MLJ: 2010: A Garza Odyssey 4: Héctor Garza, Último Guerrero, Volador Jr. vs La Máscara, Místico, Negro Casas

Taped 2010-02-19 @ Arena México
Héctor Garza, Último Guerrero, Volador Jr. vs La Máscara, Místico, Negro Casas

"Relevos Increibles" = A match where people cross political, cultural, and religious lines, solely because they want to beat up Volador, Jr. so badly.

It's nice to see some things haven't changed in almost five years. This was enjoyable chaos, and actually, quite a bit of a surprise. I think I had read somewhere that Mistico had tinkered with a few rudo mannerisms at one point, but I hadn't realized it'd gone so far. When a luchador sports an evil black version of his gear, that's a good sign that his name ought to be in red.

Like many matches I've seen this year, this one was full of great talent and Mascara. Garza and Guerrero had been feuding but that only came into play towards the end of the tercera where Garza missed the top rope to floor moonsault and hit him by mistake. If it led to some sort of brawling or animosity after the fact, I didn't see it as that was the ring-clearer to set up the finish. This was another trios match where Casas was completely forgettable. I've seen way too many of those for my liking when it comes to things like PWO's Greatest of All Time polls. Oh wait, that's not totally true. After taking the segunda with a Casita, he did a few very Randy Orton-ish cartwheels. Mascara, to his credit, didn't do anything egregious. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, because while it was fine in the match it didn't make me feel very positive about his improvement over these years. Garza definitely adds something to matches like this between his reactions and his athleticism.

This was really a tale of two matches. Mistico and Volador went at it for most of the match, from the opening beatdown on the ramp where Sombra came out to help Mistico, to interludes in between all the rest of the action. It's very distinctly structured. In the primera, Volador finally came back and hit Mistico with a tope con giro (I think), which cleared them out of the ring so that they could rush to the finish (a pretty cool alley oop into a top rope rana where UG propelled Garza to the top). In the segunda, it was more brawling and sequence (which varied from excellent to sloppy) from Mistico and Volador until Mistico hit a tope suicida to again clear them from the ring so that Mascara and Casas can pick up the fall. It was a fun little paralleled structure. In the tercera, there was a lot of everyone vs everyone until Garza took out Guerrero, as previously mentioned, and they tied Volador to the rope and beat on him to draw the DQ.

I'm lacking context (more on that later) but it as pretty clear to me that the point of this match was to get over rudo Mistico. He had the Sombra assisted beat down from the get go. Between caidas, he ripped up the sign that the ring girl was walking down with, which is something I've never actually seen before. The match ended with him both assaulting a tied up Volador and beating up the referee when he tried to stop him. It was all pretty surreal. I've seen rudo Santo, of course, but that never seemed all that far gone, and rudo Atlantis always had this clownish undertone. Mistico reminded me a lot more of current Rush actually, the difference being just how beloved he had been as a tecnico for years. He drew a chant in every match I saw him in back in 2006. I guess a match like this was sort of necessary if they really wanted him to succeed as a rudo.

You know what? This was jarring enough that I'm going to make my first deviation from the 2010 Garzathon (earlier than expected) and go back to watch the matches that I think have the turn, and maybe one or two before that to see where the wind was leaning. This match itself was worth watching, both for the surreality and to see how they weaved the Mistico vs Volador sections in and out.