Segunda Caida

Phil Schneider, Eric Ritz, Matt D, Sebastian, and other friends write about pro wrestling. Follow us @segundacaida

Saturday, April 20, 2024

MLJ: Master List

MD: No one was asking for this necessarily, but we all know that Blogspot is pretty rough, and I'd like to have this all in one place. I'm posting this on April 20, 2024. My first post on Segunda Caida was April 20, 2014. For the first two years, I wrote up three lucha matches a week. That's over three hundred. Early days, just like Blogspot, my stuff was really rough too. Thanks to Phil and Eric for the patience. I dropped what MLJ stood for very quickly, because it was a little mortifying, but this really was a journey for me. I didn't jump right to the best things. I picked a wrestler and dug in on the idea that I wanted to have some footing before I got to the best stuff. Over those two years, I covered a lot of ground. There are YouTube links here. Most of them are dead. There was, as of last week, a great solution to get around that. Now it's gone. Sorry for that.

If you're trying to learn the rhythms and patterns of lucha, I don't necessary suggest taking this exact path, but taking a comparable path isn't a bad idea. Watch some current CMLL week to week. Pick a period that is easily accessible to you from the last ten-fifteen years and follow a specific wrestler week to week for a while. Start to track what is similar and what is different, the variations and the repetitions. Then once you start picking up on things, follow a higher profile recent feud or track two wrestlers against each over time. It'll take a little bit but you'll start to crack the code.

Like I said, it's been ten years for me here. I post four times a week right now. That's a lot. I'm very grateful to have this as an outlet, for everyone I've been fortunate enough to write with, and to anyone who reads what we do here. I have no plans of stopping. Inertia's a powerful force and wrestling's a hell of a thing. 

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posted by Matt D @ 12:00 PM  0 comments

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Matt & Eric, Two Men Discussing Virus, Separately

2017-03-25 @ Arena Coliseo San Ramón, Puebla, Puebla
Virus vs. Prayer


MD: This dropped a few days ago even though it's from a Lucha Memes show back in March. I couldn't tell you the first thing about Prayer, but Virus was, of course, my #10 on the GWE poll last year, which felt crazy at the time and still feels crazy, but was very much a testament to the power of footage (we've got him almost weekly for the last many years, even if he's just in low card trios). I'll say this: after watching this match, I feel all the more validated with the placement.

We're lucky to have as many maestros matches as we do. In those, what they do is so logical and so intricate and so interesting and (probably most importantly) so full of struggle and commitment, that we forgive the half speed nature of so many of them. We see it as part of the fight, that locking a hold on to someone as expert as Blue Panther or Negro Navarro just takes that much more pressure and effort. It takes longer. In some ways, it's a testament that they can go that much more slowly but still make none of it seem collaborative, like playing a song very slowly and thus having to perfect each and every belabored note. 

This was not that at all. For the first two thirds of the match, they were primarily on the mat. There was struggle. There were intricate leverage moves. There were counters and escapes. It was done at far faster pace, was utterly believable, and didn't miss a beat. They were able to portray that same level of mastery but turned up about three gears. So much of this was Virus. You watch him and you wonder just how he sees the world, if time slows down and he can extrapolate out the ways limbs might twist and contort like an sculptor envisioning a masterpiece or a chess champion looking forward six moves. Prayer kept up well enough; he had to do his part, for Virus just manipulating him wouldn't have allowed for this level of speed or sharpness. Ultimately, though, this was a showcase for El Pequeño Gran Maestro, and since he no longer gets as many singles matches in CMLL as he did a few years ago, it's one we're lucky to have.

A few words about the escalation in the match, too. When they went to spots towards the end of the match, none of them were too excessive. None of them needed to be. Staying on the mat (even while increasing the level of peril) meant that a springboard low dropkick could mean as much as a headdrop or a giant dive. It created believable near-falls when that might not work at all with a less disciplined match. Just the testament of someone who really understands how to imbue meaning into his craft. 

I'm glad Virus is still getting opportunities to have matches like this, even if only on the indies, and I'm glad this dropped, even if it dropped a few months after the fact. Check it out.


Virus/Sagrado/Skandalo v. Soberano Jr./Triton/Esfinge (CMLL 3/28/17)

ER: Virus has to be the king of noteworthy performances in throwaway undercard matches. This falls apart a bit in the segunda/tercera, and Skandalo kind of stumbles around and gets in the way through much of this, Sagrado is really quite good as a rudo so I enjoyed all of his moments (his rudo offense is really great, especially that sunset flip counter, a double stomp into a few elbowdrops, hell yes)...but this was all about Virus. The Virus/Esfinge mat stuff that opens the match is really cool, subtly flashy, all of it compelling; but him picking on Soberano is the money of the match, as they work some fast sequences that end with Virus hitting a stiff shoulderblock that sends Soberano bumping backwards and upside down to the floor, then we cut to Sagrado clotheslining Esfinge's shins out from him on the apron, and then back across the ring to catch Virus hitting the mother of all baseball slide dropkicks on a just-waking-up-on-the-floor Soberano. We get another fun Virus/Soberano segment in the tercera, but it's a shame the rest of the match couldn't hold up the level of the primera. But a match with a floor of "So how good is Virus, right?" is still something with value.

