MLJ: Black Terry Boot Camp 11: Blue Panther & Negro Casas vs Black Terry & Solar I (Elite)

2016-02-28 @ Arena Mexico
Blue Panther & Negro Casas vs Black Terry & Solar I

This is yesterday's Maestro Match from the Elite show, so you're not going to get more up to date Black Terry than this. It's also another chance to see him against Negro Casas. It's shot pretty far off, but the action is easy to follow, even if you lose some nuance with facial expressions. I'm not going to complain as this was up less than twenty-four hours after the show.

This ran around fifteen minutes, one fall, without any real heat or comeback or anything like that. Structurally, it was a Solar vs Panther segment, a Casas vs Terry segment, and then them breaking things up so that it'd go back to Solar vs Panther, back to Terry vs Casas, switch briefly to Panther vs Terry, and end with Solar vs Casas. The point there is that we got to see everyone do everything with everyone else, which was a good thing. The draws to this match were going to be the strikes between Casas and Terry and some of the complex submissions between Panther and Solar, but everyone here is more than capable of doing everything.

The good stuff was very good. Casas drew the crowd in, but Terry got his share of chants as well. I loved it whenever they were in together, with nasty strikes all around and a sense of struggle over everything they did, be it a strike or a drop toehold. Terry, at one point, reversed a sleeper into a side slam, which you just don't see much in lucha. Casas' spinning back kick remains the best cut off move in wrestling, and they did a great job of escalating the strikes. They meant a lot more later in the match than at the beginning and it was all punctuated with a funny headbutt spot from Terry. Solar and Panther did some interesting and complex matwork. Solar's escapes and reversals were especially good and he locked some neat stuff including a swinging boston crab. On some of his stuff, it was obvious that Panther was serving as a good, strong base.

The age showed at times, not so much with Terry and Casas, but with the others. Solar fell off the ropes at one point, but Panther's recovery into a roll up was very good and they picked up the pace right after, really snapping into the next few moves to make up for it. I value the ability to recover well as much as almost anything else and their recovery here was flawless. It's notable, however, that when Casas and Terry came in the first time, I wondered for a second if I didn't have the video at 1.5x speed suddenly, somehow, because they were able to go a higher gear out of the gate.

This had a lot of fun stuff, but it's definitely helped by the fact that it's brand new. It's very much a "good for what it is" sort of match, especially compared to the IWRG from 2010 I've been watching, but in 2016, we're lucky to have new footage of any combination of these four go at it. There are so few Terry vs Casas matches out there, so that was especially nice.