If you’ll indulge me, all five of you who are reading this review right now, I have a little something to get off my chest. And that’s that I wasn’t sure whether or not I was going to do another IWRG reviews for the foreseeable future just a week ago. It’s been nearly two months since the last one, primarily because I took a long vacation to see family in Maryland. But even after coming back, I found myself just completely unmotivated to watch IWRG again; I don’t know if it was because of how much time had passed, I don’t know if it was dissatisfaction with the product (or lucha libre in general), but I wasn’t feeling it. And after last week’s IWRG card looked so dire (and featured Cibernetico in the main event just days after he helped publicize a luchador found guilty of domestic violence and attempted femicide), I was honestly ready just to go on an extended hiatus. So why am I here tonight? Honestly, because I looked at the card, and decided I had a bit more in me after all. So here we are. There won’t be any “Last time on Dragon Ball Z” riffs, and quite honestly by the end of this I may be back wondering what the hell I was doing here. But we’ll worry about that then. For now, let’s dive into some IWRG Thursday Night Wrestling.
We began with the former Junior de Juniors Champion, Villano V Jr., coming to the ring to cut a quick promo and officially vacate the title. That was all pretty standard. The rest is all perplexing to me. I get the explanation is that Villano V Jr. had to vacate the championship because he hasn’t defended it regularly. The only problem is he not only looks healthy enough to be defending the championship regularly, but has been wrestling consistently all year and could be defending this regularly. So it begs the question; if he could do all that, WHY DIDN’T IWRG BOOK HIM TO DEFEND THE TITLE MORE?! Seems like a self fulfilling prophecy to me that he had to vacate the belt when he was never booked to put the title on the line, but what do I know; I’m just a guy who’s going to play MLB 26: The Show when this is all said and done.
El Hijo de Scorpio Jr., El Hijo de Silver King, El Hijo del Alebrije, Halcon Suriano Jr., Hijo de Canis Lupis, Multifacetico Jr., Rokambole Jr., and Silver King Jr. competed in one of those seeding battle royals that is always pointless and makes some of us want to pull our eyeballs out with pliers. Order of elimination appeared to be Scorpio, Silver King Jr., Lupis, Alebrije, Rokambole, and Hijo de Silver King, with Multifacetico and Suriano as the last two. If this was done how CMLL does it, that means we’re getting Scorpio vs. Silver King Jr., Lupis vs. Alebrije, Rokambole vs. Hijo de Silver King, and Multifacetico vs. Suriano. In the words of John Olvier, cool. The best thing I can say about this match is that it was quick. Was it also pointless as ever? You better believe it. – *½
El Hijo del Scorpio Jr. defeated Silver King Jr. by pinfall after putting Silver King Jr. in La Casita. Just two days ago, I had the privilege of watching Walter Hill’s 1984 film Streets of Fire for the first time. It’s a great film that I highly recommend, in part because the film features one of the most energetic, great opening sequences in film history. I was thinking about that a lot watching the start of this match, a start that was so lifeless it belonged in a cemetery. If I had been in Naucalpan, I would’ve pulled an Inoki and told these two to wrap it up after that start.
I think these two were going for something similar to what “Speedball” Mike Bailey and Ilja Dragunov did last night on AEW Dynamite; unfortunate, neither Scorpio nor Silver King Jr. are as good as Bailey and Dragunov, and so their strikes and movement was slow, mistimed, and, here’s that word again, lifeless. The rest of the match wasn’t that much better, and for a match where they seemed to being going quick, this felt way too long. If IWRG was hoping for a hot start to this tournament, this was not it. *
Hijo de Canis Lupus defeated El Hijo del Alebrije via pinfall after blocking an Alebrije Split Legged. If the last match was the complete doldrums, this match was what happens if you have one of those Mountain Dew Orange Livewire sodas, for better or worse. These two, both better than Scorpio and Silver King Jr. in fairness, were flying from the get go, got a lot more time, and did significantly more with it than Scorpio and Silver King Jr. did with their limited time. Then again, that amount of time may have also been somewhat a detriment, as it allowed Alebrije, never the most consistent luchador in IWRG, to try stuff like a moonsault off the post and to the floor, where he promptly ate shit and landed face first. He was thankfully alright, but it took several minutes for the match to get back going as the doctors checked to make sure he wasn’t legit hurt. Maybe it’s just me Alebrije, but if you’re trying a move as risky as that and get no air, thus making it impossible for you to be caught properly, you may want to retire that spot. Regardless, this match was a breath of fresh air compared to the first one, featuring a legit good performance from Lupus, aside from whatever he was trying to do with that spear he hit towards the end. A good, if perhaps too ambitious, match. *** ¼
El Hijo de Silver King defeated Rokambole Jr. by pinfall after hitting Rokambole with a Vertical Suplex. That finish briefly had me thinking I traveled back to the El Santo era of lucha before realizing that El Santo would’ve had a significantly better match than whatever this horseshit was. Turns out, as bad as the first match was, I had no idea how good I had it compared to what happened here. These two tried to start fast like Lupus and Alebrije did, only their version of fast was doing basic offense and doing it poorly. This continued for several dull minutes, until the match climaxed with Rokambole forgetting to kick out of a move, the ref stopping the count, telling Rokambole he forgot to kick out, and then repeating the pinfall till he did kickout. It’s stuff like this that makes me look at the people complaining about Andrade El Idolo and Tommaso Ciampa doing spots with their pants on WrestleDream and shaking my head; you people don’t know how good you have it when stuff like this is out here! The amazing thing is I’ve seen Hijo de Silver King and Rokambole before and I don’t recall them being this bad. Perhaps I was delirious at the time. DUD
