some early September CMLL/indie extra reviews

I’m not posting stand-alone recaps lately, so match ratings are sitting in document files on my drive and not published anywhere. I’m not enthused to do ratings nor do I think I’m good at it, but if I don’t do these maybe no one will and the world will be missing the crucial knowledge of which Sonic match was slightly better than all the other Sonic matches.

(There’s probably not a next news post until Wednesday evening, waiting on CMLL to make announcements. I still need to go back and watch some Skywalker matches.)

07/30 (not really) AMX Yago vs Sonic: [great] The very early leader for the best empty arena match. Partly because Sonic is a nutcase for doing a missed dive in front of no one. That’s balanced by some very appreciated creativity, like the dive into a blind armdrag later on. I gave up Sonic after his repeated knee injuries and that was an obvious mistake; he’s got the ability to very entertaining if CMLL will let him out of the openers. He won no falls and looked like a star still. This is another of Yago being a really good rudo base in a promotion that really needs them. Go out of your way to watch this.

On the 08/29 Vanguardia show, I had both the Cruiserweight four-way match and the main event as good. The main event grade is irrelevant: if you like big spectacle hardcore matches, you should definitely watch this. If that had also aired in front of an audience like IWTV, people would’ve been talking about it for days. I’m high on Draztick Boy matches and this one gave me another good one; it was borderline higher.

08/29 IAW Arez vs Energía vs Iron Kid vs Látigo for the IAW Championship: [great] Just a level above everything else on this show, moving really fast and pulling off the creative stuff they were trying. Other matches on this show weren’t lacking for ideas, but this one put them together in the best way and could actually pull them off. There are miles of interesting things to GIF here if one is so inclined. Iron Kid is missing a hook or a breakout performance because he doesn’t seem far behind Arez & Latigo but it doesn’t feel like he treated as that level of star. Latigo adding more submissions balances out his size issues well.

The rest of the show was all OK grades. Jitsu and Tromba were really going for it in their match but it was not happening at all in the first half. Baby Love has the offense down but is missing that connection to the crowd. This was a weird crowd: they did it Japanese style where fans (far more than 30%) were allowed into the building but no one was allowed to cheer, and no one seemed to know how to react instead. I have the previous IAW show sitting around to watch but couldn’t get motivated to watch more empty arena stuff. Maybe later.

On the 09/04 PPV, I went OK with everything except for a Below Average for the women’s match. Just too much sloppiness there. An OK grade is generous for that main event.

09/05 Gala (09/13 YouTube): Checked this out primarily to check in on Atlantis Jr. (& Flyer) vs Hijo del Villano III (& Tiger). Villano had seemed to be putting on weight to no longer be skinny. He’s back to being skinny and seems to be moving better. The match is thoroughly average, a welcome improvement for Flyer (though he still goes bad near the end.) Sonic/Grako was OK. It wasn’t going to be remarkable but Grako running out of gas late hurt a lot. I gave the main event one fall and figured out it was nothing worth thinking about.

09/11 AMX Jarochita/Reina Isis: [good] The PPV match seems slightly better. Jarochita (end of first fall) and Isis (late in the third) have impressive transitions into submissions during the match. Jarochita screaming until her finishing sequence is a nice a bit of energy. Isis controlling the match with a lot of eye scrapes and lesser brawling attacks slows it down a bit.

On the 09/11 PPV, I went Good for everything except a Below Average for the main event. I didn’t feel strongly positive about any of the matches except the Soberano/Titan vs Tiger/Templario match, but those all felt superior to the matches from the previous work. Maybe I’m giving too many points to effort but it’s a rare quantity.

09/12 MVS Oro Jr./Coyote: [good] More stuff going on early on than the PPV match. They were off a bit in the third, Coyote especially not coming close to catching Oro’s dive. There’s a lot of overlap between these matches, though this one got a little less time.

The 09/12 Televisa show should be on YouTube next week, but the three known matches (Felino/Star, Jarochita/Sugehit vs Tiffany/Infernal, Flyer/Atlantis vs Villano/Tiger) don’t seem like something I need to see. I’m making my periodic attempt to cut down watching CMLL for anything else with my time. It never really sticks.

One thought to “some early September CMLL/indie extra reviews”

  1. I feel better about giving no particular fucks about the lucha world in era of coof bullshit knowing that even the mighty cubsfan gives similar minimal fucks.
    Shine on that one day things may get better.

Comments are closed.