Lucha Worth Watching: Fresh Casas Match-Ups! Tournament Lucha?

1. Negro Casas/Canelo Casas vs. Valiente/Astral (CMLL 6/9/17)

ER: Leave it to Casas to make a 1st round tournament lucha match something approaching meaningful. It's 5 minutes but plenty enjoyable, with Valiente breaking out weird World of Sport matwork that he doesn't normally break out, and Astral getting a big chance to shine against normal sized people, while Casas has a long showdown with the former/current mini. This is the first time Casas and Astral have ever had reason to be in the same match, and fresh match-ups/new allegiances are the one saving grace of tournament lucha. Casas hypes it up all match and make it feel like a huge deal that he's going toe to toe with this kid who's half his age. He stooges around for him, keeps pace, and gives Astral moments to shine. Astral makes the most of it, hits a wild double jump tornillo, Casas set him up to look like a big deal and he did. Canelo isn't great but he spends his segments dedicated to being a rudo instead of shoehorning highspots, and I appreciate that. Tournament lucha should be a little more like this.

2. Negro Casas/Canelo Casas vs. Caristico/Soberano Jr. (CMLL 6/9/17)

ER: Another fresh Casas match, as Soberano has been lingering in the undercard for a few years, prior to his 2017 push up the cards. At his best he's shown to be a bump freak with some cool movement, at his worst he's a bad Volador clone. But he's never squared off with Casas (they were in a decent Cibernetico in 2014), and that's obviously the money combo here. Casas is great throughout, and I loved his stiff body/timberrrr selling of Caristico's superkick, loved his stiff forearms and lariat on Soberano (and Soberano lands some nice kicks to the chest later). Casas brought interesting character to strike exchanges, we build to a fun moment of Casas snapping off a nice 57 yr. old rana, but Soberano cartwheels out of it and hits his nice long-legged version. The home stretch was really wonderful: Soberano finding multiple ways out of La Casita, with Casas getting more and more desperate as he became more obsessed with beating him. Casas starts with a simple drop toehold to lead to La Casita, but Soberano yanks his arm out, so Casas dropkicks his knee to get him back into position but Soberano shoves him away, back off the ropes and Casas dropkicks him to the knee again, but Soberano rolls through to his own pin! Generous performance from Casas here, truly the theme of the day.

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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

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2015 En Busca De Idolo Qualifying Cibernetico

Not as excited about this years lineups as I was last year, but I figure I will cover it again, and see if anyone breaks out. Like last year, I am going to rate everything either Must See, Spare Moment and Don't Bother

Blue Panther Jr./Boby Zavala/Canelo Casas/Delta/Disturbio/Esfinge/Flyer/Guerrero Maya Jr. v. Akuma/Cancerbero/Gallo/Joker/Pegasso/Raziel/Sagrado/Stigma-Spare Moment

This was less lunatic then last years qualifier, it had less awkward blown stuff (really the only awful thing was Maya Jr. blowing a dive, which is weird because he is the most experienced guy here), but also less holy shit moments. I liked Joker's brawling, and Cancerbero is always good, they were the two stand outs for the non-qualifiers. Flyer looks like he will take the Star. Jr./Dragon Lee role of young guy embracing hot death, will be interesting to see if he has anymore to show. Casas, Maya and Panther Jr. have the genetics and Maya has been pretty good for a long time, although he did look off here. Hard to get much of a sense of anything in a match like this, but I am going to remain optimistic.

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En Busca de un Idolo - Week 1

The CMLL En Busca de un Idolo tourney is the most fun non-WWE thing in wrestling in 2014. Pretty much fun WCWSN lucha style 8 minute matches. I like tourneys (although not lucha tourneys usually), and most of these matches are nice and short, so I figure I will review it all, hoping to catch up by the finals. My Complete and Accurate grades don't really work here (I don't think there are going to be any EPICS for example) so I am going to review them with a Must See, If You Have a Spare Moment, Don't Bother.

3/25

Qualifying Cibernetico (Black Panther, Cachorro, Canelo Casas, Cavernario, Dragon Lee, El Rebelde, Espiritu Negro, Flyer, Guerrero Negro Jr., Hechircero, Herodes Jr., Metalico, Oro Jr., Soberno Jr., Star Jr., Super Halcon Jr.) - Spare Moment

These matches are like Ice Cream Sundae's for the most part. Sweet, will give you a head rush, but not a ton of substance and you definitely don't want too much. This goes 30 minutes +, and while the first couple of bites are great, you are going to have a stomach ache when you are done. It is hard to really focus on one guy, or one crazy dive when the match has 20+ dives. Watching them all, I decided I am pretty much a fan of a simple tope, and there are some great ones here, especially by Panther's kids. Star Jr. gets the most height on his dive and Hechicero takes the biggest bump. It seems like the picked the right 8 guys to advance (although I would have liked to see more Black Panther), but this is a hard platform to judge people on. Plenty of crazy individual moments, and if you just want to see crazy kids do every spot they know this is fine in an ROH scramble kind of way

4/4

Cachorro v. Star Jr. - Must See

Cachorro is the son of Blue Panther and one of the most exciting young wrestlers in the world. Star Jr. is a 20 year old technico with all of the nut up testosterone of a kid that age. Star Jr. looked a little tentative in the exchanges, although he hit them all fine. What you want from Star Jr. is one crazy bump and one crazy dive and you get both as he flies through the ropes head first to the floor and hits a springboard flippy twist. Cachorro throws out his tope although it isn't as crushing as it has been, he also ends with a rana counter leglock which would make his daddy proud. Fun stuff.

Dragon Lee v. Soberano Jr. - Spare Moment 

Parts of this were a bit of a mess, Soberano kind of blows his first big dive, an inside to out asai moonsault which he doesn't clear cleanly and looks like he clips Dragon Lee. There are also off a bit on some of their in ring exchanges. Still this had some cool stuff, Lee is a really graceful flyer and that signature hip toss to the floor bump is one of the crazier signature spots I have seen. Not much to this, but it had enough moments for a mild rec.

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