My Lucha Journey: The Marco Corleone Experience 8: Marco Corleone vs Universo 2000, mano a mano

Taped 2007-3-9 at Arena Mexico
Marco Corleone vs Universo 2000, mano a mano

Alright, here's where we stand. I'm going to hang out in 2007, watch this and the blowoff hair match to finish out this sequence, hit the Lizmark Jr. hair match as well, which I wasn't expecting to do but it's actually worth it, and then I'm going to roll on to attacking 2006 in a big way, focusing on Los Guerreros de la Atlantida, peppering in with some El Hijo Del Santo from all sort of years as I go. Meanwhile, I'm sure CMLL will build to another big match and then in a couple of months, I'll double back from that like I did with Rush vs Shocker. Slowly but surely, I'm filling out a map of things. A few more years at this rate and I might actually know something.

I'm guessing on the taped date. not sure about the aired date. This was the match that made me want to see more Universo from this era. He was in his 40s here and I'm pretty sure I've seen him two decades before this. He's the younger brother of Cien Caras and Mascara Ano 2000, but there's really nothing young about him here. There was a lot to like though. He married some very gritty offense (including a really nice tope, for which Marco caught him well. That's one thing I haven't talked about which he does do well, both due to his size and willingness) and a lot of flourishes, playing to the crowd, timing things well, and grinding down when the situation calls for it. He had a great look too, having lost his mask a couple of years before. There's this sort of  desperado with eye shadow thing he had going which was better than just losing the mask and walking around like yourself, I guess.

Marco, on the other hand, looked the most physically capable I've ever seen him. The height on his dropkick was pretty awe-inspiring. His flying clothesline was frankly awesome and that rarely looks good. He even locked on a great little neck stretch and teased a tombstone (which at first I chalked up to a cultural misunderstanding, but this was after Universo took his hair in the tag match with Kenzo so I figure he knew what he was doing. He already had a fall at that point. If you hit a tombstone does the match end or do you just get DQed for the fall? Does anyone know? It's like getting DQed on purpose in an iron man match in order to do more damage?). The flipside was that while he still actually sold very well, which is probably his strongest aspect as a wrestler in this setting past his size, his working the crowd was just not up to par yet. This was the very height of the eagle arm flaps, ALL THE TIME. Someone must have coached him on that and not much else. When you look at how he interacts with the other wrestlers and the crowd now it's absolutely night and day.

The match itself was extremely abrupt, though it was shaping up to be at the least fun before it got cut short. Even today, a lot of transitions and momentum shifts involving Marco are based around him either hitting a high flying move off of a reversal or him missing a high flying move. In some ways it's just the most logical thing to do given his size and agility, but when you watch a lot of these in a row, it passes the point of "good scouting" or dynamic and sort of veers into "repetitive." One thing I've noticed about CMLL in general, both in 2007 and especially so in the last year or two is that you rarely have matches end in interference, even to set up another match. You'll have fouls, sure, or some sort of clever rudo-based finish, but rarely matches just thrown out. That's exactly what you had here, as when Marco was going for the Superman leap to take the third fall, Universo's brothers ran out to maul him, thus setting up the hair match to come. Anyway, like I said, this made me want to catch some more Universo from the period, and what prompted met to go back and then forward, especially knowing that their feud was bookeneded by two hair matches, which is usually, though as we'll see next week, not always, a sure bet.