Tag: Lucha Memes

The other three Lucha Memes shows on IWTV

2020-11-01 Super Indy Fifi Show 1

Samuray Jr. vs Coco Rojo Jr. vs Perro de Guerra Jr. vs Blaze: [good] a little bit too many four-way tropes, including people standing around and clapping instead of participating in the match, but it’s a lot of action and good action. Perro looks the best, wins impressive, so that much worked. A good enough opener.

Látigo vs Garrobo Punk: [ok] I think this was a little bit less than the tournament match for me, but the camera switches made me give up on the match and the finish wasn’t great. The outcome makes sense – this is the start of the Memes deciding to do something with Garrobo – but it wasn’t executed well.

Iron Kid vs Freelance: [good] This was going pretty well until Iron Kid landed on Freelance double knee first on the 450 splash finish. Freelance seemed to be milking it more than in actual pain to excuse the loss, so that was nice. Iron Kid looked better than him most of the match, though that’s more because Freelance is losing a step rather than Iron Kid has grown a lot this lost year. You should at least watch the dives.

Corsario Negro Jr. & Drako vs Oficial 911 & Oficial AK47: [ok] You don’t need to go out of your way to see this but it was a useful tone change break from the usual Lucha Memes matches. They leaned heavily into the comedy, the crowd enjoyed it, maybe I’m underplaying it by going with OK because it was nice to get something trying to be different.

Aeroboy vs Avisman: [good] This was the smooth hold versus hold mat wrestling you’d expect from an Avisman match. Aeroboy hung with him on that style, and the only disappointment is it ended so quickly. Avisman wrestling in his mask on this shows seems strange because I can’t even remember him being masked at this point – I know he was, it just has been so long.

Arez vs Black Terry: [good] Lucha Memes has fans – this wasn’t 30% capacity, I have eyes – and the fans made this match work where it would’ve struggled in an empty action. They still believe in everything Black Terry is doing, which made the slow action come off as dramatic and the submission holds as a big deal. Arez got knocked around big by Terry’s punches and it felt like enough of a fight to work.

Aramis vs Calibu vs Toxin: [great] A really hot match, especially early on. Aramis is reliable and this was one of Toxin’s better days. His complicated moves came off well. Calibus kept up, though it felt like they could’ve given him a little more to stand out. The match maybe was a bit too long, cooling down at the triple knocked out spot, but the last couple of bits worked well.

2020-11-01 Super Indy Fifi Show 2

Perro de Guerra Jr. vs King Gato: [ok] this show went just under 100 minutes. This match was 20 minutes. No opener needs to go 20 minutes, and almost no match at all needs to go 20 minutes. This seems to be a consequence of running two shows on the same day and trying to reduce match time for those working twice by having this go long, but wow was this long.

Toxin vs Joe Lider: [NR] I didn’t even give this one a chance. Poor Joe Lider though; Toxin goes for the back suplex on the apron deal but lines up wrong, dropping Lider partly over the top rope and causing him to land weird on the apron. Looked like Lider couldn’t take the bump at full speed but Toxin set him up wrong.

Belial & Impulso vs Astrolux & Black Metal: [OK] inventive but sloppy. Astrolux missed taking a hard header into the mat just by luck. The last half of the match was better, but this wasn’t much of a long match either.

Arez vs Aeroboy [good]: this was ‘second match on the day’ good, they should have a better match in them. Arez woke up one day and decided he’s just going to start kicking people in the elbow. Seems to be working – well, not for the other people. Aeroboy’s reversal at the end was fun but I wanted more out of him. I’ve been missing a crowd for most of the year but not as much this match; the fans were reacting to football chants (since this was the battle of the Necaxa fans) and who knows what else instead of the action for most of the way.

Corsario Negro Jr. & Drako vs Látigo & Tromba: [good] big man/smaller man tag match generally worked because both sides leaned into it. Corsario & Drako probably want to save a few of the bigger moves; it makes their package piledriver seem ineffective when they’re being kicked out mid-match.

Alas de Acero, Aramis, Iron Kid vs Canival, Mike, Teelo: [great] Easily the best math on the two shows on this same day. Mike’s crew isn’t quite as good here as they are with the MexaBoys but they’re still so skilled at basing that I”m not sure how they’re not used a ton. They’re valuable in making everyone look better. Also, it looks super impressive when Aramis can actually get Mike on his shoulders. Iron Kid looked better here than he did in his earlier match and that had to a bit too his opponents; there’s no way he’d even think of trying to toss out of the ring headscissors with anyone else. (Alas de Acero had a hard day, on the other hand.)  The TripleDive spot looked good and pretty much everything went after it was spectacular.

