MLJ: Guerreros del Infierno A9: Rey Bucanero & Último Guerrero vs Satanico and Shocker

2001-07-15 @ Arena Coliseo Monterrey
Rey Bucanero & Último Guerrero © vs Satánico & Shocker [CMLL TAG]

Thanks for the feedback from Monday. I'm glad to know at least a few people are reading. I'll keep doing this for as long as I can and as long as they let me.

Anyway, it's so nice to actually have a date for this one. Even this I'm not 100% sure of but the match finder only has one match from this era with these guys and it just makes sense. I'm starting to really see some patterns with GdI, especially as they face off against other heels during the Satanico feud. Tag team wrestling, even in lucha, is ultimately pretty simple. Use teamwork, cut off the ring, play the number advantage, build up the heat and build to the comeback. Now, while they weren't quite building up the heat as much as they'd do as a trios unit a few years later, they were doing a lot of the other things. Lucha is all about control and momentum shifts and payoff, and those elements are all over their matches and executed well, with a nice combination of effective and interesting offense and a lot of character.

With the Satanico feud, there's a lot of hatred too. I don't have a great sense of early 00s Shocker. I know he was very well touted at the time (including topping out the DVDVR 500 in 2001, I think. Geez, Rey Bucanero was #2 for the 2002 one? And UG was 9. That's just nuts. I'm not going down that rabbit hole further, but yeah, people were really into these guys). Satanico is consistently awesome. He just gets it like very few people I've ever seen in wrestling and he does it with this over the top evil laugh and look. He was put on this earth to be a rudo but he's so good at it that you can sort of love to hate him, which made he and Shocker sort of de facto faces here.

That and the fact that Rey and UG were so good at isolating their opponents and pressing the offense. In the primera, anytime that Satanico started to successfully fight back against UG in the ring, Rey would stop brawling with Shocker and dive in to cut him off. Likewise when Shocker made it in and got a lucky shot on Rey. UG was right there to cut him off. The odds game won out here and UG pinned Satanico with his feet on the ropes. Then Rey hit this neat short spike piledriver (I'm explaining that poorly; he sort of half picked Shocker up before dropping down) which he would have been well served to use as a finish for the next ten years if it wasn't, you know, a pile driver in Mexico.

The segunda broke down a bit as there was a decent amount of no selling between Shocker and Rey. That's actually a problem I still have with Shocker now. His exchanges with Rush can have some of that. The UG/Satanico stuff was better, full of two guys beating on each other and Satanico eventually trying to get UG's mask off. Eventually all four guys were in there fighting with it ending with an awesome bit of ridiculousness. Shocker was propelled straight up off the ropes by UG only to come down hitting Rey in the stomach with a mid-air punch. I get what they were going for but it ended up looking absurd. It was a gamechanger though and Satanico got in his backslide as Shocker locked in the Reinera for the fall.

There was enough hate and energy between them that I can sort of overlook well-intentioned goofiness. I think by this point, UG and Rey were so used to working with Satanico that they could do some pretty elaborate exchanges with him. Here, to end the match, UG had a complex sequence with Satanico, ending with another attempt of a rope-assisted pin, the ref catching it, Satanico going for the Satan's Knot, and UG pushing him into the ref. That allowed for a pro rudo mask toss and the DQ, which was screwy, certainly, but also ballsy and satisfying from a kayfabe perspective. I liked how it showed that even though GdI hated their opponents, they were still young and brazen and arrogant enough to accept a tainted win. This had to be a great time to be watching these shows live.