MLJ: Sombra Spotlight 2: Euforia, Nosferatu, Virus vs. Brillante, Leono, Stuka Jr.

2007-05-11 @ Arena México
Euforia, Nosferatu, Virus vs. Brillante, Leono, Stuka Jr.

Now we've got Brilliante/Sombra in CMLL proper, albeit very early in the card and still in his original gimmick. The mask had developed more almost into a negative of the Sombra mask. Euforia is 40 now. I hadn't realized that. Nor had I realized that Virus more or less headed up the post-Satanico Infernales. Someone should do an infographic mapping out the connections between Los Infernales/Hijo del Infierno/Guerreros del Infierno/etc. I haven't seen Leono in a while but he's still opening up on Arena Mexico cards.

This was a pretty good opening style match. The tecnicos were tecnicos. The rudos were rudos. Structure was rudos swarming in the middle of the primera exchanges, tecnicos coming back to win the fall, rudos taking back over in the segunda, and the tecnicos coming back in the tercera but ultimately getting cut off for a rudo win. The little wrinkles were appreciated. The pace of the primera was great and the heat, though short, felt weighty enough.

The rudo trio was pretty solid here. Virus directed traffic like he was the heir to Satanico. They didn't linger long in any single portion of the match but it still felt like they did a lot of stuff. Some of it was good, like the double clothesline/German that ended the segunda:

Some was less good like this mess of a contrived flip up, flip down, clothesline double team:

And Stuka was younger and more spry too. I promise that this is only a little sped up:

And the big question: how did Sombra look? Promising. He looked promising. He had a lot more to do than in the earlier match I saw him in. I think the fans were hesitant to cheer him as he was still very green, but there was potential. Some of his execution was still getting there. This monkey flip didn't entirely work:

He took a bit of extra effort to turn around on this rana, but followed it up with a really nice dropkick and then this goofy get stuck in the ropes thing he seemed to be doing at this time as his signature dive fake:

So there were cracks that I think the fans did pick up on, but he played his role well enough and was starting to come up with some signature spots. He was developing, but I think was slightly limited by the interchangable, flying tecnico gimmick as Brilliante.