My Lucha Journey: The Marco Corleone Experience 6: Shocker & Universo 2000 vs Kenzo & Marco Corleone, Cabelleras vs Cabelleras

Aired: 2006/12/15
Evento: Sin Piedad 2006 (Lucha Estelar) Arena Mexico
Shocker & Universo 2000 Vs Kenzo & Marco Corleone Cabelleras vs Cabelleras

So, this was a bit of a treat, and bear with me while I explain why. Just like it's tempting to watch a million Negro Casas or Blue Panther matches in a row, it's also tempting to find a million hair and mask matches and just watch them one after another. I don't think that's the best way to do this though, as it'd lead to diminishing returns after a while, and variety is the spice of life and all that. When slotting one in makes sense organically, that's another story, and that's this story, actually.

This was a big match on a big show with big stakes and it certainly felt that way. It's also not what I'd call good by any of the usual metrics. It's heated, but it's not smooth. It's almost a constant stream of bullshit, basically, from costumed dancing girls at the start (and Marco having a few bars of the Williams Superman theme and a cape in his entrance! Why in the world did he ever drop that?) to the entirety of the ring work to the haircut theatrics at the end. It was, however, wildly enjoyable bullshit that was put together almost exactly as it should have been. From some sort of "purity" standpoint, this wasn't good; hell, even the comedy wasn't the usual elaborate sort of shtick and sequence but something else altogether. I did sort of enjoy the heck out of it though.

It's funny. Part of why I wanted to see this match was to see Universo in 2007. He was in his early 40s here and I've seen some hints of really good character work from him from this period, just glimpses. Of course, seeing any Shocker earlier than 2014 was also of interest after the time I put into watching the Rush feud. So I wanted to see them, and they're there in this match, sure, but they don't stand out all that much. They had some great dives admittedly and Shocker slapped on one of the best STFs I've ever seen on Marco when they were doing a "reach the ropes" sequence to parallel on the rudos just had the advantage on, but some of that was just how tall Marco is. I did find it interesting that they weren't called tecnicos or rudos but they were introduced as the Mexicans with the others as the Foreigners. It made for a slightly different dynamic.

But yeah, frankly, It was the Kenzo Suzuki and Mima Shimoda show. I have no idea why he had Mima with him instead of Hiroko but she was 110% Sheri Martel here. I think she got more offense in this match than Universo and Shocker combined. Kenzo, who I do not remember fondly from his WWE run, was great except for one tiny thing which I'll get to in as second: Every little reaction he has to everything was amazing. He interacted with Marco really well. He sold what was happening perfectly. Some of it was just so well set up. The first fall ended with something I've been waiting to see: Marco hitting his own guy on the superman dive. It was pretty hilarious, as was Marco doing the Rick Rude gyration for Mima later on and causing Kenzo to collapse. And of course, there was Kenzo's glorious attempt to do a superman dive of his own where he totally wiped out. He was just brilliant in trying to avoid the haircut at the end (and I swear they called him a character from Dragonball once he was bald, which was also really racist, funny and unexpected. Maybe there's just a spanish word that sounds exactly like "dragonball" though). So yes, he did everything really well except for one tiny, minuscule thing: the part where he actually had to wrestle. His offense looked really rough, in the negative way (and frankly 2/3rds of it felt like it was him just holding someone for Mima to batter). His timing was all over the place. I thought Universo and Shocker sold pretty well and Marco was fine but I'd call Kenzo's selling more of the Benny Hill variety.

All that said, the match worked out pretty well, held together by the bells and whistles and (again) bullshit. Ultimately, in the tercera caida, Kenzo and Universo were eliminated and Shocker and Marco had an okay little exchange. It ended with Mima breaking up a fall again and arguing with the ref and Shocker. This led, perfectly, to Marco taking her out by accident with a really nasty flying knee and some wonderfully cheap foul stuff that played up Marco's strength (he nailed Shocker in the groin from a tombstone position) and allowed Universo to counter the cheating and help Shocker to pick up the win.

I can't imagine this match was well received at the time except for maybe the really nice dives and honestly, I won't blame anyone for not liking it. It reminded me a lot of those taped together smoke and mirrors WWE main event matches, just without all sorts of foreign objects (unless you count Mima as a foreign object), things that sort of get by on the illusion of substance. That was this, but since it's not something I'm entirely used to in lucha and the stakes and the heat were quite high, I found the whole thing well worth watching.