRAZO CIBERNETICO~! DR CEREBRO~! MR NIEBLA~!

El Brazo/Brazo de Plata/Brazo de Oro vs Gemelos Infernales/El Taur Panama

MD: Very fun to see the usual Panamanian rudos as the heroes here. And they gave you no doubt on who to root for. The Brazos ran out with bats and beat their opponents around the ring for a short primera. They kept it going with the usual nice strikes (Oro with big sweeping shots) and Porky ripped at Taur's mask. A little bit of miscommunication led to a pretty spirited comeback, including Porky getting bloodied up and Taur smashing him him from across the arena with a running chair shot. They ripped the sports uniforms off of the Brazos too. The ref was counting quick for the locals too and things advanced on to Brazos comedy into the tercera. Gemelos did their headbutt thing with Oro stooging all over the place. As always one of them was more the worker and the other was more into the theatrics. We didn't get the more advanced exchanges that the one Gemelo was capable of as things stayed pretty light. Taur stood tall against Porky including a big bear hug that popped the crowd. There was more fun miscommunication and another quick splash. You definitely got a lot of the Brazos act here, but you always kind of wish they led with the fun stuff and escalated to the bloody brawling as opposed to the other way around.

PAS: Man 2023 has been the year of new Brazos matches popping up. This was pretty great with the Brazos cleaning house with baseball bats, and Super Porky bleeding a ton. Top rope Porky splash is one of the most violent moves in wrestling history and he breaks it out here. Structure was a bit wonky like Matt mentioned, but it was still a total blast. Panamanian lucha forever!

IWRG Retro 1/20/23

Paramedico/Colt vs Tigre Metalico/Zonik 2000 IWRG 7/12/2001

MD: Short match in two falls, mainly due to Zonik's arm getting hurt (real or otherwise). Tigre Metalico is, in fact Metalico, and he looked good paried with Paramedico at the start. The second Colt and Zonik came in, however, Colt started bullying him. He was solid in that role. The arm went down early and a lot of the rest of the match was a two-on-one against Tigre. There was a bit of hope on the outside in the segunda but Zonik couldn't do with it, selling the arm as he was, and he tapped bringing it back to two-on-one and a definitive win for the rudos.

El Brazo/Bombero Infernal/Dr. Cerebro vs Brazo Cibernetico/Halcon Dorado/Mr. Niebla IWRG 1/17/99

MD: More of an angle than a match. You'd barely know Niebla was in this, for instance. It was all centered around the inner struggle of El Brazo on whether or not he'd punish his brother or even allow his brother to get punished. As angles go, it was a good one, with Brazo really writhing, Halcon Dorado trying to appeal to him and Brazo Cibernetico bleeding all over the place as Cerebro and Bombero got increasingly frustrated at Brazo as he'd fight the other tecnicos but not his brother. To Bombero's credit, he really threw himself around the ring with his dropkicks. He just had a way of tossing his whole body into his offense which really came through in the small bit we had here. Anyway, Brazo decides that blood is thicker than water and saves his bleeding brother, laying down for his opponents. That's when things really pick up though, as Los Oficiales run down to put a beating on the Brazos and Platino running out to make the save (which set up a trios title match the following week).

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Found Footage Friday: IWRG RETRO~! CEREBRO~! COCOS~! VILLANOS~! CANEK~! SCORPIO~! OFICIALES~!

IWRG Retro 9/8/22

MD: IWRG is posting old stuff. Some of it is new. Some of it is rare. We are very happy about this development.

Fantasy/Zonic vs. Rey Cuervo/Caballero Azteca 4/11/99

MD: This is the "rare" one as opposed to the "new" ones, as it was apparently on tape lists. It's a pretty fun way to spend eight minutes. About half of that is Cuervo and Azteca beating down the tecnicos and it's solid comfort food. The comeback comes on a miscommunication dropkick and goes pretty quickly into a finishing stretch of sorts as this is just one fall. Most of the heat ends up on a rudo ref who misses a tag early and misses Fantasy's shoulder being up late. It's all light stuff with a real opening match feel, but colorful, with the biggest issue being that we lose out on the native audio to the new commentary, which is a problem throughout the show but less of an issue with the matches with more substance to them.

Dr. Cerebro/Paramedico/Cirujano vs. Los Cocos 12/23/01

MD: We've got Rojo, Blanco, and Verde for those keeping score, and they come out with "Super Capo" as their valet, which feels like a big deal. Rudos ambush early and make quick work out of the clowns to end the primera. Cerebro is great here directing traffic and flipping off the rope to crush someone or kick them in the face. He bites Rojo's hand after the submission for the heck of it. In the segunda, he goes from hanging out in the corner and watching the violence to hitting a spring up turning headbutt foul to a hung up Rojo. Apparently that impressed the production team so much that they decided to show it in slow motion instead of the moment of comeback. Both Blanco and Verde looked good here, with the best spot maybe Verde on the apron ready to jump and Cerebro diving at him only for his legs to pop up so Cerebro ends up sliding across the apron and off screen errantly. Tercera had some comedy miscommunication, submissions that were broken up one after the other and a pretty nice tope suicida train, with Paramedico all but sailing into the crowd. That cleared the ring for Rojo vs Cerebro and a pretty definitive and crowd-pleasing stunner finish on Cerebro. Big takeaway here was how good he looked overall.

Canek/Villano III/Villano IV vs. Scorpio/Guardia/Vigilante 8/22/96

MD: I don't think I've seen much Scorpio, Sr. before but he looked like an old, decrepit rudo with spaghetti like hair that was made to be taken by Canek in an apuestas match.  This was super libre and all about the numbers game, with as much mask pulling as I can remember seeing in one match. The rudos attacked the Villanos before Canek could come out to even the odds but the tecnicos fired back after a couple of minutes of beatdown to take the primera. There was already a lot of mask pulling here, all around, with Guardia and Vigilante spending a good chunk of the match just trying to keep their masks on. Between falls, Scorpio successfully got Canek's mask and that led to a 3 on 2 advantage as he had to run to the back. The beatdowns were solid here and utilized the super libre rules. Scorpio stood out and kept things interesting, in the primera by choking Canek with his own cape and in the segunda, by forcing Villano III into the corner, seated, groin first, and just jamming his feet into his back. Eventually, Canek rushed to the rescue with a new mask, but super libre or no, the refs seemed to call it after too many rudo fouls to try to stem the turned tide. I have to assume that this led to a bunch of mask challenges that went nowhere. Some satisfying lucha for lucha's sake in this initial drop.

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