New Footage Friday: Brazos 25th Anniversary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXMKL-Iy2Yk&feature=youtu.be

Escorpion Dorado Jr./Corazon De Dragon vs. Super Halcon Jr./Bestial

MD: It's been a while since I've seen undercard lucha, especially undercard indy lucha from 2001. Not a ton to say here. One-fall opening match. They didn't do anything big and most of what registered was carried by Bestial and Halcon's rudo antics. The crowd was into it, but more into booing them than cheering the tecnicos. Some things looked good. Some things looked sluggish. The only build to the finish was Halcon launching a cheapshot after a handshake and as a match, it probably could have used a bit more of a beatdown after that.


Super Nono/Super Kepler vs. Enrique Vertiz/El Cazador

MD: Ñoño had a big kid gimmick. He was definitely young but maybe not as young as luchawiki would have us believe (though hey, maybe). I thought he had the act down pretty well and the kids were into it to the point where they were chanting for him and not against the rudos. Cazador was a bit more into the match than Vertiz who was mostly bemused by everything (completely no-selling an outside-the-ring wedgie for instance). Kepler did not look smooth including some of the weirder stilted armdrags you'll see. If you had gotten the rudos from the first match and let them work with Ñoño, you might have had something here.


Pirata Morgan Jr. vs. Dash

MD: This was the first of a bunch of Luchas 2000 vs XLAW matches. Anyway, the first two minutes were pretty good. Morgan hit a Dropkick followed by a tope right to start and then had a string of fairly nice looking offense (press up facebuster, somersault senton, etc.). It got rougher after that. Dash looked like he was wrestling underwater and just seemed to lack the strength to get Morgan up at times (which could have been on Morgan too, I guess, though he showed plenty of effort elsewhere, like his flip bump on a clothesline). They were definitely not on the same page with some of the spots and holds. The run-in at the end was at least high energy.


Brazo De Platino/Super Brazo vs. El Pietir/Dolar

MD: Pretty satisfying mauling at times. Brazos were full on rudo but beloved, to the point that when they try to take a powder up the stairs, the fans inspire them to come back. Some perfectly fine 405 Live stuff combined with handshake goofing. Platino's clap slaps/punches were fun but would probably get old quick. Dolar had a presence and really ran into the corner on one whip late in the match. Perfectly acceptable fat indy guy. Platino and Super Brazo could do this stuff in their sleep but it's still a good, charismatic act.

MD: There was a bit with Gringo Loco and some young luchador where they did a lot in a short period of time and Gringo got clowned which was effective but not really much to write about. It felt like if they'd done a big indy show in 1998 Calgary and gave Teddy Hart a showcase or something.


El Brazo Jr./Brazo De Oro Jr./Brazo De Plata Jr. vs. Crazy Boy/Mike Segura/Genesis

MD: Totally different vibe to the show once we hit this point. The entrances are more elaborate. There's more of a buzz. The Brazos are out with football gear and ski masks to start, with weapons to bear. The XLaw guys cut a promo and then the violence begins. Amusingly, they cut away from a lawn dart iconoclasm onto a chair in the middle of the ring to focus on some floor brawling. That set the tone pretty well. They kept things moving here with a lot of creative weapon usage that didn't have overly elaborate set ups (except for the chair assisted moonsault in the dive train but that you can forgive, and the final table spot but at least that had a soundtrack). As with a lot of this show so far, especially with the XLAW vs Luchas 2000 stuff, the rudo/tecnico dynamic was a bit off. The crowd was behind the Brazos but the XLAW guys got the big comeback/momentum shift off the Brazos going to the well once too often with a whip into a chair in the corner. The crowd got behind them during the mauling that followed though. Like with any of this stuff, the craziest bump isn't always the most spectacular looking one. Crazy Boy took a clothesline over the top and hit a chair on the apron on the way out which just felt nuts. The one-on-one exchanges towards the end maybe went on a little too long and broke the tone of what had come before but there was nothing innately wrong with them. The wrestling was all good. It just felt out of place. By that point the genie had been long out of the bottle and they couldn't just go back to order after all the chaos; maybe if they had fall breaks, I guess. It was all very 2001 post-ECW Emulation with unprotected chair shots and violence on women so inconsequential that the camera didn't even follow it and some worked shoot stuff post-match (I guess?), but that can be good for you in small doses now and again.

PAS: This was fun without actually being particularly good. They wandered around and smashed each other with things, and sometimes the finish ended up being worth the set up, and sometimes it wasn't. The stuff that resembled traditional lucha brawling was the best, I really liked the bleeding and the dive train, and the ECW prop stuff didn't work as well. Segura is the biggest pro on the XLAW team, and his lucha stuff looked the best, Jr. Brazo's were fun, although it probably made sense for their careers to ditch the Jr. gimmicks and go with what they did.

Brazo De Oro/Brazo De Plata/Brazo De Platino vs. Villano III/IV/V

PAS: I love the idea of Hatfield vs. McCoys wrestling family feuds, Armstrongs vs. Fullers is really the only other one I can really remember which spanned generations like the Villanos and the Brazos. Imagine my glee when my boy Rob lets me know about a previously unseen Villanos vs. Brazos match. This is exactly what you want, expect and love about a match between these two families. Lots of blood pooling in forehead scars, great looking wild brawling, a couple of Super Porky miscommunication spots and all six guys looking like the dazed survivors of a tour bus crash. Porky is just iconic, I loved how he worked in the splash-his-partners comedy spots into non-comedic violent spots in a brawl, and the highlights of the match where him just standing and trading hard shots with Villano 3. A worthy addition to this iconic rivalry.

MD: This was shaping up to be a great, hate-filled, bloody brawl, and certainly there's a big history of those between these families but I'm not sure that was the right move to follow the last match, especially after the ceremony. I think this would have worked better if they started with more shtick and then built to the violence. There was plenty of room to transition that way. That's the problem with watching these things in context sometimes. That said, it was a really good brawl until the finish when La Dinastia Alvarado came in to battle in full force. Porky's physical timing was amazing as always. At the end of the first fall, he was masterful at trying to portray an attempt at stopping himself from jumping off the second rope after the Villanos switched up who he was going to land on. Too often guys in that situation would just jump. I was really into where it was heading with Villano III directing traffic but then everyone rushed the ring and that was that.

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2019 Ongoing MOTY List: Alvarado Family Feud

24. Maximo vs. La Mascara AAA 2/1

ER: What a tremendous bit of family theater. This was a hair vs. hair match, except that Maximo was fighting for Super Porky's hair, and Mascara was fighting for Goya Kong's hair. It starts pretty simply, two very quick falls, but Maximo gets busted open in the segunda, serving as a sign of the drama that was coming in the tercera. Everybody played their role tremendously, and the fans were literally jumping out of their seats for nearfalls down the finishing stretch. Maximo turns in one of the great tecnico performances of the year, really eating some hard shots from Mascara before finally snapping. Maximo snaps off a couple nice headscissors, hits a plancha off the apron into his sister (with Mascara awesomely moving at the last minute so Goya takes the hit), and then goes nuts in the crowd throwing hard rows of sharp chairs at Mascara's head. Maximo was really throwing those things and suddenly this is an Alvarado take on a Park/Rush brawl. But Maximo manages to hit a better tope than any tope in a Park/Rush match. Maximo has an argument for best tope in lucha, and this is one of his finest ever, his chest and head battering Mascara hard into the barricade, like booby trapped tree knocking a storm trooper down a hill on Endor. I loved all the family interaction: You had Mascara slapping Porky, Porky hitting Mascara in the face with the handle of a ring squeegee, Porky hobbling after Goya - Porky was moving pretty poorly but has lost weight, looked like a lucha Sebastian Gorka - and smacking that handle against the ground with every step before hitting his daughter with it (!), and later an awesome nearfall when Goya runs in to interfere and splats Mascara with a great elbowdrop. The nearfalls down the stretch were fantastic, and the fans were dying with them. They wanted to see Goya without her great head of hair, and every single Maximo kiss into a schoolboy lead to the crowd going bonkers. Maximo even pulls out a triple dip kiss for a nearfall, the ref eats a kick to the back of the head, some other guy gets involved and kicked to the floor; that kind of overbooking can feel like a total mess but here I thought it all added to the chaos and the fact that a couple heads of hair were on the line! This tercera (which was basically the whole match) was too much fun. Maximo is a guy I've pretty much checked out on post-CMLL, but he does always seem to turn in one big early year performance. For all I know he's putting on shows like this all over town.

PAS: I feel like I need to get the backstory of this match with a brother fighting his cousin while wagering the hair of their invalid father and sister, respectively.  The weirdness of this match was really elevated by everyone being family. Porky can barely walk but he is still bleeding and hits a splash on an imposter who he thought was his nephew, and hits his daughter with a giant cane. Maximo ends up getting multiple near falls after he kisses his cousin on the mouth. Hell of Maximo performance, if this had been a bigger match the image of him hurling rows of chairs at his bloody brother would have been iconic, this was a small Arena Lopez Mateos match and only available via handheld, but it felt like a huge main event. Lots of goofiness and shortcuts, but I enjoyed the hell out of it.

