Caristico, LA Park vs. Fenix, Penta 0 M 3/21/2018

This match is great but what else could it be when you get 4 of the best wrestlers in the world and have them just beat the hell out of each other for 15 minutes? The Lucha Brothers really work great when they are put up against a popular team as it allows them to lay in stiff shots and take their time milking the beatings. Fenix has the flashy offense and the huge bumps to compliment the more deliberate sadism of Penta. Caristico is still one of the best at taking these beatings and timing his comebacks perfectly to get the crowd involved.

In an odd bit of synchronicity, I was thinking about how Penta has been losing mystique as a singles wrestler over the last year or two but still ends up really high on my (and other's) year end list, and then today's WDKW dropped with Dylan talking about the same thing. The problem with so many Penta singles matches is that his offense is not particularly flashy or impressive, and so when he gets his comeback spots they are somewhat disappointing. Not only that, it's not particularly fast-paced and does not flow together. Thinking about his best singles matches, his offense works there because it really is a rudo-style offense that works best when cutting off a tecnico or perhaps methodically picking them apart. The flow and pacing of tag matches is different and it allows for Fenix's much flashier offense to get those comeback spots, with Penta filling in the gaps. It's even better when the opposing team is over with the crowd, as it is here or as it was in the match vs. The Besties from last year, as that is when Penta can use his same offense to beat down a babyface until the crowd is dying for their comeback.

Poseidon, Fantasma del Espacio, Super Angel vs. Cat Rocker, Guerrero del Inferno, Guerrero Lee. Ruleta del Muerte for hair or mask. 2/18/18 Club Apolo

No, I did not watch this match ONLY because the luchador named Cat Rocker is in it and that name entertains me. I also watched it because Poseidon is okay and I love the aesthetics of Club Apolo and yeah it seems likely somebody will bleed all over the place.

Apuesta matches are often out of control and bloody. While this is toned down in CMLL, AAA and the indies continue to have matches in this style, and this match definitely carries on in that tradition. While only a few guys bleed, Super Angel comes out wearing a white mask and ends up looking like a cherry tomato before the match is halfway over. Blood alone cannot make a wrestling match good, but when a guy bleeds to amplify the violence they are receiving and to help emote their exhaustion it can really help a match, and that is on display here. 

This a Ruelta de Muerte, which means that when a luchador makes a luchador from the other team submit or pins them, the victorious luchador is eliminated from the match. So, this means that if you "win," your team is going to lose a member and (maybe) be short-handed. Nonsensical rules are endemic in lucha libre, so not only have I made peace with this I can appreciate when a match is booked to make sense within those rules, and this match is. I don't know enough about these guys to know what was going on prior to this match, but I can presume that the teams are either friends of some sort or share an animosity to the opposing team. Either way, they want their team to win, and a quick victory that leaves your team shorthanded is not going to help that, so this match does not have a pin or submission attempt for at least 20 minutes.

The match starts with a rudo beatdown that feels neverending but not tedious. In fact, the beatdown continues so long that I began to believe the match would just turn in to an extended squash (sort of like Lesnar vs. CM Punk at Summerslam) because indie lucha just does weird things some times. Almost immediately as I thought this, the tecnicos make their comeback and I am completely engrossed in their success. I don't know if the timing of their comeback will work for everybody, but it hit at just the right point to really draw me in to the drama of the match and rooting for their success. This is not a fast-paced match by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, since the match is built around two very long control segments to start, the pace slows as the segments go on, allowing the desire for the other team to make a comeback (the crowd is surprisingly pro-rudo, cheering very loudly for one or both of the Guerreros) to simmer and build until it explodes into actualization.

The tecnico segment mirrors the rudos control segment, both of which were fun brawls all over the arena. It's not the wildest brawl but these guys are working stiff enough and whatever shortcomings exist are made up, to me, by the timing of the spots and comebacks. After about 20 minutes (at least, I was not paying attention to the time but this video is 1 hour long and I don't think there was much  more than 20 minutes of non-wrestling at the beginning and end of the video) they all end up back in the ring, and begin to try to win falls. It starts with each guy taking turns putting submissions on, only for another guy to come in and break it up and put on their own submission. This is fun, but what really makes it work is how vicious the submissions are. These guys are really wrenching these holds in and making it look like they really want to win, if just to take break if nothing else. This exhaustion continues throughout the match (which I am sure is not entirely being worked) and really helps with the pacing and setting up spots. 

The match may go on a bit too long, but the crowd is rabid and the workers milk it for everything it is worth. Again, the work is nothing that will blow you away, but these guys get every ounce of drama from every move in a way that draws me in to the drama of the match. And again, there is a dude named "Cat Rocker" that is wearing leopard-print shirt and pants.


(The match does not start until about 10 minutes in to the video if the 1-hour timestamp is daunting.)

