PELF

I’ve been doing Lucha Libre (mexican-style pro-wrestling) for 7 months now. I could – and should – write so much about it, but I’ll leave that for another day. Today, I just want to sum up what we were up to in the last couple of sessions.

We drilled one of the foundational spots in wrestling: The International, mainly paying attention to our positioning and the emotion we’re portraying. (Here’s a nice post about it.)

We did the Barbra Streisand, which basically is a surprise reversal into an irish whip. You’re running the ropes, duck a clothesline, duck a back elbow and while on it you grab the left arm with your left arm and come to a squat-ish stop, then perform an irish whip; now your opponent can do the same thing.

We also tried a variation where instead of reversing it with half a turn, we switched ropes by doing only 1/4 turn or spinning more and doing a 3/4 turn.

We practiced a new wrist-lock escape, grabbing the ropes to do a front flip. We did it kicking the leg back like it was a webster, box jumping and jumping with the right foot on the rope.

(Me and Duane did a more flamboyant variation where after the front flip we immediately did a backflip and another front flip. That could work in a kind of more comical match.)

After the flip you can feed around to the left, going through the center of the ring, into a drop-toe-hold to finish the escape. Flip the opponent over by picking up his left foot and throwing it up and around to the right, and then elbow drop him on the chest.

I also tried a cool wrist-lock reversal with Malek, where you do the first spin under the arm as always, and then you step with the left foot on his left thigh and jump/swing/kick the right leg to the left over his head. It helps to place the right hand on the shoulder for balance and support.