MLJ: Cavernario Spotlight 7: Sagrado, Stigma, Tritón vs Bárbaro Cavernario, Cancerbero, Raziel

Aired 2013-12-15
taped 2013-12-02 @ Arena Puebla
Sagrado, Stigma, Tritón vs Bárbaro Cavernario, Cancerbero, Raziel

I swear that if I watch enough of these matches I'll start to be able to figure out the difference between Titan and Triton. One difference here is that Triton came out with a clown mask over his normal one as if he lost a bet? I bet that feud between Titan, Triton, and Shocker and Atlantis, Delta, and Guerrero Maya Jr from 2011 was fun. I don't think I could handle too many of those matches right now, though.

Anyway, this was another mid-card Monday Puebla match, but the trend I've been seeing here is that these tend to get a couple extra minutes and it leads to more complete matches than a lot of the more polished stuff with bigger names. It's a trade-off. These tend to be a little more imaginative both in offense and in transitions, but there tend to be more little flubs and moments of disconnect as well.

This was one of my first looks at Cancerbero and Raziel too and I came out liking them for their spot on the card. It took me a second to figure out which was which, but thankfully not only is Raziel smaller, he was also shirtless and had a big R on his mask. See, I'm getting good at lucha watching. Sagrado was new to me too. He was a little larger and matched up with Cancerbero pretty well, with both of them hitting some impressive spots for their relative size.

The primera had all the time it needed to be enjoyable. Triton and Cavernario started with some intense and competitive matwork. Sagrado and Cancerbero followed up and didn't stick up the joint and then Raziel and Stigma had a faster exchange. It all ended with a bunch of dive teases that were cut off by the rudos as they went around the cycle allowing Stigma to recover enough to hit Hijo del Santo's full rotation 'rana sunset flip (does that have a name?) for the caida.

The segunda started even and led into a pretty good rudo beatdown. Cavernario probably does the standing chop-off too much; it's in almost all of his matches, but the fact he's one of the only guys in CMLL that does it every match makes it mean more if every wrestler was doing it every match. I liked the transition. Cavernario tried to rip Triton's shirt off as part of the chopfest and it got stuck. No idea if this was intentional or not, but it left him prone to a swarming and shifted the momentum. Sagrado had a lot of character, actually. In the segunda he made sure to fight back and lose during the beat down which not everyone does and in the tercera he actually unsuccessfully hulked up a few times. He had a sort of local hero vibe to him. I wouldn't call it good, in and of itself, but it could work as part of a unit. I see he's teamed a bunch with Valiente which was my first thought but I could totally get behind a Valiente, Sagrado, Mistico trio. Anyway, the caida ended with Cavernario hitting the splash to the outside which let the others submit Sagrado, and that's great, because anytime Cavernario hits that splash it SHOULD end a fall.

More beatdown into the tercera but it was good. There was the hulking up and an always fun handshake fakeout to set up an ambush. Raziel and Cancerbero worked well together. Raziel hit a ridiculous pumphandle move too. Finally Stigma did an assisted handspring off the ropes to start the comeback which had a lot of sort of sloppy sequence but was servicable and gets a B+ for effort. After another cut off or two, Sagrado finally got to hit his dive too. Raziel and Stigma ended it with a roll-up fest finishing with another one of those Santo sunset flips before Camorra (I have no idea who Camorra is) ran to the edge of the ramp to distract Stigma letting Raziel pin him. This had its warts but I really do enjoy watching matches like this now and again to break up whatever else I'm watching. There's a lot of effort here and they use the formula very well to their advantage.