MLJ: July 2015 Matches Week: Negro Casas/Esfinge/Guerrero Maya, Jr. vs Virus/Disturbio/Boby Zavala

Taped 2015/7/24 @ Arena Mexico
Negro Casas/Esfinge/Guerrero Maya, Jr. vs Virus/Disturbio/Boby Zavala

I wanted to take a little break from my fair, impartial, and critically beloved look at Volador in 2015 to check out a few other things from July. This was the Busca trios match. I looked at the one from last year not that long ago. Generally, due to Negro Casas and Virus' involvement, if you're going to watch one match from these things, this is the one to go with.

I think everyone agrees that the field this year was terribly lackluster. If you're someone who wants kinetic action and big dives, then things were particularly weak. They tended to work a more subdued sort of match with more (often meandering) matwork. Canelo Casas and Blue Panther, Jr. stunk up their share of matches. The guys who can fly big like Flyer tended to move gingerly and without confidence. The judging bordered from embarrassing (Hijo del Gladiador's reactions explains so much about CMLL's booking) to hilariously embarrassing (Blue Panther, Sr. refusing to judge Blue Panther, Jr.) to just hilarious (Porky giving everyone 10s). Add in the shadiness of Esfinge advancing and the specter of last year's highly enjoyable field and it's really just depressing. You'll notice that Segunda Caida didn't cover it to any great degree.

But hey, this match has Casas and Virus and I'll watch any match with Casas and Virus, so here we go. If you remember, last year's trio match was smart with its pairings, starting with the maestros (and Hechicero) separated so that there were three solid exchanges to begin things. It also had the weirdness of Cachorro on the rudo side. Here, the split is very clean. Casas, super over with the Arena Mexico crowd, would play babyface (if not tecnico) and Virus, Disturbio, and Zavala would naturally play rudo.

This year they started with Disturbio vs Esfinge, which was tolerable. I know Esfinge has gotten criticized for the nepotism but he's seasoned enough to do the little things here. Disturbio probably has the best facial reactions in CMLL right now. I'm trying to think who would be better an coming up blank. He's just such a goon. Anyway, the matwork here was perfectly okay. They led into what I'd consider the main rivalry of the match, and it was a surprising one, the sort that really didn't exist in last year's more heralded match, Casas vs Zavala. They were paired up numerous times throughout the match. If anyone was the breakout star of the Busca this year, it was Boby, and Casas bent over backwards to highlight him here. They were presented as very even in strike exchanges and in Casas just respecting him as an opponent worth his time. Virus was paired with Maya and tat was fine, if brief, leading to a pace picking up for the primera's finish. It looked like it was going to be the tecnicos ascendant with Esfinge hitting a dive and Casas locking in the Casita on Zavala, but Esfinge wiped out and Zavala blocked the Casita to hit a power bomb. I watched this back a few times, and I'm pretty certain that Zavala shook the ropes to make Esfinge wipe out. If so, that was really clever and it's not something you see all the time. The camera just didn't catch it well. It was a good primera which set the tone for the match.

I think the really exciting stuff here was Casas' face in peril during the segunda. That said, I wasn't quite as high on it as some people, if only because I wish it went a little longer. The nature of lucha trios matches is that you don't get extended face in peril segments. You get a side-in-peril, yes, but they tend to keep things moving and the importance of a "tag" instead of a momentum shift is minimized. It's a little like focused limbwork. It's rare enough that when you do see it, it really stands out. Here they cut off the ring for a few minutes (maybe even less than that) and kept Casas from tagging. Virus was especially great here. It sort of led to nothing when Disturbio came in and just launched Casas into his own corner, but I'm more than willing to give the match the benefit of the doubt and say that it was inexperience that caused it. Disturbio's such a goon. The comeback led to an awesome Virus vs Casas exchange and then Maya getting the pin on Virus after his skullbreaker over the knee. I liked how they let Zavala pin Casas in the primera and Maya pin Virus in the segunda. It's almost like they knew what they were doing.

The tercera was all action with Casas looking like the best guy in the world between how crisp he was hitting things, the emotion he was inspiring form the fans through his selling, and his timing in repeatedly grabbing the ropes on pins. More than that, though, he made Zavala feel like a big deal. He didn't have to, and there are so many other wrestlers at his level, even put into a mentor role, that wouldn't. We've seen that already from Casas this year vs Dragon Lee and others but Zavala feels a little lower on the card (and also a rudo) and it just really stood out. I was expecting them to go back to Virus vs Casas to finish things up but it was Zavala vs Casas and it made perfect sense within the confines of the match and didn't feel forced at all. Yes, Casas won the match for his side with the Casita on him but Zavala came out looking even better than he did coming in. It wasn't nearly as special a match as last year's maestro trios but it's still probably the highlight of the tournament this year and just more proof of how amazing Negro Casas is.