MLJ: The Volador Train Keeps on Rolling through 2015 7: Máximo & Volador Jr. vs Rey Bucanero & Terrible, hair vs hair

Aired: 2015-03-28
taped: 2015-03-20 @ Arena México
Máximo & Volador Jr. vs Rey Bucanero & Terrible, hair vs hair

Back to our good friend Volador. I'm feeling an itch for slightly older lucha so I'll either dust off my GdI comp, hope dataintcash posts something else soon, or check out some Texano/Silver King tags since I've seen next to none of those, for next week. Right now, I need to make it through some more 2015 Volador. I'd like to at least make it to some of the more hyped matches for the sake of fairness, even though you learn plenty from any match. Let's get through this one first, though, as it's on a relatively big stage.

This was a comedown after seeing Ultimo Guerrero vs Rey Escorpion, but I wouldn't necessarily call it bad. It was just sort of there. Some of that is just the fault of CMLL's booking. Terrible and Maximo have history. Rey Bucanero was riding whatever tiny, tiny wave he had gotten from taking Felino's hair a few months before. Terrible and Bucanero are certainly competent at being bad guys. Maximo is one of the only over tecnicos on the roster. They had a slight story coming in that Bucanero and Terrible were just the better team. It just never reached a point where it felt like it mattered or was a big deal or was all that serious. Popcorn matches are fine and good. Popcorn apuesta matches are a problem.

I do want to talk a little about tag team apuestas matches though, mainly about the long terceras common in this type of match. I think they are sort of unique in and of themselves, just in the pacing. With a trios match (and you don't get too many trios apuestas matches from what I've seen, but you do get title matches and ones with high stakes), they can move wrestlers in and out once things break down torwards a finishing stretch. You don't get a lot of that laying around, but at the same time, exactly because of that, there's not often a big feel of selling. It's on to the next near-fall and there's a real threat everything becomes noise. On the other hand, in a singles match, any near fall has to be a kick out and the selling can be overdone, not earned by the first two, often quite short, caidas. You can sort of get the best of both worlds in a straight tag team match though, where you can use saves instead of kick outs in order to control the escalation and make it more believable but also have more extended selling to make things matter.

I think that was the case here. On a structural level, I liked the tercera. I wish there was more heat though, a little more visceral intensity. That's not what this was. It was a "fun" apuestas, one that matched the build, with some cute spots and miscommunication and Maximo wiping off Volador's sweat and a bunch of dives and roll ups out of nowhere. I get what they were going for, but I'm not sure I've seen too many hair matches that were played up like this and that made it all a little jarring. Even the Maximo ones I've seen in the past have come off a little more serious.

There were a lot of independent things to like. The tecnicos tried to rush the rudos up the ramp to start but were overwhelmed and within seconds destroyed with a couple of tandem moves. Then the comeback was fluff (and had a painfully flubbed vault to the top by Volador to hit a Spanish Fly), but followed by Terrible taking an amusing bump off of a dive that sent him into the crowd. The dives were all pretty good, Maximo having two rope walk ones, Bucanero careening off of the ramp, Volador leaping into the crowd from the top. The flash roll up exchange was good in a vacuum, some of the near falls came off well down the stretch and I liked, in part, Terrible's attempt at interference in the finish. I do sort of wish Volador had neutralized him on the second roll up, though, since that would have punctuated things better.

It just had so very little of what I look for an an apuestas match. It had none of the mood, none of the violence, none of the stakes. For the most part, it was compete wrestling, and it was fun wrestling, but it was empty where it counted. Maybe if they had drawn out the heat at the beginning, it'd have been better. If there was more of a sense of peril some of the more fun stuff might have felt more like pay off, or even a narrative of triumphant tecnicos being true to themselves to overcome adversity in the face of nefarious rudos dwelling in an Ingobernable world, something like that. What we got instead didn't quite cut it.