More People Should Be Talking About Metalico

People should talk about Metalico! He's never going to break out of the CMLL undercard, but he brings something different and wonderful to the CMLL undercard. He's a little stoogy Memphis heel. He's that combination of Loco Max and Billy Joe Travis that every single person would still love if those two were still alive*. His one semi-featured match of the decade (his mask match against Angel de Oro) stunk, but I put that squarely on Oro's shoulders. Metalico only makes tape a couple times a month so he's not a tough guy to keep track of in mainstream lucha circles. Seeing him pop up on a Fox deportes rerun just made me want to shine a little spotlight on him. This will be an ongoing miniseries of Metalico appreciation.

Metalico/Hijo del Signo/Canelo Casas vs. Sensei/Magnus/Leono (CMLL 9/3/16)

Not a great match but one with a wonderful Metalico performance and my pleasant surprise that Hijo del Signo is good now! Sensei appears to be not as good as he used to be, and appears to be bulkier. But Metalico is so much fun in this. He's a great rudo base so finds several ways to bump arm drags and he's good at setting up sometimes convoluted offense for tecnicos. At one point Sensei was setting up a headscissor off the top and Metalico was great at occupying himself by jawing with the crowd so Sensei could get into position, then running over to throw a great strike that was meant to be kicked away by Sensei. The "missed strike to set up opponent offense" is someone a lot of wrestlers do real phony, but Metalico brings a great combo of realism and theatricality to them. He's good at running lucha stooge spots in ways that you don't see (when Leono wouldn't shake his hand he went around the ring shaking hands with the ref and his own partners, to show how good he was at trustworthy handshakes), and can work stiff with a big elbowdrop and an awesome western lariat that sees him follow through all the way to the mat. Signo was a generic lucha son last I saw him and now he has genuine presence, really knowing how to sell through the mask and act befuddled by fast tecnicos. He does a decent Fuerza bump and runs some nice base sequences with the tecnicos. But this was Metalico's game. The Coliseo crowd is perfect for a guy like him and really my preferred lucha venue. There's something big missing from Arena Mexico ever since they put up the ringside barrier. Imagine Rush with the benefit of fans being right at ringside. Imagine how less fun Hector Garza would have been in 2006 with a ring barrier up. He wouldn't have been able to fall into all the old ladies and pretty girls. Metalico is real good at crowd work and I think the closeness of the Coliseo crowd plays off that nicely. We need more Coliseo stuff showing up. I miss it.



*Pretty sure Loco Max isn't dead