MLJ: Black Terry Boot Camp 11: Blue Panther & Negro Casas vs Black Terry & Solar I (Elite)

2016-02-28 @ Arena Mexico
Blue Panther & Negro Casas vs Black Terry & Solar I

This is yesterday's Maestro Match from the Elite show, so you're not going to get more up to date Black Terry than this. It's also another chance to see him against Negro Casas. It's shot pretty far off, but the action is easy to follow, even if you lose some nuance with facial expressions. I'm not going to complain as this was up less than twenty-four hours after the show.

This ran around fifteen minutes, one fall, without any real heat or comeback or anything like that. Structurally, it was a Solar vs Panther segment, a Casas vs Terry segment, and then them breaking things up so that it'd go back to Solar vs Panther, back to Terry vs Casas, switch briefly to Panther vs Terry, and end with Solar vs Casas. The point there is that we got to see everyone do everything with everyone else, which was a good thing. The draws to this match were going to be the strikes between Casas and Terry and some of the complex submissions between Panther and Solar, but everyone here is more than capable of doing everything.

The good stuff was very good. Casas drew the crowd in, but Terry got his share of chants as well. I loved it whenever they were in together, with nasty strikes all around and a sense of struggle over everything they did, be it a strike or a drop toehold. Terry, at one point, reversed a sleeper into a side slam, which you just don't see much in lucha. Casas' spinning back kick remains the best cut off move in wrestling, and they did a great job of escalating the strikes. They meant a lot more later in the match than at the beginning and it was all punctuated with a funny headbutt spot from Terry. Solar and Panther did some interesting and complex matwork. Solar's escapes and reversals were especially good and he locked some neat stuff including a swinging boston crab. On some of his stuff, it was obvious that Panther was serving as a good, strong base.

The age showed at times, not so much with Terry and Casas, but with the others. Solar fell off the ropes at one point, but Panther's recovery into a roll up was very good and they picked up the pace right after, really snapping into the next few moves to make up for it. I value the ability to recover well as much as almost anything else and their recovery here was flawless. It's notable, however, that when Casas and Terry came in the first time, I wondered for a second if I didn't have the video at 1.5x speed suddenly, somehow, because they were able to go a higher gear out of the gate.

This had a lot of fun stuff, but it's definitely helped by the fact that it's brand new. It's very much a "good for what it is" sort of match, especially compared to the IWRG from 2010 I've been watching, but in 2016, we're lucky to have new footage of any combination of these four go at it. There are so few Terry vs Casas matches out there, so that was especially nice.

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MLJ: Recent Elite matches: Traumas vs Guerrero Maya Jr./Rey Cometa and Cavernario/Negro Casas vs Mistico/Caristico

2015-12-27 @ Arena México
Trauma I & Trauma II vs Guerrero Maya Jr. & Rey Cometa

El Cavernario & Negro Casas vs Carístico & Mistico

I'm still playing catch up, so here are two Elite matches from the last couple of weeks. There are two different video shots for them, one having better VQ, the other being less cut. You get the idea for both though.

You could tell, clipping or no, that they were fairly short, brisk affairs, but they were both a lot of fun. I still can't tell the Traumas apart as in I couldn't tell you which of the two was better, but their act is great (and they were paired up well against Puma/Tiger in previous weeks). I love how they dominated early on here, with a choreographed attack of letting Cometa in, only to slide out pull him back out to set up the double team dive onto the apron. 

The comeback here was very brief, a missed move, a dive, and Maya's finisher. In general, I thought Maya looked better than Cometa. I really don't think he ever quite recovered from losing his mask, even if it was for a good cause. He comes off as a poor man's Volador and could probably do well if he was paired with him in a trios. Maya just comes off as far more charismatic, even if Cometa does his his stuff cleanly. The tercera was a lot of tecnico shine until the Traumas finished it out of nowhere. Not a classic but a great use of ten minutes.

