MLJ: Sombra Spotlight 3: Dr. Wagner Jr., Euforia, Último Guerrero vs La Sombra, Místico, Negro Casas

2007-07-06 @ Arena México
Dr. Wagner Jr., Euforia, Último Guerrero vs La Sombra, Místico, Negro Casas

So, rough guess has this as #250 for the lucha journey. I might be 1-2 off, but it's still a hell of a lot of matches to have watched and I'm glad this is a milestone number. It was really good. How good was it? It was good enough that I want to go down the Mistico and Negro Casas tag team rabbit hole. We're missing some matches online, and I really want to keep covering Sombra ground, so I won't do that, but this was one of those really dynamic, charismatic, exciting main event trios, like the one we had a few months ago with LA Park and Dr. Wagner. It had star power and a lot of heat and just felt special. I'd suggest everyone watch it.

So, this was setting up Wagner, Jr. and Ultimo Guerrero vs Mistico and Negro Casas. They'd end up trading the tag belts back and forth. Wagner was fresh as a rudo here, and it felt a whole lot like him teaming with Los Ingobernables, just with Guerreros Del Infierno instead. He did the huddle. He did his hand signal with them. I eat that stuff up. The focus, despite the tag element was very distinctly on Mistico vs Wagner, with the crowd thoroughly split.

The structure was exchanges, beatdown, comeback, cutoffs and finish. Really, it's so standard a formula that what made this work were the intangibles. Some of that is the specific moves the wrestlers do. Some of it's the timing, knowing how much to hype up the crowd, riling them more and more for the key exchanges. No one likes to milk that more than Wagner and he had the perfect opponent for it in Mistico. It was just one of those magical main event lucha trios, that perfect cross-section of charisma and action, and in this case I'd rather you watch it than me break it down further. I'm not sure if it's good on the level of a MOTYC, but it's good on the level of lucha feeling transcendently larger than life.

I picked this specifically to see how Sombra fit in with the main event players, and I think he did well for the most part. He wasn't paired up with Euforia as much as you'd think. Instead, it was him vs Guerrero in the primera and Guerrero did a great job selling for him, letting him win exchanges, guiding him through things and making him look good. He couldn't do that with a broomstick though and Sombra projected the confidence needed and the acrobatic skill to back it up. The one major flub (at least I think it's a flub, which is the sign of a relatively painless flub) was Sombra getting projected up to the top rope. From there, I'm pretty certain Guerrero was supposed to superbomb him. He fell off, though, and they recovered, immediately, into the front suplex off the top. So, not perfect, but a really good sign that he could be in a match like this and not feel wildly out of place.

I'm not even going to spoil moments with gifs here. Instead, here's this awesome gifs of Wagner, pre match and Mistico from a commercial towards the end of the match.