MLJ: Hijo del Santo vs Blue Panther 10: Juventud Guerrera, El Hijo del Santo, Negro Casas vs Blue Panther, Black Warrior, Shocker

2001-09-07
Juventud Guerrera, El Hijo del Santo, Negro Casas vs Blue Panther, Black Warrior, Shocker

Just to start, I saw that some people were confused last week since I was talking about AAA when the match had nothing to do with AAA. I was just commenting on how I see the rudo ref trope in AAA a lot these days as a way to get heat in matches and how it's not a huge pull for me. That Panther vs Casas had a lot of it, but they overcame it through the talent of the guys in the match. That's all I was trying to indicate. Sorry if it was confusing. Anyway, just to continue the high level knowledge I'm dropping here, I couldn't possibly have less context for this match. Actually, that's not totally true. I know who all these guys are at least. Black Warrior is Black Panther, Blue Panther's nephew. Juventud is pretty self-evident but it was nice to get to see him within the scope of the project. Shocker was pretty young here.  He was an energetic addition to the trios match to say the least. So no context, and honestly, another problem I wasn't expecting. At the start of the match, I had to really focus on who was on which team: It's just counterintuitive to see Casas and Santo team, for some reason I kept thinking Juvi was a rudo, and even by the end of the match I wasn't entirely used to Black Warrior's mask. Shocker had already lost his by this point and Juvi came out with his on but took it off immediately, which is what Felino does sometimes and what I've seen Espanto, Jr. do even years after he lost the mask match to Santo. Juvi also had a random belt. Maybe it was the IWC Crusierweight title?

So, this is clipped, which is primarily frustrating since it robs us of the Panther vs Santo exchange from the opening segment. Why they'd pick that to cut I have no idea. The VQ isn't great either AND they decided to randomly to an attractive woman during key parts of the opening Shocker vs Juvi exchange. That's sort of funny. It's not as bad as the match I saw recently where they cut to a baby during the comeback. Regardless, the pairings were fun from what I saw. Shocker and Juvi were a natural match, fast-paced and smooth, and full of swagger. Juvi added so much to the match. He was just full of energy and while that might have frustrated me in a different setting, here, grounded by a number of great wrestlers and a solid story, he really added a lot. Black Warrior seemed to have come along a bit more since the last time I saw him and he both did matwork with Casas and had a chopfest.

The structure of the match was a little weird due to the fact they kept playing with injury angles and the ringside doctor, but it all came together in the end. First, after the initial pairings, Warrior totally planted Casas with a DDT; Casas took it really nicely and then sold it like death. Santo ignored everything to check on him while Shocker and Juvi fought in the ring. When it was time to finish the fall, Casas and Santo rushed back in and picked up the fall. Casas did a pretty good job selling throughout. After that we had a cut (and who knows how long this was) to a triple wheelbarrow suplex on Juvi which brought the doctors back in. Now that it was 3 on 2 again, the rudos took the fall with a big Warrior leg drop on Casas and Shocker hitting a death valley driver of all things. The only downside, past the clipping, was that Shocker then screwed up the double wrap around pin that Panther wanted to do with him. It didn't even look all that complicated. He just zigged where he should have zagged. Then the doctor got to check on Santo. They really overplayed their hand here since you so rarely see the doctor involved in other matches.

It did all sort of work, though. The tercera started with a bunch of pounding on Juvi, who made for a quite good FIP, actually. Then Santo tried to run it, got beat on too, and ducked a corner move and the comeback was on. The specter of physical danger from earlier in the match did make the comeback more heated, but it's not something they could do every week. Santo got a massive revenge DDT on the outside. Casas got a revenge inverted DDT on the inside. There's some really solid end-of-match exchanges in here too, setting up a big spot and a few dives. The key spot was Casas freeing Juvi from a standing Black Warrior submission only to dropkick him by accident. The key dives had Santo using Panther as a springboard to sail out onto Shocker and then Panther almost immediately thereafter diving out after him.

That cleared things up for the finish, with Juvi, still reeling from the Casas dropkick, getting taken out by Warrior. Casas followed up by dodging a low dropkick but as he was about to hit the Casita, Juvi came back in and attacked, causing the DQ. Another great trio with a few different characters to switch things up. It's a shame this was cut, especially the Panther vs Santo section but I came out of it really wanting to see a Juvi vs Casas match, so it definitely did its job.