2019 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2015 Ongoing Match of the Year List

32. Negro Casas v. Maximo CMLL 1/11

ER: This match is the day after Casas's 54th birthday, and he celebrates in gleeful dickhead fashion by just continuing to be arguably the best wrestler of the last decade. That guy. Right out of the gate he jumps Maximo, going right after his knee over and over with low kicks, dropkicks, leg whips, you name it. He goes after Maximo with a viciousness normally reserved for stip matches or actual feuds. It is possible that on his birthday he got some novelty old age gag gifts from Spencer's Gifts and they were not sitting well with him, so for every novelty bottle of jelly beans labeled "Old Man Stay Hard Pills" he received, he was going to take it out tenfold on Maximo. And he must have received an insane amount of novelty dick pills. Maximo takes his beating well, not like a man, because there are many moments where Casas makes Maximo literally squeal. Like, he's wrenching at Maximo's jaw and nose and Maximo is squealing. At one point Casas mule kicks him right under the jaw and the way Maximo's leg buckled as he crumbled was a thing of beauty. Maximo's comebacks are all wonderful, with the crowd being way into them, and then blowing the doors off everything with an all time great, rewindable, comment worthy tope which plays like a gigantic missile that's all shoulders, head and chest. Just massively crashes into Casas. Great match, Casas is just on a whole different level when he gets the bug. Great match.

PAS: Casas is an all time great rudo, but for the most part he has worked defacto technico for years. I love that he celebrated his birthday by turning up the rudissimo to 11. He goes after Maximo's leg with unbridled aggression and it looks great. Not only does he try to rip off Maximo's patella, but he does a dickish little limping dance to make fun of him. He not only slaps Maximo in the face, he tries to rip his nose off. "You thought I was a good guy? I am the baddest fucking guy you have ever seen" Maximo is really great at limping, he limps around but still hits this amazing limping tope where he just obliterates Casas, top of the head right into the jaw. We get some great near falls, with Casas having tons of cool ways to almost put on the Casita but get foiled, and Maximo finally finishing him off with a giant top rope armdrag. Total blast and so much fun to watch Casas do what he does best.


2015 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Lucha Worth Watching: Hair vs. Hair!! Besos! Bumps!

Rush vs. Maximo (CMLL 3/18/16)

I love big time stip matches in lucha (even if it seems like CMLL has been doing a LOT of them in the past year+), and Rush knows how to bring big drama better than maybe anybody in lucha these days. Rush's hair has to be seen as the biggest trophy in all of lucha at this point, and he knows it. This match is worth watching just for the ways Rush flips his hair and puts it back in a bun. There are few appropriate situations to break out a hair taunt, and Rush seems to cover all of them. A couple things hold this back from being really really good: Maximo got a little steamrolled. He only won the first fall because Rush threw the referee while he was beating down Maximo, and while he got plenty of offense in the tercera Rush still dispatched him rather easily and never looked in serious danger. Also, Super Porky was flat out embarrassing as Maximo's second. During a big moment where Comandante and Porky fight at ringside over their sons' fallen bodies, Porky comes off looking like a drunk who's seeing two of Comandante, and he's fighting with the one that doesn't exist. During their strike exchange Porky whiffs on everything, and when the ref breaks it up it seems more like a mercy killing. Porky still probably gets more love on this blog than anywhere else. Usually a Porky performance ends up landing on our MOTY list every year. But damn did he look bad here. The rest of the match was really good though. Rush is awesome in these kind of matches, not only the presence he brings, but the ramped up stiffness he brings. Here he plasters Maximo with awesome dropkicks, stomps all over him, tosses him with suplexes, and then occasionally soaks up the cheers of his fans, slaps fives, lets people touch his hair, steals a swig of their soda (or other?), and then goes back to beating Maximo's ass. Maximo gets his great comeback and starts hitting topes. Rush wisely pulls the Comandante in front of one of them, and Pierroth was an awesome second in this. Rush also manages to somehow survive three consecutive kisses FROM A MAN! and both men were amusing setting them up. I especially loved Maximo tugging Rush's hair to bend him backwards before planting an upside down kiss on him. But Rush keeps his glorious flowing locks. I personally hope he never loses them, or they at least wait until someone super deserving comes along, and then they realllllllly build it up properly. I know that's asking a lot from CMLL, but Rush's locks are practically Santito's mask at this point.

Negro Casas vs. Volador Jr. (CMLL 3/18/16)

Two big hair matches on the same show feels a bit much, but the loud and full crowd tells me that I am incorrect. And while I strongly detest the move trading atmosphere and CMLL big match structure, there is extra drama when a full head of hair is on the line that I cannot deny. Casas is on fire and you can see that from the first move of the match when he cuts low with a brutal left arm lariat. That follow through looked like it took Volador's head off. Both guys have some big moments and clearly tried to have the biggest match possible within CMLL's maligned structure. Casas tried playing catch up to the younger man, breaking out a couple of Volador style ranas (though one doesn't go well and has to get awkwardly redone), and both guys bump big for the other. Casas taking that sunset flip powerbomb to the floor was disgusting and only made his eventual head shaving even more heartbreaking. I also really loved Mephisto as Casas' second. He was awesome at firing up the crowd and currying favor, really doing all the great mannerisms you'd want from a second in a large match. I loved when the camera would do large cutaways to show the impressive crowd, as you could always see Mephisto off by the ring barrier trying to fire up fans. CMLL and lucha in general is always a cut above when the crowd is hot, and this show was no different.

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2016 Ongoing MOTY List: Maximo v. Kamaitachi

1. Maximo v. Kamaitachi CMLL 1/1

PAS: This was the co-main event hair match of the Sin Piedad New Year's Day show and was a great start to 2016. First fall had Kamaitachi work over Maximo's knee with some nasty stuff, I loved his diving knees onto Maximo's knee. He eventually gets the submission with a kind of modified figure four, liked the second fall with Maximo still getting brutalized and pulling off a twisty armdrag and then really cranking a single crab to even it out. Third fall was more back and forth, with some really cool stuff. It also felt more like a story with Maximo gritting out the bad leg, this wasn't just a series of crazy spots. Maximo is a great bad leg diver, his topes are awesome looking but he also throws in a subtle but noticeable limp. Finish had a little goofiness with fake fouls that was uneccesary, but otherwise this was awesome stuff.

ER: What a fun match. I like Kamaitachi a lot in CMLL, and he has a wonderful head of hair to put up in a hair match. And it seems like Maximo has to pop up at least once a year on our MOTY list, so he fills his quota pretty quickly here. Kamaitachi is crazy and fully throws himself into everything he does. He's an easy guy to watch, but an easy guy to boo here. We're all used to him in the Dragon Lee feud at this point, and all their match-ups (both in singles and trios) have been go go go. Here we get to see Kamaitachi slow things down and be more sinister. He still gets to be a showy bump machine, but this is much more classic rudo bully picking apart a sympathetic tecnico's knee. And boy does he pick apart Maximo's knee! We start with a low dropkick and it's curtains for Maximo's knee from there. Kamaitachi does a great job of adjusting his signature offense to specifically attack the knee, especially his double knee drop. Maximo's selling is great throughout, and he's already one of the more over tecnicos in CMLL, so the selling bumped him up to an even greater level of sympathy. Crowd is going nuts the whole time, but CMLL also makes sure we see (a lot of) Kamaitachi's big fan as she holds her Kamaitachi mask, gleefully laughs when he's doing well, and sits in shock whenever Maximo turns the table. Of course, they end up showing her so much that it practically feels like she's the one who put her hair on the line. But Maximo is really great at putting over the knee injury, and the topes that it built to were glorious. Now, Kamaitachi still does his lunatic senton off the top to a standing opponent, and it's just crazy. I think I may use the word lunatic a lot, but I'm not sure any move deserves it as much as this senton. Kamaitachi just seems to have minimal regard for his body when doing this move, not caring if the back of his head smashes into the ground, caring most about just wrecking ball leveling his opponent. It's insane. It's awesome. And I liked the end run fake fouls. I thought it actually led to a nice false finish where I bought into Kamaitachi's nearfall (and considering I don't think I've ever seen a Japanese guy win a mask or hair match in CMLL, that should tell you how effective they were at creating this nearfall within the context). I loved the build throughout this match, felt it was one of the best uses of the modern CMLL caida format, with the two quicker first falls and then a longer tercera. A lot of times singles matches feel like they go that way because that's how the fed structures singles matches. This felt like it fit logically into that format, with Kamaitachi working over the knee and getting a quick win in the primera, Maximo getting a flash submission that worked great in the segunda, and then they worked a long tercera without ever making it feel like a 50/50 move exchange, as a lot of CMLL's long singles terceras devolve into. Everything about this was satisfying.


2016 MOTY MASTER LIST

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MLJ: Máximo vs Kamaitachi [Hair vs Hair]

2016-01-01 @ Arena México
Máximo vs Kamaitachi [Hair vs Hair]

Well, this is out there now, or at least it was a few days ago and it was really good. If you search for it, you might find it. Maximo's had a hell of a year starting all the way back in January of 2015 with the Negro Casas singles match. That's something that if people haven't seen, they should. It informs this match as well as both involved quite a bit of leg selling by Maximo. The difference was in the level of commitment. Maximo gave one of those performances here that are somewhat rare in lucha. In general, he didn't drop the selling. There was the ebb and flow of heat and comeback, but he portrayed a sense of vulnerability throughout and it made everything resonate all the more. Also, yes, Kamaitachi is developing a wild charisma and jumped from high places in dangerous ways. But, this was all about Maximo and his leg.

