Lucha Memes (Chairo Bill Vol. 5): 2020-04-05

Recapped: 2020-04-05

This was an empty arena show held in Coliseo Coacalco. It had been billed as a live show but was taped some day prior. The matches didn’t appear to be edited but the time between matches may have been reduced. The broadcast makes a point of showing the ropes being cleaned after the first match but not again, which makes me think perhaps they weren’t.  

Matches:

La Heroína beat Infest and Lunatik Extreme
(4:09, ok, 00:02:59)

Heronia was the weakest link in the opener, had the most obvious blown spot, seemed to get hurt in the process and still won. She was sort of the sole TWE rep on what was supposed to be a co-promoted show, so maybe it made sense for her to win, but her matches are usually this sort of struggle. She’s a character but not good enough of one to make it work. It’s not connecting for me. I didn’t know much about Infest but he did well here and Lunatik Extreme was about normal for him. There’s not much to make out of a four-minute match.

Alas de Acero & Iron Kid beat Cobre & Moria and Corsario Negro Jr. & Drako
(10:45, Iron Kid Volador Spiral Cobre, great, 00:14:50)

The three-way tag was the best match on the show. It was a little sloppy but a lot crazy; it was a missing AAA opener. La Fortaleza (Corsario & Drako) always seem out of place in these spot heavy matches, but they’re right two sorts of heavies to take the tecnico offense and keep it together. This also seemed like the rare match where Alas de Acero outshined Iron Kid (because he was more willing to do an insane thing.) This match built better than most indie matches, ended well, and distracted enough from the emptiness around it.

Garrobo & Gremlin beat Diosa Quetzal & Hahastary
(13:55, good, 00:35:21)

I’m slowly making my way through some recent IWRG, where Diosa Quetzal tries to do things in women’s matches and sometimes it works. It worked out a lot better here, which has to be credited to Gremlin & Garrobo. The better of the two was Garrobo, but they both did a lot to make the women the stars of the match. Turning this into an elimination match didn’t add to any story and Gremlin & Hahastary struggled on its own. Still, this was very watchable for a match I wasn’t expecting much from

Aramis beat Perro De Guerra Jr.
(9:49, head drop, good, 00:59:11)

This match came across as a surprisingly hard-hitting match, though it was also the one I was most distracted during. Perro de Guerra came across well, but surprisingly had no character for a Coliseo Coacalco show; he was just a guy in trunks with an odd name. Guerra similarly doesn’t have a lot of flash to his wrestling style, but he does the simple things well enough to be a good fit with Aramis. He was also a man who was probably hurting after this match; Aramis dropped him hard a few times, including on the finish. This was a basic Aramis indie match – no dive – but he still is interesting even stripped down a little bit.

Psicosis II beat Toxin
(12:48, powerbomb onto the chairs, ok, 01:16:23)

Psicosis isn’t a compelling singles wrestler in a normal situation and there’s nothing he and Toxin could do to cover for it an empty arena. The vacant arena situation bothered me less on this show than most of the ones I’ve seen, but the emptiness felt overwhelming here. They also went longer than they needed to for being a match with no particular dynamic. There was nothing substantially wrong with this, but it was just two guys doing spots in an empty arena with nothing interesting to it.

Ricky Marvin beat Arez
(10:10, cradle, good, 01:36:54)

It took until the last minutes of the match for me to get there, but I was left hoping Arez wouldn’t finally get the win over Marvin in this match. It’d be a shame to get that moment in front of no fans, and in a match that wasn’t epic enough to make up for that. Marvin & Arez had their usual strong chemistry, though it didn’t come off as big given the conditions. It’s like a match they would’ve brought to an audience to get over with an audience who didn’t know them in Tampa this weekend, not as much as the next chapter in a rivalry mostly in this promotion. The finish was clean but close enough that this is still unsettled, the fighting was good but not being too risky in front of zero people. This may have been as good as it should’ve been in this situation but the other matches meant a little more to me.