Negro Casas Worth Watching

Rush/La Sombra/La Mascara v. Negro Casas/Shocker/Mr. Niebla CMLL 7/4/14

ER: Oh man, Rush and his boys come out in suits, pork pie hats, Mascara is wearing a vest, Sombra has his dress shirt unbuttoned way too low under a suit jacket, Rush is wearing no shirt under his jacket. They look like the three most aggressive dry humpers at the club. They look douchey enough that one of them should have "Don't you know who I am?!" tattooed on them. And this match was awesome. It was way more even than most matches between these two teams, and while there was never any real flow to it, that was because each team kept cutting off the other in logical ways. It was a really great use of 6 people as right when one side would gain an advantage, a guy who had been on the floor or apron would come in and cut the momentum right off. The work in this was as stiff as expected, with Sombra rattling Shocker's teeth with plenty of elbows, Mascara delivering plenty of on-point superkicks of the non-thigh slap variety, Rush and Casas each leaving boot imprints on the other's face. Shocker had a great showing here with some of his best selling ever. At one point he fell on his butt after some Sombra elbows and it was downright Kawada-esque. Earlier while selling his knee he valiantly limped right into a Mascara superkick. Niebla hits a dive out the corner past the turnbuckles like it was 1999, Rush boots a charging Casas right off the rampway, Sombra goes full douche by posing while splayed out across the middle rope, and this shit was all awesome. Go watch this.

Negro Casas v. Volador Jr. CMLL 5/31/15

ER: Fun short match with both guys working fast and tossing in little extra dickish things, and Casas almost rubbing it in Volador's face that the Arena Mexico crowd will always like him more. Both guys work stiff here but also really fly into the other's offense. Volador flies fast and nose first into a Casas DDT (with Casas adding a stiff senton afterwards to an unsuspecting Volador), both guys take a few really fast bumps over the top to the floor. You can tell right from go that they were working hard, with Volador jumping him and hitting a dive right before the bell. Later Volador hits a flip dive and then "slips" back first on Casas' face, but slow mo replays clearly show him doing it on purpose. No wonder he got that little senton receipt later. Casas brings some atmosphere and gravity to this, both things normally absent from Volador singles matches. Strikes were on point throughout, both guys gunning for the other's knee on dropkicks, Casas going jaw first into a superkick, Volador manning up into a Casas Thesz press. The whole thing was worked like they were trying to prove something, and this made it a cut above other match-ups I've seen between these two.