This feud came about very suddenly after the last Dragon Lee/Kamaitachi title match and seemed like it was going to be the Japanese guy losing his hair on the way out. I'm not entirely sure if or when Kamaitachi is finishing up though as he's not on the FantasticaMania cards. It wasn't the main event of the 1/1 PPV. It should have been. I haven't had the heart to watch Casas vs Parka yet. One thing I do appreciate out of CMLL in 2015 (and we're counting this in that) is that they had a number of apuestas matches and all of them felt different.

Kamaitachi has really come into his own in his crowd interaction. He was doing the Taichi hair flipping through a lot of this, really letting things breathe and settle in ways that he's just not been allowed to in the more frenetic Dragon Lee matches. This was about gloating and punishment and a weightiness that you just don't find in those, even if they are, of course, very good and cleverly put together with big spots and building callbacks from match to match.

They went right to it here, with Kamaitachi targetting the knee with a low dropkick almost immediately. He didn't let up, with Maximo selling it big right from the beginning. The primera was quick but spaced out by Kamaitachi's crowd interaction, ending with the double knee from the top onto the leg, and Maximo trying to chop back valiantly only to eat a Dragon Screw and a leglock. Between falls, Kamaitachi posted the leg and attacked it over the guardrail on the outside. Maximo had a comeback in the segunda, one that he really had to work for, and one that was only temporary as Kamaitachi went back to the leg in the tercera, keeping the heat on. They didn't reset into a your move/my move template but instead had Maximo fighting to buy himself distance so that he could hit moves.

In the Casas match, the doctor utilized the magical medical spray and Maximo pretty much dropped the selling. It was vaguely believable within the confines of CMLL, if not the greater whole of wrestling, and it didn't bother me too much. Here, past one or two bursts of adrenaline, he didn't drop the selling at all. It informed everything he did, either leaving him open to a cutoff, making him take too long to mount the ropes, or just adding a layer of struggle on top of whatever move he was successfully hitting (true even as he was locking in the half crab to win the segunda or RIGHT before his pop up power bomb to win the final fall). Everyone knew coming in he was going to win, but thanks to the level of detail he put into his performance, there was a real question of just how he was going to win.

The finish had some BS, sure, but I'm more okay with that than a lot of people, so long as it's well done bs. CMLL is pretty good at being self-aware of it, adding an extra layer. This was absolutely the right sort of match to work in this moment, on this card. Maximo is one of the few tecnicos that is actually over as a tecnico. He garnered a ton of sympathy here in front of a crowd that desperately wanted to get behind him. While he's good and hits his stuff smoothly, there was no way he could match the spot-heavy Dragon Lee matches, so they had to go a different route, one that also wouldn't be utilized by Casas vs Parka later on. This was really the way to go and, to me, it showed the power of full commitment. Maximo was careful to only drop the selling once or twice and when he did, he made sure to sell immediately after hitting his move. It led to a level of immersion that you rarely get in this specific way in these matches and that helped to create a different, but maybe equally compelling, sort of match than the Dragon Lee vs Kamaitachi series or the Atlantis vs Sombra match.

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CMLL Worth Watching 8/23/15 & 9/11/15

Blue Panther, Dragon Lee & Stuka Jr. vs. Kamaitachi, Ripper & Rey Bucanero (8/23/15)

Oh man this was fun. Nothing at stake, just all these guys you like doing things you want to see. Bucanero and Panther get a long roll on the mat, and it never fails to impress me how smooth a fluid Panther still does things, rolling through a leg lock or doing a side roll to advance a transition just isn't done better by anybody else in lucha, let alone guys half his age. In the segunda he locks Bucanero into an ankle lock that actually looks like it hurts, a rarity! I live for these little 2 minute mat segments of Panther. Even doing things like quickly bumping through the ropes to the floor are done like he's not even in control of his body, his muscle memory just allows it to happen. Like he bumps backwards off a shoulder block, out through the bottom and middle rope, lands on his feet and has no idea how he got there. His body just knows what to do. Ripper brings back his gorgeous flipping Cassandro bump, kind of fusing a somersault Hamrick bump to the floor with a Cassandro wrap-around the post bump, and Stuka's signature stuff always impresses me. Lee/Kamaitachi has been one of the more fun match-ups of the last year as they always go hard at each other, with each taking stupid bumps at awkward angles, both working blindingly fast and really know each other like the back of their respective hands. Lee always flies stupidly into Kamaitachi's rampway sprint dropkick, always dumping himself ass over elbow, Kamaitachi also dumps him with a couple of rolling Germans, and later Lee hits the craziest high speed flip dive to the floor, just leveling Lee. Every time these two are in against each other it's total must see. Wrestlers you like, doing wrestling you like. Easy recommendation.

Marco Corleone, Rush & Maximo vs. Super Parka, Volador Jr. & Valiente (9/11/15)

Hey I didn't realize Super Parka was also coming in! He is truly old (just about 60) so I'm an instant sucker for this. Rush and Marco don't let up on him, and after a little bit of early awkwardness Parka settles in fine. Marco looked really great here, more inspired and nasty than I've seen him a...sheesh all year. His left hands were awesome, blasting Valiente several times, leveling everybody with shots. This was technically two tecnico teams but Rush's team was obviously default rudos, and they all thrived in the role. The three of them at one point set up Rush's "punt" feint, with Maximo holding the invisible ball (laces out, hopefully). Parka and Volador work nice together and I always love father/son dynamics. Volador works like an actual brawling badass here, his pops already being a good influence. Volador also bumps like a loon, peaking with a flip bump on the apron off a Marco punch....and then getting up and doing the same damn thing right after! Parka hit a nice 60 yr old man tope, Marco hit 3 variations of his big no hands crossbody (seriously Marco looked really great throughout this), both teams had well set up moments where a big dive hit their own teammate, with Marco doing a crossbody to Maximo, and Valiente diving into Volador. Parka was really fun here, wandering around punching guys (especially cracking Maximo a few times), kind of like a late career  Pierroth. Super fun match. I want a Park/Parka/Volador team to take on Rush/Comandante Pierroth/Dragon Lee team. Make this happen!!

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MLJ: Puebla Hotshot: Negro Casas, Barbaro Cavernario, Kamaitachi vs Dragon Lee, Maximo, Blue Panther

2015-9-28 @ Arena Puebla
Negro Casas, Barbaro Cavernario, Kamaitachi vs Dragon Lee, Maximo, Blue Panther

1:15:00 in

I'm messing up my schedule for the next couple of weeks (again) in order to hotshot this. It was from the Monday Puebla show this week and I was higher on it than most of the comments I saw live, comments that I'll get to and that I think were fair and don't even disagree with. Two hundred-plus matches into this project, I've learned some things about myself and my own proclivities, however, and this is a good match to look at for the sake of generalities.

First and foremost, the match was a disappointment. Of course it was. On paper, this is one of the best trios matches that CMLL can put on right now. Unfortunately, it was put on with no real stakes, no major program to build to (though maybe they'll run Casas vs Maximo again?), in front of a really sparse crowd, and on a stilted 2 hour show. They played around with the pairings so that other than a far too brief opening exchange (more on that in a moment) we didn't really get Blue Panther vs Negro Casas, and there wasn't the sort of spotfest destruction we've come to expect from Kamaitachi vs Dragon Lee. There wasn't even a lot of standout character moments between Cavernario and Maximo (though there was a promising moment between Cavernario and Kamaitachi). It was a match that, in another setting, should have been spectacular. That said, for a match without much of a primera and with a rushed I do think it was very solid and I want to talk about why I feel that way.

I'm very forgiving on CMLL trios matches in general. I think that has to do with what I look for in wrestling. A lot of people want brilliant matwork or lightning fast sequence in a primera or spectacular dives and spots in a tercera, and I like that stuff too, but it's a means to an end for me, not the end in and of itself. I'm into this for the build up and the pay off. That can come in a number of forms in these trios matches. It can be in the primera as an escalating series of mat exchanges or rope-running sequences leading to the tecnicos gaining advantage and picking up the fall. Alternative, the pressure could start building that way leading to an underhanded rudo swarm. It can be in the segunda, with a beatdown stemming from either the start of the match or the end of the primera and culminating with a big tecnico comeback. Or, it can be in the tercera, with the whole match building to a specific pairing, the dives clearing the ring of the tertiary luchadores so that the match can end on its real focus.

That's the part of the journey I love, and the best matches give us multiple iterations. That's something I've noticed watching 90s footage relative to now. They'd often give us a really complete primera (for isntance one with escalating tecnico shine), a really complete segunda (with a long beatdown), and then a comeback into a really complete tercera, with a lot of action, a lot of cuts off, and a finishing stretch which highlighted an ongoing feud and paid off the emotion of the entire match.

Rarely now do matches get room to breathe in all of those ways. Personally, if a match is only going to breathe in one, however, I want it to be the beatdown. I think this speaks to my background in wrestling. I love southern tag matches. I love that heat building and building, with hope spots and cut offs, with false tags and ref distraction and cheating heels and overzealous babyfaces. Lucha is generally broader than that, with its own tropes more focused on widescale momentum shifts, but wrestling is wrestling and there are more commonalities than differences.

