MLJ: Casas vs Cota 1: Mocho Cota & Silver King vs El Dandy & Negro Casas [Relevos Increíbles]

1994-03-18 @ Arena México
Mocho Cota & Silver King vs El Dandy & Negro Casas [Relevos Increíbles]

Brief two match interlude here before I shift gears. I may have gone and obtained an episode of CMLL TV from 1994 in order to watch the Mocho Cota vs Negro Casas hair vs hair match. It was just really striking to me that a lot of the people I talk to hadn't seen it. Negro Casas is one of my favorite wrestlers, but Cota is unique and special in his own way. He's unconventional and so over the top. I'd liken him to Fuerza Guerrera more than anyone else, maybe? But he's more unrelenting and pesky, especially in his early 90s comeback. If modern day Casas is some sort of trickster god, early 90s Cota was a malignant goblin. I've been impressed with how over the top and larger than life he's been in the 93-94 matches I've seen him in and I just had to see what he and Casas could do, given time and stakes.

It was attached to the 61st Anniversary, a week or two before, in what may have been an attempt to run multiple Anniversary shows. We don't have a lot of the matches that lead up to the actual hair match online but this revelos incriebles was early on. I looked at some old Observers and Meltzer said this started back on 3/4/94 and apparently they had a singles match the week after this one that drew 8000 at a time they were normally drawing 1000 on the Friday night shows. There was some thought that they were going to blow things off with a hair match in April but apparently they wound things down and heated them back up as the year went on. It didn't completely work as the eventual hair vs hair match apparently only drew 4000. Meltzer claimed that Cota had a bad back injury around this time and it affected his work but I'm going to pin that on the world not ready to yet appreciate what Cota brought to the table that may not have been necessarily athletic but more character based.

So this was Silver King and Cota vs Dandy and Casas. Silver King and Dandy were tecnicos. I've seen way too little Silver King, by the way, and he's someone I mean to do a lot with at some point. I have no idea HOW Cota turned on Casas but it must have been heated since Casas went after him right from the get go. King and Dandy seemed fairly bemused to be stuck in the middle of this.

And it was a lot of fun. I'm not sure I'd call it great or even good, but it was effective and fun. Cota was an opportunistic lout. He could hold his own, but in equal combat with Casas, he'd never win. He'd be the first to go to a kick or a cheapshot. He'd complain and gripe and rudo it up. He'd ambush Casas at any chance he had and what he actually would do wouldn't be smooth but it would be canny. It was after an ambush towards the end of the primera that he was able to pick up Casas in a fireman's carry and just dump him out:

Almost immediately thereafter he pulled the rope down to make Dandy go flying (he had been in an exchange with Silver King), which give his side the last bit of advantage to pick up the fall.

Casas fired back at the start of the segunda with a potential foul. The refs' reaction and Casas' reaction to that was pretty funny, and he followed it by leading him into the corner, as if protecting him, and then peppering in a great little elbow:

Things were pretty much broken down by this point with the partners breaking up any sort of advantage. Eventually Cota tried to hold Casas for a Silver King missile dropkick but miscommunication ruled. That let Dandy and Casas dropkick their opponents out and they held the ring. Cota responded by running to the back and he returned with a rare foreign object (knuckle dusters ironically enough). He clocked Dandy but Casas got it from him and fought back with it. The refs saw that and Cota got the DQ win. I've seen objects like that so little in CMLL that it does mean something when they're used. Casas didn't take the loss lightly and beat Cota up for the next few minutes any chance he could and I could see why this drew well the next week.

I wouldn't call it a necessarily good match but Silver King and Dandy worked well together for the bit we got to see them and it was all definitely fun. Cota and Casas, being two of the greatest characters I've ever seen, certainly had good chemistry with one another.