MLJ: Sombra Spotlight 15: CMLL Universal Tournament 2010 Part 2: Sombra vs Jushin Liger

2010-08-13 @ Arena México
Jushin Lyger vs La Sombra [CMLL Universal]

11:03 in

Thankfully, tournament finals are better than tournaments. There was a lot of novelty to this, what with Liger and all. It's great to hear his music in the Arena Mexico setting, for instance. He had cut a path through two of my favorites on the way to the finals, but the matches aren't really worth going out of your way to see. The Casas match had some fun legwork but was too slight and the Garza match was blink and you miss it. In the semis, he beat La Mascara and there's no good reason to watch 2010 Mascara (more on that in a few days). Liger's a great heel and was more than happy to rudo it up on his way to the finals.

In some ways, that actually made this match a little disappointing to me. It was worked mostly on the level until the end. Liger didn't even wear his black gear like he had in the earlier rounds. He's hugely charismatic, and he spent a lot of the match celebrating the moves he hit in order to get heat, but there wasn't even really a prolonged control segment here.

Now, that said, this was still good, even as a mostly back and forth affair. The crowd was still hugely behind Sombra, and Liger's power bomb-centric offense made for a lot of strong near-falls. The primera was pretty short, with them going right to the initial dive (though it was teased that Liger would get there first, but Sombra did instead), and Sombra launching his roll-up-into-a-suplex which looks more impressive these days since he does it as a deadlift powerbomb instead.

The segunda, however, was much more back and forth than you usually get out of modern CMLL and that helped build to the tercera with its selling, bombs, dives, and near-falls. Again, I didn't love the finish, which was Liger's second, Okumura, grabbing the leg and Liger pulling the mask for a roll up, as I just didn't feel it was built up to enough (I like screwjob finishes fine when they fit the match), but it did show how thoroughly they were protecting Sombra at this stage. Most importantly, he felt like he belonged in a match this big. Liger's celebrating was amazing. I'll leave you with that: