Tag: recap

IWRG seems like it’s been good since their restart; there’s usually been at least a match worth watching. Shun Skywalker’s stint helped, but their regulars have performed well.

Shun Skywalker vs. Hijo de Canis Lupus for the IWRG Rey del Ring
(IWRG @ 08/30, 22:38, good, +LuchaTV)

An entertaining match if one that doesn’t completely come together. Hijo de Canis Lupus often comes across as a person who has seen clips of exciting matches but hasn’t watched on them in full. It didn’t fall apart, but they’re close to having a bigger feeling match with a little more thought about what they’re doing, and it’s unclear if Canis Lupus is going to get there. (He’s the one who I’m going to have to see for the next decade if I keep watching, so Shun getting it doesn’t help as much.) The match flows better when the much bigger Canis is playing rudo to the much better seller Shun Skywalker, but Lupus can’t totally commit to it.

Demonio Infernal © vs. Shun Skywalker for the IWRG Rey del Ring
(IWRG @ 09/06/2020, 16:00, great, +LuchaTV)

The dramatics were played up big all match here. It didn’t totally work – there was a fair bit of one man being near death and then being fine a moment later – but they got the crowd with the antics. It is about as loud as a 30% capacity Arena Naucalpan crowd will sound on the last few moves. These aren’t two guys who would naturally mesh together, but they go with a hard-hitting match, and it holds up better than the one the previous week. Demonio Infernal is a great representative of IWRG.

Toxin vs. Puma de Oro in a super libre match
(IWRG @ 09/13/2020, 10:52, good, +LuchaTV)

I really liked Toxin bringing a chain and attacking Puma de Oro right off the bat. Might as well use a weapon with no hesitation in a super libre match. The match drifted towards a generic big move exchange from there, but both treated the victory as a big deal.

Fulgor I vs. Black Danger
(IWRG @ 09/20/2020, 11:08, good, mluchatv)

A solid match, though the rudo/rudo nature hurt it. Fulgor doesn’t get many wins here but needed one if he would be thrown into an angle (which happens next), so this worked well enough. Danger took Fulgor’s big moves well while looking like a threat. Fulgor seems to be working on a wizard beard.

Toxin © vs. Puma de Oro for the IWRG Mexico Championship
(IWRG @ 09/20, 14:58, great, +LuchaTV)

This shouldn’t have worked this well. Toxin & Puma de Oro are guys who try a lot and don’t always succeed. They pretty succeeded without compromising on the complicated spots. They were just much cleaner at it than usual, astoundingly so on the first few spots. There was good competitive drama in the last few moments, and they saved the biggest stuff for last. This was much better than they’ve shown capable of before, even in this generally well-done feud. I would like to believe these guys suddenly leveled up (maybe a couple of times over.) It might have been they just had an excellent night. The result’s the same either way.

The referee spots were among the parts that didn’t work as well. At least Fulgor interfered only a couple of times, without it getting excessive. Toxin pulling the ref into a submission hold to break it up didn’t work at all, was something I could only figure out what was supposed to have happened by the reactions after the fact. It would be beneficial if Mexican indie rudos learned how to demonstrate their rudo nature outside of spots where they obviously should’ve been disqualified. There are non-cheating ways to act like a rudo; you could be cruel or cowardly to start.

Diosa Atenea & Fulgor vs. Alas De Plata & Diosa Quetzal
(IWRG @ 09/27, 15:53, good, +LuchaTV)

It was actually reassuring for the Quetzal/Atenea over the top rope spot near the end to have a hiccup, to be sure I was watching a real match. Diosa Quetzal was unbelievably good in this match. Not just good for her, but a genuine good exciting wrestler that fully matched her star rep. The other three wrestlers contributed mightily, but Diosa Quetzal definitely wasn’t pulling off top rope double stomps into perfectly timed Destroyers before. Like Puma/Toxin, she overachieved expectations here in a difficult situation. You could tell she knew; she was beaming about post-match despite the loss. I’m not sure how this happened, but they have something to get it to happen again.

Welcome To Mi Barrio is in the midst of a twenty-four man tournament to crown a first singles champion. It’s been going since August, but it was only this past week when I put a bracket together for the luchawiki. It got me curious to actually watch the tournament and see what it was like. I’ve watched very little of Welcome To Mi Barrio since it debuted as a Mas Lucha staple about a year ago. They use a lot of people who don’t seem to work outside the promotion (except for planned inter-promotional bits.)  didn’t expect to find a treasure-trove of an unheralded match of the year candidates if went through the tournament, but I wanted to get at least have a sense of what the product.