People could watch the Traumas tag and be happy. They should actively watch the Casas/Cavernario tag, though. That's probably my favorite quasi-makeshift tag team in the world. They're great together and the Misticos were great foils for them (though really, of course, it was meant to be the other way around). This was just as brief. 

It won't take you much more than ten minutes to watch, less if you watch the clipped version, but the clipped version sort of comes off as a good parts version, and it's all good parts, from the initial ambush to every bit of awesome Cavernario offense, to Zacarias getting to do a 619, to Casas doing a Fargo Strut, to seeing Caristico interact with Casas and Cavernario, to sort of accepting Mistico's crummy superkick, to the way that Casas and Cavernario make the tecnicos work for their comeback, to the fun back and forth tercera, ending with Casas' Oscar-deserving antics to break up the last pinfall so his team can win.

Negro Casas never not been revitalized but he feels even further so against Caristico. I'm looking forward to them having a singles match. Cavernario's such a star too, seeming like he absolutely belongs in there with the rest. 

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Lucha Worth Watching: Dragon Lee/Kamaitachi and Caristico/Sombra

Dragon Lee vs. Kamaitachi (CMLL 12/4/15)

These two have built up the rep of doing some high speed crazy moves in the last year +, and this match does not disprove that rep. But it also felt like the most "moves exhibition" of all their singles matches so far. Some of the stuff is crazier than any of their other matches, but moreso than any other of their matches (even their lightning match, somehow) this felt like a super series of unrelated gifs. Many of the gifs looked awesome, but the order of them didn't make any sense whatsoever, and oftentimes one of them would take a giant move, only to beat the person delivering the move to his feet, and do one of his own. There was some nutty as hell stuff happening here, and that counts for something. The crazy stuff looked crazy. I mean the match starts with Kamaitachi missing a crazy ass dropkick from the apron to the floor, to be followed up with a Lee dive that sees him plowing upside down into the barricade. That's the level we start at. It's like starting a first date with a blow job. We get tons of lunatic reverse ranas and Canadian Destroyers, tons of headdrops, dropkicks to the face and back of the head, Kamaitachi hits an AWESOME senton from the top to the floor onto a standing Lee, we get a couple engaging moments of both men fighting on the top rope, a Japanese woman at ringside wildly cheers for Kamaitachi (including when he stomps on the title). We get a fun silly restart when it's revealed Lee's foot was on the ropes (and I'm kind of a fan of fun silly restarts) and I like the end sequence of Kamaitachi setting up his rampway dropkicks which has leveled Lee for the past year, and Lee timing it right to counter it (like Little Mac properly countering the Bald Bull Charge) and then dumping him with a suplex. So tons of things looked cool. But it just didn't add up to anything of substance for me. I thought the 8/30 match built really well and the spots kept getting crazier as the match went on, really making it feel like they were pulling out all of the stops. This felt like showing off. And both guys got a lot of cool shit to show off. But there really felt like no rhyme or reason behind what moves could end a fall, what moves were devastating, what moves are setting up bigger moves. Sometimes a move would end a fall, and then get kicked out of when performed moments later. It's an easy way to suck me out of a match. But, there was plenty here to just sit back and marvel at.

La Sombra & Ultimo Guerrero vs. Caristico & Atlantis (All Elite 11/8/15)

Matt wrote up some other All Elite Caristico so I figured I would tackle the other one, also because I've been more interested in soaking up all of the post mask loss Sombra. And the match itself is fun, if not extremely by the numbers for these guys. The first fall is probably the most inspired thing here, with Sombra especially looking awesome with tons of sliding kick variations to Caristico that all looked really good. As the (short) match went on he eventually became Caristico's Averno, impressively catching a slingshot rana and big springboard dive to the floor corner. Caristico looked hesitant or off in spots, or just plain rough. It's cool you can land on your feet after your alley oop dropkick and all, but it would be cooler if you made contact with your opponent. Ultimo and Atlantis continue doing the house show version of their feud, and this match could probably be quite good if fleshed out a bit more, but the bare bones version was fun enough.

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