MLJ: Puebla Hotshot: Negro Casas, Barbaro Cavernario, Kamaitachi vs Dragon Lee, Maximo, Blue Panther

2015-9-28 @ Arena Puebla
Negro Casas, Barbaro Cavernario, Kamaitachi vs Dragon Lee, Maximo, Blue Panther

1:15:00 in

I'm messing up my schedule for the next couple of weeks (again) in order to hotshot this. It was from the Monday Puebla show this week and I was higher on it than most of the comments I saw live, comments that I'll get to and that I think were fair and don't even disagree with. Two hundred-plus matches into this project, I've learned some things about myself and my own proclivities, however, and this is a good match to look at for the sake of generalities.

First and foremost, the match was a disappointment. Of course it was. On paper, this is one of the best trios matches that CMLL can put on right now. Unfortunately, it was put on with no real stakes, no major program to build to (though maybe they'll run Casas vs Maximo again?), in front of a really sparse crowd, and on a stilted 2 hour show. They played around with the pairings so that other than a far too brief opening exchange (more on that in a moment) we didn't really get Blue Panther vs Negro Casas, and there wasn't the sort of spotfest destruction we've come to expect from Kamaitachi vs Dragon Lee. There wasn't even a lot of standout character moments between Cavernario and Maximo (though there was a promising moment between Cavernario and Kamaitachi). It was a match that, in another setting, should have been spectacular. That said, for a match without much of a primera and with a rushed I do think it was very solid and I want to talk about why I feel that way.

I'm very forgiving on CMLL trios matches in general. I think that has to do with what I look for in wrestling. A lot of people want brilliant matwork or lightning fast sequence in a primera or spectacular dives and spots in a tercera, and I like that stuff too, but it's a means to an end for me, not the end in and of itself. I'm into this for the build up and the pay off. That can come in a number of forms in these trios matches. It can be in the primera as an escalating series of mat exchanges or rope-running sequences leading to the tecnicos gaining advantage and picking up the fall. Alternative, the pressure could start building that way leading to an underhanded rudo swarm. It can be in the segunda, with a beatdown stemming from either the start of the match or the end of the primera and culminating with a big tecnico comeback. Or, it can be in the tercera, with the whole match building to a specific pairing, the dives clearing the ring of the tertiary luchadores so that the match can end on its real focus.

That's the part of the journey I love, and the best matches give us multiple iterations. That's something I've noticed watching 90s footage relative to now. They'd often give us a really complete primera (for isntance one with escalating tecnico shine), a really complete segunda (with a long beatdown), and then a comeback into a really complete tercera, with a lot of action, a lot of cuts off, and a finishing stretch which highlighted an ongoing feud and paid off the emotion of the entire match.

Rarely now do matches get room to breathe in all of those ways. Personally, if a match is only going to breathe in one, however, I want it to be the beatdown. I think this speaks to my background in wrestling. I love southern tag matches. I love that heat building and building, with hope spots and cut offs, with false tags and ref distraction and cheating heels and overzealous babyfaces. Lucha is generally broader than that, with its own tropes more focused on widescale momentum shifts, but wrestling is wrestling and there are more commonalities than differences.

I thought this match had a good beatdown, one that got enough time and led to a solid comeback (though not an ideal one). I don't love how they went into it. Casas and Panther had really just started to show their maestro wares when the rudos swarmed. That can work, even so early in a match, but it has to be the right situation. I think Ingobernables' title matches are a good situation, for instance, because they're spitting in the face of title match tradition when they do it. Here, it felt more due to time constraints, or because in 2015, for most trios matches, something has to give. You just can't have a complete primera, complete segunda, and complete tercera. I suppose the card has to have variety and this was only second from the top.

No matter how they got into it, it was a good beatdown. Casas, Cavernario, and Kamaitachi are great at keeping things moving and engaging. There was even a little cut-off-the-ring face in peril section on Panther, who's someone skilled enough to pull that off. It took me a long time to really figure out the tendency for these, but so long as there's just one rudo in the ring, they can play to a hot tag instead of just cycling tecnicos in and out. It's a subtle difference but it works. Usually it lasts for a few minutes focusing on one tecnico and sort of provides the best of both worlds. Once he's sufficiently beaten down without having made the tag, they cycle him out and start the double teaming in more force since they have the numbers game. That's exactly what they did here and I think it was effective and compelling, even if there weren't a lot of big spots or moments.

I can't say I liked the comeback quite as much, but some of that was down to familiarity. I made two real comments while watching this (and it's nice that CMLL on Youtube or Claro lets a number of us watch this at once. It adds to the sense of community), the first being that they really needed to let the beatdown go for a while (and they did) and the second being that I really didn't want the comeback to be centered around Maximo's butt stop spot (where a rudo runs into his ass as he runs up to the second rope). It's fine once and a while but Maximo goes to that well far too often. Well, that's what they did. I think it made the crowd happy, that, the Dragon Lee dive that followed, and the tercera which was heavily focused on Maximo's spots, but there were a number of more interesting ways they could have gone with it.

And that's the most damning thing about the match. It could have been more interesting. It should have been more interesting. Still, I'm glad I watched it and I'm glad I watched it live. There's something primal about the ebb and flow, the build up and the payoff, the beatdown and the comeback that really draws me to trios matches, even the disposable ones. There's something broad and mythic about it, and even a match that doesn't live up to its promise can tap into that just by the nature of its structure. Plus, while this was paint-by-numbers, it was some of the best paint CMLL has to offer and numbers that almost always come through.