MLJ: Emilio Charles Spotlight 2 w/bonus Casas vs Cota: Corazon De Leon, La Fiera, Negro Casas vs Bestia Salvaje, Emilio Charles Jr., Mocho Cota

1994-04-08 @ Arena México
Corazon De Leon, La Fiera, Negro Casas vs Bestia Salvaje, Emilio Charles Jr., Mocho Cota


1993 - CMLL - Tag Match by Y2JFans

I missed this one on my way through 1994 Mocho Cota. What's cool about the match is that it's an intersect between the Fiera/Charles feud and the Cota/Casas feud. Yes, we have young, green Jericho to bring everything down a bit, but Salvaje can hold up his end so that's not a huge deal. This was the following week from the Fiera vs Charles singles match and fills in the gap between that and the hair match. For Casas and Cota it's during the period where Casas had temporarily shifted tecnico before stumbling back towards rudoness and their eventual hair match in the fall.

This is as bloody and heated as it had to be to set up what they were trying to set up. It was a bit of a mess too, but a forgivable one. The rudos took over immediately with the logical pairings. It was really a great beat down, although once or twice Jericho stumbled in when he shouldn't have. Thankfully, part of the joy of rudo beatdowns is that if someone seems unsure of what to do, they'll probably get the crap beat out of them in short order. In this case, Salvaje was more than happy to missile dropkick Jericho in the face. Meanwhile, Cota was focused on stomping Casas' leg for about five minutes in the corner, which was more effective than it sounds. I think by this point Casas and Fiera were both bleeding. Ultimately, Charles pinned Fiera after one of those super high back body drop bumps that Fiera takes. And Cota put an exclamation point on the fall by slamming Casas' leg into the ring apron's wooden enclosure.

The comeback didn't quite live up to the beatdown. By the end, it was good, but it was a bumpy road to get there. Fiera, as mentioned before, is really good at building up an earned comeback. The spin kick (here on Cota) was a pretty useful weapon for that, since he could hit it out of nowhere, but it left him vulnerable to attack in at trios match. As he was getting attacked by Salvaje and Charles, Casas grabbed Cota's legs and posted him from the inside out, groin first. So far, so good. It was a great moment, but then they sort of stumble back into a reset and the rudos swarm again before Fiera hist a back brain kick out of nowhere and the tecnicos finally rush forth to really take over. Sometimes I like that little fold to make things harder for the good guys to really establish control and get revenge, but here it just seemed confused. That's not to say there weren't some fun moments like Casas and Jericho missing a couple of double clotheslines on Salvaje, looking annoyed at one another as Salvaje gloated and then double dropkicking him in the face. Also, Casas hit his no-rope bounce springboard back elbow on Cota and that's just an amazing spot and one of those moments where you remember that Younger Casas definitely could do things that Older, still awesome, Casas just can't.

The tercera, which was a reset, some rope running, and a lot of pin break ups as guys cycled in and out also had a few moments like that, most especially, Casas SAILING across the ring with a dropkick out of nowhere. The momentum he had behind it was nuts. I think of the best dropkicks I've seen in my life, like the one that ended Santana/Martel vs High Flyers and they're all usually ones that get high elevation but are basically static with a guy running into it face first. This was like a corner drop kick in its momentum (and we all know that Casas can do those) but in the middle of the ring. Things ended with Fiera taking his over the top back body drop bump and Jericho getting lifted up and kicked over the top. This left Casas outnumbered and quickly disposed of so they could shift the focus back to Fiera vs Charles. The rudos held Fiera. Charles punched him repeatedly. The ref called for a DQ and they heated things up for the hair match.

The VQ on this isn't great. It's on Dailymotion. Without the Hair Match, you're going to end up ultimately unsatisfied, and in general, it doesn't quite reach the level that you'd hope it would coming in, but this is heated with some great individual spots and probably worth watching if you've got twenty minutes to kill.