MLJ: Mocho Cota in 1993 II: El Satanico/Fishman/Mocho Cota v. El Rayo de Jalisco Jr./Lizmark/Latin Lover

Taped 10.9.93 @ Gimnasio Olímpico Juan de la Barrera, Ciudad de México, Distrito Federal
El Satanico/Fishman/Mocho Cota v. El Rayo de Jalisco Jr./Lizmark/Latin Lover

On paper, this seems pretty comparable to the match I reviewed on Monday. Grundy was a drag on that one, even if there were a few specific things he could do well. Here we have Rayo, and the impression I've gotten from the few matches of his I've seen, are that he's a big ham, and an attention hog, maybe a proto Wagner, Jr (though they're pretty close to the same age and I find Wagner more charismatic and able to back it up better). Fishman always struck me as someone who was perfectly acceptable in a trios match, but I should watch some of his singles matches at some point. He was into his 40s here but then so were Satanico and Lizmark.

As before the entrances were great. Cota had some sort of horror mask and sort of an Imperial Guard valet. Fishman came out to We Are the Champions with a girl in fishscales. Satanico, amazingly, came out with these red klansmen of doom. Lizmark was out there with a cape and Tirantes, and Latin Lover instead of coming out with two women, came out with none, but at least he had some flamethrower thing.

This ended up being just two caidas but it had everything you might have wanted from it, a massive, violent beatdown, the tease of a comeback, and then the actual one. I won't go through everything but I loved the beatdown. The rudos took right over by charging forward and they played the numbers game well. Cota hit his fireman's carry into a hotshot again and it looked even better this time. They held onto Lizmark's mask straps to hold him into the corner so he couldn't fight back. Unsurprisingly Rayo made sure to fight back as much as possible before getting overwhelmed. My biggest problem with this was the heelishness of the ref which really took the heat off of the wrestlers and put it on him. I like the modern CMLL style more where the ref is just hapless and helpless in the face of rudos being rudos so it's not his fault, it's theirs.

Towards the end of the caida, after being cut down at every point, the tecnicos rallied. Lover, instead of coming in directly through the ropes when it was his turn, ran around the ring (and the heel ref) to stage a quick ambush. Everything broke down to crazy brawling with Cota and Lover mounting and hammering each other. Eventually, though Cota hit some massive headbutts to gain control of the mount, symbolically cutting off the comeback and letting the rudos pick up the primera.

Cota kept on shining to start the segunda. He measured Lover with knees and bit at his wound and was all over him until the tecnicos charged back again. It was a pretty rousing comeback with quebadoras and a powerbomb and Lizmark palming Satanico in the face, mask ripping, chair shots, the works. Cota bled and Lover continuously ripped his face apart.

This continued on for a few minutes, some very solid action with a lot of hate and blood and mask ripping behind it until it built to all three pairings getting highlighted in the ring one at a time. It ended with Rayo and Fishman, and Rayo, furious, grabbing the mask off for the rudo win (on paper at least). Satisfying trios. There was a bit of meandering at times and the heel ref stuff was irritating in a bubble but was probably more tolerable in context.