MLJ: Villano III Interlude 2: El Hijo Del Santo, Fuerza Guerrera, Villano III b Felino, Negro Casas, Shocker

1998-09-04 @ Arena México
El Hijo Del Santo, Fuerza Guerrera, Villano III b Felino, Negro Casas, Shocker

I ended up with an extra Sombra write-up last week as we needed content to keep the every day train going and my Monday review was the victim, so I'm filling the gap with another Villano III interlude. I realize I'm post prime here, with VIII in his mid-late 40s, but this is another one of those matches that hits a lot of marks: heel Santo, masked Shocker, tecnico Negro Casas, Fuerza Guerrera. Frustratingly, I feel like every rudo Santo match I watch has him on the verge of turning tecnico. I don't know if that's a footage issue or if he just spent half of his time as a rudo teasing the turn back.

Here, it was the key story of the match, but it played out interestingly. He went rudo, in part, because Casas, his eternal rival, had gone tecnico. In this match, there's a narrative of mutual respect between the two. While Santo doesn't show much affection for Felino or Shocker (and they show none for him), he seemed reluctant to allow for triple teams on Casas, even pulling him out of the ring at one point when he was getting double teamed. Later on, Casas returns the favor. He seemed frustrated by Fuerza and VIII, not wanting his hand raised with them after they took the primera. The finish of the match had Santo knock Felino off the top rope and ready to leap only for Fuerza to knock him off so he could hit the senton and steal the match.

You'd think in a match with so much story that the action might suffer. It really didn't. It did take up a lot of the primera, since it was a key element to the rudo beatdown, but Fuerza and Villano worked well together and Casas was tremendously over and is extremely good at garnering sympathy when put in a position to. The tecnicos actually came back in the primera in part due to Santo refusing to triple team. I'm well aware of it by now, but it's still amazing to see how different Shocker and Felino are in 2015 relative to 1998. Shocker, high flying and dynamic hit this amazing missle dropkick on Villano before he caught him in a power bomb for the fall (check out Fuerza's senton too):

The real joy of the match was in the brawling that followed, though. I'm not sure what got into them in this night, but Casas and Villano, especially, decided that they were going to pound the hell out of each other and it was pretty glorious. I said that this probably wasn't a great match to watch to get a sense of villano since it was so past his prime, but in lucha, wrestlers are viable into their 50s, and it's always interesting to see how they adapt after they can't go physically quite as much. VIII punching Casas in the face and eating his punches is a hell of a way to go. Casas still threw in the spin kick (and the Fiera wide spin kick which I'm not sure I've ever seen him do before), but he was brawling in a way that I've not seen from any other match of his, even apuesta matches, even the heated work with Rush.

People should check this one out for the well executed Santo story, but first and foremost for the Casas and Villano of them going at it. I'm excited to go back and watch some of those VIII apuestas matches now and some of his trios matches vs the Brazos or what not.