MLJ: Atlantida Rising 15: Atlantis vs Rey Bucanero

Aired 2006-07-22
taped 2006-07-16 @ Arena Coliseo
Atlantis vs Rey Bucanero for the NWA World Light Heavyweight Championship

What the heck 2006 CMLL? Come on now. It's like you want the poor bastard to fail. Rey did fail, too. Not entirely, of course. He kept the Light Heavyweight title until May, 2009, which is a long time to keep any title, even an occasionally ignored one. He ended up rejoining Los Guerreros too, teamed with La Pesta Negra where he got to debut (or repackage at least) Zacarias. He won the NWA Historic Light Heavyweight Title and even as late as last year the World Tag Team Championship. From what I've seen though, he never really sustained the top-of-the-card success that this turn and the push that came along with it would have suggested. Frankly, I don't entirely understand the mechanics of how drawing and pushes work in Mexico, but I really don't think these two matches, the first with Ultimo Guerrero and the second with Atlantis, helped.

The first of the two, with UG, I feel comfortable blaming on the two competitors. It was a massive disapointment relative to the build, abrupt, lacking a lot of the necessary trappings of a successful title match, with selling that was absolutely not earned, big moments that felt anticlimactic and ultimately, a celebration that was enthusiastic but empty. A week or two after the match with UG, Rey was pushed out again, on TV, with a sudden and surprise change to win the NWA World Light Heavyweight Championship, what, if I'm not mistaken, was later on replaced with the Historic title that he won later in his career. If Wikipedia is correct, Atlantis had just won the belt from Wagner, Jr. Apparently he thought he was supposed to be defending against Niebla, and the "championship committee" or suitable CMLL equivilent, switched things up so he was defending against Rey instead. All of this lead to hugely entertaining chickenshit Atlantis antics. Unfortunately, we've got no idea if it led to the sort of classic title match that Rey probably needed at this point. They decided to show a mighty eight minutes of the match, bell to bell, with most of the clipping seemingly taking place at the start of the tercera.

What we got followed the UG match pattern for the most part. Two incredibly brisk caidas followed by a mostly unearned tercera. This time, though, it felt even more so because we're missing a chunk of it. The primera was basically just Atlantis, edgy due to the switch, charging at Rey and after a minute or so getting rolled up. It wasn't the worst sort of vulnerable heel champion moment in the world, but it's maybe not what Rey needed here, especially due to the clipping. The segunda being Rey hitting a quebadora and then running right into the Atlantida (even a great looking one) didn't help things.

The tercera made Rey look like a chump, Lizmark, Jr. look ineffectual as a second, the refs look moronic, and well, at the least, it let GdI get some of their heat back after the title loss, but not much of it. The clipping came in at a Rey superplex, which at least rationalized some of the selling for both wrestlers, maybe even more so than in the UG match, which wasn't clipped. They went back and forth with hitting and missing a few moves before Rey escaped another Atlantida and hit the Buca Storm. At this point, when he had the match won, UG pulled the ref out and in the confusion Atlantis hit a powerbomb counter with UG adding extra leverage for the win. What they actually did was fine, even the short primera since it played into the story of Atlantis not being prepared for the match. The fact that they clipped a match that already was set up to be sort of slight was a problem though. Maybe I just hold title matches in higher regard than the fanbase and the company do? I don't know, but these two matches, coming at so close a time together, really seemed like they should have been a way for Rey to put a stamp down and establish a tone for his tecnico run and that didn't happen at all.

At this stage, despite liking a lot of the matches I've had about my fill of 2006 for now. Depending on how long I can keep this up, I might do another sweep for the Perros del Mal stuff, including some of the back half of the year. For now, though, I've got one more match that feels sort of topical and that I liked a lot more than this, even if it had one less talnted luchador, and then I think I'm going to bounce back to 2014 for a while.