Tag: IAW

IAW: 2021-02-14 “El Club de la Lucha 1”

thecubsfan

Results

  1. Perro de Guerra Jr. beat Energía
  2. La Fuerza © beat Thanos to retain the NERW REVIVAL championship.
  3. Mr. Leo beat Tio Korton and Calibus and Lokillo
  4. Ciclón Infernal © beat Jitsu to retain the IWA Junior Championship
  5. Komander b Arez and Iron Kid
  6. Látigo © b Jimmy to retain the IAW Championship

The entire show is on Mas Lucha.

There wasn’t much of the way of story movement on this one. People kept their titles.

Notes

I wrote about this show as it streamed. A lot of this is going to be repeated.

Is Latigo the best champion in Mexico? I mean, I guess probably not, but Latigo continues to deliver every time he defends that IAW title. The championship graduated from ‘yet another random indie belt’ to ‘i’m excited every time a title match comes out.’ It’ll likely devolve back as soon as Latigo loses it, though it’s still a good run. I had high hopes for this matchup and they beat them. Jimmy failed in his goal to win a championship in Mexico (he’ll only get two dozen more chances) but he succeeded in his goal of getting very good at professional wrestling. I think they have a slightly better match in them, but I may just be missing a crowd.

The three-way was looking good until Arez got hurt on a flip. It does say something about how Komander’s improvement where this match still held together without Arez, even if it just more a highlight match. Komander was a guy who’s had his good nights and bad nights, and maybe he’s reaching a point where those good nights are more common. Iron Kid gets slightly mocked at RIOT as Mini Bandido. I think he’s actually turned into Junior Laredo Kid, the guy who shows up, gets inserted in a random match, is pretty good, takes the loss, never gets the attention. He’s in that same spot – talented enough that everyone wants to use him, missing that extra something (or a bit of luck) to get any attention. Iron Kid is a candidate for an “el Mago” new coat of paint, just to get him unstuck.

Maybe the deal with Jitsu is he’s not a good flips guy – or there’s just too many other better flips guys – and he’d be better off being a “hit people hard” guy. He and Ciclon Infernal went that route and it was the best Jitsu match I’ve seen. Ciclon Infernal came off more interesting than he has on the Vanguardia shows too.

The first half of the show wasn’t for me. I’ve got the same issues with Perro de Guerra here as the Memes show, and the second match wasn’t much better. Tio Korton would be better off working as a monster for 90% of the time and doing one highspot, but it instead feels closer to 50%/50%. Everyone’s he’s in the ring with can do dives, he’s usually the only guy who can do “be very tall and intimidating”, but he’s fighting against it. That dive here seemed like a message he should receive.

Ratings for Dumb Completeness

Energía vs Perro de Guerra Jr.: ok
La Fuerza © vs Thanos [NERW REVIVAL]: ok
Tio Korton vs Calibus, Mr. Leo, Lokillo: ok
Ciclón Infernal © vs Jitsu [IAW JUNIOR]: good
Arez vs Komander, Iron Kid: ok
Látigo © vs Jimmy [IAW CHAMP]: great

IAW: 2020-07-11 & 2020-10-10 shows

thecubsfan
very much a match where you can pick any 15 seconds and come up with a good GIF

Two for one.

The July 11th IAW took me a while to get to because the no fans atmosphere became hard to enjoy – this is one of many problems CMLL has too – but the Tromba versus Arez versus Latigo match should be seen anyway. I’m lower on the most, the short duration makes it hard for me to rate it better than Good, but it’s still plenty worthwhile for the totally different matches this crew is doing. They seemed to go into this match with the idea of doing no moves that anyone else had done before, or at least it felt that way for the first four or so minutes. The creatively was off the charts and this might have worked as a Great match for me if they could totally hold it together. They were just a little bit off from connecting at times. The finish made sense in that they were all going for their big moves, but it still felt way too short. I wonder if this is an actual result of it being a no-fans show if they would’ve been afraid of a negative reaction for the brief main event if there were ticket-buying people.

The women’s match on a typical Mexican indie show typically gets no more booking attention than “ok, just let the women have a match”, which occasionally is good news. There’s no wild booking to get in the way of the high effort match between Lady Cat, Star Fire, Lilith Dark, and Miss Delicious. There still is a superfluous double pin, but they work at a fast pace over a short time length. The main event is obviously better, but this still fits in the same Good level. It’s a little bit too indie cliché when the got to the four-way chop spot but otherwise good action for eight minutes. Everyone besides Star Fire has been part of the improved IWRG’s women’s division before the break; it’s too bad that concept seems to have been downplayed since their restart

The wild booking does kick in the Jitsu & Energia three falls match, which turns into a tag match, which turns into partners turning on each other. Just, no. Kunay versus Heroe Romero was a better use of creativity and another Good match; maybe Kunay’s niche is just finding weird spots to do in a falls count anywhere situation. The fight improved the moment they stopped doing a normal match and started climbing on carefully positioned people to do headscissors. Hera & La Fuerza vs Ciclón Infernal & Slyfer was a bit too long and not remarkable.

The August 10th show is back in front of people at Gimnasio Mitklan. I watched the Estrellas del Ring version. I can not name the IAW commentators, I do not recall anything they said on the previous show, but I did miss them greatly when I was trying to figure out who people were in the undercard. The tradeoff is the undercard isn’t much good. The women’s tag match falls apart at points, the five-way is all offense with no particular direction, and this was another in a long line of Mexican indie royal rumbles where too many people stick around for too long. The highlight of the Rumble was seeing Santy Hernandez involved, assuming a 100% chance he was going to do a WWE bit, and then watching him hide outside of the ring until Kunay thought he won in a WWE bit. He is that dude.

Baby Love versus Star Fire versus Candy Swing is not memorable, but it was successful in having a goal (Baby Love heroically overcoming the odds against bigger opponents) and achieving that goal. It was in this match that it clicked that she’s a blond thin masked woman from Monterrey with a generic name and some popularity; hopefully this goes better than the last one. (She absolutely should change her name as soon as possible, before it becomes harder to do so. She’s only going to go so far as “Baby Love”.)

Jitsu vs Yoruba vs Mr. Leo vs Ciclón Infernal was back to just having a lot of moves and nothing much coming from them. The referee screwing up the count (in the second straight match) didn’t help, but having so many multi-people matches really doesn’t help. I know it’s not actually true, but it feels like Jitsu is the only person in Mexico working more after the pandemic started than before it; I can’t escape him right now.

Ares vs Aramis vs Willy Banderas had some ups and downs. Willy had trouble either with the rhythm the other two are used to working or remembering the complicated spots. There were few problems when it was a one versus one match, but the hit rate went down whenever all three people were involved. It’s useful to prevent Aramis & Arez from facing each other and their same crew forever and they’ve got to make what they do work with outsiders to continue growing, but this just made Banderas look not up to their level. I liked this enough that it was still Good, though even just the Guadalajara guy against either one of these guys might have been better

The Latigo vs Aeroboy match didn’t go for any big innovation, it was just a really well done title match. (I rated it Great.) There were a few spots that were particularly entertaining, like the well done rolling casita spot. This was more a match building very strongly to the end, getting the crowd very excited for the last few minutes. It’s an obvious advantage to have an actual group of people making noise for a match, and I was with them. They probably could’ve gotten in one more comeback after the big near fall, but that seemed like a minor complaint.