MLJ: July Matches Week: Ultimo Guerrero vs Rey Escorpion [Hair vs Hair]

CMLL Lucha Azteca: 2015-08-01
taped: 2015-07-17 @ Arena México
Último Guerrero vs Rey Escorpión, hair vs hair

I actually thought I'd be looking at a Tortugas match but I was fooled by European styled dating and the one available for July with Black Terry and Dr. Cerebro, while looking interesting, probably isn't the best introduction. I'll do a week at some point and probably come off like a nuanced killjoy. Best to avoid that for now. Then I thought about the King Jaguar vs Lestat match but there's really not a lot to say about that. I liked the broad strokes of hubris surrounding transitions (Lestat going for the mask prematurely and losing the advantage because of it; Jaguar outright cheating and paying for that, etc), but man the work was not smooth.

Quick plug before we go with what I did decide to watch. Mark had Vandall Drummond and Karl Stern on (along with a few minutes of me talking Piper in Portland and TCM's Summer Under the Stars of all things) the Winter Palace Podcast this week, mainly on Piper but with some talk of the busca trios match I covered on Monday.

I figured I'd finally look at UG vs Escorpion from CMLL's big show in July. I'm not running through all the matches leading up to it due to time restraints, but this stands on its own anyway. I thought it was really good, and I thought it was really good for reasons that didn't necessarily have to do with anything either guy did.

First, a quick review on CMLL big matches, especially those with our friend Ultimo Guerrero in them:
1.) Generally either a short even primera with a decisive "catch"/mistep that leads to the win or a thorough one-sided beatdown that does the same.
2.) A very brief segunda with a lightning comeback, or more usual, a lightning pin.
3.) Then a tercera with a reset followed by an early dive or otherwise right into big moves with long stretches of selling (generally laying around) for fifteen minutes with escalating near-falls.

It doesn't really work. The brevity of the first two falls mean that the selling in the third isn't earned; they're offering the crowd something that's facile and empty that is supposed to seem important but never quite gets there.

This did, and it worked for a few minor reasons and one major one. Ultimo Guerrero was burst open hardway and that made a difference. The primera and segunda got a bit more time and had a bit more meat to them. There was also an element of novelty to some of the spots, things like Escorpion slapping the guardrail into UG's head, or Guerrero leap springboarding off of it into the crowd to get his opponent.

Most of all, and this is what I meant by saying that the wrestlers didn't really work it that differently than any other of these matches, it was the crowd that made all the difference. There's a general sense, that I don't disagree with, that a crowd can help a match but rarely hurt it. I think it helps here, immensely. You'd have a totally different experience watching this match on mute. It'd just be another, slightly more heated, big CMLL singles match. With the crowd though, things that usually don't mean much, suddenly had meaning. It's interesting to me, because it makes me wonder about the evolution of this style of match. Apeustas matches from the 80s don't look like this, and I wonder when and how the changeover happened, because I think it may have happened naturally and then with the crowds dropping off and the tecnico fans getting chased off, something that worked (albeit as a shortcut) suddenly stopped working.

Again, though, the primera and segunda helped. Escorpion taking it right to Ultimo Guerrero, the nasty punches between the two, all that helped. Escorpion ducking out of the ring to avoid the first senton de la muerte attempt helped. Him rushing back into the ring to ambush UG, the blood that first became apparent shortly thereafter, all of this helped. It built the mood and the anticipation. It put some real heat on Rey. The crowd was behind Ultimo Guerrero to begin with. He's the CMLL mainstay, the bandit leader of years past, Arena Mexico's rudo. Rey took the first fall soon after the ambush by turning a rana attempt into a power bomb. It felt right and it just pissed the crowd off more.

After that came the slam with the rail, UG fighting back from a point of difficulty, which is one of the things he does best, and then getting cut off with a low kick. Back in the ring, UG pulls him back down into the corner on a reversal and hits the senton de la muerte and since it had the build from the previous caida, it's a huge moment. From there he just unloads hitting his seated body shot from the top to the outside and that running springboard jump off the rail into the crowd. It's a great mix of violence and showmanship, just a heated comeback. All of it was good, but it was really just a few minutes. They still had the tercera with the laying about ahead of them.

It worked, though. It worked better than almost any of this style of match I've seen and it worked because the crowd was the orchestra and the wrestlers were the conductors, and usually, in a situation like this, they're trying to conduct without the orchestra. Here, though, it boomed. When both wrestlers were selling, they focused their collective energy into Ultimo Guerrero and he responded in kind, feeding upon it. During chopfests or moments where Escorpion had the advantage, he recoiled from the boos, his power and confidence chipped away by it.

They hit spots, including teasing another big power bomb reversal by Escorpion, and a huge dive off the ramp by Guerrero, top rope moves and counters, and the crowd reacts. It leads to this real feeling of inevitability with Escorpion just feeling it all slip away. When he hits a late match press slam and climbs the ropes, presumably for a moonsault, time seems to stop. Ultimo Guerrero is just there, cutting him off and yanking him over backwards for the Guerrero Special. The look on Escorpion's face as he realizes what's about to happen and what it means is golden.

It was interesting to me. We're really quick to damn the laying about and the faux drama but when the crowd actually buys into it, it puts an entirely different lens upon things. This was a match that seemed sort of unnecessary, with Escorpion not promoted on Guerrero's level (he was barely used for a while before this feud started), that just seemed like standard CMLL stopgag booking, but that somehow drew a crowd that wanted to believe in it. It wasn't Atlantis vs Guerrero, but they didn't care. They came, they screamed, and they helped to power a match that should have probably been running on fumes and misguided effort.