MLJ: Recent Uploads: Love Machine, Último Dragón, Vampiro vs Black Magic, Negro Casas, Pirata Morgan

1992-09-18 @ Arena México
Love Machine, Último Dragón, Vampiro vs Black Magic, Negro Casas, Pirata Morgan

I really meant to get back to Sombra and I will soon but Dataintcash has been uploading so I wanted to give some of these a look. There's another Robin Hood match up and an Estrada vs Fiera match which I'm going to give my vaunted colleagues a few more days to get to before I look at, but it sounds great on paper. This, though, took me by surprise. I'll watch any Negro Casas match that comes down the pipeline, but I didn't really have high hopes for this one. I was wrong.

It was one of the craziest lucha brawls I've ever seen. It didn't have the sort of brutal fury you get from the 80s rudos vs rudos wars, but it was just constant action, with all of the rudos playing their roles so well, and all of the tecnicos as endlessly spirited and fiery, even as a framing device, which I'm not sure I've ever seen before. Usually, when the rudos are beating on one tecnico, it's because they've managed to neutralize the others. Here, it was often two on one because one of the other tecnicos was chasing the third rudo around the ring. Crazy stuff with a lot of visceral hatred.

Morgan immediately felt like the best possible Vampiro opponent here. All Vamp really needed to do was bleed and sell and occasionally dive across the ring at whatever rudo last wronged him, using his height to make that visually striking. It didn't often go so well for him, save for one big revenge spot where he got to suplex Black Magic outside of the ring. Morgan was just awesome at bullying him and bleeding him, with all three rudos constantly cutting him off. There's a hair match between Morgan and Vampiro and I actually want to watch that now; it's nothing I've ever really thought of seeking out before.

I think this was shortly after Magic's turn and he and Barr got the very most out of that, with Barr first frustrated and then increasingly furious and deranged in his attacks. Casas was glorious, both as the rudo getting chased around the ring the most and as the guy taking the most sheer enjoyment from the beating they were giving out. He was always in the right place at the right time to help with a cut off or push someone off the ropes or get in an extra shot for good measure, and he made Dragon look like a million bucks by bumping for his kicks. I value old Casas just as much as young Casas, but I'll also freely admit that physically, he could do things well above and beyond when he was younger. He never had to, but they almost always add something unique and special to a match.

This was one of those vaguely unsatisfying two fall matches with the rudos controlling most, the tecnicos getting a comeback win in the middle, and then the rudos getting disqualified in the end. Of that sort, you either have the desperation DQ foul because the tecnicos are too much or when the rudos get DQ'd because they're just beating on the tecnicos too much. Both build heat for another match, but I kind of like the latter since it allows for more face saving on the rudo side. That's what we had here. I'd suggest watching this just for the breathless energy of it and Morgan and Casas playing their roles so well. This was really the way to manage Vampiro at this stage.