I thought this match had a good beatdown, one that got enough time and led to a solid comeback (though not an ideal one). I don't love how they went into it. Casas and Panther had really just started to show their maestro wares when the rudos swarmed. That can work, even so early in a match, but it has to be the right situation. I think Ingobernables' title matches are a good situation, for instance, because they're spitting in the face of title match tradition when they do it. Here, it felt more due to time constraints, or because in 2015, for most trios matches, something has to give. You just can't have a complete primera, complete segunda, and complete tercera. I suppose the card has to have variety and this was only second from the top.

No matter how they got into it, it was a good beatdown. Casas, Cavernario, and Kamaitachi are great at keeping things moving and engaging. There was even a little cut-off-the-ring face in peril section on Panther, who's someone skilled enough to pull that off. It took me a long time to really figure out the tendency for these, but so long as there's just one rudo in the ring, they can play to a hot tag instead of just cycling tecnicos in and out. It's a subtle difference but it works. Usually it lasts for a few minutes focusing on one tecnico and sort of provides the best of both worlds. Once he's sufficiently beaten down without having made the tag, they cycle him out and start the double teaming in more force since they have the numbers game. That's exactly what they did here and I think it was effective and compelling, even if there weren't a lot of big spots or moments.

I can't say I liked the comeback quite as much, but some of that was down to familiarity. I made two real comments while watching this (and it's nice that CMLL on Youtube or Claro lets a number of us watch this at once. It adds to the sense of community), the first being that they really needed to let the beatdown go for a while (and they did) and the second being that I really didn't want the comeback to be centered around Maximo's butt stop spot (where a rudo runs into his ass as he runs up to the second rope). It's fine once and a while but Maximo goes to that well far too often. Well, that's what they did. I think it made the crowd happy, that, the Dragon Lee dive that followed, and the tercera which was heavily focused on Maximo's spots, but there were a number of more interesting ways they could have gone with it.

And that's the most damning thing about the match. It could have been more interesting. It should have been more interesting. Still, I'm glad I watched it and I'm glad I watched it live. There's something primal about the ebb and flow, the build up and the payoff, the beatdown and the comeback that really draws me to trios matches, even the disposable ones. There's something broad and mythic about it, and even a match that doesn't live up to its promise can tap into that just by the nature of its structure. Plus, while this was paint-by-numbers, it was some of the best paint CMLL has to offer and numbers that almost always come through.

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MLJ: The Volador Train Keeps on Rolling through 2015 7: Máximo & Volador Jr. vs Rey Bucanero & Terrible, hair vs hair

Aired: 2015-03-28
taped: 2015-03-20 @ Arena México
Máximo & Volador Jr. vs Rey Bucanero & Terrible, hair vs hair

Back to our good friend Volador. I'm feeling an itch for slightly older lucha so I'll either dust off my GdI comp, hope dataintcash posts something else soon, or check out some Texano/Silver King tags since I've seen next to none of those, for next week. Right now, I need to make it through some more 2015 Volador. I'd like to at least make it to some of the more hyped matches for the sake of fairness, even though you learn plenty from any match. Let's get through this one first, though, as it's on a relatively big stage.

This was a comedown after seeing Ultimo Guerrero vs Rey Escorpion, but I wouldn't necessarily call it bad. It was just sort of there. Some of that is just the fault of CMLL's booking. Terrible and Maximo have history. Rey Bucanero was riding whatever tiny, tiny wave he had gotten from taking Felino's hair a few months before. Terrible and Bucanero are certainly competent at being bad guys. Maximo is one of the only over tecnicos on the roster. They had a slight story coming in that Bucanero and Terrible were just the better team. It just never reached a point where it felt like it mattered or was a big deal or was all that serious. Popcorn matches are fine and good. Popcorn apuesta matches are a problem.

I do want to talk a little about tag team apuestas matches though, mainly about the long terceras common in this type of match. I think they are sort of unique in and of themselves, just in the pacing. With a trios match (and you don't get too many trios apuestas matches from what I've seen, but you do get title matches and ones with high stakes), they can move wrestlers in and out once things break down torwards a finishing stretch. You don't get a lot of that laying around, but at the same time, exactly because of that, there's not often a big feel of selling. It's on to the next near-fall and there's a real threat everything becomes noise. On the other hand, in a singles match, any near fall has to be a kick out and the selling can be overdone, not earned by the first two, often quite short, caidas. You can sort of get the best of both worlds in a straight tag team match though, where you can use saves instead of kick outs in order to control the escalation and make it more believable but also have more extended selling to make things matter.

I think that was the case here. On a structural level, I liked the tercera. I wish there was more heat though, a little more visceral intensity. That's not what this was. It was a "fun" apuestas, one that matched the build, with some cute spots and miscommunication and Maximo wiping off Volador's sweat and a bunch of dives and roll ups out of nowhere. I get what they were going for, but I'm not sure I've seen too many hair matches that were played up like this and that made it all a little jarring. Even the Maximo ones I've seen in the past have come off a little more serious.

There were a lot of independent things to like. The tecnicos tried to rush the rudos up the ramp to start but were overwhelmed and within seconds destroyed with a couple of tandem moves. Then the comeback was fluff (and had a painfully flubbed vault to the top by Volador to hit a Spanish Fly), but followed by Terrible taking an amusing bump off of a dive that sent him into the crowd. The dives were all pretty good, Maximo having two rope walk ones, Bucanero careening off of the ramp, Volador leaping into the crowd from the top. The flash roll up exchange was good in a vacuum, some of the near falls came off well down the stretch and I liked, in part, Terrible's attempt at interference in the finish. I do sort of wish Volador had neutralized him on the second roll up, though, since that would have punctuated things better.

It just had so very little of what I look for an an apuestas match. It had none of the mood, none of the violence, none of the stakes. For the most part, it was compete wrestling, and it was fun wrestling, but it was empty where it counted. Maybe if they had drawn out the heat at the beginning, it'd have been better. If there was more of a sense of peril some of the more fun stuff might have felt more like pay off, or even a narrative of triumphant tecnicos being true to themselves to overcome adversity in the face of nefarious rudos dwelling in an Ingobernable world, something like that. What we got instead didn't quite cut it.

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MLJ: 2015 Volador, Jr! Wrestler of the Year? Still Sort of Crummy? 5: Rey Bucanero & Volador Jr. vs Máximo & Terrible in a National Parejas Increible Tournament match

Aired: 2015-03-21
Taped: 2015-03-06 @ Arena México
Rey Bucanero & Volador Jr. vs Máximo & Terrible in a National Parejas Increible Tournament match

I thought about skipping this, and really skipping everything up to the hair match. I had for the title trios after all, but A) the hair match was a bigger main event so I should try to catch some of the build and B) I'm a sucker for the parejas increibles stuff, especially with this line up. The matches aren't conventionally good and if you're watching them in sequence, a whole bunch at once, they're a lot of the same. Thankfully, I'm not, and because of that, I can catch some fun character stuff and not be overwhelmed by crummy tournament lucha.

I mention this pairing because three out of the four guys, being Maximo, Terrible, and yeah, Bucanero, are really solid with their shtick. I like Rey best when he's being a dickish, chickenshit heel. Terrible's sort of a gruff straight man but he's had a thousand matches with Maximo and they do their stuff well together. Maximo is talked about so little, but he does what he does so well. I think part of the problem is that exoticos in the past probably do tower above him, but likewise, he towers above a lot of the tecnico roster. He hits his stuff cleanly, makes things matter within the context of the match, but most of all, is actually over with any crowd he gets in front of for being a good guy (albeit an exotico one) when most of the tecnicos aren't over at all.

So the Leyenda match was already set, putting an odd spin on this. Were it not for that, you'd expect the rudos to care more about who won. As it was, what mattered was getting one over on their upcoming opponents. It was hair match upcoming after all and that's serious business. This started with Volador vs Maximo, with some quick-paced matwork and I actually liked it a lot. It felt more organic and natural than usual for Volador. Some of that was the bits of routine Maximo was tossing in and Volador having to respond to them in a way that he doesn't usually have to. I liked it though. It's always a bit of a novelty, whether in a match like this or in a cibernetico to see tecnico vs tecnico and both this, and when they did it again later in the match, was fun.

Of course, when Terrible and Bucanero faced off, they refused to wrestle and immediately attacked the tecnicos, and in this, both here, and later in the match when they teased it again but instead hugged, I thought that the match very much served its purpose in building to the apuestas main event at the bigger show. Almost every other match I've seen like this eventually has the rudos break down and dissent. This didn't and their solidarity was very welcome. I'm not going to say it put into question the result of the Leyenda match, because that was never in question, but if CMLL's booking was better (or existent) in general, it might well have, just through the ringwork alone. In fact, the back half of the match had Terrible and Bucanero trying to give each other the win with the partners breaking it up, like so:

including a very funny moment of Rey hitting a foul and then dropping down himself so that he could let Terrible pin him.

Shortly thereafter, after a Commandante leg pull, Rey interfered again, distracting Volador and letting Terrible pick up the win. I thought this was a bit of a mess, but really quite fun given expectations, and it set up the rudos as being absolutely on the same page for their upcoming match, which was a worthwhile idea on paper at least.

