This post will be the first in a series of three or four, depending on how verbose I end up being.
Lucha Mutante Experimento I
July 18, 2015, 4pm, Deportivo 18 de Marzo, Mexico City
The first show that we attended was Lucha Mutante. Deportivo 18 de Marzo is essentially a park in the northern part of Mexico City. The show itself took place inside a large tent. The nominal start time of 4pm was, in reality, when they started letting people in; the first match didn't start until around 5:25pm local time.
1) Ekuz CO Payaso Loco
This was a three-fall match, somewhat rare for a smaller indie promotion, and even more curious because it was the only such match on the show. This was a pretty decent opener, nothing special but entertaining enough. That being said, there was a surprising amount of mask ripping and hardcore stuff going on. This match felt a bit weird in that it was an opener with opening match guys but treated as Not An Opener.
As a side note, we later learned that the DF lucha commission did not like the lucha extrema bits and threatened to cancel the rest of the show. Fortunately that did not happen.
Ekuz took falls 2 and 3. The final spot of the match was a Spanish Fly from the apron to the floor by Ekuz. Confusingly, the ref seemed to wave his arms horizontally (thereby seemingly signaling a double countout) before Ekuz had returned to the ring, but they very clearly pronounced Ekuz as the winner.
The match got money thrown in the ring afterward, which I thought was awfully generous, but it wasn't my money. Maybe they loved the finish enough for it.
2) Pólvora b Jinzo
Jinzo subbed for Hijo del Pantera. This ended up being OK in my opinion, but unremarkable, except that Pólvora landed on my foot when he rebounded off a chair during a dive. Pólvora won with his Pólvora Driver.
3) Titán, Tritón b Aero Boy, Violento Jack
This was the match that, coming into the show, I was most interested in and worried about. In my mind, it could go one of two ways: either a hardcore crap match, or a really fun match with lots of creative spots. I've seen enough of Aero Boy and Violento Jack in non-hardcore matches to know that they can work well when they're not busy with foreign objects. (The crowd doesn't always appreciate that style, though.)
This was short (most of the Lucha Mutante undercard was) but filled with lots of creative spots, and ended up being my favorite match of the trip. For example, I loved Aero Boy suplexing Titán from the Tree of Woe simply because I totally did not see that coming. Titán's submission finisher on Aero Boy was cool, too.
Most (85% or so) of the match is here:
Money was thrown in the ring afterward, and this time I participated. The crowd definitely wanted more of this, chanting "¡Una caída más! ¡Una caída más!" ("One more fall! One more fall!"). We didn't get that extra fall (unless you count Violento Jack comically "obliging" by taking a back bump), but fortunately, Lucha Mutante seems to be indicating on Facebook that they'll be doing a rematch, so that'll be something to watch for. Titán later mentioned to me that Aero Boy is one of indie guys with whom he really likes working, and it showed here.
As a side note, I like Tritón's yellow color scheme of late, but someone in the crowd near us called him Pikachu. :(
4) Wotan b Core
Core subbed for Ludark, who appeared before the match and apologized for being unable to wrestle due to an injury.
This was probably a good match if brawling is your thing, but I couldn't get into it at all, and I'm one who finds brawls generally much more entertaining live. I wasn't bored painfully out of my mind, but at the same time, perhaps following that Titán/Tritón match was a little too much to ask.
5) Metaleón, Mr. Leo b Dragosth, Juana La Loca; Suicida, Toxin Boy; Leo, Rafy
Really fun, crazy match with lots and lots of dives. What made this crazier is that it started pouring rain during the match, and the seams of the tent we were in were not at all tight, so the mat, as well as a few other areas, became quickly soaked. This did not stop anyone from doing their dives, and somehow, amazingly, there was only one botch from the slipperiness of the mat.
I never am able to keep track of elimination order in these sorts of matches because my head is usually still internally spinning from the dives. This was really fast-paced and enjoyable.
After this match, there was a forced intermission while the Lucha Mutante crew dried off the mat. This took more than half an hour. The promoter of Lucha Mutante seemed cognizant of the problems with the rain and promised to correct those for the next show.
6) Último Guerrero b Black Terry
This was worked as a maestros match through and through, and a very good one at that. This has been said before, but Último Guerrero in this type of match against indie maestros is very different from the bingo-card Último Guerrero inside CMLL. Último Guerrero won with his old stand-by, the Guerrero Special, but there was virtually nothing else recognizable from his standard CMLL repertoire. Even an attempted Pulpo Guerrero ended up not materializing as you'd normally expect. This match was deservedly awarded with money thrown into the ring.
This video is clipped but probably has the majority of the match, enough to show how it went:
Overall
I thought Lucha Mutante did really well on this show, definitely more than worth the 150-peso (~US$9.50) cost of a front-row ticket. There were three very fun matches. Objectively, Último Guerrero vs. Black Terry was probably the best match of the show, but my favorite was Compares vs. Titán/Tritón. So much fun to watch those sequences live. You could also make a case for the four-way tag match as well. As I tweeted out at the time, the eight crazy luchadors running across a soaking wet mat to do dives, as if the rain wasn't there at all, deserve an A+ for effort.
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