MLJ: Dragon Lee vs Virus/Casas 6: Hombre sin Nombre, Sangre Azteca, Virus vs Ángel de Oro, Dragon Lee, Stuka Jr

Taped 2014-11-25 @ Arena México
Hombre sin Nombre, Sangre Azteca, Virus vs Ángel de Oro, Dragon Lee, Stuka Jr

To sum up: in the midst of the newest Dragon Lee vs Kamaitachi match being heralded as the CMLL match of the year, I'm off to the side watching Lee vs Virus from last fall instead. If we want to be positive towards me, then we can go with the fact that a lot of people are watching the former match due to the hype and I'm giving them a jumping on point to watch more Dragon Lee. We'll just go with that.

So this is the run up to Lee challenging Virus two weeks later for the Lightweight championship, which means this week's worth of matches will be a little more focused than this mini project has been up until now. (It's been an overglorified excuse for me to watch Casas or Virus matches). For those unfamiliar, Sangre Azteca is the world's most single-minded wrestler, his entire offense centered around groin shots. Hombre sin Nombre is the former Hooligan and current Luciferno. He looked really good here.

The primera was basic and solid. Pairings, slight tecnico advantage for the first two and then an outright rudo swarm during the third. interestingly, they put Stuka and Virus together (with Oro and HSN and Sangre and Lee), which might have been misdirection as the match would ultimately culminate with Dragon Lee vs Virus. It could have just been to keep things interesting. Nothing really stood out. Virus is awesome. We know that. He's as good as anyone at moving his opponent around and making sure that the opening matwork seems competitive and not collaborative. Stuka was fine. The match had a decent amount of time and they let the opening two exchanges breathe, but not to the detriment of the match. It ramped things up to set up the swarm after Lee came in and got an immediate advantage on the roperunning vs Azteca. Even so, the tecnicos held on, with Oro diving in with a plancha only to get his mask yanked by Virus from the outside in a nice, little spot. That set up the corner groin crush by Azteca and the fall.

The segunda was primarily a beat down, but a solid one. Virus and HSN looked good here, with nice intensity and variation of offense. Azteca kicked people in the groin and then danced around. So it goes.

The transition was a nice spot where Lee, having been beat upon by Virus slid out of the ring, sending Virus right into Oro's trap, followed by your usual heel miscommunication with tecnicos diving in, Oro's rocking submission and Stuka hitting bombs away. Notably they had Virus back-peddle from Lee during the actual moment of the fall, setting up the tercera.

The tercera was your usual reset and pairings. The crowd was surprisingly pumped for Lee vs Virus. Lee isn't quite as good as brother Rush in getting the crowd pumped up but I do think he's learned from him because he's better than a lot of the CMLL roster. Anyway, this was about what you'd expect: a lot of quick action, with some tecnico vs the world sequences and rudo cutoffs to delay the dives. When they finally came, it allowed the ring cleared for Virus vs Lee once more. I don't think the final encounter ultimately lived up to the build for it within the match, as Lee especially looked a little rough on the finish. For a first match out of three, it was fine, though, and it was obvious that Lee was getting a little better every week.

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CMLL Worth Watching 10/12/14, 12/26/14 & 1/4/15

1. Welterweight Cibernetico, feat. Rey Cometa, Fuego, Mascara Dorada, Negro Casas, Kamaitachi, Titan, Sangre Azteca, Triton, Delta, & Polvora (12/26/14)

When I first got into lucha it was ciberneticos and Rey/Psicosis matches that broke me in. And then once I discovered lucha brawling I lost interest in ciberneticos. When I started watching lucha I went in not understanding its complexities, went in assuming like it would be like a never-ending WCW Saturday Night spotfest. I didn't realize at the time what a low bar I was setting, and just how deeply I would come to accept lucha into my life. Ciberneticos just became a waste to me, as it was mostly guys rushing through spots with no sort of character, and fairly quickly I learned that lucha was much better as a character piece than as a spotfest. But obviously there can still be some tremendous spots and occasionally you still get a cibernetico such as this one with tons of fun stuff. Cometa and Fuego really shined in this one, with each hitting some nutso dives (gotta compete with the televised craziness of Lucha Underground after all), but Cometa here seemed more fired up than I've seen from him in over a year (that middle rope tornillo is so cool!) and had a nice snap to everything he did, Dorada took some major bumps, Fuego finally looked like the guy that people have been pimping him to me as, Sangre Azteca is dressed like Michael Jackson in The Wiz, and I *love* when Casas gets in a match like this with some younger guys and shows he can run circles around all of them. Casas in these kind of showcases brings out something else entirely in him, as everybody seems nervous about hitting their spots while he just seems like it isn't even a job to him, always smiling big and having a ball. Kamaitachi always misses stuff with gusto and I loved Casas grabbing ahold of him and dismantling his leg. Very fun, well worth the time.

2. Astral vs. Electrico (10/12/14)

Well hey these guys went out and had a nice little match! I can't recall the last minis singles match I really enjoyed but who cares because this was real good. Really I liked all of this, with the opening mat stuff being nice and snug, great headlock takeovers, nice Indian deathlock variations applied nice and quick, Electrico's caida-winning submission was a thing of beauty. The nutsy dives start in the second and we really get a couple of doozies, with an Astral bump around the ringpost leading to an Electrico dive out the corner, and later on we get a huge double springboard Astral tornillo. There was too much cool stuff in here to list it all, but these two really clicked something good.

3. Hechicero, Hombre Sin Nombre & Sagrado vs. Guerrero Maya Jr., Dragon Lee & The Panther (1/4/15) 

New year, and some new blood starts showing up on TV! Hombre sin Nombre is Hooligan this go 'round (not really sure the need to stop being Hooligan, but whatevs) and The Panther is the former Cachorro. Salgado works so much better as a rudo, it's not even funny. We've been putting up with this butthole's bad tecnico routine for a fucking decade now, watching him botch spots and have no clue where to be in the ring. Here he's a bully who makes it his match-long goal to target Lee and it's great. He doesn't even seem to care about winning, just wants to beat down Lee. Hechicero gets to run the joint in there and him matching up against Maya is a blast. Maya himself had a wonderful showing, culminating in him hitting an absolute bonkers flip dive through the ropes on Hechicero, hitting way high up on Hechicero's face/chest, bending him over the barrier and sending himself into the front row. Crowd really responds to Hechicero which is exciting. He has an effortless way about him, and always surprises me by doing things I don't expect out of sequences, like breaking out a springboard dropkick in the middle of a rope running spot. This whole match was tons of fun.

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