CMLL on LATV Workrate Report 5/4/14

These matches were all from the 4/20 Arena Mexico show. Earlier today I watched part of an episode of The Price is Right and some chubby goof in a bucket cap on contestant's row guessed $420 on some jewelry, then made an obnoxious "did I say that!?" face and turned to his matching-shirt friends who were all going "ohhhhhhhhh!" Then it cut back to Drew Carey who was shaking his head as if to say "Man what a doof." People, man.

Blue Panther, Valiente & La Mascara vs. Puma, Tiger & Vangellys

Damn this was really good. This is two matches within about a week where Panther gets to stretch out a bit on the mat, and his 4 minutes here with Puma was probably his best mat stuff of the year (so far). What's great is it was completely different from the stuff with Terrible from 4/11. He and Puma do a bunch of cool leg takedowns, with BP doing cool roll throughs and leverage moves. It is true poetry watching him do his thing. Valiente and Vangellys roll as well which is fun as you don't get to see two of the stockier guys do extended mat sequences. It's also good, in a different way from BP/Puma, more brutish, with each guy trying to use his size to hold the other down while twisting limbs. Segunda is fun in as Valiente and BP switch partners and get to show off their fun ranas, with it ending on a nice throwback to the primera, with Mascara going to the well the won it before, and the rudos immediately recognizing it and cutting it off. Tercera was nice and extended with us actually getting some drama with eliminations. It's such a regular part of lucha that it's easy to forget how lame the "all three guys pin/submit the other three guys at about the same time to end a fall" ending is, and here we get the non-captains getting picked off first, actually making the finish built to something. Vangellys sells Valiente's silly-and-nasty inverted power bomb to knees great, mainly because he took Valiente's boot toe right to the mouth. Panther started the year nicely and has been really ramping up his work in trios as the year goes on. Puma and Tiger have also gone from guys I didn't really know last year to guys I actively look forward to in 2014.

Negro Casas, Felino & Mr. Niebla vs. Rush, Atlantis & Titan

Match immediately feels different than other Casas/Rush affairs, as Casas attacks from the get go and controls most of the early action. Just when I get used to seeing Casas as sympathetic old man he turns into sadistic ass beater, kicking Rush into the crowd and attacking him in front of families on a Sunday afternoon. At one point in the ring Rush does his (arguably the current most awesome thing in pro wres) thrust headbutt into Casas' chin and Casas appropriately sells it as if he just took a thrust headbutt to the chin. Tercera has nice moments from everybody, with Felino working fast and feeding Atlantis admirably, Niebla taking a fun Race bump to the floor and dumping himself on his neck and shoulders Titan hitting a giant moonsault off the top to the floor (although I really wanted Felino to punch him in the dick during his handstand, which actually seems like something that would fit the current Felino…"character"). But we all want the Rush/Casas interaction, and we get it. Casas dominated the first, and Rush gets his heat back in the third, breaking down Casas in the corner in the most beautiful way. Arms flying, and when Casas starts to buckle he kicks Casas' legs out from under him, dropping him onto his seat where Rush then leaps and stomps all over him (to the hisses of the crowd). The match was pretty short but the work was quick, and the match-ups ranged from solid to great. Not one of the must see matches in the Rush/Casas canon, but as watchable as ever.

Rey Escorpion vs. Maximo, for the CMLL Light Heavyweight Title

Good lord, Escorpion is all painted up in blue wearing  some sort of Avatar get up, and it is every bit as horrible and cringeworthy as when Volador did it last year. Is Avatar still a really big deal in Mexico? His hair is in a ponytail, but not in a tight braid (which it will need to be in order to have sex with a dragon's ponytail vagina). This was a fairly short match for a Title match, but they crammed a lot of action into it. Maximo did his really nice pendulum rana, and hit maybe his burliest tope ever, looking much more like a flying shoulder tackle than a dive. He really just slammed right into Escorpion. I get kind sucked out of the match as they do one of my least favorite "big match feel" lucha tropes, where the match devolves quickly into Move > Pinfall > Both Lie On Mat Selling > Repeat. It's obnoxious and I suppose it's supposed to make things more dramatic, but it really makes the whole affair disjointed to this viewer. Hurricanrana roll-up, slow count, kick out at two, both guys lie there breathing heavy and selling. I'm not sure why Maximo was selling the effort it took to get his move kicked out of, but apparently this wrestling is tiring business! I'm about as far removed from a go-go-go super workrate freak as you can get, but this style just doesn't feel like a match to me. It feels like several separate move demonstrations, with breaks in the middle for both demonstrators to rest. This match is hardly the guiltiest offender, or even a bad match (it was actually a pretty decent match, both guys looked good....well, in a wrestling sense. Escoprion of course did not LOOK good, due to his dorkgasm Avatar cosplay), this is just me finally coming to terms with being sick of this phony big match feel. The classicly slow lucha pinfall counts only make it more exasperating to me. Sorry guys, wrong place wrong time.

