MLJ: On Trios Matches

Scheduling issues shifted me about so that I've posted six matches over the last 14 days. Originally, I thought I'd do three this week anyway, but in response to some dissonance between one's ability to analyze Hamlet and figure out how lucha worked over on PWO, I wrote up the following a few days ago. It's my attempt to explain trios matches to someone who didn't understand and stems very much from my experiences writing here for the last year and a half. I'm going to give myself a slight break and repost it now. It was written originally as a response on a message board so keep that in mind. As always, I'm sure I still have a lot to learn too.

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I had a hard time with lucha. I had enjoyed the process of the DVDVR AWA 80s set so much that I wanted to get right on board with lucha even though I was extremely unfamiliar with it, and I struggled through the first few discs on the set. By the time I hit disc 5, I started to feel like I had a little sense of what I was watching, enough so that I wanted to spin off and start writing things up for Segunda Caida. The #1 rule I had, however, was not to just jump to the best stuff. Why watch the best stuff before you have an understanding of what you're watching? When you do that, you don't have an accurate baseline, or your baseline becomes MS-1 vs Sangre Chicana. I wanted to watch a number of different situations from a number of different years, and I tried to avoid singles matches until I understood more of what built up to them.

I tried to take an analytical approach. I watched matches, I took notes, and I started to look for patterns. In doing so, I figured out some things about at least the CMLL style of lucha. (And even then I admit that I lose some context with my language gaps, but you can learn a lot, in general, from patterns in how the matches are worked).

Let's start with this. Here's what you don't need to know about lucha. 

• In trios matches, there are captains. 
• To win a fall, either the captain has to get pinned/submitted or the other two members of the team have to.
• If someone is knocked out of the ring or dives out, a partner can replace him.
• Babyfaces are tecnicos. Heels are Rudos. It's not exactly a 1 to 1 correlation.
• A backbreaker is called a quebradora.
• A tope con giro is some sort of flippy spinny dive thing. 
• The first fall is the primera. The second fall is the segunda. The third fall is the tercera.

That's what someone does not need to know about lucha. Why? Because you know that stuff already and it doesn't really matter all that much. Mike Tenay told us all that years ago as if it was all that mattered. It's not important on a real narrative level and you know it anyway.

Here's what you need to know about trios matches:

Trios matches have a point. Almost everything done in a trios match has a purpose. Almost every trios match has an internal narrative, some central theme that it's pushing forward. Usually that's a feud between two wrestlers, though CMLL's booking or lack there of means not always. Sometimes they're the captains, sometimes they're not. All of the wrestlers are generally paired up against each other in the beginning, though those pairings can shift. The match will almost always end with a refocusing towards the key pairing.

That's what late match dives are for, by the way. Dives, in trios terceras, are generally to clear the ring and set up the last exchange between the key players, to put the exclamation point on the match. The dives aren't the end. They're a means to the end. This actually inverts the standard southern tag formula which usually ends with a hot tag and everyone in the ring as things break down. Then in the unfocused chaos, either the babyfaces triumph or the heels do something underhanded to win. Lucha trios matches are generally the opposite of that with things becoming refocused after a fairly chaotic tercera.

That brings things back to structure. This style is about build and payoff. The tercera, as I just mentioned, is about a build to the dives and that last exchange. In a lot of ways, the rest of the match is the build to the tercera. There are only a few ways these matches are generally structured and once you understand these patterns, understanding lucha becomes a lot easier.

A ) The tecnicos and the rudos start out the match in a feeling out process with pairings, matwork, and fast exchanges. The tecnicos have a general advantage. Eventually, the rudos have enough and opportunistically swarm the ring starting the beatdown. Or the tecnicos can win the first fall and that swarming starts in the segunda.

Or

B ) The rudos ambush the tecnicos from the get go and immediately start the beatdown.

That's pretty much it. The beatdown is your heat and works one of two ways. Either A ) all of the rudos are in the ring at once and they churn through the tecnicos using a numbers game, with the tecnicos cycling in. Rarely do you have it so that the tecnicos are shown to be all recovered at once. They won't be waiting on the apron but instead they'll convalesce on the floor (Volador had a match this last weekend where he was hanging out on the apron for way too long during his partner getting beat down 2 on 1 and it drove me nuts because you never see it). The more over tecnicos will know to fight back a bit but ultimately keep getting overwhelmed. Or B ) after taking the advantage, one rudo stays in the ring for the most part, beating on one tecnico. So long as this happens, they can play more face-in-peril style. The rudos will cycle in and occasionally, after a long beating, a tecnico might roll out and another will take the heat.

These matches are about broad momentum shifts. They are about the mandate of heaven shifting. So whether the rudos started the beatdown in the primera or the segunda, generally in the subsequent fall, the tecnicos will come back. This is usually due to the rudos going to a well once too often, getting too cocky, or through basic miscommunication. Often times, it'll be through one tecnico dodging or reversing a move in the ring and the other two flying in, or brawling on the outside, and will often involve a revenge spot, whether that is a posting or mask ripping or whatever, some quick shine, and then a tying up of the falls (unless the tecnicos were already ahead, in which case move on to the next paragraph).

This usually leads to a reset where everyone pairs off again, one at a time. This involves a lot of quick, logical cut offs, a chance for everyone to show off their offense, and usually some more tecnico shine as they fight against the odds. All of that builds back to the dives and then to the finish, usually between the two luchadores most focused, and with some ending that will bridge to whatever (usually similar) match they are running the next week, and occasionally to an eventual singles match.

That's not every trios match, but if you come in with that framework, that model, as a tool for understanding what you're seeing, to see how it fits and how it matches and what the variation is, then it's much harder to get lost.

You can do the same thing with wager matches or title matches.