MLJ: Emilio Charles, Jr. Spotlight 4: El Hijo Del Santo, Misterioso, Mascara Sagrada vs Emilio Charles Jr., Fuerza Guerrera, La Fiera

1991-11-29 @ Arena Mexico
Fuerza Guerrera/Emilio Charles Jr./La Fiera v. El Hijo del Santo/Mascara Sagrada/Misterioso

First, a plug. The latest issue of Odessa Steps Magazine just dropped and in it Mark has outdone himself this time. He's got interviews with Hechicero, Zeuxis, and Marco Corleone, plus a "Dr. Lucha" Steve Sims article on Atlantis and the marking of the end of an era, my Chilanga Mask write ups (including the women's match that I didn't do on here), and other lucha goodness. It's an outright zine in an age that they no longer exist and well worth supporting. More info at Mark's site: www.odessasteps.co.uk.

Onto the match: this is the stuff. Another great match, but with a different structure than the last and a little more focused on building the Misterioso vs Fuerza title match. Having Sagrada in there instead of Dragon didn't really change much, but there was slightly too much reliance on the heel ref trope to make the logic fit into place in the otherwise great tercera.

Here, instead of the feeling out/shine, swarming/heat, comeback/reset/finish sort of structure, it's a rudo swarm from the get go, followed by the comeback in the segunda, and a reset in the tercera, which ultimately led to Misterioso and Fuerza finishing things off. The variation shouldn't be understated. One thing that makes CMLL stand out from a lot of other wrestling is that they run the same crowds, week after week, with many of the same wrestlers. There are only so many pairings and quite often they go back to them again and again. That they can have very good matches, two weeks in a row, with almost the exact same grouping but also make them feel different while getting across the same messages is impressive. It's a testament to the wrestlers but also to the nature of the genre. I think it's something that we often overlook through cherry picking matches and watching them out of context.

Here, Fuerza just walked across the ring and attacked Misterioso as he was announced as captain. He's the most brazen wrestler in history, I think, utterly shameless. He sealed the attack through running Misterioso into the post from the apron and the rudos gained an immediate numbers advantage with the ambush. Sure, Santo fought back a bit because he's Santo and that's to be expected, but the onslaught is too much. Good, gritty beatdown, with enough movement and action and teamwork to keep things interesting. It ended with everyone on the tecnico side getting pinned or submitted, which was a little confusing, but just showed the rudo superiority.

I liked the comeback here as it was logical and a little bit unique. For once, the tecnicos, all recovered at about the same time, entered the ring to back up their partner (Misterioso). The rudos couldn't play the numbers game and instead withdrew during the standoff. That let Misterioso charge after Fuerza and get some revenge posting in. The tecnicos churn through the rudos after that, including a great moment where Charles gets pissed after eating multiple drop toeholds and kicks the rope, causing Fuerza, who was standing on it on the apron, to go stumbling in. Does anyone still do Misterioso's reverse quebradora gutbuster? It's a very fun move. Anyway, they did the usual fall ending for a Santo trios with him diving over his partner pinning someone with a headbutt off the top to the standing, charging rudo partner. Good stuff made even better by the fact that the ref breaks up Misterioso pounding on Fuerza on the outside, delaying that ultimate confrontation for the tercera.

They actually cycled back into heat on Misterioso for the tercera, which was welcome as you rarely get a real double tecnicos-in-peril in a trios match, but it was a bit too contrived by the ref keeping the tecnicos out for me to fully enjoy. Anyway, this involved a bunch of mask ripping and ref interference, before the tecnicos finally had enough. They charged around the ring to avoid the ref and evened the odds that way. This lets them move into the quick exchanges and ring-exits, with two pretty awesome and super-heated Misterioso vs Fuerza encounters, Santo hitting his senton/tope combo, and Sagrada and Fiera suplexing each other over the top to take them out of the match. At the end of the day, Misterioso locks in the Reinera again and wins the day setting up the title match to come. Great trios match only brought down a bit by ref antics.