MLJ: Sombra Spotlight 13: Volador Jr./La Sombra/Sagrado vs. Sangre Azteca/Black Warrior/Dragón Rojo [MEX TRIOS]

2009-02-03 @ Arena México
Volador Jr./La Sombra/Sagrado vs. Sangre Azteca/Black Warrior/Dragón Rojo [MEX TRIOS]

Last offramp for now. I thought it would make sense to watch at least one of the Mexican National Trios tag title matches that Sombra had as well, just to cover all the ground before we move on. I like looking at a luchador in all of the different roles he might play and while I won't do that entirely for every stage of Sombra's career, a trios title match seemed logical. I'm not going to go back to the match these three had vs Hijo de Fantasma, Maximo, and Mascara too even if that does look interesting. See, I have some restraint. That's online, for anyone curious though. If you do watch it, let me know how it is.

This was a match that had a lot of time and that showed off a lot of the strengths of the genre, with all the dives and cut offs and fast action you'd want, with a little bit of heat and a spattering of early matwork that I'd call middling, and some big spots and really solid character work. It's not necessarily a trios title match I'm going to remember in two years but I'm not going to hesitate in calling it good.

My biggest takeaways were:

1.) Sombra really stood out at this point. Volador did too, sure, but Sombra felt like more of a total package, even at this point. The biggest example I can give is this: at parts of the match, just from their gear, it was almost impossible to tell Sagrado and Sombra apart. They all had team gear and while Volador had the silver mask, both Volador and Sagrado were in black. Despite that, I never had a hard time here. Why? Because Sombra was so much smoother, so much faster, so much more graceful, and so much more dynamic in almost every aspect of his work, and that's including the opening matwork.

2.) I got a real kick out of the rudo side and it's disappointing to me we don't have more title matches with them. I'm no big fan of Sangre Azteca in general, but he was a little younger here, a lot faster, and didn't JUST launch creative shots to places he shouldn't be striking (though he did that too). Black Warrior was hugely emotive. I need to run through his big matches at some point.

3.) Dragon Rojo, Jr. came off as a very solid foil for Sombra. I've got a number of their matches ahead of me, and I'll probably end up diving a little deeper than I first intended.

and 4.) The crowd was really into this, straight down to the finish. That's another reason I'm sad that there weren't many defenses (if any) by the rudos. This felt like a big deal and some of that was due to the big entrances, some to the work itself, and some just to the time they had.

I'd definitely point to this as another indication of how far Sombra had come up to 2009. It takes a different set of skills to be a cog in a trios match like this than a singles title match, and at this stage Sombra was a solid fit for matches like this.