MLJ: Rush vs Casas 10: La Sombra, Máximo, Rush vs Negro Casas, Rey Bucanero, Shocker

Aired 2014-06-07
taped 2014-05-27 @ Arena Coliseo Guadalajara
La Sombra, Máximo, Rush vs Negro Casas, Rey Bucanero, Shocker

I want to play around with this one a bit. Bear with me. I'm going to veer off into the speculative. Let's get some preliminaries out of the way. This was very much like the last match. Rush and Sombra and a third tecnico vs Casas, one of his usual partners, and a third rudo. Maximo's presence added so much to this, however. Rey's unfortunately, did not, but Shocker in 2014 is a step up from Felino in 2014, so there you go. If something works in Puebla, why not toss it out in Guadalaraja right? They aped the exact same opening bit from the previous match. Maximo is not Marco, however, and he was far less apt to play along with the Ingobernales. Still, the beatdown was the beatdown, it led to the comeback at the start of the segunda, and after everyone got everyone else out of the ring in a tercera which was as much comedy as heated brawling, Casas went for the low dropkick and the Caista only to get pushed into the ref, fouled, and pinned by Rush. Very entertaining match, but not as spirited as the previous one.

Alright, so now that we have that out of the way, I want to look at a couple different readings of a couple different things. Wrestling is so subjective and we never have a complete picture, and that's as true with lucha as anything. I feel that's especially true for a relative newcomer like me. Rush and Casas are both top wrestlers in the world for 2014. I'd actually have Shocker and Sombra fairly high as well. Is it okay then that Rush and Casas reuse so much of the same stuff? They work the reverse course clothesline in to each of their matches. They do the corner stomping/stepping and usually reverse it at least once. The dodged big boot transition happens a lot.

Here, though, they completely reused the match structure and the opening from Puebla one night before. There, Marco had fallen into the rudo traps that often start a match, double-teaming and chicanery. Once Casas came in, he tossed him to his corner to get his hands on Rush and the match inverted with Rush and Sombra charging in and basically becoming the rudos. Here, the exact same thing happened but with Maximo playing Marco's role. Did he do it very differently? Yes, but watching one match after the other, it came off as really unbelievable and fake. I've seen them do this before in weeks past, specifically with Rush's whipped comeback dropkick out of the corner as a transition. There's very much a sense of them coming to like a spot and then running it in the next town, despite the fact that both shows are taped.

Honestly, I don't know. Do we hold it against them? It's tempting. I think we'd hold this sort of thing against a Sheamus or a Bray Wyatt if they tried to pull it on both Raw and then Smackdown, but that's not how things work in Mexico. For one thing, these shows are taped to air a week or two later. No one live at the second show would have seen that yet. Moreover, the revenue structure is different. From what I understand, the TV is all pretty much bonus and the live gates are the big deals. In that case, there's not really any practical harm in it. It's only when you try to judge them up against other wrestlers and their output for the year in some sort of nerdy list that it might become an issue, and even then, is it fair to hold it against them?

Also, there was a narrative opportunity with Maximo there. I like Maximo a lot. He hits his stuff well, puts so much character into his act, and is almost always over with the crowd. I've not seen a ton of exotico work so maybe it's just the baseline, but he does stand out to me. Alternatively, I kind of get frustrated when there's a random tecnico teaming with Rush or his cronies and they just play along with the act. The next match this partner would be teamed with other people and back to being a normal tecnico. Maximo here was such a breath of fresh air. Where as Marco joined right in and rudo-ed it up. Maximo was reluctant, hesitant, flip-flopping and doing everything in his power not to take the cheapshots that Rush and Sombra wanted him to take. I do think there's a natural feud for Rush with his former partners, Marco and especially Maximo. There were fun hints of what that might look like in the revelos increibles match from a few weeks before this, and there were more here.

Casas really played into it though, maybe too much so. He'd run this act where Sombra and Rush would hold him for Maximo and Maximo would hem and haw and not hit him, so he'd break free, hit Maximo a few times, and then let himself get grabbed again, goading him. It was hilarious, but in the greater scheme of the Rush vs Casas feud, and given the amount of hate they show each other later in the match, it was a little frustrating. Lucha can be weird when it comes to internal consistency, but I felt like this was a lapse. Now, you can spin it, or more accurately, I can spin it. For instance, let's read it like this: Casas is, much like myself, frustrated with the fact that Rush and Sombra get to still call themselves tecnicos and the complacency and hypocrisy of other tecnicos teaming with them and allowing it. He's especially frustrated teaming with Shocker, who is a man who was so true to his own convictions, he became a rudo instead of teaming with Rush. By continuing to goad Maximo, he was trying to show him what Rush and Sombra had become and how close to that edge any of them were, just by association.

Alright, so it probably wasn't the latter at all, though, to be fair, the frustration in Maximo seemed to grow as the match went on. He'd still go in and hit his stuff and do his comedy and play with Shocker and molest Rey and what not, but he wouldn't fistbump Sombra. Maybe it was just Casas playing up a comedy spot vs a comedy wrestler in the midst of a hate-filled situation, but there were interesting things that came of it.

Anyway, the point is that there are a lot of ways to analyze these matches and we're not always dealing with perfect information. I try to do my best and look for patterns, but even in a match that was as throw-away as this, you can end up not sure how to read something.