IWRG 18th June 2009: Trauma II vs. Zatura

I had a few other Trauma singles matches lined up to watch, but I ended up only watching this, and then a couple of other minor matches from the same card. The Piratas trios has its moments, but was pretty standard fare. I'll try and watch Dr Cerebro vs. Juvi tomorrow.

This is a title match, and it is a deeply, deeply pleasing one. The mat work here is focused on injuring bodyparts, which is somewhat unusual in this setting. I thought both guys looked great moving around on the mat, and the holds all were designed for submissions, not the kind of one-upsmanship you often get (to be clear, I like that style, especially where used to tell a story, but sometimes feels a little disjointed). The first fall is predominantly Trauma II in control, and he uses a number of painful looking arm submissions on Zatura's taped up shoulder. He's also not afraid to punch Zatura right in the arm in between. I liked the suddeness of the finish, with Zatura locking one of those all-limb, inescaple holds that is completely lucha. In a nice touch, the hold was predominantly controlled using the legs.

Over the course of the first and starting again in the second fall, Trauma develops (or possibly redevelops) a shoulder injury also, which is the focus of Zatura's second fall control. There's a moment where Trauma exits the ring to get a breather, and he seems to convey a frustration over how close he's come to losing in two straight falls. The second fall finish was beautiful - a rope assisted rolling takedown into a (again predominantly leg-controlled) arm submission.

The third caida is where they drop the mat stuff and go for broke. Trauma does a great corner powerbomb, Zatura later responds with a gorgeous top rope moonsault. They spill to the outside - Trauma gets a (OKish) tope. The last few minutes are really good. It descends into both guys throwing punches - a long way away from the early matwork - before Zatura tries for a pin with some takedowns. I feel like I'm in danger of over analysing the finish, but how I would like to see it would be that Zatura had to break his tapatia due to his injured arm (if you watch, you see he releases that arm first). This allows Trauma to reverse the move and secure the win.

The match feels like its included a mixture of different influences - the control and transition of the matwork is distinctly lucha, but the submission work feels a lot more puro/shoot-based. The extending selling of a bodypart as the main story isn't typical either. I thought they really managed to pull it off and achieve something that felt, for want of a better word, new and exciting.