Multifacetico Jr. defeated Halcon Suriano Jr. by pinfall after hitting Suriano with a Spear. This was the shortest match of the first round bouts, which sucks because this was also easily the best match of the bunch. Like Lupus vs. Alebrije, Multifacetico and Suriano started fast, and unlike Lupus and Alebrije, they stayed within their limits and delivered what I thought was very good action. This was easily the best of Suriano I’ve seen during his IWRG stint, the closest he’s come to looking like he did during his Stukita days in CMLL. And yet again, Multifacetico proved why the Revolution Crew guys are so valuable to IWRG. He frankly looked even better than Lupus did; he certainly had the better spear, and his tope was smooth as silk and faster than Meat Loaf on his motorcycle in that one Rocky Horror Picture Show scene. A very good match that could’ve been even better if it got more than four minutes. *** ½
Kikiri Boom & Toki defeated Aguila Oriental & Falcon Fire defeated Kikiri Boom & Toki in an elimination tag team match. Toki was eliminated first by pinfall after a Falcon Fire top rope splash, Falcon was then eliminated by Kikiri Boom after a top rope splash, and Aguila Oriental was eliminated after Kikiri Boom reversed a suplex with a Small Package. Goodness gracious me; in a show that had been a bit of a mixed back to this point, this match was a Pepsi in a fridge full of Coca Cola, a Mike Trout in a lineup full of the rest of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service nestled in between You Only Live Twice and Diamonds Are Forever.
Look, am I overrating this one a bit, the same way I probably overrated the two singles match in the first round of the Junior de Juniors tournament that weren’t the quality of a 1990s Creed album? Maybe. But I can’t help getting excited over seeing guys who are really good doing good shit, and this match was full of good shit. You always know you’re getting good quality from Falcon Fire and especially Aguila Oriental, and this was no different; they were working a hundred miles per hour from the word go and never let up. And they were still probably the third and fourth best guys here because Kikiri Boom and Toki once again showed how versatile they are. They’re like Orange Cassidy if he was either a parrott or a giant blue sasquatch; capable of working comedy, and then becoming killer workers when necessary. It was necessary tonight, they delivered, and Kikiri was rewarded for his efforts with a challenge to Aguila for a future Intercontinental Lightweight title match. I’ll take it. I wouldn’t quite say it was great, despite my raving about it, but it was borderline great, and I will gladly take it as I face down more work from Scorpio and Silver King coming up. *** ¾
Hijo de Canis Lupus defeated El Hijo de Scorpio Jr. by pinfall after hitting Scorpio with a Double Stomp. This match is proof of two things; Hijo de Canis Lupus is really good, and Silver King Jr. is really bad, because it was almost night and day how Scorpio looked in this match compared to the Silver King Jr. one. Don’t get me wrong; he’s quite green and he’s lacking dynamism, but he was at least doing stuff in this match, in contrast to the first where it felt as basic as humanly possible. I have to give all the credit to Lupus. This is where you could really tell how much his charisma, experience and skill matters; he was able to carry this match and hide the flaws of Scorpio as best he could, making the match passable as a result. This reminded me a lot of the Psycho Clown vs. Canek match from TripleMania a few years ago; like this bout, it wasn’t a great match and Scorpio, like Canek, had a very flawed performance. But Psycho was so good that he was able to make the match watchable, and Lupus had that kind of performance tonight. To quote Cyrus from The Warriors, that is a miracle! Also a miracle? That Lupus won this match, giving us the possibility of a good final. Well, depending on how the next match goes at least. ** ¼
El Hijo de Silver King defeated Multifacetico Jr. by pinfall after catching Multifacetico with a School Boy. To say this was a disappointing result would be like saying Sam’s Town wasn’t as successful as Hot Fuzz. Frankly it was even more disappointing given that this deprived us of an all Revolution Crew final between Lupus and Multifacetico, which had a chance to not just be good, but really great. Alas, this is what we got instead. The good news is that this match saw significant improvement from Hijo de Silver King over his bout with Rokambole. He still shouldn’t have won this match, but he looked far better here with a good opponent in Multifacetico, which I guess goes to show that Rokambole is, as Donald Sutherland in JFK would put it, not so good. Even still, it’s such a shame that Multifacetico didn’t move on. Like Lupus with Scorpio, he carried this match, he easily came across as the more dynamic wrestler, and between this and the first match, it’s pretty clear he would’ve been the better opponent for Lupus. That would require us to live in a world where we get nice things; instead we live in a world where Jay Leno gets The Tonight Show from Conan O’Brien, Multifacetico gets eliminated from this tournament too early, and Dralistico posts AI photos of himself in prison. ** ¾
Los Macizos (Ciclope & Miedo Xtremo) defeated Mala Fama (Latigo & Toxin) by pinfall after Xtremo unmasked Latigo and hit him with a Michinoku Driver. Before I get too harsh, allow me to point out that this was significantly better than a lot of the stuff we got earlier on the show, and better than both semi-finals matches in the Junior de Juniors tournament. And yet, as I was watching this match, featuring two teams that I consider to not just be good but really good, I spent the entire time thinking “this should be better. Why isn’t it better?” The last time I had that feeling that strongly, I was in the theater watching Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar, which coincidentally was probably the last time anyone actually watched J. Edgar.
