MLJ: Rush vs Negro Casas 13: La Máscara, Rush, Titán vs Felino, Negro Casas, Shocker

Aired 2014-06-14
taped 2014-06-06 @ Arena México
La Máscara, Rush, Titán vs Felino, Negro Casas, Shocker

Just a bit of background to begin here. Titan had a lengthy (as in 9 months or so) National Trios Title run with Mascara and Rush. If you're keeping track, Rush had the World Trios belts with Marco and Maximo until May of 2013 and then after dropping them due to Marco's injury, picked up the National Trios belt the next month. He kept those until February of this year when they lost to La Peste Negra. The point is that like Marco and Maximo, Titan's a partner who has experience teaming with these guys. As we saw in previous matches, Marco was more than happy to join in the Ingobernales fun while Maximo was much more reluctant. Titan fell far more on the Marco side of the spectrum, to the point that I didn't even miss Sombra in this match.

This match was all heat with a beatdown in the primera, a cutoff comeback and then DQ in the segunda, and a few more cutoff comebacks in the tercera before they really take it home. You don't see lucha matches like this too much and in some ways it showed. The pacing on some of the comeback attempts wasn't maximized, and they went back to the same well twice on a transition spot, a painful sin indeed. In general, though, it was a pretty effective switch up of the formula and one that they all worked towards, which was especially impressive when you have a stooge like Felino in the match.

Ingobernales being out first meant that there would be an ambush, though this time it was Shocker's own fault for rushing the ring. For what it's worth, Titan came out with an axe and Mascara had a ridiculous sweatshirt with the Papi of Papis slogan on it. As I said, titan fit right in to the beatdown. He has slightly flashier stuff than any of the Ingobernales and that added something more than, let's say, what we usually get from Mascara. All three beat down on Casas, who drew chants. They closed the caida with a flurry of corner attacks (including a fun Titan clothesline through the ropes and an alley-oop kick where he was propelled up and over Rush's shoulders) with the Rush low dropkick punctuating Shocker's skull and a nice Titan springboard splitlegged moonsault finishing Felino.

The beatings would continue into the segunda caida, with Titan really pounding Felino on the ramp and then taunting everyone back on the apron. He was getting into being a rudo, certainly. There was a hint of comeback with Shocker grabbing Rush's leg from the outside as he was about to nail a held Casas, but the exchange that followed ended with Titan hitting a big dive on Felino and Rush locking in the outside in Leglock on Casas that he'd done in the last two shows. This time Mascara chocked Casas with his shirt too, which was a boon as it helped it feel more like escalation than them doing the same spot again and again. This led to the DQ caida victory for Casas and company and it felt like the equivalent of a hot tag cut off into a second heat segment, really, which you don't get to see too often in these trios matches.

I was expecting a near immediate reset in the tercera and you sort of get it. Shocker decided he'd given up enough of the match and he quickly moves out of the way of a Mascara superkick while being held. He has a face off with Mascara and I was about to be annoyed at the laziness of it all but it kept on building, finishing with a great exchange that served as the real comeback. Rush had come back in to cut Shocker off; he and Mascara whipped him into the corner but he dodged Mascara's jumping elbow and did his elaborate reversal into a stunner on Rush. Mascara rushed in with a dropkick but Shocker moved so that he hit his own partner with it. This let NC start to take over on Rush on the outside and Felino to charge back into attack Felino. It was a nice little bit of sequence.

They even draw things into one more little heat segment, as the Ingobernales get a late advantage back in the final exchanges. After some mask pulling on Titan, he forced Felino out and hit a huge top rope Asai moonsault to take them out of the match. Mascara and Rush took the advantage over Shocker and NC, but they replayed the missed superkick spot from earlier in the match. This led to a quasi advantage for Shocker and Casas, a broken up pinfall after Rush's corner dropkick on Casas, a German from Shocker, and then, finally, a dropkick to the knee to cut off a final corner dropkick from Rush and a STF to finish the match.

That second superkick dodge killed me. If they had just come up with something a little cleverer this would be, though not quite a MOTYC, something that I'd be happy to tell everyone to watch. As it was, it's another quite good trios match in a series of quite good trios matches. Of note was the fact that they really started to hype the apuestas match on commentary which I hadn't heard before, so even though it felt a bit uncertain just a few days before, everything was now locked in and headed toward a conclusion.