NXT Episode 220 5/8/14 Review

1. Emma vs. Charlotte

Man Jason Albert tries way too damn hard on commentary. He comes off so phony and forced. And it needs to be pointed out again just how tragic Sasha Banks' hair was during this period of NXT. It's like she had shorter hair, but got extensions, but only in the back, so she had a weird mullet that was made to look even weirder by her always parting it down the middle. It's a terrible terrible choice that has somehow lasted for a couple months. And this wasn't much of a match. Charlotte had a couple of really nice bridging pins, including the one for the win, but not enough happened in this one to make it worthwhile.

2. The Legionnaires (Sylvester Lefort & Marcus Louis) vs. El Local & Kalisto

This is the Kalisto TV debut, and El Local is Del Rio's former ring announcer Ricardo Rodriguez. I've never seen Louis before. Lefort is a guy I really like who never gets a ton of offense. But he takes offense really nicely, and here he really leaps into all of Kalisto's flip offense. Leaps into his high crossbody and springboard tornillo, leans temple first into a couple really nice Kalisto rolling kicks. Local is a little slow but did a fun sliding stop when thrown into the buckles, and turned that into a nice Pele kick. I couldn't get any sort of read on Louis. But a nice debut for Kalisto.

3. Camacho vs. Captain Comic

Comic is Jody Kristofferson, who I forgot was in WWE developmental at one point and has since come back to the Bay Area indie scene and is the present APW Champ so they can hilariously brag on Facebook that "If Kris Kristofferson shows up to your show, you've done something right". Yeah. You booked his son in the main event and gave him the title. It's not like he just showed up at a wrestling show to check out the talent. I dig Camacho so it's nice to see him get a squash win. He throws a cool pump dropkick to Comic's stomach dishes a nice over the shoulder powerslam, and admittedly wears one of the worst Converse Chuck Taylor designs: camouflage. Yuck. Just go with a plain canvas color dude. The camouflage Chucks are like barely a step above the Flame print ones.

4. Alicia Fox vs. Alexa Bliss

Another debut with Bliss likely being some sort of fitness model. She certainly doesn't know how to do wrestling offense, wherever she came from. She throws a real ugly mistimed dropkick and then hits a bad handspring standing moonsault that sees her accidentally land in an awkward kneeling position. Her elbows to get out of a headlock land nowhere near Fox. Man this girl does not look ready for TV in any way. Fox, however, looked awesome. Fox hits a real mean northern lights suplex, big tilt a whirl backbreaker, and really cranks in a side headlock. Bliss was lost as hell so Fox had to lock on a few chinlocks and headlocks to save things, but Fox made every single one of them actually look painful. Of course Bliss gets the upset, but man did she look bad.

5. #1 Contender Battle Royal

Not too many ways to determine a #1 contender for your main belt are more dumb than a battle royal, but I'm a weird sucker for royals so whatever. Tons of guys are waiting in the ring, but Mojo Rawley, Sami Zayn and Bo Dallas get entrances. We have a Curt Hawkins sighting! I mean, the sighting came when he got immediately eliminated, but Hawkins is still a guy who is around and doing things! I do like Albert putting over Yoshi Tatsu, saying he has legitimate Royal Rumble experience so he should be a favorite in this. But damn this really isn't much of a battle royal. It felt more like just filling time. Bo Dallas got a couple nice shine moments, getting to eliminate Mason Ryan and Big Cass, the two big guys in the match. But the whole match is used to set up a Breeze/Zayn/Tyson Kidd triple threat with HHH coming out to announce it and acting like a triple threat is the best possible match we can get. I would rather see a singles match between any two wrestlers in the battle royal, than the triple threat match we're going to get next week. So is HHH or JBL the Commissioner? Can anybody from WWE come in and make matches? Even Brodus Clay was able to come in and put himself immediately into a title match.

Weird episode this week as I do like seeing debuting wrestlers, but the two tournament matches fell flat, and the battle royal was uneventful and poorly filmed, and sets up an undesirable match.


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MLJ: Sombra Spotlight 26: La Sombra vs Averno [2011 CMLL Universal, final]

2011-09-16 @ Arena México
La Sombra vs Averno [CMLL Universal, final]

I'm mainly coming into these blind, picking matches that seem significant or noteworthy or just plain good. This wasn't something that jumped out at me. I think it almost has to be a CMLL MOTYC for 2011 though, and looking back at discussion from the time, people seem to agree. It was a really great main event title match, one that doesn't face many of the pitfalls that such matches in CMLL tend to have.

I'm not going to go through the entire tournament here, but Sombra went over Angel De Oro and Diamante, both of which were interesting because they were tecnico vs tecnico, and Rey Bucanero as well, which wasn't as interesting as it was mainly to set up a big apuestas cage hair match with Felino and others for the Anniversary. I don't have in front of me who Averno went over but it's a bit less novel than Liger, so I didn't feel the need to look into it.

It's easy to take Averno for granted. He was Mistico's arch rival in a lot of ways and I love his stuff against Satanico, though that's more of a guilty pleasure. Going back through this stuff, he's felt very interchangeable with Mephisto for a number of years. He had lost his mask just a few months before this, though (not against Mistico, as that ship had sailed), and I think it revitalized him. For one thing, he had a great look without the mask, and great facial expressions, and he really was able to use them to the fullest now. Also, he had a theme which was almost orchestral and bubbly, in a techno way and it was a great bit of dissonance. I'd love to hear Kevin Sullivan come out to something like this, or something.

And he worked this match very fun, too. In the first two falls, he wasn't just working it straight, as title matches are often worked, bu the was working like a tecnico, as if he was trying to out Sombra Sombra. Volador was at ringside as his second and they had switched shirts, which added to the surreality of this. It was sort of like Lucifer's hubris, that he was not content to defeat Sombra as a rudo. He had to outdo him at how own game. It kept backfiring on him however, though he was able to recover in the primera and catch him off a springboard with a power bomb. It cost him in the segunda, as after he did a needless tecnico backflip, Sombra was able to catch him with his Brilliante Bomb (the roll up into a suplex). It's worth noting here just how thoroughly the crowd was into Sombra. He felt like a star here, even more so than he would a few years later in the start of the Ingobernables creation where Rush consistently came off as a bigger deal.

The tercera was exactly what you'd expect, a lot of bombs, near falls. The selling felt absolutely deserved considering the fact they let the first two falls go a little longer (cumulatively) than usual. It started with a bang, with the flip to apron rana (and thanks to Cubs for giffing it years ago):

and just kept going from there. I'm not going to go play by play on it, but it was good, building and building until a top rope Devil Wings attempt where it seemed like Averno lost Sombra, causing him to end up crotched on the top. They handled it like total pros though, both of them, and especially Tirantes as the ref, who played it up as if he might DQ Averno and end a great match on a wrong note. They recovered, however, and cycled back into things organically, without making it seem like they were trying to redo a spot.

Great match, way better than I was expecting coming in. Check it out. On this night, Sombra was undisputedly a star, one that had come a very far way.

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