Rey Pantera Jr. & Hijo de Rey Pantera vs. As del Espacio & As del Espacio Jr., mascaras vs. mascaras 01/14/2018

I don't know who these guys are, but I will watch most apuesta matches I come across. These are often the biggest matches of a wrestler's career, so you're unlikely to come across anything but the best performance and effort out of the wrestlers involved. Since these matches usually come out of some fairly heated feud you often have a hot and lively crowd helping the match along. The matches themselves usually vary between brawls and completely out of control brawls, so the wrestlers are generally allowed to use blood and any other tricks to put the match over the top and if none of this seems to work you can always just turn the match off.

So yeah, I don't know anything about these guys (although I have seen the dad Rey Pantera a few times) but like I said I will watch most apuesta matches I come across but one with these familial elements involved sounds even more fun. In much of the world, sports play a huge role in familial relationships. While the relationship is changing, playing sports and watching sports is still a huge aspect of masculinity and also a prominent avenue for men to form relationships. The scripted nature of wrestling allows it to portray family relationships far more than happens in "legitimate" sports, as wrestling has the freedom to not have to rely as heavily on actual skill. And so wrestling not only fills this cultural role of something for a family to enjoy together, wrestling can explore family dynamics in the medium. Families are often paired together based on nothing but blood, and when these relationships turn sour they can be even more vicious and hateful than other relationships falling apart.

Why am I rambling on about wrestling playing up family connections? Because it plays a huge role in this match. The whole match is based around two rough brothers taking on a father and son team where the father is older and maybe a step slower than the Panteras and the son is clearly younger and less experienced than the Panteras. 

The video starts with Rey Pantera Jr. coming to the ring while a live band plays. Eventually we see that Hijo de Rey Pantera is in this band! It's a very minor thing, but I absolutely love when wrestlers are involved in their own theme music and even more when they play it live, as it is so self-indulgent but if they are playing a cocky, flashy character (like Chris Jericho, Juventud Guerrera and the Panteras here) it adds so much to that obnoxious aura. Who is more insufferable than a member of an okay-at-best rock band than a member of an okay-at-best rock band that is also a pro wrestler?

The match starts out with straightforward back and forth wrestling, but almost immediately guys start diving out of the ring (and into seats) onto guys that are not immediately involved in the match. It's not the wild brawl that some indie apuesta matches turn in to, but it is a bit wilder than a standard match. As the match continues, the roles mentioned above start to become clearer as the Panteras not only work together as a team better (as they have likely been working as a team for some time now), but there is a really cool segment early in the 2nd fall where the Panteras get Espacio Jr. outside of the ring between them and Espacio comes running over to help his son, only to get double-teamed himself. 

The first two falls of the match are over pretty quickly. I'm not a huge fan of this match format but it is so prevalent now that I've gotten used to it. And although I think it is annoying it does work to some extent. One thing people seem really confused or annoyed by in lucha (and really all wrestling) is when a ref ignores blatant rule breaking, as happens in this match. I guess these are the people that NFL and MLB are courting with their recent attempts to turn their sports into byzantine rule interpretation while athletes look on. The idea that a ref (or any ruling authority) can let things slide in the name of a greater justice seems alien to them, but that is exactly what happens in lucha. Refs, like anybody else we invest with authority, can choose to let nominally illegal activity slide if they think strict enforcement will lead to a result nobody wants (i.e. a disqualification finish to end a blood feud) or if they simply don't care. Wrestling is just a mirror of our real world power struggles. There is no escape from them.

So the first two falls of this match are burned through pretty quickly to get us to a third fall where the Panteras quickly take advantage of the ref's discretion. But, since this is wrestling, the Espacios aren't simply crushed under this corruption but make their comebacks. And these comebacks are great. Like any good babyface, they show they can get just as wild a rough as the Panteras, delivering sick chairshots and Espacio Jr. hits some giant dives out of the ring. The pacing may drag a bit, but I think they're just milking the crowd reactions which are not being recorded very well. At some point the entire crowd is out of their seats and cheering the match on.

The work in the match is good, but there are little moments that really bring out the character stuff, like As del Espacio racing back in to the ring to help his son pin whichever Pantera it was that he just hit with a big move. This all leads up to what is one of the most dramatic and emotional finishes I have ever seen. I don't like to describe specific spots when talking about a wrestling match because so much of the enjoyment of a match can be tied in to seeing these things evolve organically within the match. That said, the end of this match involves each team trying to submit the other, and eventually this gives way to a crazy chairshot sequence where they are trying to prove who is tougher. Again the different male relationships of brothers vs. father and son come in to play, and how our roles as protectors or respectors (of the toughness/manhood of another) of each other. We saw early in the match Espacio getting seriously hurt when he rushed in to protect his son. Would you do the same thing for your father, if the roles were reversed? Would you expect a different outcome? 

The emotion and drama at the end of this match is unparalleled, and this is two teams of guys I have never seen before! Imagine if this was a feud you had been following! I can't imagine a better blowoff to this type of feud or match, and unless wrestling in 2018 is absolutely phenomenal (I hope it is!) this could easily end up being my match of the year.