I Hope The King is Here to Stay

Jerry Lawler/Bill Dundee v. Phil Hickerson/Dennis Condrey CWA 3/78-FUN

Rare opportunity to see the Wrecking Crew of Hickerson and Condrey who are a legendary tag team (Cornette called them the best team he has seen), who have very little footage on tape. You get a sense of what made them great here, but for the most part this was pretty disjointed. This was a title change, but for the most part it was worked like a time killer studio match, Dundee has a bunch of fun flourishes he adds to studio match, for example he gets the hot tag to Lawler by skittering the length of the ring on his back like a worm, but Lawler always feels a little rote in studio matches, he is a big arena worker at heart. Hickerson and Condrey spend most of the match playing hide the boomerang which is just too big of a foreign object to be plausibly hidden. Would have loved to see what these two teams would do in Mid-South Coliseum, but this was a tease more then anything.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE KING

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MLJ: 2010: Invasores Interlude 3: Brazo de Plata, La Sombra, Toscano vs El Alebrije, Histeria, Psicosis

2010-05-02 @ Arena México
Brazo de Plata, La Sombra, Toscano vs El Alebrije, Histeria, Psicosis


Alebrije, Histeria, Psicosis vs Porky, Sombra...

I come from a place of ignorance. That's the whole point of this project on some level, to push back against that. A lot of the people who check out what I write have been watching lucha for years or decades or even their entire life. There is cognitive disconnect that I need to put aside sometimes in doing this. I don't mean things like "why don't the tecnicos do something when their partner is getting triple teamed in a trios match?" or anything like that. I mean general booking and revenue issues, the underpinning behind what I see. CMLL owns the building(s?). They get their money by fans showing up and paying for tickets and concessions. They get some more money by selling as much TV product as possible. That leads to lazy and outright bad booking (which sometimes feels like no booking at all) being forgivable economically.

Still, this match is maddening. As best as I can tell, this was the invaders first match in Arena Mexico. They may not have been the biggest names, but they had a unified look with the outlandish purple colors, with Alebrije's size and Psicosis' over the top mask and Cuije's presence. They had a total surprise entrance to the company and then a very strong first match in Puebla. And here they gave way too much to Porky, a total comedy wrestler, even if he was a beloved one, and ultimately had to be saved by the near 50-something Mascara Ano 2000 and Universo 2000, who were better known and remembered names, certainly, but hardly had a rousing last run in the company and didn't fit the look of the other invaders at all. I'm not going to compare it to, let's say, Brian Adams in the NWO, but that's the vibe I got. I don't know if it was because someone else was booking the Puebla shows and it was just a regional angle that gathered more steam than they were expecting, which led to it getting play (but not positive play) at Arena Mexico or what. I have no idea what the arrival of Los Invasores did for business, but it felt like a hot angle to the live crowd when they arrived and the first match with them was very good. This felt like the worst way possible to capitalize on it.

That's not to say it was a bad match. It wasn't. Sombra had a good mix of athleticism and a general sense of knowing what he was doing back in 2010. Toscano was more than capable still. I even wanted to see Alebrije and Porky go at it from a morbid curiosity point of view. It was just very much the wrong match with the wrong outcome at this point of the story.

Still, not bad. The rudo beat down went well enough. Psicosis and Sombra started, with a nice Bow and Arrow from Psicosis; when Sombra went for a hold of his own, the rudos swarmed. After that, they mainly beat up Porky in the corner while his partners rotated in to get double teamed. It ended with some fun use of Cuije as a melee weapon and nice teamwork, two clotheslines in the corner followed by a double back kick in the corner, which shoved out Toscano for Alebrije's spear. This particular rudo trip was more the sum of its parts and I really do love the double armpit lift-up, charging battering ram flip finish.

They teased a reset to start the segunda but Sombra quickly got lured into an ambush. This immediately set up Porky charging out of the corner with a Porky Attack, Sombra hitting a visually impressive fireman's carry drop on Alebrije, and a split-legged senton/roll up/Porky splash finish to the lightning quick comeback.

So far so good, but it would devolve from there. They'd attack Cuije a bit. Toscano took his pants off and Porky did the spot where he smells them and fell over. Toscano went up against the world (which was fine, including really leaning into a dropkick), Porky pinched Alebrije (which was less fine). And the rudos all ended up in the corner for Porky to jump on. It devolved into stooging and the Porky show, ending with Los Capos running in to break up a Porky second rope splash, and this would have been fine and entertaining for a random mid-card match with no feuds behind it (and I imagine Porky was quite happy to have some new fodder to work with), but placed where it was in the angle, it was just brutal.

I guess that's CMLL for you. We're just not allowed to have nice things for long.

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