Lucha Azteca Workrate Report 5/24/14

These matches were from the 5/9 Arena Mexico show



Ephesto, Mephisto & Dragon Rojo Jr. vs. Valiente, Titan & Marco Corleone

Real fun match, bunch of cool Ephesto stuff, nice Mephisto showing and maybe the best Marco performance of the year. Definitely the best showing from him in my recent memory (jeez we sure do talk a lot about Marco Corleone on SC these days). With just a liiiitle bit more time and a littttttle less Titan silliness I could see throwing this on the MOTY list. Primera was a short blast, with Valiente and Ephesto tearing it up on the mat (wish I got to see these two go on the mat more), Marco tightening up his punches more than he has in a long time (he's been doing these big looping hooks, here he was tossing them more like a short left uppercut and they looked real good). Ephesto and Mephisto did a nice job of cutting off Marco, especially Ephesto coming in and blindsiding him with a big kick to the chest. Marco still does obnoxious stuff (here he bumps to the floor off a dropkick, and the first thing he does is bend over and hike his kneepads), but also breaks out some great stuff like using his abs to mime punching buttons on a telephone, before walloping Dragon Rojo, and tosses out some real slick armdrags that would look cool even if they were done by a smaller man. Valiente hits his lightning fast dive (probably the best straight dive in lucha today), Mephisto has a goofy devil mask like he's in a Damn Yankees production, Titan hits a nice rana on the floor, and this was a nice brisk 15 minutes. Tons of fun.

Tiffany, Princesa Blanca & Dalys vs. Marcela, Princesa Sugheir & Lluvia

YES! Tiffany is back on my TV! It's been too damn long. She and Blanca have the matching pleather catsuits like they're in the Doll Squad or something and this is awesome. Dalys is sporting her fashionably short 'do with pride! Dalys looks awesome here, breaking out a sweet running Akiyama knee in the corner on Sugheit, and a mean running corner clothesline on Lluvia. The rudas absolutely own the first fall and get DQ'd for Blanca shoving a ref, because they're strong women who don't let men run their lives. Dalys continues to rule throughout this, catching a slick Marcela rana from the apron to the floor. Lluvia's fishnet bodysuit seems like it would take ages to get into. Oh shit the match ended with Sugheit hitting La Mistica. Damn that was short. Fun for the time allotted, maybe best Dalys performance I've seen, and it's been too long since I've seen Tiffany. She's like the Christine Baranski of CMLL.



Mascara Dorada, Atlantis & Volador Jr. vs. Ultimo Guerrero, Niebla Roja & Gran Guerrero

Well blink and you'd miss this match as the whole thing is less than 10 minutes, but it's packed with tons of killer action. Dorada was on fire here and had a pretty wild death wish. His ranas always look spectacular but here he includes his high speed tornillo which is just so sick. Volador can snap off a nice rana of his own when he's not being a shithead, and he looked better here than he has during most of his 2014 run. UG was a good ringleader here (though I like the team WAY more when Euforia replaces Gran G) and took his Jerry bump super fast (since the whole match looked like their normal match, but played about 25% faster). My dvr cut off the very end so I assume there were Atlantis/Ultimo Guerrero mask challenges lobbed back and forth. Skim through for some Dorada craziness.

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MLJ: El Hijo del Santo One-Shot 3: Satanico, Hijo Del Santo, Emilio Charles, Jr. vs Negro Casas, Shocker, Mr. Niebla

1998-03-06
Satanico, Hijo Del Santo, Emilio Charles, Jr. vs Negro Casas, Shocker, Mr. Niebla

It's actually harder to find disposable El Hijo del Santo matches than you'd think. Looking for something that's 30 minutes long and seems epic? Not so hard. Looking for a disposable 15 minute trios, though? Something to get some sense of things to build up in your watching to those longer matches? Harder than you'd think. This one did pop up, eventually, though, and it had a lot going for it. First, a new wrestler, new to me at least, in Emilio Charles, Jr. I'm pretty certain he's on the tail end of the DVDVR 80 set but I haven't made it that far yet. Next up, young masked Shocker and Niebla, which is kind of exciting. They were a team at this point and I think actually champions, having beaten Charles and Wagner for the belts. Of course, we've got Casas rounding out the tecnicos.

Finally and most important for this exercise, we have rudo Santo, which is pretty much the most surreal thing ever. I'd seen the turn before because it's such an amazing, crazy moment, but I've never seen him work this way, especially in so routine a setting as a weekly TV match to set up someone else's feud. As a bonus, I got to see Satanico team with Santo as rudos which had to feel like one of the signs of the apocalypse. I'd seen him in 2007 when he was really over the hill (though still effective) but he had a lot more in the tank here. I do hope there's a lot of 2001-2 available because I want to see all of that stuff.

I thought both Niebla and Shocker represented themselves well. Shocker was more than passable against Satanico on the match to start. Niebla really stood out though. He has that crazy goofy rudo charisma now but it was turned up to eleven back then. He literally bounced around the ring with Santo, more spring than man. He was wildly entertaining to watch but at the same time, it was also very, very satisfying when he got nailed in the face by a Santo dropkick. There were times that the two of them did look lost though, especially when they were working together. One would set up to whip his opponent and the other would meander about not quite sure what he was supposed to be doing. That sort of thing. You get to take the smoothness in a lot of these exchanges for granted. Casas was, of course, smooth as ever, and unsurpisingly matched up against Santo especially well even if it was a pretty strange role-reversal to watch.

As I said, this was more of an angle than a match. Towards the end of the first fall, Emilio crashed into Satanico on a pretty fierce tope suicida. It was Santo who was supposed to jump on a held Casas but Niebla had grabbed Santo's leg from the outside. The delay allowed for Casas to regroup and escape and one rudo crashed into each other, allowing for the masked tecnicos to hook a fun double submission on Satanico for the first fall. The rudos recovered into the segunda, with Charles (who had a great look) serving as a very solid base. Satanico continued to sell his arm, looking dejected and annoyed, and refusing to tag, which left Charles vs the world. When he finally locked an armbar on one of his opponents, Satanico came in and nailed his own partner over the miscommunication. Santo, himself frustrated and exasperated, tried to break them up and only accomplished getting them to stop long enough to both hit him at once. They went outside brawling and the tecnicos hit a pair of diving headbutts on Santo for the pin. Post match, the brawling continued and set up a hair match later in the month, which I do hope we have.

Ultimately, Santo was the third guy on his side. This was fairly late into the rudo run and I think it might have been wearing a bit. He made a good foil for the tecnicos, though, both Casas and Shocker, and it was a lot of fun to see Shocker and especially Niebla so young. Anyone know if that hair match is out there?

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