2020-11-29 Lucha Memes : Homenaje al Negro Navarro

This show is meant to be “win by submission” only show. The luchadors either are unaware or forget often, leading to moments where the referee refuses to count a pinfall and everyone gets mad. That part is not good. Everyone works a methodical mat wrestling style, making for much longer matches than usual; this is an hour longer than the previous Memes show.

Perro de Guerra Jr. vs Belial: [great] I couldn’t get into this at all the first time I watched and gave it another try. These matches take some focus I’m sometimes missing. They did a good job going into this style, transitioning from hold to hold in a way that made it feel like a competition and not an exhibition. The bigger spots felt like they helped pick up the intensity. Neither luchador is one I would’ve expected to work so well in this way, and their work was pretty solid. Memes have done well in elevating Perro de Guerra from just “a random local” to “a guy”, though he probably needs an upgraded look if he’s going to farther.

Judas el Traidor vs Tromba [good]: I have no notes, just that it was good.

Aramis vs Black Terry: [great] Physical match, worked in a style where Terry looks effective. Didn’t go long but worked for the story of Terry neutralizing Aramis enough to surprise him for the win. Aramis did a better job of selling the bad arm than most. The pinfall spots were not great, but the crowd getting angry at Aramis for kicking Professor Terry hard was amusing. Aramis was too nice of a guy to get this win.

Arez vs Trauma II: [ok] Trauma II wasn’t feeling it. The surfboard spots around the ropes were painful but not the right kind of painful.

Dr. Cerebro & Negro Navarro vs Aeroboy & Solar I: [good] Something a little bit too metaphoric about this match being squeezed in as the sunset in Coacalco. Aereoboy and Dr. Cerebro do their jobs well as foils (and poor Aeroboy gets dropped hard on a Cerebro Driver after he had already submitted), but this is the Solar/Negro Navarro story it was meant to be. They’re at the points where these tribute matches can end up being depressing, but they have enough left to make this work. The crowd is super into this, making up for any speed or polish they may be missing now. If it’s not as strong as those past efforts, it’s still a solid effort in an emotional setting. Navarro losing clean on his own tribute show felt like a possible farewell.

Lucha Memes posted five shows from 2020 on IWTV. They seem to be happy with how it’s gone – the promoter seemed delighted to get a check instead of giving things away for free – so I expect they’ll continue to place shows on the service sometime after they take place. I watched all five to check them off my 2020 lists. There’s some good stuff there, and a sense of where the promotion is at right now.

The Lucha Memes production isn’t at the level of a typical US indie on the service. There are no graphics for wrestler’s names and there is no commentary; the only way you know who anyone is if you already know or you catch the ring announcer saying it once. (Each file has a match list, but the matches are often not in the airing order.) Just to compare it fairly against other Mexican promotions, Vanguardia has graphics and actually has English commentary for one of their shows on IWTV. RIOT, previously on IWTV has graphics. Anything Mas Lucha puts up has commentary and graphics. I haven’t seen the GHC shows but I’m going to try to check one out just to hear their commentary. The Memes shows must be difficult to follow for a casual viewer and “making it easy for viewers to know who the wrestlers are and why they should care” is such first-day wrestling stuff that I can’t believe I’m spending a paragraph trying to persuade a promotion to do it. It is possible that Memes only cares about making sure existing fans can see their shows if they’re not there – even that’s a big step from before – but they’re going to struggle to grow new fans with the way they’re doing these shows.

The camerawork can be frustrating. This appears to be Carxyus produced, with some people holding cameras and other cameras mounted. Multiple cameras are great – go watch the most recent Welcome to Mi Barrio to see what it looks like when only one camera is working – but there are camera switches for the sake of showing off the cameras. There are situations where it appears a bad camera angle was picked ‘live’ to surprise with a better angle in a replay. An advantage of editing a show is getting all the right angles the first time, but the aim here seemed to be showcase the ability to do replays by doing them many times a match. I grew to hate the replay chime by the fourth show. There’s also a lot of camera switching on every strike just for the sake of it, which seems like a copy of WWE’s poor choices. It was occasionally painful to watch and took me out of matches. The picture quality was clean, I never felt like I missed a finish, but it felt like the shows would’ve been better if a lot less production work was done. “Do less” is a pretty easy fix, so I’m sure these can get better over time.