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MLJ: 2015 Volador, Jr! Wrestler of the Year? Still Sort of Crummy? 2: Máximo, Mistico, Volador Jr. vs Rey Bucanero, Terrible, Último Guerrero

Aired: 2015-01-31
Taped 2015-01-23 @ Arena México
Máximo, Mistico, Volador Jr. vs Rey Bucanero, Terrible, Último Guerrero

I realize I'm taking some heat for Monday's match, but I'm going to keep going. There is a method to this. I'm moving chronologically and I thought the first singles match of the year we have posted online with a luchador isn't a bad way to start an examination of his work. I plan on hitting a number of matches, more than ten. The idea that you would just look at the most heavily regarded matches of a wrestler in order to understand how good he was in a certain year is completely and utterly against the way I look at wrestling. You look at a broad spectrum and try to get a total picture. I'll watch as many singles matches as I can. On the docket through his March work is this trios, the tag title trios, a singles match with Ultimo Guerrero, the Parejas Increibles finals, another trios vs Casas and Cavernario, and then the hair match. Then I'll see what we have online after that.

In general, I'm going to make sure to find things that interest me as I move chronologically. A 2015 GdI reunion interests me. It happens, not often, but it happens. Really, more often than not they're on opposite sides but sometimes Bucanero and Guerrero do team together. This is one of those times.

I have another theory about Volador, and it's that he's a lot more functional in trios than he is in singles matches. That's true with almost anyone though (Valiente is a great example of that). Guys who are good at hitting their stuff, getting beat upon, and having spectacular (if emotionally wooden) comebacks, are better off in trios than in singles matches. Other people can carry the other things. The only problem is if they're the focus.

Anyway, this delivered what I wanted it to, a GdI nostalgia fest. UG ambushed Mistico on the way out, and that I didn't mind in the least because after seeing that start to a match a thousand times in 2013-2014, I just haven't seen it that often lately. When you only see it once in a while, it's fine. From there Guerrero whipped Mistico with his jacket, Maximo got beat on in the corner, and Volador got thrashed on the ramp. This led to the GdI special body splash and while they didn't do the huddle, at least Rey got to do his repeated arm thing. This led to a triple corner attack ending with the Senton de la Muerte and a pretty hilarious triple submission (watch Volador just give his limbs up like usual) and as three minute beatdown opening falls go this was about as enjoyable as it gets and really brought back what made GdI so effective in that scenario.

The segunda wasn't quite as much beatdown as I would have liked but the comeback had zip to it, and it had some solid moments. My absolute favorite was Rey Bucanero holding Maximo down and taunting his partners so Maximo couldn't tag. You rarely get little face-in-peril moments like that in Mexico but it's the sort of attitude that Bucanero brings to the table when he's at his very best. Terrible kissed his hand, touched Maximo's face, and punched him which is a sign that they've worked together a thousand times, but it was also welcome. UG even went after Mistico's mask a bit. Eventually though he missed a corner charge, basically due to his own hubris, and then ate a superkick and a rana and the tecnicos just unloaded, culmanating with a flying top rope Maximo rana, doubel topes, and the Mistica on UG. Good stuff, and even better, Kemonito got to terrorize UG between caidas (with Maximo almost kissing him too).

They reset for the tercera, and we got a lot of rope running and cutoffs. I like how Terrible portrays a bully when he has the advantage and a coward when he does. It's solid stuff. There was a lot of tecnico showcase here but it was perfectly fine and really quite enjoyable given the setting. The rudos were all great bases for it including eating double flip dives towards the end. The biggest problem I had with the finish was that the tecnicos got a pinfall on a non-captain but it wasn't evened up, so it meant that the last exchange, Maximo vs Terrible was really obvious. It all would have been better if Terrible was the captain since then there'd be some question on the finish. Regardless, he ate MAximo's top rope armdrag for the pin.

When I say "I could watch fun, throwaway trios like this all day," I mean a match like this. It was no match of the year contender but everyone did what they were supposed to and it was good, fun candy, with high flying tecnicos and underhanded, cruel rudos. This is the sort of match that Volador looks his best in.

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CMLL Worth Watching 5/10/15 & 6/19/15

Comandante Pierroth, Tiger & Sagrado vs. Fuego, The Panther & Blue Panther Jr. (5/10/15)

Man I dug this. Pierroth has been one of my favorite CMLL guys this year, real high energy ass kicker who always wings nasty clubbing shots, stomps guys into oblivion, jumps all over them while stomping them, breaks out some nice slams, etc. He's like a throwback Dinamita. As in, if you've been missing Mascara Ano 2000, Cien Caras or Universo 2000 on your TV (and I have been), Pierroth has been an oddly, unexpectedly great fill-in this year. Sagrado as a rudo is the only worthwhile stuff he has done in his entire career. This guy was just a clueless tecnico, always tripping over himself, and now suddenly he looks capable, has nice presence, takes a tope like a man (god did Panther just snap Sagrado's back over the barrier on a tope) and hits a mean piledriver to end the primera (say aren't those things sorta illegal down there?). BP Jr. is pretty green and can't really work long sequences, but he hits a nice dive in the tercera, and the greenness of BP's kids works to the match's advantage, as the segunda has a satisfying finish with the rudos getting cocky, chasing BP Jr. and Fuego up the ramp, allowing Panther to get a surprise roll up on Pierroth as he roots on his goons. Tiger sold the loss great, like he could not believe they lost even one fall to these wimps. Real satisfying story here, and the work fit the match nicely.

Blue Panther, Maximo & Marco Corleone vs. Euforia, Niebla Roja & Gran Guerrero (5/10/15)

You've probably seen some combination of this trios a dozen times, but sometimes guys show up a bit more spirited than other times, and this was one of those times. I always love Panther but spirited Panther is just the best. Here he works a nice long opening mat sequence with GG, which was arguably the most interesting thing GG has ever been involved in. Panther has a million reversals and the way he rolls through into various grapevines and leverage moves always leaves me slack-jawed. We don't get any dives in this, and the falls go quick, but the tecnicos amusingly must have decided before the match to see who could throw the nicest/neatest arm drag. Panther throws more in this match than I've seen him in years, including one where he gets tilt-a-whirled by Roja into performing an upside down arm drag on Euforia; Maximo throws some nice rolling ones too, one springing high off the top rope and another rolling over Roja's back. Even Marco throws a shockingly good one while rolling over Euforia's back. Marco's punches have been looking kinda lackluster this year, and here he breaks out some nice ones as he pinballs his fists back and forth between Roja and Euforia. Kind of a one sided affair for the tecnicos, but everybody busted ass and it's stunning to see Panther so spry at 54.

Stuka Jr., Angel de Oro & Super Porky vs. Barbaro Cavernario, Felino & Okumura (6/19/15)

So I'm not sure this is very good, but "worth watching" and "very good" are two different things, and I thought this was worth watching, more for its parts than its sum. Firstly, Porky takes FOUR bumps in the primera. This feels noteworthy to me. Porky is a guy who goes to great lengths to avoid bumping. Yet here he's splatting all over the mat for shoulderblocks and lariats. Think of the effort it takes him to stand up from a back bump!!! And here he does it 4 times in about 40 seconds. I admittedly starting writing this up right after witnessing that. I had made up my mind to immediately include it in a "worth watching" list. Beyond that we got one of the better Oro performances, as he hits a couple very impressive flying spots, and then spikes himself on an Okumura apron DDT. We get a Kemonito apron splash, Porky doing a seated senton to the rudos on the rampway, Felino not acting like current Felino (including getting heat from starting the match wearing his mask and jawing with the Arena Mexico old people) and Stuka Jr. doing his awesome bullet splash. It's like 8 minutes of your life, and it will bring you joy.

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CMLL Worth Watching 2/8/15 & 3/27/15

Virus, Kamaitachi & Puma vs. Dragon Lee, Guerrero Maya Jr. & Delta (2/8/15)

This was from that All Elite show with Dr. Wagner and LA Park, so everybody involved I suppose had more incentive to bust all sorts of ass on a Sunday afternoon. Everybody was firing on all cylinders here like they each had something to prove. Virus hits everything here with a real vengeance but also has no problem taking all sorts of giant Delta dives. Delta hits a couple wild ones with him vaulting off the ring post for one and moonsaulting off the ring support. Maya is crazy and totally outdoes him by hitting a flip dive that sees him wind up in the 4th row. Kamaitachi dished and took here, impaling Lee with a high jump dropkick that had so much force you really bought that Lee got naturally dumped HARD on his head. Kamaitachi pays it forward by letting Lee stomp him neck first off the top through the mat. Kamaitachi takes all sorts of stuff great, whipping himself into the barrier off a Delta rana, making all the tecnicos look dangerous. Kamaitachi ends the match with the most violent unmasking I've seen, kicking Lee in the balls then punching him in the ear a bunch while brutally ripping the mask off from the bottom without even attempting to loosen the laces. Looked like he was trying to scalp poor Lee. You never know when you're going to strike trios magic in lucha, but 6 guys all working with a certain ferocity while trying to upstage the main is one way to do it. Awesome stuff. 

