CHILANGAMASK (SAT) 04/20/2013 Arena GALLI, Villa Park, Illinois
1) Pentagono Del Infierno b Chris Castro
Chris Castro replaced Ripper. He came in with a thumb injury, which was the focus of the match. First attempt at the finish was screwed up, so Pentagon submitted Castro instead. Short match.
2) Mason Conrad b Matt Knicks, GPA, Mojo McQueen, Acid Jazz, Ovirload, Jason Gory [Tercera Caida International Cup]
Mojo replaced Emperador Azteca, while Knicks replaced Negrotistico (moved to a different match.) Elimination match, with eliminations going Ovirload, GPA, Acid Jazz, Matt Knicks (by Mason Conrad, betraying his usual ally), Jason Gory, leaving Mason Conrad as the winner of the big trophy.
3) Latin Dragon & Noriega b Facade & Negrotistico
Negrotistico replaced Jake Shining. Good match. Noriega caught a Negrotistico plancha, gave him a side slam, and Latin Dragon added a 450 splash for the iwn.
4) Kaientai b Zema Ion, Extreme Tiger, Samuray del Sol
One fall match, in the dark. Very good match, either too short or flew bye. Zema Ion demanded no one touch his hair during the match; Samuray both touched his hair, but used his hair spray (to keep his spikes up!) Extreme Tiger did his 450 splash to the floor on Ion, and Kaientai upset Samuray to get the win. Kaientai declared himself the greatest independent wrestler in the world. Others disagreed. Everyone came back out to sign autographs after the match
Arena GALLI is in an old shopping mall, as mentioned before. The shows I’ve gone to before have been in an unused store front. It makes for a cozy fit, but it has low ceilings and not much room at ringside, which limits guys from flying. They moved it for this show, putting the ring out into the atrium in between stores, giving them plenty of head room and space at ringside. There are no active stores in that wing of the mall and the bigger space worked out well. You had to use the back entrance of the mall to get in, but it was no problem from there. Show started about 40 minutes late because indy wrestling.
Only a four match show, and really almost a three match show because there was nothing much to the opener. Chris Castro worked hard at showing some personality, which is appreciated in a world with so many CMLL fighting robots, but he didn’t have a good night and this was not on the level of the other matches. Kind of surprising for lucha guys to be coming in from Mexico but the usual lucha libre crew almost not at all on the show besides Pentagono; a decent amount of that is no-shows. I would try not to miss a show to be aired on national TV, but things happen.
Seven man elimination match was about what you expect – a lot of moves, some good and some bad (you are close to the screen than Matt Knicks’ finish was to whoever he beat), people turning on each other, more dives because they had the room this show, and rapid fire eliminations at points. (I missed whatever it was that led to Conrad beating Knicks.) There were good ideas which didn’t go anywhere: everyone turned on Mojo at the beginning of the match, and kept throwing him back out of the ring every time he tried to get involved, until…he was just in the match and things moved on. I don’t think I’ve seen Jason Gory before. He’s a goth vampire (as opposed to some other kind of vampire – steampunk vampire?) who put a lot of time into his look, but looked good in the wrestling portion of the match. There were good parts, I wish Acid Jazz stuck around longer, but Mason Conrad came of as the best guy in the match and deserved winner.
There was an intermission between matches two and three. I picked up a couple old magazines from the merchandise. One had a story about a young man who had left AAA and was hoping to get into CMLL – some kid from Queretaro by the name of Cometa. Hope it turned out okay for him.
I don’t remember a lot about tag team match. My recollection is Latin was trapped in the ring for an extended portion of time, there were dives (including goods one from Latin Dragon & Facade) and then the Puerto Rician team finished the opposition off for the win, but I may even have it backwards. It felt professionally done. I write every time about how good Noriega is about doing the little things and he’s still good about that. I know this was the second best match on the show, and I know I can’t think of much to say about it.
The lights were turned out before the main event. I dunno why. I’m not sure anyone knows why. It may just be the mall’s lights automatically turn off at 9 for all I know. They stalled for time for a bit, and then we all just rolled with it. The entrance light and the one fluorescent lamp left on was enough to see, though it was weird. Everyone was working very hard in the main event, and the match was just on a different level than the rest of the card. I was the most struck by Extreme Tiger; I know TerceraCaida was recording the match, but this still was a show far away from home in front of a small crowd, and Tiger was working as hard as if this was TripleMania. I’ve poked fun at Extreme Tiger before and surely will again, but he impressed me with his effort here – and that was before he did a top rope 450 splash to the floor on Ion. Ion and Samuray were very sharp. I was least familiar with Kaientai – actually, to be more honest, Kaientai was a guy who I knew participated in extreme matches in Monterrey, but did not seem like a sure bet to work the style of match the other three guys were going to want to work here. And I was wrong about that; the other guys seemed slightly more athletic (and Ion and Samuray have faced each other many times of late, so they’re even quicker with each other), but Kaientai kept up with them and looked like he belonged – there were a couple well timed Shining Wizard kicks I can recall.
Match just had the metric ton of spots you’d expect. The only flaw was the finish feeling like it came out of nowhere. It wasn’t clear it was a single fall match until the finish, so I first thought it was just a surprising elimination and then thought maybe the referee had counted three when it wasn’t meant to be. The match wasn’t short – somewhere in the 12 to 15 minute range – but I could’ve gone for about five more minutes of near falls easy.
As mentioned, the Tercera Cadia crew was at the show. On some TV shows, the host just kind of shows up, reads his script, and a bunch of people behind the scenes running around to prop the host up. That’s not at all the case here – Bernardo and Jose were the entire show here, working hard the entire time. When you see this footage on TVC Deportes and see one of them doing an interview with someone, that means the other guy was the camera guy. They both filmed the entire show, did a bunch of interviews with the wrestlers, and were greeted by a fans of Tercera Caida. I got to talk to Jose a little bit and Bernardo briefly, and they were both nice guys, exactly how they seem on TV. It was good to meet them.
I didn’t stick around long after the show – I’d spent the day outside watching a minor league baseball double header and was pretty tired by this show was done. But it was a good time and I’m glad I got to see it.
Upcoming shows for me
05/03: Lucha Libre USA @ the Odeum – assuming tickets go on sale!
05/18: CHIKARA Pro @ Logan Square Auditorium
whatever else