The tournament – “El Poder de Barrio Calavera” – either doesn’t actually have a playlist on Mas Lucha’s channel or I’m terrible at finding it. A fan helpfully created one if you want to look through it. They appear to be alternating blocks each week, which means there’s a lot of tournament matches in the first three weeks and increasingly fewer each week. The first two rounds of the tournament are up, the semifinals started on Wednesday (didn’t see it yet), and the final will air around 10/28 at the current pace. These have been all empty arena shows so far, though it’s possible they’ll have fans there by the final.

It’s a slow pace. It matches the house style. Welcome to Mi Barrio, at least for this tournament, has a slower and less impactful sort of wrestling compared to what you’d see almost anywhere else. The matches hold together generally well. I only saw one or two which fell apart to the level of the worst CMLL empty arena matches. They’re also as intended to be casual fan crowd-pleasing matches in the way CMLL does them. There’s more time between the moves, more in control brawling, and a lot less flying. The current en vogue indie moves are not be found, making WTMB feel older while also a bit fresher. Gym Shu el Guerrero is listed as a sponsor and he’s been mentioned as a trainer for some of these guys before, so I wonder if this his influence. The outside guys stick out more for working differently. The main roster wrestlers seem to struggle to build towards a finish at times. I’m always biased toward a faster pace and a bigger finish, so this wasn’t really in the wheelhouse. They did push forward a few interesting people, enough that I’ll try to catch the last couple rounds later on.

The Panteras – Hijo is the one who was in Japan, Jr. is the one we haven’t seen much before – were both highlights. They’re working at a different speed than everyone else, and there’s a sharpness with them that the regular WTMB roster just doesn’t have at this point. They’re also coming from different experiences. One of the funnier moments of the tournament was Hijo del Pantera doing a 20 count count-out tease. He saw it a million times in Japan, I’m sure. Payaso Purasanta has been wrestling in Mexico instead and had no idea what was going on, staying out to hold Pantera in a chinlock before Pantera visibly told him to go back to ring so he could dramatically slide in at 19. The Hijo del Pantera/Camuflaje and Pantera Jr./Mara second-round matches were the ones I’ve liked the most so far. The Mara one is a feather in someone’s hat because Mara’s first-round match with Radical was among the weakest matches. I would love to see the Pantera’s in other environments to see how much of their speed is real and how much it is just relative to who they’re working with.

(Random thing I was distracted by: there’s a red digital clock on one of the walls visible when the wrestlers go outside. It’s only very occasionally on-screen, but you can see it enough to notice how they’re taping these matches in no particular order, sometimes hours before the last one. Or on vastly different days, I guess.)

There are three Payaso Purasanta luchadors in Welcome To Mi Barrio. The idea is it’s a father and two sons, though that may be a gimmick. Payaso Purasanta moves like you’d expect for an old man. Hijo del Payaso Purasanta is solid. Payaso Purasanta Jr. seemed like the best of the trio: showed good personality, had a range of impressive offense, made something out of an opponent who didn’t seem entertaining on his own. And then he lost, which was the strangest decision. DTU’s Kevin losing in to an inferior seeming opponent in the first round also was surprising, but he was a late sub whom I’m willing to believe just wasn’t available for future tapings. (Kevin’s good though; he’s got to be the guy getting the shot at the DTU Alto Impacto title.)

The tournament opening Criatura Azteca/Ambu match was better than I was expected, and may have messed up my expectations for the rest of the tournament for a bit. Xerjes was not at Pantera Jr.’s level here yet has promise as a skinny guy who can get beat up well. Secreto Negro seemed intriguing even if his match wasn’t much to talk about. It’s just hard to figure out positive places for these guys to go elsewhere because the style they worked here would get rejected as boring elsewhere. The positive thing Welcome to Mi Barrio is doing is a lot of in-between vignettes to try get over personalities and feuds. If they can get fans to care about the luchadors and their stories, the style issues aren’t nearly as much an issue.

Nothing here is must-see. I’d have maybe two matches borderline good, but people looking for AAA style action are not going to want to spend time on this. Both the Panteras have made the semi-final six (with the final as a three way.) I presume one will be eliminated, but at least one of the making the final gives it a chance at being something. Rugido or Hijo del Payaso Purasanta, based on being regularly focused on luchadors in this promotion, seem the most likely to actually win the whole thing. Tournaments are generally overdone, but this one was useful to get looks at a lot of different people without feeling like I needed to watch every match of a six week (and counting) show.