My Lucha Journey: The Marco Corleone Experience 9: Marco Corleone vs Universo 2000, Cabellera vs Cabellera

Homenaje a Dos Leyendas:
Marco Corleone vs Universo 2000, Cabellera vs Cabellera
2007-3-30 @ Arena Mexico

I was going to maybe finish with this, but it's really not a great choice for it. This was another big final match of a big event, with a big trophy at the end and the dancing girls to begin and what not, but frankly, it wasn't all that great, even relative to my current breadth of watching. I think there's one ultimate sin that a hair match can commit, the absolutely worst thing: being boring, and this one sort of was. I was expecting a little more out of Universo based on the scope of the match, but I guess Marco just maybe wasn't ready for something at this level yet.

There wasn't the same feeling of pomp for the entrances or really excitement for the match itself compared to the tag hair match. In general, I do like Universo's look. That's the way to survive losing your mask (which he had only lost a few years before): to have this weird facepaint under the eyes, cowboy hat and goatee look. It was sleazy and iconic all at the same time. The crowd was mostly behind him, though he did work rudo, but in general they weren't into this like they were the previous one.

To be fair, Universo did kick out a number of fairly good touches, even if, in general, he was somewhat sluggish (especially coming off the ropes) for a match of this caliber. His very early beatdown attempt was effective, in part due to the fact it was sold well (like usual) by Marco. The abrupt ending of the primera was pretty good, as it looked like Marco was going to do one of his usual agility reversals, but got his foot caught and dragged into a quick and deep STF. The segunda began with a charging headbutt by Universo to break up the Rude Swivel. They paid some of this off later, somewhat at least, with a missed charge to start the tercera and Marco fighting back against a replication of the early beatdown attempts later in the match. I might have been reading too much into that, though. It wasn't that Universo wasn't trying. He had a nice dive, which Marco caught well, and towards the end of the tercera, he missed a big top rope senton because he was jawing with the second (Rey Bucanero). Best of all was probably his antics to try to avoid the haircut after the match; he did not take it gracefully at all.

The first two caidas were pretty brief. Like I said, I kind of liked how abruptly the first one ended, if only because it was a divergence from the usual Marco comeback. Moreover, his comeback in the segunda was a little different than usual, with a dropkick as the big move and a seated chinlock to end it, so it at least felt different. The tercera caida had a couple of good nearfalls and some fine late match selling, but ultimately didn't really pick up or had the sort of big moments or story beats that would make a match like this.

The finish was fairly clever as it built somewhat upon the mano a mano match, with Cien Caras interfering to stop the pin during the superman dive. This distracted the officials and allowed for Universo to try to try for a foul but Buccanero took one for the team and Marco picked up the roll-up win. Unfortunately, It wasn't enough to overcome an otherwise lackluster match, however. This was probably one of the most disappointing hair matches I've seen since starting to watch lucha. They tried, but this was lacking the smoke and mirrors of the tag cabelleras match and, while Marco would get better (and I've seen plenty of evidence of that), this particular pairing just didn't have enough to bring to the table at this point in time.