Valiente, Maximo & Marco Corleone vs. Barbaro Cavernario, Ephesto & Mephisto (2/8/15)

Fun little short and sweet match from that same show, that isn't given time to build anywhere, so all the guys just work harder. Everybody gets cool little spots, with Maximo getting big reactions for his awesome dive (with Barbaro hurling himself into the barrier, which he also did taking an even more brutal Valiente tope earlier) and a big rope walk splash onto everybody. Valiente hits the craziest and fastest Valiente Special that he's hit in some time, Marco throws a bunch of nice lefts, Ephesto bumps big, Mephisto brings charisma and a rad new mask for a big show, and suddenly it's all over. This probably barely goes 8 minutes but everything is hot.

Kamaitachi, Negro Casas & Barbaro Cavernario vs. Dragon Lee, Delta & Guerrero Maya Jr. (3/27/15)

A rematch of sorts from the above match, with Casas and Cavernario replacing Puma and Virus on Kamaitachi's team. And also by this point Kamaitachi had no mask and was still furious at Dragon Lee because of that. This is not as good as that above 2/8 match, as it ended in straight falls and was very short, but the work within was hot. Delta shows more life here than I'm used to, as Casas was his foil who stumbled all around as Delta got to pursue. He and Delta have a real nice fast armdrag sequence that leads to a great moment with Casas getting chased into the crowd, and then he and Delta punching each other with the guardrail separating them. We get some stereo dives from Delta and Maya, Casas giving all of the offense to Delta and Maya, Barbaro being Barbaro ( with tons of cave drawings on his body! Dug his mat stuffs with Maya), and the money is all Kamaitachi vs. Lee. Kamaitachi works real fast, cuts low on clotheslines and cheats to win. Loved the spot where Lee runs Kamaitachi chest first into the ropes to get him off balance and then whips him into the mat with a snap German. Just a brief whisper, over before you know it, but fun.

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MLJ: Cavernario vs Titan 2: Cavernario, Euforia, Mr. Niebla vs Máximo, Titán, Valiente

Aired 2014-07-19
Taped 2014-07-15 @ Arena México
Cavernario, Euforia, Mr. Niebla vs Máximo, Titán, Valiente

If the trios with Blue Panther and Cachorro leaned gallant, this leaned goofus. It was the following Friday from the previous match with Felino subbed out and Euforia subbed in. CMLL does that all the time, just mixing and matching their rudo factions, but it felt particularly odd here. To be honest, Euforia didn't really do much so it hardly mattered (which was especially damning since he and Valiente got the focus of the finish).

Structurally, this actually had a lot going for it. There were two heat segments, one in the primera with a cut off with a comeback that let the tecnicos go over and then from the end of the segunda into the tercera which lead on towards the finish. Despite Cavernario's intensity, and Maximo and Titan generally being sympathetic, it was hard to take any of it seriously though. Matches with Niebla spanking Maximo are generally not the ones to utilize a double heat format on. While double heat generally means double comebacks as well, this was a match that needed much more in the way of shine.

Instead, it started with a rudo ambush, including Zacarias doing the 619. Cavernario's great in this role. He charged in with his staff and stomped away. It's also not a bad role for Niebla. He's good at crowd control and has those big, broad strikes. It's just when he does anything else that any possible meaning gets pissed down the drain. The comeback came with a Maximo butt spot, one of Valiente's huge Jim-Neidhart shaped topes, and Titan doing the handstand backflip headscissors cradle, again. Twice in two weeks was probably a bad choice for that move. It's just too contrived to do too often.

We did get some of that shine at the beginning of the segunda, with the tecnicos going vs the world. The crowed wanted absolutely zero of it though. Even Maximo, who was usually over, was getting boos. Niebla was more than happy to do the cheer-off with Titan and this time, there was no Blue Panther to turn the crwod back. Instead, Titan did some backflips, a headscissors, and then a pose, and the crowd booed the hell out of him. Maybe a pose wasn't the right move there.

What was the right move was this really cool reverse monkey flip backflip thing. That was pretty cool:

Which leads us to this apron ddt spot, which (and hey, maybe Titan and Cavenario do this a dozen times and I just don't know it yet) would be one of the spots of the year, easily, if not for the fact it didn't even end the frigging fall. It was too big a spot to use in the middle of such a throwaway match like this. At the least they should have saved it for their title match. Geez:

After that, Niebla would pull Maximo around by his hair and spank him. Great tonal cohesion there. A submission on Maximo followed shortly thereafter, with (of course) Cavernario back up to beat on Titan. I'm pretty certain Titan was double crotched on the outside by Niebla and Cavernario which led to him being counted out.

I do think that Niebla helped Cavernario a lot one with one aspect of his game, namely the playing to the crowd. Cavernario is so over the top and into his character and if I tried to capture all of his flourishes and temper tantrums, we'd have twenty gifs. There's a limit to the effectiveness of this though, and Niebla doesn't know the first thing about limits.

Instead I'm going to post a couple of gifs from the tercera, which had some of the fun, tecnicos heavy spirit that the match should have had more of (after Cavernario missed a corner charge which let Valiente come back).

This great monkey flip:

and this pretty clever Kiss of Death:

All that led to tandem topes by Maximo and Titan, which was to set up Valiente vs Euforia A blatant (frustrated) foul by Euforia led to the mostly unsatisfying DQ. It led to a trios defense and a singles match, but the focus was off earlier in the match to make it mean anything here. Titan was fine, dynamic, with the apron DDT being an amazing spot (albeit one that wasn't worth nearly as much as it should have been), but he sure was illiterate when it came to reading the crowd.

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CMLL Worth Watching 1/4/15, 1/18/15 & 2/1/15

Hechicero, Ephesto & Niebla Roja vs. Blue Panther, Valiente & Maximo (1/18/15)

On paper you look at that match and go "man I hope Panther and Hechicero match up a bunch" and if that's what you went in wanting, you'll leave a happy human. There are also many other things that happened that were a blast, but I personally showed up for Panther and Hechicero squaring off. They get a nice long exchange in the primera and more in the tercera. Primera is those two have a bunch of cool struggling matwork, which really is worth the price of admission (zero dollars, technically so easily worth that). Hechicero is a super adaptable mat guy and Panther still looks like Blue Fucking Panther on the mat which is one of the first things that made me fall in love with lucha. All the takeovers and sweeps and arms held painfully behind backs. It's glorious. Hechicero gets runs with all the guys and he really makes Maximo's stuff look spectacular. And all of Hechicero's little roll ups and submissions are so fluidly executed. I'm a fan. Segunda is short but we build to a nice crescendo in the tercera with Valiente hitting the mother of all great topes, just bending Roja in half over the barrier. Just a scud missile flying fast and accurately right at you. Wrestlers are crazy. Ephesto gets a big dive of his own and this delivered in the exact ways I was hoping it would.

Rey Cometa vs. Niebla Roja (Lightning Match) (1/4/15)

This was really cool as Roja throws way more rudo elements into a lightning match than almost anybody I've seen. Usually this format is used for guys to show off their highlight reel in heatless exhibitions. But here's Roja kicking Cometa in the face, ripping at his gear, choking him and being a dick. Cometa is a guy with plenty of great looking spots but he goes along with Roja's match plan and it makes a standard lightning match mean so much more, makes Cometa's few highlight spots seem that much bigger. The opening mat stuff is nice and engaging, and then things go to a new level when Cometa goes for a leaping tornado DDT off the apron but gets caught by Roja and tossed brutally into the barrier. It made Cometa's later rana off the apron mean so much more.We also build to a great Cometa tope that blasts Roja impressively into the barrier. Roja dicks it up the whole time, Cometa's hope spots come off better for it, and all that equals a much more satisfying 7 minutes than we normally get.

Kraneo, Olimpico & Ephesto vs. Blue Panther, Titan & Dragon Rojo Jr. (2/1/15)

So Cubsfan should get around to uploading this one so more people can see it, because it's really fun. I mean, it's not like that guy uploads hundreds of matches over the course of a year or anything. It makes me feel just a tiny shred of minimal importance to write about a match like this, since it does not appear to exist online, and one day somebody might ask "I wonder if anybody ever watched a Kraneo match from 2/1/15?" and then they will find that, yes, at least one man did watch a Kraneo match from that date, and documented it FOR THE WORLD. Match was really fun and would have landed on the MOTY list had the segunda and tercera gotten more time. Primera had some of Titan's best stuff, doing some lightning fast exchanges with Ephesto with no Titan silliness. Then Panther and Olimpico got to roll and that is all of a sudden one of my favorite match-ups in lucha. Olimpico has looked better in the last couple months than he has in 8 years. Now he's working a weird glammy Egyptian gimmick and looks like Ben Kingsley playing the Jaye Davidson role in Stargate. His mat stuff with Panther is great with BP always going after an arm or leg but Olimpico scrambling all over him, working more to disorient. Kraneo continues to be my favorite luchador of the moment as he's all massive shoulderblocks and big bumps and fatness. He always works as if he has something to prove, as if he gets ribbed about his mass all the time and wants to show everybody that he can work harder and better than anybody. He's like the modern lucha Buddy Rose. So yeah, upload this match Cubs! Pretty please?

