MLJ: Sombra Spotlight 25: Hiroshi Tanahashi, Terrible, Texano vs Black Warrior, Héctor Garza, La Sombra

2011-09-06 @ Arena Coliseo Guadalajara
Hiroshi Tanahashi, Terrible, Texano vs Black Warrior, Héctor Garza, La Sombra

I'm interjecting this one in as it's between the opening round and the finals of the Universal tournament. I saw Sombra vs Liger, Nakamura, and Goto, and I thought that I should hit this one against Tanahashi too.

This was loads of fun, just full of schtick and sequence. Terrible and Texano were really good together. I love how they were able to really dominate a match with a solid beatdown in the Bucanero match  vs Sombra with a lot of heat that I looked at previously, and then here got to have a real crowd pleaser. They had a really great little stretch against Sombra where he played the dominant tecnico countering everything they did which was probably the best of such I've seen out of him in this process. Warrior brought a lot of energy to things as well. I like him in almost every match I see him in, no matter the year.

Tanahashi fit right in too. He was such a flouncy heel, which is really the natural role for him, holding his own on the mat vs Sombra (and that was simple stuff but good and competitive) losing chop battles, getting clowned by Garza and just selling it huge.:

Garza was a comedy machine here. I like his reactions more as a rudo and I like Terrible more as a dangerous wildman but both played their roles really well in this one:

There was at least a bit of the wild beatings too:

Structurally, this had a few inversions (the tecnicos cutting off a rudo takeover at the end of the primera, the rudos coming back out of nowhere at the end of the segunda) which may not seem like much but are really satisfying when you see a lot of these that feel the same.