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DIR Return to: Sheriff Lonestar's PPV of the Week
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#Post#: 21543--------------------------------------------------
Sheriff Lonestar's PPV of the week; Style's Clash
By: SheriffLonestar Date: December 14, 2013, 1:07 am
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Some times in life you want some different things, its worth
bringing in something new to make things whole again, a new
partner perhaps that will make things not see so, ordinary. No I
am not talking about that. I am talking about wrestling. I watch
a staggering amount of wrestling, I mean I watched 3 PPV's this
week as well as Impact. I watched promos from all over the
world, I watched matches from the 1930's for The Five. Always
looking for something that little bit different. Enter New Japan
Pro Wrestling and its partner in international wrestling Consejo
Mundial de Lucha Libre or as you know them NJPW and CMLL. The
second and third largest companies in the world, and the two
oldest. They have had a talent swap agreement in place since
about 2010 and it has produced some sterling results. The main
bit of which is the subject of today's PPV of the Week coming to
you from Korakuen Hall in Tokyo by the magic of IPPV (and some
bloke in Clacton with a crack code). Ladies and gentlemen, Damas
y Caballeros, Go resseki no minasama, I give you
Fantasticamania, the NJPW/CMLL super tour that lasts for five
days each January and acts as a natural come down to the massive
Tokyo Dome show on January the 4th. It helps combat the big
match fatigue in New Japan by offering something completely
different.
As NJPW was founded in 1972 you would think it would be a bit of
a spring chicken compared to CMLL founded in 1933. You would
think it would lets its hair down every once in a while, however
NJPW has some very conservative booking traits. No gimmick
matches, except the occasional two out of three falls, just good
old fashioned get it done in the ring grappling. CMLL is kind of
its counterpart in Mexico, traditional, very few gimmick bouts,
certainly no street fights. They both produce a purely athletic
aesthetic for their fans. Of course that is still relative to
its audience. The most important matches in CMLL, as in all
Lucha Libre, are their bet matches; Luchas de Apuestas. Mask vs
Mask, Hair vs Mask or Hair vs Hair. Though none appear on
today's card they have appeared at Fantasicamania in the past.
What we get here though is an interesting kind of cultural cross
over. First off lets look at the presentation. It is a NJPW
show, with a NJPW ring and NJPW announcers but in a nice touch
they brought over the CMLL ring announcer to announcer all the
matches in Spanish, which does give a certain grandiosity to
proceedings. All Lucha matches start with a whistle not a bell
so both are mic'd up. Just looking at the poster;
HTML http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/93/Fantasticamania_2013.jpeg
They obviously wanted an old Lucha vibe at the event. They got
it to, with scantily clad ring attendants for the Technicos
(faces) and doom laden music for the Rudos (heels). What
interested me most though of course was in the in ring style.
For the sake of continuity, and to give everyone chance to
relate to a new product in a tearing great hurry, Heels tag up
with Rudos and Faces tag up with Technicos. Thus keeping natural
rivalries alive, with one notable exception. Atlantis turned
Rudo in CMLL many years ago after years of being a top line
technico in both CMLL and AAA, he decided to make the turn and
reignited the fire in his career. However his forays into Japan
have always been as face, so for this tour he ditched his Rudo
red and black and went back to his Technico blue and white to
tag up with Jushin Liger and Tiger Mask IV to face another set
of legends; Gedo, Jado and Mephisto.
The content of the matches to is very interesting. The Mexican
style is bump light. The reason why you see Luchadors and
Luchadoras doing a lot of flying outside the ring is because
those crash mats on the floor are easier to land on than the
ring itself. Prince Devitt a couple of years ago making the
return trip managed to damage himself temporarily by trying a
missile drop kick into the ring and spent a lot of time in the
foetal position trying to recover. So the mat wrestling they
deploy is very fluid so as not to have to take the bumps. New
Japan's rings being more like an American ring, have some bounce
to them along with the naturally stiff style of the Japanese
competitors makes for some interesting variations on the pro
wrestling you see. This is a high flyers paradise, air bomb
offence, with some classy practitioners. My personal favourite
coming from night one with Prince Devitt vs Dragón Rojo, Jr.
being a highlight. This is of course the days before the Bullet
Club (only 10 months ago and they are everywhere now thanks to
Devitt's twitter account) so we have a face Devitt, who really
doesn't work that much differently, and he had a nice little
piece of action going on with Dragón here.
The main event pits Hiroshi Tanahashi and La Sombra against
Misterioso, Jr. and Shinsuke Nakamura. In a nice touch
considering that he never wrestled for CMLL, former NJPW referee
and wrestler Black Cat is given a memorial send off. He died in
2006 at the age of 51. He had an extended heel career in NJPW,
WCW, and feuded heavily with Tiger Mask in the early eighties.
That is his widow collecting the flowers from Tanahashi and the
present Nakamura. Both NJPW and CMLL understand their rich
histories and its benefit to the product. It is also the right
thing to do. Black Cat, being a Mexican trained by a Japanese
wrestler and spending time in lots of different promotions would
have liked the sentiment. It was people like him that made this
kind of card an artistically viable proposition and there for a
logistical and financially satisfying one.
HTML http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e3/Victor_Mar_Manuel.jpg
This truly is a world festival of wrestling, and it lasts for
three nights on youtube. Go on what's 9 hours of your lives? Its
the weekend.
Enjoy the shows;
HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb3QwREGSVs
HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2mI-HcEFJo
HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shzsg5cyWeE
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