Lucha Azteca Workrate Report 7/5/14

2014 Leyenda de Azul

feat. Valiente, Maximo, Rush, Rey Escorpion, Ultimo Guerrero, Euforia, Atlantis, Shocker, La Sombra, Super Porky, Mr. Niebla, Terrible, Rey Bucanero, Dragon Rojo Jr., La Mascara & Vangellys

We start with a battle royal to decide Group A and Group B teams and much of the battle royal is spent with me watching and wondering how the hell Porky is going to take a bump over the top rope. La Mascara has never watched a battle royal before as he takes a break to celebrate on the apron while the camera cuts to two people old enough to know better wildly tongue kissing in the crowd. Niebla takes a fast and crazy looking elimination bump. UG takes his elimination like a man getting monkey flipped by Atlantis and flipping wildly to the floor. Escorpion just walked over and punched Porky in the boob (left). Ohhhhh all of the first 8 people eliminated are all in one Group. That makes sense. But also means that I didn't get to see how Porky would take his elimination bump since he was clearly in the group of guys who didn't get eliminated.

The cibernetico itself starts out pretty hot with Rojo hitting a big rana off the apron onto Euforia and then Porky shockingly being the next person in the ring (I assumed he would need a bit of a breather before getting back in) and damn if I don't really dig Porky's bit with UG, seeing Porky take a big bump off a stiff shoulder block and come back with a deep arm drag. Nice. Escorpion hits a nasty baseball slide through the bottom ropes into Rush, with Rey flying all the way out to the floor. Rush and Vangellys have a real fun run (for two guys who never actually fight each other due to affiliations) with Rush really kicking the shit out of him but also leaning face first into a seated Vangellys dropkick. Shocker adding the Stunner actually fits pretty well with his style and isn't soul crushing like indy Lawler doing it. Valiente hits the most badass high speed headbutt tope on Niebla and then we get a cool UG Euforia showdown which obviously has never happened, ending with Euforia hitting a wild dive. Holy shit and then we get Porky/Maximo…but Sombra and Mascara are dicks and break it up before anything happens, but that does lead to Porky hitting a headscissor/headlock takeover on both so who can be mad? Escorpion hits a giant guillotine leg drop on Rojo, which is not a move you see much anymore, for whatever reason. Porky is a special kind of fat, as his belly sticks out just as much when he's lying down as when he's standing. Rush has mastered the rich dick hair flip. Maximo hits a couple really cool delay hang time arm drags on Escorpion. Eventually things end up with Atlantis opposite Ultimo Guerrero and they have their standard exchanges and work about a 4 minute singles match. We get some mask ripping, a nice Atlantis dive, some big move nearfall exchanges that I zoned out during, and a win for Atlantis.

Overall this was much more interesting than many of the ciberneticos they've run over the last few years. This was given WAY more time than most of those (excluding the battle royal this clocked in at over 30 minutes) so you didn't have a bunch of awful strung together eliminations off moves that would never end a regular caida. Add to that the battle royal setting the teams provided some unique match-ups that I've never seen. It sounds odd to like a match in part because Euforia did a cool headscissors to UG, but lucha match-ups and feuds don't always get mixed up that much, so it was neat seeing brief "new pairing" moments. Fun match, tons of cool stuff in it.