MLJ: Sombra Spotlight 12: La Sombra vs Mephisto [NWA WELTER]

2009-01-19 @ Arena Puebla
La Sombra vs Mephisto [NWA WELTER]

The problem with doing any project of any length is that I decide I need to watch more and more matches. That's what this is. Sombra had a NWA Welterweight Title reign from November 2007 to May, 2009. That's the belt that they replaced with the Historic Welterweight Title and that Volador Jr has now. He beat Ohara for it and lost it shortly after this match to Mephisto. There just aren't a lot of his defenses online, but I felt like I had to at least look at one just to see where he was developmentally in a singles title match. He held the thing for a couple of years, almost.

This was a pretty good match which had one really big thing going for it, time. Time, in and of itself, is not the magic answer to title matches, but it's very hard to have one feel weighty or meaningful without it. Lack of time is an issue even if time, in and of itself, isn't a magic bullet. The current style of CMLL title matches (and apuesta matches, really) allow for a lot of selling in the tercera, and that has to feel warranted, generally through enough damage being done to both wrestlers. That happened here.

Unfortunately, it really suffered from the other tendency of modern title matches, the time being allocated unevenly. The tercera had 18 minutes. The primera was a blip, the segunda less so. They at least made lip service to matwork and wrestling to start, as it wasn't just a title match but one of the NWA ones, NWA patch on the ref's shirt and all, but I don't think there was a lot of faith in Sombra to carry a long title match matwork exchange here. He picked up the primera with a cute little reverse on a fireman's carry drop by Mephisto and the split legged moonsault. He pressed the advantage during that short segunda until Mephisto was able to get a nice headscissors roll up out of nowhere. Then they did a couple of extremely sparse minutes of heat before Sombra reversed things, hit a dive and they started the selling and the nearfalls.

As these sort of terceras go, it was a pretty good one. Again, the time helped, as did Mephisto's selling. For instance, at one point he locked in a really nice Cavernaria, right in the middle of the ring. When he finally let it break, his selling and body language really portrayed the sense that he simply couldn't hold it anymore due to the damage done to him throughout the match and the exhaustion that had set hold. It wasn't just a case of him letting go of a hold to keep the match moving along. That sort of effort is appreciated because it feels somewhat rare.

Both the spots and the sense of danger and believability of the nearfalls escalated as the tercera went on, which is really what you want out of this sort of thing. Occasionally, one didn't work out quite as believably as it should due to Sombra trying to balance his selling with the immediacy necessary but the sum was stronger than the parts here, and when he did hit the springboard dragonrana he was doing around this time and picked up the pin, the crowd went nuts and Mascara lifted him up on his shoulders, and it really did feel both warranted and like a big deal. It certainly wasn't my favorite title match that I've seen recently, but Sombra had come a long way to pull off this specific sort of one as well as they did here.