Poneglyph

But that's actually one of Rush's biggests transgressions. You could say that someone like Negro Casas is playing fairly because he will openly call himself a rudo, so he is telling everyone beforehand that he will brawl, take shortcuts, cheat, etc. That's his style of choice and his rivals know that. On the other hand, Rush refuses to be called a rudo or be booked as one. He may say in promos that he is beyong the rudo/técnico distinction, but the truth is that being booked as a técnico and not wrestling like one gives him an advantage. And CMLL allows that, which fuels the nepotism accusations against him.

The face/heel distinction in American wrestling is about morality, about good and evil as you say. They are also inside terms about the expected outcome of the worker's actions based on that morality, so a face is someone that does specific things that will get him cheered. It wouldn't make any sense for these inner workings to be brought to the surface unless you wanted to avoid suspension of disbelief - or unless you're Dolph Ziggler. What you do have in American wrestling are terms like brawler or highflyer by which wrestlers are openly identified. In Mexican wrestling, técnico/rudo is closer to that. It's a choice of style - or in some cases, an imposition of style - so it's used because it isn't always related to the moral of the characters. Almost any Rush feud would be a good example of someone who is technically a técnico being the villain of the story while a rudo like Negro Casas was the face in their feud, or Shocker switching sides to be able to fight him was see as a heroic move. Of course there's some kind of moral implicit in the choice of style since it's the choice between winning cleanly by mastering the technical aspects of wrestling and using the shortcuts of brawling and cheating, but then again there's this popular saying in Mexico that says "el que no transa no avanza". It would roughly translate to "you can't advance without cheating" so you can see why some people would sympathize with the rudos.

The DQ out of nowhere felt like it was CMLL/Elite's attempt to stop the match when they realised they had completely lost control of Rush and Park. Blood and foreign objects are pretty much banned in CMLL and they have a history of stopping matches from airing when they get out of control, but Rush and Park (and Elite) had other plans. That may have avoided a riot, so it was for the best. According to cubsfan's report, both Rush and Park cut promos in the ring but their mic was cut, so I guess they edited that part out. Even with the decisive finish, I liked this one better than the one from Tijuana. Actually, I think a big part of that is the weird DQ and the interruption of the match. Rush and Park wanting to keep fighting despite the DQ, the wild energy of the crowd going from littering the ring to throwing money, the feeling of that style (the one from the great classic Mexican brawls) coming back to Arena México after being kept away from there... those are thing that made it a special match.

I went to the show in Barcelona too. It was a really good show overall even with a couple of weak matches - Heidi Katrina isn't very good and I didn't really care about Alpha Female vs. Santana Garrett. I liked Shirai vs. Dragonita better than the opener but I agree with you on the rest. Hojo/Iwatani vs. the Owens Twins was easily my favourite match of the evening. I was with the group that started to randomly chant "tómalo, dáselo, tómalo" at Santana Garrett. Apparently the Mexican promoter liked it so much that he's now using it as a hashtag for her on Twitter.

I think Rush vs. Máximo was the best match I've seen this year. Since I started watching lucha, I've seen Rush beat Shocker and Negro Casas in a dominating way or throwing around low blows because he cared more about humilliating his opponents than winning. In the match against Máximo, he's been the most vulnerable I've ever seen him, and the best part is it's only because of the idea of Máximo challenging his notion of masculinity with the friendly fire kiss that started their feud. You have Rush feeling the need to do the bait and switch with Pierroth to surprise Máximo and looking scared when the referee throws Pierroth out because he knows, after getting hit by three straight topes by Máximo - which was one of the greatest desperations spots I've seen recently - that he might get beaten by this guy with pink hair that's he's treated as someone that he needs to squash and being shaved by him would be the ultimate humilliation. So here you have CMLL, Máximo and Rush telling the best story around gender roles and heteronormativity after so many people have failed before them. And they weren't even trying, probably. IWRG has been a lot of fun this year too. They have the Panteras, the reunited Terribles Cerebros, the Navarros (even if watching Trauma II is hard for me right now), the Insoportables and they're finally pushing Diablo Jr. and Imposible (who is one of the most underrated guys in México, imho) in the Mariachis Locos.

The promotion is Promociones LLEM at Arena Tepotzotlán according to luchablog's match finder. It sounds like a really fun match, I guess it's time to get a new batch of matches from BTJr.