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MLJ: Sin Salida 2010 Final: Maximo vs Taichi [cabellera vs cabellera]

2010-06-06 @ Arena México
Maximo vs Taichi [cabellera vs cabellera]

4:54 in

This is a fitting capstone for this mini project for a couple of reasons. I'm higher on Maximo than most people seem to be. That might be because it's refreshing to have so straightforward a tecnico in modern CMLL or it might just be my lack of seeing a lot of exoticos but he has a sort of physical confidence and spryness which combines with very dedicated character work. There's a reason he's always generally over with a crowd that tends to boo half the tecnicos.

He was also in one of the first matches I reviewed. There he was teaming with Porky. Here he has Porky as his corner man for an apuestas match and at that point I didn't even know their relationship. That was a little less than a year ago. Finally, maybe due to cuts, maybe due to my lack of language skills, I actually lost the flow of this match when watching it and I'm not entirely sure how Maximo won the segunda. So that's fun.

Fun's a good word to describe this match in general. Look, you know coming in you're not going to get an expert matwork demonstration and you're also not going to get a crazed bloody brawl. Maximo is fun. Taichi is crummy. At best what they were going to present was an enjoyable, story-based, character driven romp where Taichi got his comeuppance and lost that stupid mane he was always flicking around. That's pretty much what we got and I'm absolutely not going to complain.

The primera was straight to the point. Taichi (whose corner man was Okumura not surprisingly) came in aggressively with a double leg takedown and punches. Maximo ran circles around him for a minute before doing the same. Then he started to get cocky and tease and taunt him and ultimately, because he wasn't taking the match seriously enough, walked right into Taichi's lame looking Emerald Flowsion.

The segunda is a mystery to me. You'd expect Maximo to get beat up for a bit and then hit a roll up out of nowhere, which would lead to a reset to start the tercera. That's how these usually things go. I didn't see that. Instead, the comeback pretty much consisted of two topes, so we're going to be generous and say that Taichi was counted out during one of them. Ultimately, it doesn't matter, because this isn't the sort of match where there was a long beatdown and a meaningful comeback. Modern CMLL Apuestas matches are pretty much all tercera, though this did give the weird illusion of a segunda that felt like a tercera, until I figured out what was going on.

The point is, I liked the tercera. The selling didn't entirely feel earned, but it occurred after two pretty big tope suicidas (topes suicidas?), so in that regard quality overcame quantity. Taichi had the advantage for most of it, with a number of pretty good near falls. Nothing was overly complex but it really shouldn't have been. The biggest one was another flowsion too close to the ropes. Maximo finally started to fight back, hitting one of his multiple jump planchas into the ring, only to have Taichi pretty hilariously fake a foul off a near ref bump in order to score a roll up. That's how Maximo took Emilio Charles Jr.'s hair a few years before, btw. The fans were really into it.

I like it when Maximo turns on the physicality, as he's big enough to have just won the Heavyweight title, for instance and he did so here immediately thereafter with these boots.

There was one more roll up by Taichi but Maximo stood tall, hitting a powerbomb reversal for a fairly effective kill shot. You rarely see him do something like that, so it meant something when he did. For a match where I have no idea how the segunda ended, this was perfectly enjoyable for what it was. I'm not sure I'd main event a big show with it, but I'm not CMLL.

A Proud Papa: 

So much Glitter, so much Shame: 

Alright, so that's it for 2010. We're deeper into the Hechicero/Lucero feud on Monday and then the rest of the week is up in the air. I'm hoping to start delving into a comp, but we'll see. I have a lot of 90s Negro Casas to watch too before I start up with either the Mistico/Casas or more likely, the Rush/Terrible feud.

I think I will make a dash towards the Anniversary show in 2010 at some point later, though. There's enough going on that I still want to see more of it, and I'd like to do that with more Hector Garza. He was, and this is no exaggeration, one of the two or three most charismatic wrestlers I've ever seen. I think I got a little gif heavy by the end, but that's because his reactions to every little thing going on in the ring were worth capturing. I'm glad that I have so much of the rest of his career to watch and I'm sad that there won't be more to come, especially so this week, of cousre.

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MLJ: Sin Salida 2010 Set Up Bonus: Hijo del Fantasma, Máximo, Volador Jr. vs Ray Mendoza Jr., Shigeo Okumura, Taichi

2010-05-28 @ Arena México
Hijo del Fantasma, Máximo, Volador Jr. vs Ray Mendoza Jr., Shigeo Okumura, Taichi

3:37 in

Before going on to the Taichi vs Maximo hair match, I thought it made some sense to take a look at one of the matches that built it. This meant watching another Taichi match, but at least I knew it was going to be one with at least some heat built in. Frankly, half the reason I'm going forward with this match is that I want to see the jerk lose his hair. Apparently, at the time that wasn't a sure thing. Maximo had lost his last two apuestas matches (vs Texano, Jr. and Okumura) and Brazos weren't supposed to win the big ones anyway.

Speaking of losing a wager match, this had Ray Mendoza, Jr. to round out the rudos side. I've seen him sans mask once or twice on the journey I think. He (as Villano V) beat Blue Panther for his mask back in 2008 only to lose his own in 2009 to Ultimo Guerrero. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like a lot of the build to the 2008 match is online or else I'd do run through those matches because they sound like they were a lot of fun. On the other hand, we've got a few of the build to Villano V vs UG online, so maybe I'll do those at some point. It's just hard to get too excited for a payoff when its an apuestas match with UG.

Anyway, Mendoza is a guy who lost his mask at 46 or 47 and could have done okay from a charisma even if he had lost it years before. He's extremely emotive and great at stooging. He came out with a big sombrero and seemed pretty damn happy to be there. It still amuses me that the Japanese rudos come out to Du Hast. I really hate Volador's side tassles. enough about that.

Let me run it down quickly. This was structured to heat up the hair match. It went two falls, had double heat and two comebacks. The rudos charged the ring at the beginning of the match, had an energetic beat down, and then Maximo got to be the lynchpin in the comeback, being the only one to be able to charge back in and do some damage. He got beaten back but that allowed his partners to fly in. They hit double dives to set up Maximo vs Taichi and a rope-assisted roll up by Maximo.

The rudos came right back with a rudo-advantage reset that lasted most of the segunda. This had more hope spots including a solid Fantasma vs Mendoza chop off where Mendoza was channeling his inner Satanico with his stooging and then hitting great powerslam out of nowhere. Volador hit a dive to get himself and Okumura out of the match, and Maximo flew back in with his butt bump to pin Mendoza. They finished this with the Kiss of Death, really one of the most protected moves in CMLL, and Taichi completely no selling it to foul Maximo and then beat the crap out of him. Not the world's worst way to heat up the match while still having Maximo look strong.

This was slight but perfectly functional with enough character to make it enjoyable. Maybe I'm an easy audience or maybe it's just that I'm still in my first year of heavily watching this stuff, but that's pretty much all that I need to make me happy with a lucha trios. Obviously other elements (great, escalating matwork, a super comeback, violent brawling, tricked out armdrag sequences, etc) can be the difference between me being happy with a match and me thinking everyone needs to go out of their way to see it, but the baseline for me is whether or not the match accomplishes what it's supposed to, whether or not there's a sense of anticipation and payoff, and whether or not there's enough character to make the thing sing. This wasn't a masterpiece, but it did accomplish all of that.

GIFs:

Poor Kemonito:

Oof:

Dives in and out:

Pre- Powerslam:

Post Powerslam:

Best thing that Taichi's ever done?:

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MLJ: 2010: A Garza Odyssey 21: Héctor Garza, Terrible, Texano Jr. vs La Máscara, Máximo, Volador Jr.

Taped 2010-06-04 @ Arena México
Héctor Garza, Terrible, Texano Jr. vs La Máscara, Máximo, Volador Jr.

5:16 in

http://youtu.be/9WmEfVHzI8c

http://youtu.be/LFvfbwcU61w

http://youtu.be/yksgFHVHT0c

Oh CMLL, you crazy, hapless diamond. So, this is the last show before Sin Salida (this was a Friday. That was a Sunday), which, as we remember, was the show CMLL was putting up against a pretty stacked Triplemania (LA Park vs La Parka over the name La Parka). The theme of the show was CMLL vs Invasores. Past Garza and the visiting Giant Bernard who was not actually affiliated with the group, I don't think there was one Invasor on this Friday card (it did have the Virus vs Valiente lightning match though). Nor did it have CMLL ally Rayo de Jalisco, Jr. Or... look, I'm boggled. There's just no build at all. It's maddening. A lot of the build in this specific match was because Latin Lover was at ringside, and that seemed thematically on point. Maybe he'd join Los Invasores. Maybe he'd be loyal to CMLL. Hector Garza, leader of the invaders, was right there after all. They had a history, and lo and behold, at the end of the match, they hugged and then Garza clocked him. Aha! He'd be a force at Sin Salida after all, right? No, not right. He didn't show up again until November! There HAS to be some crazy internal power struggle between the people who book the outer shows and the ones who book the Arena Mexico shows but I've got no idea. It all just hurts my head.