It is worth dealing with all of this because there are some good matches in front of (somewhat masked and distanced) crowds. A fair criticism of Lucha Memes is they’ve essentially given up on booking storylines or feuds; most of the shows seem directionless matching up of two or more regular performers. There are the smallest signs of actual direction by the end of the year, but it’s generally unambitious booking. The silver lining is you can just jump into watching solo matches whenever because they’re all just standalone content. I’m not going to write about all the matches on each show because there is literally no point, just the ones that gave me something to write about.

On the first two shows:

2020-09-16 Double Power from Arena Lopez Mateos

Mike Segura vs Freelance: [good] enjoyable for where these guys are at this point in their careers. They can hit their big moves, they’re not going to deeper than an exhibition match. Suicida looks more fluid, in movement and thought, than Freelance these days. Freelance is more about someone else building their match over the few spots he’s definitely going to do.

Arez vs Ricky Marvin in a cage match: [ok] I don’t know if this has reached diminishing returns or it was a bad night affected by working two matches in one afternoon. There was a physical effort but not a great mental effort. It was simply Ricky kicking out of all of Arez’ moves, Ricky pulling Arez into a poor looking backslide that shouldn’t have been a three count, and a referee counting three because he’s not going to risk being in trouble with Ricky Marvin. They’ve done much better. This is also another indie lucha libre stip match where the promoter couldn’t/didn’t convince the wrestlers to use the stipulation at all; I wasn’t looking for a dive off the top, but the cage might as well not have been there.

Aramis vs Baby Extreme: [good] The headline here is Aramis’ new Musketeer hat. The match is good but was it as good as the hat? Tough to say. This has a lot of cool and exciting moves and no particular order to them. Baby Extreme gets piledriven so hard on the ramp that the referee almost stops the match, but they’ve got four more minutes of moves to do so they do more moves. There’s nothing building here, just some athleticism until they get through Aramis’s finishes. This was likely spectacular in person and a bit numbing on a screen because the moves quickly felt like they didn’t mean anything.

2020-10-04 Battle of Coacalco 2020

Garrobo Punk vs Latigo: [good] Latigo presumably wants to be in the biggest promotions in the world, but he’s actually was fantastic in 2020 going touring the micro-lucha indie and getting a strong night out of a guy who never really stands out. A lot of that’s been with the IAW title, but he’s just as good here making Garrobo Punk look more complete than he has on any other Lucha Memes show. This has the drama and build missing from the Aramis/Baby Extreme match, with Garrobo Punk looking like the guy who fought well and just had a tough first match up. This is close to Great for me.

Arez vs Blaze: [good] I wrote this down as good even though I have is more “it was fine” type stuff. This started slow, action got solid, I liked it even if I couldn’t defend it.

Arez vs Sadico: [ok] Disappointing. It felt like they were on different pages early on – the long Arez submission spot that’s not really sold by Sadico and also not counted as a pinfall was a cold moment. They were smoother as it went along, only to finish suddenly. The finish was creative but felt out of place in a serious tournament unless Arez being a heel was meant to be a story. (It was not meant to be the story.)

Latigo vs Taurus: [good] both Taurus’ early-round matches are the undersized guys trying to stop the monster. Latigo is much more effective at it (and it doesn’t include a quickly negated big chair spot.) Latigo going after Taurus’ hand to slow him down was effective, and it felt like he was close to getting the win before he was obliterated. Taurus’ spear doesn’t look as impressive as it has in other times, and the finish gets some air taken out of it when Latigo seems to have it knocked out of him right beforehand. Still an effective match.

Aeroboy vs Ricky Marvin: [good] there was a point here where Aeroboy did a kick to the side of the head and there was no noise in the building except for the impact sound. These guys were hitting each other hard and it didn’t seem to connect to the crowd at all. The reaction seemed there when they started fast. It slowed way down, and even the stiffer shots weren’t getting the crowd back for a while. The match was fine and got good by the end, but it’s a tough watch in front of an audience who only seems to care when Ricky is yelling at them.

Arez vs Taurus: [good] Both guys, maybe more Arez, seemed tired from the tournament and it affected their performance.They did well for the time they went and the crowd was very thrilled with the outcome, but it felt like they have a much better match in them.