See? Leo knew this film was disappointing too, look at how bored he seems!
Again, I must stress that this match wasn’t bad; we got two great dives from Latigo and Toxin in the middle of the match, things started hot with Ciclope and Xtremo attacking Latigo and Toxin during their entrances, and the last few minutes were really well done as the pace picked up significantly. The problem is everything in between all the good stuff. We could’ve had the pace at the end from the beginning; instead, we got the typical IWRG structured long heat segment from Ciclope and Xtremo that, while better than it would be with lesser workers, is beneath their skillset. Then we got the same thing from Latigo and Toxin after they gained control, which, while better than usual, is also WAY beneath their skillset. Look, I am just a dude on his computer watching lucha before going off to play my baseball video game, and these four are really good pros who know what they’re doing. But dammit, I would’ve preferred to see these guys work as hard as Kikiri Boom, Toki, Falcon Fire, and Aguila Oriental did earlier. That match had the right pace and the right effort, and it succeeded because of that; if these four had done the same with how good they are, I think it would’ve easily surpassed it. What we got instead was a standard IWRG tag that was better than usual, but below what these four can deliver. Maybe they’ll give it to us in the potential rematch that Latigo was looking for with his post match challenge. Cool; either way, it won’t change that this match was good, but still disappointing. *** ½
El Hijo de Silver King defeated Hijo de Canis Lupus to win the IWRG Junior de Juniors Championship. The finish came after Hijo de Silver King pinned Lupus after Villano V Jr. interfered and hit Lupus with a Martinete. So the former champion wound up influencing who the new champion would be…although I’m not sure it mattered as he also attacked Hijo de Silver King after the match and unmasked him. Yet another thing that makes you wonder why IWRG took the belt off him in the first place and, really, why they do anything at all! In any event, unlike the semi-main, there was a whole lot of effort to make this match special. Hijo de Silver King was bleeding within the first five minutes of the match thanks to a Lupus chairshot, and while he didn’t bleed Jon Moxley at WrestleDream style, it was enough to give this match some heat, and allowed this bout to eventually feel like a struggle between Silver and Lupus. There was just one problem; Hijo de Silver King is still Hijo de Silver King, so there’s only so much he can give you and only so much Lupus could get out of him. Throw in the finish, a truly bizarre development given IWRG felt the need to take the belt off Villano, and this was all just messy. I guess a fitting end to the show in that regard huh? ** ¾
Of all the nights to return to doing IWRG reviews, it had to be this one. On the one hand, this was a show where I gave four matches *** stars, so it would seem to not be all bad. And yet, I come away feeling this show was a waste of time. Several matches were ones I’ll never remember. Three matches were outright awful, among the worst matches I’ve seen in any promotion this year. One of the good matches was still disappointing given the talent. And the show was built around a tournament to crown a new champion that ultimately neglected putting forward the best possible final in favor of a bout to set up, let me check my notes here, an angle where the champion stripped of the title due to either talent laziness or booking laziness determined the new champion (and then immediately betrayed the guy he helped). I don’t know what else to say, other than this was the worst show with good matches that I’ve seen in a minute, and something that certainly didn’t motivate me to return next week. Between IWRG delivering this, CMLL having an underwhelming year, and AAA no longer existing, it sure feels like lucha libre could use a giant kick in the ass. I’m not optimistic it’ll get one any time soon. Till whenever we meet again.