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My Lucha Journey: El Hijo Del Santo One-Shot 1: El Hijo Del Santo vs Atlantis

Leyenda de Plata 2005:
2005-11-11 @ Arena Mexico
El Hijo Del Santo vs Atlantis

Alright, so I received one mighty request (well-appreciated) to look at some El Hijo Del Santo, and since someone was kind enough to ask, I'm going to do my best. I think the way to do this is to pepper some in now and again, though, as opposed to trying to do any great overview. He's just got too long and storied a career to do it justice that way, and I'm also a little wary of tracking back to the early 90s quite yet. I had seen him a bit in the DVDVR 80s set and once or twice in the Worlds Collide era stuff that everyone sees at some point or another, but not much else. In this moment, however, I'm right in the middle of first decade of the 2000s, and I'm going to look at a pair of matches with opponents I know fairly well.

This was the finals of the Leyenda de Plata 2005, after the two ciberneticos they had that year. For the sake of disclosure I watched the Santo vs Ultimo Guerrero match that followed a week or two later first and then decided it made sense to double back to this. It's definitely a temptation to make a whole thing out of this, but I'm going to roll into 2006 soon, and despite the "one-shot" naming, I'm just going to do these two matches for Santo, for now, thus killing two birds with one stone.

Santo was somewhere around 42 here and while that's not the prime of a career by any means, it's still young enough that a guy in the short of shape he was in could still really go. Atlantis was maybe a year older or so. This was just a one fall match but it did get a decent amount of time at least. It was interesting to see that aspect of it since the only single fall matches I've seen while doing this have been lightning matches. There's a nearfall or two early on that could have been a fall-taker if this was 2/3 falls (especially the high impact flip over sunset flip out of a 'rana position that Santo did that earns him the first fall in the Guerrero match later in the month that I'm going to look at next). There was also the sense of changing gears maybe ten minutes or so in when the near falls and big frenetic moves and broad selling began that almost felt more like a tercera caida in and of itself instead of just a long finishing stretch.

I'd have to go back to see if these two had faced each other in a setting like this before. My guess is that maybe a trios or two after Atlantis' turn, but in general, no. I think this was an opportunity for Atlantis to really cut loose with the rudo-ness, since he was facing a guy that he probably wouldn't get cheered against. He took his opportunity in full stride, with early mask ripping, mascot abuse (including a fun spot where Ultimo tossed him from the outside in to Atlantis, who then used him as a projectile to splash Santo), grabbing the ropes for leverage on near-falls then jawing with the ref (which led to a great nearfall as Santo rolled him up), and just controlling the early pace of the match with methodological offense. He even took a stalling escape onto the ramp late in the match! One of my favorite momentum shifts in lucha is when the tecnico, either through opportunity or revenge loses it and goes after the mask, only to pay for it on some karmic level by losing control of the match. This happened early on here and led to Atlantis turning the tide, immobilizing Santo and giving his mask a working over, one that would lead directly to the finish.

This was obviously a big match and they went all out. Santo was very good at making things matter and giving them weight, though I could have liked a little more breath between big moves here. I think this was in part was due to the one-fall nature not allowing for the natural breaks these matches often have. The highlight of the match for him from a highlight reel point of view was probably the headbutt off the top that drove Atlantis out followed by a very big dive. The purity of Santo's mask, especially dangling as it was, made a lot of his high impact offense like this look visually striking. They followed, maybe a bit too soon, with a few more big spots (the flying rana and a huge plancha from the top to the outside) by Santo. It was here, to break things up before the finishing segment that Atlantis utilized the ramp stalling. When he made it back in they immediately went to teases of the Caballo and then the Atlantida and took the thing home.

The finish was sort of BS, but it's way more conclusive than it could have been (and  definitely more so than the match that follows vs UG which I think a lot of people complained about at the time as being too AAA-y). This was only, maybe, half a year tops after the Atlantis turn and I'm not too sure how successful the turn itself was. With a finish like this, he had to have huge heat coming out of this match, though. After the finisher teases, UG (Atlantis' second) tripped Santo off the ropes. Mistico (Santo's second) got up on the apron, distracting the ref, which seems like a very Mistico thing to do in this era. Santo went to confront UG only to get his mask pulled off from the outside. He covered up, got rolled up by Atlantis, and then everything broke loose. Considering this was the final of a yearly event that was put on in the name of Santo's father, it was a hell of a heat-generating finish.

Ultimately, I thought this was very good. It was two real masters of their craft in a heated environment, with big stakes and a pretty molten finish, even if it wasn't a clean one. Atlantis got to really play the rudo and Santo shined in opposition. It was maybe hurt by the fact it was just one fall but that's a medium-sized maybe. Frankly, I consider myself quite lucky that someone wanted me to see El Hijo Del Santo matches instead of a sharp Volador, Jr focus or something, which is probably what I deserved. More to come soon.

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