I saw Black Terry live twice. The first time was at a Chilanga Mask show in Guadalajara where he tagged with some local guy against the Traumas. I already loved Terry, but I wasn't fully able to explain why. I knew he was brilliant both in technical matches and violent brawls, that he had great punches, that he was charismatic but I couldn't explain what made him so special until I experienced it live. The match started with both teams trading holds, with each one being more violent than the other. You got the sense that each time one of the Traumas tried to submit him, it was an affront to Terry's honor and you perfectly understood why he would apply the next one a little bit stronger, so Trauma II would learn a lesson. When the first punch happened, it was as if nothing else could have happened. The violence had reached a point that it was inevitable. They had to punch each other, they had to brawl all around ringside. After that, Chilanga Mask booked two matches between Black Terry and Hechicero. Both followed the same pattern - they started trading holds and ended brawling with their legs trapped between the chairs of the arena in the first and with Terry throwing Hechicero a box full of bottles in the second. And both those extremely violent moments felt like the only logical things that could happen after the escalation of violence in each match. In my opinion, that is Terry's greatest strenght. Not only is he great trading holds or throwing punches, he manages to put all of his character in any one of those things to the point where they feel like the only possible thing in that moment. That's something kind of amazing to watch.

At the last house show I went to, the place was full of kids wearing Reigns' t-shirts and gloves cheering him. I was sitting behind a kid who spent the whole event talking about how much he wanted to see Reigns do the Superman punch. It was Reigns' first visit to Spain as a top babyface and the only exposition most of the crowd had was seeing him booed on TV. The kids still loved him.

I don't think it's fair to say that lucha libre doesn't have any psychology just because it doesn't have the same psychology as American wrestling. Lucha is not about Good vs. Evil but about the clash of styles, técnicos vs. rudos. The difference is not as evident now as it was in the 80s, but everything is worked around the dichotomy between the two philosophies and which one is defining the match at any given time. You are not going to see limbwork or a FIP section. Técnicos dominanting the match with their superior ability and rudos trying to cut them off cheating, swarming the ring or brawling give every match a basis of psychology. One thing Matt D has written about is the payoff of things that were set up early in the match, which is a point that i really like. The best example would be a move finishing the first fall and then being reversed in the third. The 3-fall structure also creates a sense of evolving strategy - for example, when a wrestler raises the pace in the second fall after losing the first because he needs to tie the match quickly. It's probably never intentional, but authorial intent is probably the thing I give less importance to when I watch wrestling. O a movie, or read a book, for that matter. I believe the language barrier hurts the perception of lucha. Even with the 8/16 Chilanga Mask show, which had great reviews, no one talked about about the stories Panther vs. Trauma II or Guerrero/Hechicero vs. Caifán/Avisman were built around, which were set up in the video packages - like T2 wanting to impress Panther after he said he hadn't ever heard the name of the Traumas, and thus trying complex submissions and Panther's own armbar.

I'm sorry, but have you even seen any of the individual ballots for the Sight & Sound list? It's full of people not ranking Hitchcock or Godard or Ford. There are ballots ranking Arnulf Rainer by Peter Kubelka or Andy Warhol's Empire. The fun (?) thing is canonical choices ended up pretty high on the final list anyway.

Some friends and I started a Medium publication where we want to discuss anything in wrestling that catches our attention. In the Spanish wrestling community (everything it's in Spanish, but I think some people here can read it without problems) there are few places talking about things outside WWE in a thoughtful way, so we wanted to try filling that void. It's called Proyecto Suplex! In my first contribution, I wrote about the body as a tool for representation in Silver Star vs. Charles Lucero (22/6/14): La fragilidad del cuerpo

You can buy the matches from Black Terry Jr. (@BLACKTERRY), but some of then also get uploaded to Youtube. This one has a couple of matches from the lastest Chilanga Mask show: https://www.youtube.com/user/amolaluchalibre These upload some of the main CaraLucha matches: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClDOKmCSFva3mEd92UsZUJg/videos, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZxIwU5rEKIgT8GuqVudzpg/videos Also, +Lucha just uploaded Satánico vs. Blue Panther They go all out trading holds for fifteen minutes. It's not just a maestros exhibition, there is a lot of struggle and fighting for positions. I loved the way Satánico put a Fujiwara armbar on Blue Panther, sticking his elbow on Panther's back. The finish may feel like a cop out, but I really liked Satánico being unable to avoid the temptation of going for a cheap win.

Los Cuatro Cuarenta are the band that plays with Juan Luis Guerra and Negro Casas is a big fan. I think that's where it comes from.

We all have a set of personal criteria we use tu judge matches, that is always changing, conditioned by pretty much everything in life but specifically what we watch, what we don't, the institutions and agents in the wrestling field, etc. Let's say that we all have an ideal wrestling match - or a couple of them. My point is that a Ric Flair match is not inherently closer to that ideal than a Gigante match. Most people here and most wrestling fans everywhere have developed an ideal wrestling match that is closer to a Ric Flair match, but there might be others that have developed one closer to a Gigante match. If someone gives five stars to a Gigante match, they would need to explain it more than if they give them to a Ric Flair match because it's uncommon, but I think it's possible. I wouldn't agree, but it isn't wrong.

Can a El Gigante match be better at being a Gigante match than a Flair match a being a Flair match?