There was a match, though, and I really love the Texano, Terrible, Garza trios. They were made for each other and balanced one another very well. Moreover, by this point, they'd worked together a couple of times and were more in sync. This was your stereotypical modern CMLL trios. They teased a few feeling out exchanges. At a key moment, the rudos swarmed. There was an extended beatdown that carried into the segunda and lasted until a bit of miscommunication let the tecnicos take a quick fall. Then they reset in the tercera for some exchanges, tecnico shine, dive cut offs and pay offs, and the finish. I've seen this match dozens and dozens of times and I bet most people reading this have seen it more, and I don't care. It works. When done well, it's great. It's the bread and butter of modern CMLL and there's a reason why they go back to it. It's sort of the "southern tag" of CMLL and so long as the characters are good and the work is spirited, I could watch these all day. Maybe I'll feel differently after a few more years. I know so many of you have been drowning in this stuff week in and week out for a decade now, but I'm not there yet. It's not fresh to me anymore, but it's still a lot of fun, and in that regard, this match delivered.

Things of note: Kemonito came out on his own (or maybe right before Maximo) and had a little stuffed Kemonito with him. He got beaten up a little after the primera but we mostly missed it. They showed Latin Lover a lot. One of the best spots was during a comeback where it looked like Mascara was going to take out Garza either with a dive, but instead slid out, faked a punch, and shook Lover's hand.

 I really miss the tecnico fans. Look at these guys in their pink shirts cheer for Volador. CMLL seems to have driven them away for the most part now and it's a shame.

As noted, TGT's tandem offense was great. They crotched Maximo and then dropkicked him out. They did this really neat toss out of the corner into the Garza kick.

That took out Mascara. Then they brutalized Volador with a catapult, kick to put him over Terrible's knees, moonsault from the ropes back in. It was hugely ouchworthy and the two tandem moves ended the fall.

The comeback was fun but not super memorable. There was miscommunication. Mascara hit a clumsy roll up. Again, I'm not necessarily in this for smoothness and beauty, so it's ok. The reset was fine with some fun stuff. I loved this Volador spot where he hit a rana and landed on his feet, driving Garza out, who then shadowpunched hilariously.

I don't love Volador or Mascara but at least with the former, I'm perfectly fine watching him get beaten up and then hitting some flashy things on the way out. On the other hand I alawys love Maximo/Terrible interaction, especially when they do spots like having Maximo leap off the apron, Terrible catch him and then crush his spine on the pole:

That was followed by Volador getting tossed and eating the best kick I've seen this week.

This all ended with Mascara getting a kick in on Commandante, to keep some heat, and then walking into a flip up double powerbomb and a splash to end the match (I'm not quite sure how since he wasn't the captain but whatever).

Post match they do the super-heated Latin Lover thing that didn't go anywhere and certainly didn't build to the big show on Sunday.

CMLL: booked by stuffed Kemonitos? 

You tell me.

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MLJ: Maximo Monday: Terrible © vs Máximo for the CMLL World Heavyweight Championship

Aired: 2015-02-07
taped: 2015-01-30 @ Arena México
Terrible © vs Máximo for the CMLL World Heavyweight Championship

This was interesting for a lot of reasons that don't necessarily have to do with the match itself. It's part of what seems to be a larger Terrible/Bucanero vs Maximo/Volador feud that might lead to a double hair match to help leverage Rey's recent taking of Felino's hair into something vaguely marketable. The idea of a title match as just a cog in a greater machine and not the end all is still a little jarring to me, but that's just the way it is, especially, I gather, with the Heavyweight title. Terrible has held the thing since January 1, 2012 (it was vacated when Garza left the promotion before that). It looked at points like Rush or Marco might win it, with Maximo not exactly a front runner. Exoticos don't often win singles titles in CMLL from what I can gather. So, because in some ways this was meant to be as much angle as match, or at least as much an angle-furthering element, and because Maximo, whose very existence stretches realities in some ways (his finish is, more often than not, a knock out kiss), there was definitely more BS in this match than you'd expect out of a CMLL title match. That said, I think it worked for what it was supposed to be. It's just that what it was supposed to be rubbed some people the wrong way and I think that's a completely understandable mentality. It didn't bother me too much because I was able to put it in context and I don't think that this was a precedent, though, of course, since Maximo won the belt, it almost has to be in some ways.

Structurally, it was definitely a CMLL title match in 2015. Feeling out to begin, followed by an escalation and a lightning pin by Maximo to end the primera. The segunda was extremely brief with Terrible catching Maximo out of nowhere and putting him down. It was also a momentum change so that Terrible could control the first part of the tercera. Eventually Maximo fought back and hit a dive and they both started selling. There's the finishing stretch with a few call backs to the primera and some big moves and fake finishes and then the BS card got played heavily for the finish.

In general, Terrible is one of my favorite Maximo opponents. I really like when they're paired off in trios. You're not always going to get the best action but Maximo plays off of Terrible's presence so well. In years past, that was through spine-chilling fear. In the weird world of modern CMLL where there really aren't a ton of tecnicos cheered for being tecnicos, Maximo, exotico as he is, stands out. I thought, given the storyline, they did a good job showing meaningful reactions from the seconds (naturally Rey and Volador) throughout the match too.

The tercera worked mostly well until the finish. Maximo came back with a couple of dives and the bombs were sufficiently meaningful to justify the selling. There was a Terrible superplex and the Maximo "run up the ropes for a top rope arm drag" that he beat Casas with a few weeks prior. Towards the end, he ran down the ramp trying to vault in but flubbed it, but frankly, they recovered so well by making it a fairly believable near-fall, that it didn't bother me.

The finish was sort of what you would expect. Maximo failed to lock in the same casita he won the primera with. The kiss of death didn't work (and that move is super protected so that was a surprise). The seconds became involved instead, with ref distractions and fouls, and a big dive by Volador that sent Bucanero into the stands. In the end, it almost felt like a team effort, which plays into the upcoming match, but didn't do a whole lot for the title change in the grand scheme of things. Not a bad match by any means, and the BS was totally functional and probably will serve its purpose in helping to heat up the upcoming match, but I don't think we're looking at a MOTYC or anything.

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MLJ: Maximo Monday? Negro Casas' Birthday Bash? Maximo vs Negro Casas

Aired 2015-01-11
taped 2015-01-11 @ Arena México
Máximo vs Negro Casas (and check out OJ's review of this too)

Things have been busy enough that I've only seen two lucha matches this week. One was Virus vs Dragon Lee and my thoughts sync up pretty well with Erik and Phil on that so there's no need for me to write it up. The other was this, and this was one of those matches that you hear about and you can't wait to see. Normally, it'd be a fun match up, but this was Casas' 54th birthday match (google says his birthday's on the 10th but this is close enough), and you just knew he was going to make it something special because of that.

He did. The crowd's weird for this. I think that there were a lot more comps for this for some reason (maybe because a bunch of the roster is away in Japan so there was less of a draw?) and I'm not sure what they made of the match at first. By the end, though, the crowd, while split between the rudo-loving regulars and the bewildered stumblers-in, were loud and engaged and very much into what they were watching. Thus is the power of Negro Casas.

It was a great match, and past a couple of bumps (one off the top to the floor, one off a tope, and then the finish) and a couple of lightning darts across the ring to cut Maximo off, I think everything awesome that Negro Casas did, he could probably still pull off at eighty. Virus was awesome in the Dragon Lee match for doing all sort of maestro type stuff, the holds and tangible competitiveness and that level of drama in the tercera. With Casas, it was pure, unbridled character.

There's something so genuine to Casas and it's something I think is in the lucha I love the most. I've been seeing it lately with 2010 Hector Garza. I like tricked out matwork and dives and clever transitions and all that, but what really draws me into lucha is that ebb and flow, the emotional build to the comeback and the payoff, and luchadores can do all the right moves with the right timing and have a totally logical build and that'll move me a little, but it's when they wear their heart on their sleeves and really portray what's happening as genuine, that's when things really sing.

Casas is so good at that and he was good at that here too. From the very get go he started to kick at Maximo's leg and he never really let up. The entire primera he just chipped away at it, a kick, a yank, a twist, another kick, and then, faux limping around the ring to mock him, ending it with a pretty brutal STF. There's something primal about Casas unleashed; he's a malicious trickster god. Some of that is physical as there's an almost desiccated look to him at age 54 (and it drives OJ nuts, I think, but I love it because he's so damn confident in his own skin. It's sort of transcendent). He's what I picture you'd find in the desert after days wandering lost, a specter appearing offering you a glass of water for the small price of your soul. In some ways he's a more subtle Satanico than Satanico, but with a hint more Brer Fox. There's such a glee to the chaos he causes.

Case in point: Maximo came back, mainly due to Casas mocking him, hit two clotheslines and a roll up. Between falls, the doctor worked on Maximo's leg. Casas put his arm around the doctor, stole the spray for the leg, stole the doctor's tape, used Zacarias on the ropes as a distraction for the ref, sprayed Maximo in the eyes, used the tape to choke him around the ring and then, when Maximo finally rolled back in, furious and unleashed, Casas ate a tope suicida with one of the best bumps off a dive I've seen in ages, just tossing his back at full speed into the guardrail (ad-rail? You know what I mean). Then, getting up first, he kicked Maximo in the leg to take back over. Beautiful stuff.

They zoomed to a finish with chop-offs, false finishes on both the kiss of death and a few escaped casitas before Casas finally dropkicked the leg a couple of times in order to hit it. That was a kick out though, and they went on to the real finish, which was perfectly hit and Casas, on his birthday, was gracious and confident enough in who he is to put the other guy over. The false finishes didn't quite have the zing I'm used to out of Casas, but I still thought it was all effective. Definitely the most fun match you'll watch today.

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