Into the Indies 10.18.11: Mexican Hardcore

Posted by Ryan Byers on 10.18.2011

We're heading south of the border this week, as a lucha libre promotion gets invaded . . . by XPW?!



Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Into the Indies, the column that plays street ball.

This week, we depart our normal forum of Japan and head south of the border to Mexico for some independent lucha libre action.

We're taking a look at just one epic match this week, a match that I found quite compelling on paper when I read that it was going to be taking place. The match pitted two factions against each other, one from the United States and one from Mexico. At first glance, it seems like the two teams come from completely different worlds, but, upon closer inspection, they're not too dissimilar.

On one side of the ring, you've got members of Mexico's Perros del Mal, a wrestling stable turned promotion that I've previously written about here and here. Four of the most prominent wrestlers in the group also comprise the team for this eight man tag team match. Captaining the group is Damian 666, a man who in his glory days was renowned for taking some of the most insane bumps possible, which got him noticed and earned him a run in WCW when they were signing away all of lucha's top guys. Standing next him here is his best friend and frequent tag team partner, Halloween, who followed him to the United States in the late 1990's. Rounding out the group are X-Fly, a veteran who only got minimal respect before becoming one of the PDM, and Bestia 666, the relative rookie son of Damian who is just starting to gain some traction with wrestling fans.

On the other side of the ring: It's a team purporting to represent XPW, the Southern California hardcore promotion from the late 1990's/early 2000's which has had almost as many deaths and rebirths as Terry Funk's in-ring career. I didn't even realize that most of the guys associated with the company were still wrestling, but apparently they're always on call when there's an opportunity to cash in on whatever minimal name value XPW has. On the team for this match are Supreme, a man with an affinity for horror films, piercings, and falling into piles of broken glass; Carnage, who if I recall correctly didn't have that big of a run in the company; Kaos, a guy who at one point had a look that could've earned him a WWE job but now looks like a jackrabbit with acne; and Johnny Webb, whose career has stopped and started almost as much as the promotion that he's best known for being a part of.

So, what is it that causes me to call these two groups of wrestlers similar? They're guys who have, for large portions of their careers, been hanging around just outside of the big leagues. Damien and Halloween have had major runs in AAA and WCW, but lately they've been more closely associated with the indy group formed by Perros del Mal. The XPW posse has always been close to breaking out on something more than a regional independent level, but that glory has always been taken away from them at the last minute. They're guys many of whom, though I took a few lighthearted shots at them above, are fairly talented in the ring but have put their pure talent aside to get noticed in hardcore matches. They're guys who are hungry for more success than what wrestling has afforded them lately and that, combined with their penchant for big bumps and weapon shots, might just make an eight man tag featuring these men tearing into each other something memorable.

So, let's head to the ring on August 20 of this year, for some hardcore action between the men of Perros del Mal and the men of XPW. Let's see if they can use this as a platform to finally get some of the respect that they have been denied.



Supreme, Kaos, Carnage, & Johnny Webb vs. Damian 666, Halloween, X-Fly, & Bestia 666

The two teams are announced, and the entrance of the PDM team sees them standing around on a lot of cars that are part of the set for the show. As soon as the last Perro is announced, the two teams are attacking one another and brawling all over the venue where the event is being held. We've got a lot of quick cuts back and forth between four different pairs of wrestlers brawling, so this might be a hard match to keep track of. About three minutes in, light tubes get introduced into the mix, and all eight wrestlers are breaking them over each other's heads. In a particularly brutal spot, Damian takes three to five tubes, lays them across Carnage's body, and gives them a big legdrop. Seconds later, on the outside of the ring, Damian is suplexing Carnage on top of a motor vehicle. Poor guy just can't catch a break. The only guy who has it worse than Carnage is Kaos, who eats a second rope powerbomb through a light tube bridge. Meanwhile, Supreme is having his face repeatedly slammed into a car windshield. Kaos gets powerbombed on top of an upside down wash basin by Damian, which looks like it suuuuuucked. I understand that my play-by-play is very choppy right now, but, if you think that is bad, you should see the editing of the match. After dishing out a lot of punishment, it is finally Damian's turn to take some of it, as he gets suplexed through a barbed wire board. Flashing forward a bit, Halloween brawls with Kaos out to the entrance ramp and suplexes him on it, then climbing up to the top of a set of bleachers and leaping off of it with an elbow drop. The sick part is that Kaos moves, so Halloween misses the elbow and SPLATS down on the mat. It's at this point that I realize that Damian and Halloween are dressed identically and both covered with so much blood that I've probably been confusing one for the other throughout the entire match. I had wondered why the cameras were so heavily focused on Damian.

Anyway, after a commercial break, Halloween gives Carnage a big spear in a ring filled with light tube remnants. Kaos runs in to take over on Halloween and hits him with a missile dropkick variation on the Van Daminator. Bestia goes after Kaos at this point and takes him off his feet with a spinning heel kick and follows with a big leg drop for two. Yeah, a Hogan-esque LEG DROP is going to end this match. Bestia's daddy Damian hits the ring to show his spawn how it's done, and he light tubes the hell out of Kaos. With a break in the action on the inside of the ring, X-Fly builds a hellish contraption by taking a barbed wire board and sticking light tubes into the barbed wire as the crowd chants what I believe is the word "hardcore." Halloween SPEARS Carnage on top of a car. Owie. Damian and Kaos are climbing a scaffold for no apparent reason in one of my least favorite hardcore match spots. What exactly is gained by going up there? Well, it turns out that NOTHING is gained for Damian, and, in fact, he loses a fair amount, as KAOS SHOVES HIM OFF THE SCAFFOLD, FORCING HIM TO FALL FIVE FEET AND DOWN ON TOP OF A CAR. Christ.

Kaos follows Damian down with a lower-elevation elbowdrop. Bestia, perhaps trying to prove that he's more insane than his old man, goes all the way to the top of the scaffold and comes off with a dive on to all of the other wrestlers in the match. Somewhat ironically, the man who caught him the most was his father/teammate Damian. Back on the inside of the ring, Damian somehow goes back onto the offensive, shoving Supreme off the second rope and down on to a pile of miscellaneous pointy crap. There's no better way to describe the menagerie of half-destroyed weapons that litter the squared circle at this point. Damian places more of the pointy crap on top of Supreme, drops a leg on him off of the second rope, and that is enough to get him a three count.

Overall

I was pleasantly surprised by this match. I've watched a lot of deathmatches from Mexican promotions, a decent amount of deathmatches from XPW and related groups, and a lot of deathmatches from Japanese promotions like Big Japan. I've almost never liked the deathmatches that I've seen from Mexico and XPW because they're just random collections of spots. A guy takes a big bump here, a guy hits another guy with a weapon there, but none of it really goes anywhere or builds to anything. The Big Japan deathmatches, though, are completely different. They've got their own unique psychology and a structure that works, where the violence intensifies throughout the bout and one brutal spot builds into another, more insane spot. I don't know if it was by design or whether it was a coincidence, but this XPW vs. PDM bout actually felt a lot more like a BJW deathmatch than it did any of the deathmatches that I've seen from south of the border. Granted, things started out with hardcore spots instead of standard wrestling as probably would have been the case on the other side of the Pacific, but instead of that hardcore continuing at an even pace with no real rhyme or reason, the big stuff in this match was actually saved for the end and the finish was such that it felt like it should actually be a finish instead of just another spot in the a never-ending series. I would probably go about *** for this one, which is higher than virtually any other Perros del Mal battle that I've ever seen. Go ahead and check this out if you're looking for something different. It probably won't disappoint.

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