MLJ: Sombra Spotlight 24: Héctor Garza, La Sombra, Shocker vs Rey Bucanero, Terrible, Texano

2011-08-26 @ Arena México
Héctor Garza, La Sombra, Shocker vs Rey Bucanero, Terrible, Texano

I'm being a little choosy here. I can't watch every trios match and pick out the best one. Some of what's interesting in watching lucha is doing just that, looking at how a wrestler works the same opponents (or the same set of opponents) week after week, in front of the same crowd, quite often when there's almost nothing at stake. I'm trying to hit more of a broad cross section with Sombra though. I had picked a trios against Negro Casas, Mr. Niebla, and Felino, because it's worth everyone seeing La Pesta Negra at least once (and maybe only once), but when I went to watch the match, it was actually Olimpico in there instead of Casas, and while I like Olimpico more than most people, I don't like him nearly as much as Negro Casas.

So we're going with this instead. TRT (Terrible, Rey, Texano) was another perfectly serviceable trios with matching white hoodies and a lot of dynamic tandem offense that leads to a gif worthy match. It's a good match to see what Sombra could add when he's not the focus too. Much more of the story of this was Garza clashing with ref Tirantes. Garza's irascible scamp act worked equally well whether he's tecnico or a rudo. Sombra was there to provide some of the big action mainly.

Structurally, this started with a rudo swarm and ambush, which let TRT get in all of their offense in the primera, which they won handedly. The comeback in the segunda was more chaotic and less iconic than usual but that sort of felt novel. There were just bodies everywhere. It culminated with Garza reversing an assisted power bomb attempt off the top into a Rana. I always like it when the comeback is just a little more earned than usual and that was the case here. Tercera had a lot of cutoffs and spots, with the overarching story focused on Garza and Tirantes. Generally, I hate rudo heel focuses to matches but here it was just at the margins, not driving the action but affected by it. In the end, he allowed a rope assisted pin on Garza, but called for the DQ after a triple foul on Shocker. I think that was supposed to be a big moment for Tirantes. I know he's considered fairly lovable now.

As for Sombra, he mostly stayed out of the way of the storytelling while adding that flair and flash, which can be a very important role to play in a trios match. It would have been a lot clunkier and tedious without him. He hit this one flip to apron handstand rana outside that was just nuts, as well as some fun "vs the world" sequence in the tercera and eating hot death on a redirected dive to help set up the finish (by getting himself out of the way) I'm not sure I'd ever seen that specific rana before. Good stuff, but we'll move back to a tighter focus next time with his Universal Tournament win (probably skipping the actual tournament itself and going to the finals).