CMLL on LATV Workrate Report 6/1/14

These matches were all from the 5/18 Arena Mexico show. I wish they would go back to showing Coliseo shows, but for whatever reason it looks like they've run a couple Sunday Arena Mexico shows. Still these LATV shows are nice as the Sunday afternoon matches always get way more time to breathe than the Friday night ones. We get more matwork and guys don't seem to rush to get all their stuff in nearly as much.

Virus, Tiger & Polvora vs. Black Panther, Triton & Stigma

Just what I was saying about more mat stuff, and the primera here features long Tiger/Triton segments and most excitedly a Virus/Black Panther mat off. Triton's stuff is kind flashy and substance free on the mat, but Tiger is really good and had some leg picks and always finds cool ways to tie up guys at the ankles and wrists. Virus vs. Panther was awesome as both can go and the work looks super cool. I'm glad Panther has gotten so much mat time in his first real year, and even more glad that Virus has gotten tons more mat time as the year has gone on. He was in some more spotty trios at the start of the year but he's had a lot more mat focus the last month plus. Stigma is a guy who I don't think I've ever seen pop up on TV before. Pretty sure he's a Puebla guy but not sure how long he's been on the main roster. He hits a killer slingshot rana to the floor so he has my attention. Stigma in general seems to be in the role of hitting unsuspecting rudos with ranas on the floor, as later he surprises Virus with one off the apron. Stigma hits a pretty wild Valiente springboard moonsault to the floor, but really as long as Virus is in the fed nobody else should be doing that. His is too fast and too pretty. Panther's stuff with Tiger and Virus is the (predictable) highlight of this. Virus is an awesome guy to watch against rookies as he seems like he takes pride in working circles around them, but it never looks like he's showing them up or trying to make them look like trash. It looks like they hang with him, but aren't quite there yet. This didn't quite hit next level, but you knew with some of the guys involved it would be worth it, and it was.

Euforia, Niebla Roja & Gran Guerrero vs. Rey Cometa, Marco Corleone & Titan

Interesting that Marco's left hand is treated as more of a normal punch now. I'm not sure when that change happened. It used to be a spot that rudos would run from or get KO'd by, now here he hits three straight on Gran Guerrero just to back him into a corner. I love Gran Guerrero's baseball slide dropkick that sends dudes crashing and burning off the apron, and Cometa gets into position for it better than anybody else I've seen. He actually looked like he was struggling to get away from the apron while being held in place, unlike most guys who clearly lie still bracing themselves for impact. And Cometa goes flying into the ring barrier and it looks great. Titan seems to always overshoot guys on his flip dives. I'm not sure if this is the catcher or small sample bias or what, but it seems like every flip dive sees him glance off the rudos' shoulder and splat face first into the barricade. It could be Roja is a bad catcher. But Cometa's always seem to hit flush. The Cometa/Euforia stuff in this was a blast. Euforia hits a sweet floppy armdrag and Euforia responds by knocking his fillings loose with a clothesline. Poor placement though as right afterwards Cometa hits a silly handspring headscissors. Niebla Roja wins me over by merely stepping out of the way of Titan's handstand headscissors. He just walks around it and still gets caught by a rana, but this is growth people. And gee whiz Cometa almost dies horrifically taking a flapjack slam off the top rope. He initially came down a little head heavy but luckily landed more on his chest/stomach. It looked nasty as is, but could have been fatal.

Rush, La Sombra & La Mascara vs. Mascara Dorada, Valiente & Volador Jr.

Damn I cannot recall the last time I saw such a one-sided beatdown in lucha. This match was allll Rush's team for the first 10 minutes, until the tecnicos got about 30 seconds before Rush did a combo ball punch/schoolboy to win the whole thing. Seriously there was just no hope for the good guys in this one. It was 10 minutes of Rush and Sombra standing on dudes throats while Mascara tossed off superkicks to unsuspecting victims. Rush and Sombra were dickhead extraordinaires in this, jut beating down all the tecnicos from the word go and never letting up. At one point Sombra throws like 8 straight awesome knees in the corner and it's strange watching a match with no comeback in sight for the good guys. At one point you felt the comeback bubbling, and Rush just cuts everything off and you can just kinda feel all hope slowly draining out of things, like in Bad Lietenant when things start horribly for Harvey Keitel and the whole film just gets worse for him.

Lucha libre as Abel Ferrara urban crime cinema everybody! According to the judges I just got a triple word score for "Worst Possible Simile"! Thanks for reading, everybody!

Read more!

MLJ: Hijo del Santo Vs Blue Panther 1: Negro Casas, Blue Panther, Fuerza Guerrera vs El Hijo del Santo, Yoshihiro Asai, Gran Hamada

WWA, 1990
Negro Casas, Blue Panther, Fuerza Guerrera vs El Hijo del Santo, Yoshihiro Asai, Gran Hamada

I think there's a slight danger in me just watching random matches without purpose or point. Lucha's a giant ocean of decades and what seems like a near infinite number of matches. I've been trying to jump off from one point to the next. It means maybe I watch ten Marco Corleone matches, but if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have necessarily ended up where I did in 2006 enjoying the stuff I'm enjoying now. I'm also trying to build to more classic feuds and matches as I go, so that I develop some sort of context and theoretical underpinning.

I do want to watch more Hijo del Santo but I wanted to find some sort of structure in my watching. What I came up with, sort of on the fly, was to find the matches online where he was pitted against another person I want to see more of, Blue Panther. For now Santo One-Shots has become Hijo del Santo vs Blue Panther. This means three or four singles matches and a bunch of tags and trios over a span of fifteen years or so. I've been warned that they don't actually face off too many times in the tags I have in front of me, but they're both so good and they're in there with such good partners for the most part, that I think I'll be perfectly okay with that.

Case in point is the first match here. It's true: there really wasn't much Panther vs Santo interaction. That's okay when the others guys in the match were Fuerza, Casas, Hamada and a young Asai. There were some great exchanges and sequences in this match and even though the key match up didn't take place at any length, everyone else paired off, sometimes multiple times, and it was all great, compelling action.

That said, it wasn't the most satisfying match I've seen in this project, even if the work itself was all very crisp and sharp and high-end. The big problem is that the tecnicos took so much of the match. There wasn't any sort of prolonged heat segment and past a blip where the rudos snatched a fall in the segunda, it was all quite one-sided and a little "samey." It especially stood out since Asai was staged almost perfectly in his role in the match to have been the victim of a few satisfying minutes of rudo dominance to build to a comeback.

Here, my lack of context hurts. One thing I've noticed from watching so many matches from 2006 on an almost weekly basis is that they did change things up from show to show. You'd get a differently structured match each week. Things would be balanced. There's a lot about this match I just don't know. It's from WWA, which was a promotion I haven't seen much of. It's from 1990, which was a year (and even a decade) I've seen little of. It's in a geographic setting I'm not as used to. They presented trophies to the tecnicos at the end.

So basically, I'm not sure if they worked this was worked a bit more like a title match or if it was part of a tournament with these two teams working a number of matches against different opponents or if they had just worked a match the week before with a long beatdown on Asai, or even if there was another match on the same show with that sort of structure. Maybe the purpose of the match WAS to get over the tecnicos strong for some future encounter with other opponents or because they had just debuted or maybe the rudos were on the way out. Maybe it was just meant to be a celebratory match to end a big show, etc. I just don't know, so therefore, it becomes a bit harder to hold it against the match. I say this because I know these guys know what they're doing. For instance, I've seen Hamada paired with Sayama in the Asai role and in that match, Sayama took a lot of offense the way that I kind of wanted Asai to here.

Now, then, all that said, there was a lot to love here. Past Panther vs Santo (ironically enough), everyone got paired with everyone else. I love the rudo side as they all brought something slightly different to the table, but all of them served exceptionally well as bases for the tecnico offense. Panther really got to shine on the mat in the opening segment with Asai, who held his own as they played up his agility as a way to counter Panther's skill. Fuerza had the most personality though he never went too deep into shtick at the expense of the competitive mood they managed to create. He's someone I badly want to see more of. Casas fell somewhere in the middle and was also the most frenetic of the bunch. He also had a pretty awesome punch exchange with Hamada.

This was a showcase for the tecnicos, in that the rudos mainly got to show off by eating their offense and stooging well. Santo looked great, hitting all sorts of elaborate stuff in his exchanges, especially with Casas. The end of both the primera and tercera were pretty with Santo hitting big spots while action went on around him. I wish we had multiple camera angles and replays. Hamada was gutsy. My favorite spot of the match with him was when he fought off all three rudos in the primera, which culminated with him kicking Fuerza in the butt so that he would dropkick Panther through the ropes by accident. Asai served his purpose, showed a lot of promise and felt like he belonged in the ring with them, though again, I don't think they used him well enough as a foil. There were little moments like when Fuerza goes for a handshake and then a hug and he's left bewildered in the face of the mindgames.

It was just too much in the way of tecnico control. In the primera, that felt intentional, like a shine, with the tecnicos getting the best of the exchanges due to their skill and agility. As the match went on though, it became an issue. The rudos momentarily caught them to end the segunda, yes, but they went right to a reset after the fall ended. Then there was a moment late in the match where Hamada had an armbar on and the rudos all sort of looked at each other and decided they had enough and that they were going to rush him, but after a moment of swarming advantage it went back to another reset and they started on towards the finish. A little bit of heat would have gone a long way. Good action, fun start to Santo vs Panther, but not ultimately what I'd consider a great match.

Read more!