MLJ: 2010: Invasores Interlude 4: El Alebrije, Histeria, Psicosis vs Hijo del Fantasma, La Sombra, Shocker

Taped 2010-05-03 @ Arena Puebla
El Alebrije, Histeria, Psicosis vs Hijo del Fantasma, La Sombra, Shocker

5:59 in

http://youtu.be/cDITa-uIM1o

http://youtu.be/c3m0D-chMh0

I'm still trying to wrap my head around all this, to be honest. Trying to figure out CMLL booking is kind of like staring at the sun for too long. It hurts us. We know better, but we still do it. My current guess is that it was a local angle that ended up surprisingly hot and when it got brought to Arena Mexico, too many hands got into the mix, maybe some old favors were called in, and Porky kind of went into business for himself? Or not. I am just fumbling at the edges of Mexican wrestling politics here. I could give a pretty good educated guess at why every match happened on the last seven WWE shows, but I've got nothing here. A stranger in a strange land, with a small man in a monkey costume.

A small man in a monkey costume with a vicious alien rival in Cuije. Who was in silver and black, like his Invasores comrades. This match has Shocker subbed in for Mascara, and I'm perfectly fine with that move. I'll take lazy tecnico shocker over Mascara without much hesitation. Past that it was more of the same, which is not necessary a problem, nor an endorsement of adding Los Hermanos Dinamitas to the mix so soon. It still felt fresh enough and heated enough and was plenty enjoyable. More than that, the invaders started to give just a little more here, which was probably the proper pacing, as opposed to what we saw in the aggravating Porky match at Arena Mexico.

Standard B-A-C formula here. Rudos swarmed from the start and took the primera. They ran a comeback and then teased a reset before letting the tecnicos take the segunda. Then they actually ran the reset and did some tecnicos vs the world spot run throughs before going to the dives and the finish. It was formula but the formula, when executed well, works, and it was perfectly fine here.

The beatdown was just as good as the last few. These three work well as a unit, double teaming, utilizing Alebrije's size and kicking out double teams. Particularly nice here was a wheelbarrow drop/facebuster on Sombra and lifting Cuije up super high for a splash on Shocker.

Some people were just made to be projectile weapons. Finally they took out Sombra with the still aces lift up pendulum bull charge...

and finished off Fantasma with a lift-up top rope senton thing by Psicosis.

Between falls they really drove things home by having Psicosis slamming Fantasma into the wall between the fan seats that is the most scenic part of Arena Puebla.

The comeback was brisk but definitely solid. It involved shocker grabbing Histeria's legs from the outside, Fantasma dodging a flying Alebrije, and Sombra flying in from outside and ended with Kemonito getting his hands on Cuije, Fantasma getting revenge on Psicosis at the wall and some weird reset-feeling rope running that led to a Fantasma tope and a Rana from Sombra and the Reinera by Shocker for the caida. It was spirited (and capped off with a Kemontio dropkick to boot), which is all I ever usually need.

Tercera had a lot of tecnico shine, especially for Fantasma who got to go against the world, but all the tecnicos got to show off with the rudos doing a good job eating their showcase offense and cutting one off to bring in the next. Some highlights were the use of Cuije as a projectile once again...

and some crazy sequence from Sombra...

In the end, Sombra nailed a big dive and cleared the ring for Psicosis and Fantasma. Psicosis pulled the mask off and that was that. Pretty good match that kept the heat on the rudos, but showed more chinks in their armor.

Somewhere between the beginning of writing this and the end I decided to look at a few Observers. I think what was going on here was CMLL trying to build a big marketable angle for a rare big Sunday show in Sin Salida, meant to combat Triplemania, as both were running in Mexico City on the same day. With that in mind, they had to bring in as many Invasores as possible, and that meant calling upon a mix of old and new names. The whole paragraph up until now indicates that CMLL had a plan, be it a good one or a bad one, and I'm not entirely willing to give them that level of credit.