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posted by Matt D @ 9:00 PM  2 comments

Monday, March 06, 2017

MLJ: Volador Jr. vs Yoshitatsu Was Not Actually the Worst Match I've Ever Seen

2017-03-03 @ Arena México
Volador Jr. vs Yoshitatsu


I don't go out of my way looking for bad Volador matches. I hadn't seen any of Tatsu's run up until this. I'm behind in general. I haven't seen the Volador/Cavernario vs Guerrero/Valiente match yet, for instance. This had so much negative buzz, however, that I wanted to check it out.

The complaints, as I heard them were thus: Tatsu was careless/incompetent in taking spots/dives. Tatsu was lazy and Volador was hard working. Tatsu was just trying to figure out his new character and not have a good match. Tirantes did something beyond the pale stupid and inexplicable, presumably because he didn't have faith in Tatsu to get the finish right. Here, let me give a quick reminder on my Volador thoughts. He is excellent at hitting spots/dives. He's very hard working. His matches tend to have a lot of bloat/go on too long. He's wretched at transitions (even reusing the same one multiple times in a match in a non-story driven way), highlighting athleticism and spot over stories. So I can see how this might be horrible. You have someone in there who theoretically can't work to any of Volador's strengths and can't do anything to hide his weaknesses.

And it wasn't very good. You know what, though? I think compared to the general CMLL main event output it wasn't all that terrible either. This is a company that has Ultimo Guerrero basically having the same singles match ten times a year. It's a company that carts out Niebla in big places all the time. Very little of Tatsu's shtick was worse than that. He certainly wasn't mailing that element of his game in. If anything, he did way too much. Thanks to Volador caring enough to react to it, however, it worked decently enough within the match and they balanced it with more spots than I was expecting (though not all of them hit certainly).

There was a story. It was pretty straightforward. Tatsu was out there with the mind games, coming out and ambushing Volador. He hit a couple of big moves quickly and took an early fall. Mascara helped out a bit. Then he ended up goofing too much and stomping too little. He put his hands up to stop a potential Volador comeback across the ropes, which is a CMLL thing. It's something guys like Mascara or Sombra or Marco do all the time. It's a common CMLL trope. Then, when Tatsu went to goof on that and turned to take his shirt off, Volador rolled him up. Hell, the sheer joy on Volador's face after he got the pin was probably the most tecnico character that I've ever seen out of Volador. Moreover, I thought they did a decent job of delaying Volador hitting much here. Tatsu slipped back in to avoid/delay the dive and there was a roll up, so Volador's revenge was more comedy oriented which fit the match and frankly was a little bit refreshing in modern CMLL. This is a tradition which has tecnicos often clowning rudos at length. It's nice to see it now and again on top. We get so many matches a year streaming that it's okay for them to run one that's a little bit different now and again.

The tercera was a goofier and sloppier version of what you'd normally get out of a Volador match. There were superkicks and no selling. There were a few less spots than normal and a bit more shtick. I kind of liked the handshake stuff. I think the crowd wasn't shitting on it in the least. It was different enough and Volador, while a little exasperated, was also committed to selling it. He was having fun with it and that's a different sort of engagement than just "working hard" and hitting stuff well. There were even a couple of transitions/spots (like Tatsu missing the big boot in the ropes and then back body dropping Volador over) that I thought were pretty imaginative. Were there some bad points of execution? Sure. There was one pump kick which was terrible, but I'm not sure whose fault that was. And of course, there was Tatsu absolutely failing to catch Volador on the second dive. Volador probably didn't need to go for that second dive in the first place. In a match like this, the tope (which Tatsu took well enough) would have been fine. He could have leaned into the comedy a bit more and the crowd (who tends to like that sort of thing anyway) wouldn't have complained. Maybe it'd get a half star less from people on the internet who only care about spots and dives and not other elements of working. As it was, they hit a decent amount of stuff, maybe 2/3rds of what might normally get hit in a singles match with no stakes like this.

Then there's the finish. It wasn't good, certainly, but it kind of fit. You can logic it fairly easily, with Tirantes going into business for himself. This sort of thing happens a few times a year and people get up in arms about it. So long as it's not happening every week like in indy LA Park matches or something, it's less of a big deal. So long as it's not destroying great matches, it's less of a big deal. This was the perfect match for Tirantes to do something ridiculous in. What impressed me the most (and full credit to Volador here), was how natural the reactions seemed, and how well they recovered. This wasn't the sort of match which needed six finisher kick outs. Tatsu got distracted by the culture clash and the strangeness of what was going on. Volador was the more poised wrestler and took advantage of it. One finisher later and this was over. The lack of protection on the dive was a disaster. Tirantes was absurd.

Judging it on certain metrics, it was actually kind of okay. Not every match, and not even every Volador, Jr. match, needs to look the same. I liked this a lot more than I would have probably liked Tatsu trying to do a straight up Sombra vs Volador style spotfest (they had the most difficulty when they tried to be that) and there were elements in here that I wish I saw out of 2016-2017 Volador a little more. I think someone like Maximo or Casas or Marco could have a pretty fun match with Tatsu actually.

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posted by Matt D @ 8:29 AM  0 comments

Monday, February 13, 2017

MLJ: Recent Uploads: El Hijo Del Santo, Mr. Niebla, Negro Casas vs Black Warrior, Blue Panther, Fuerza Guerrera

1998-11-13 @ Arena México
El Hijo Del Santo, Mr. Niebla, Negro Casas vs Black Warrior, Blue Panther, Fuerza Guerrera


There's a moment in this match towards the end of the third fall, right before Black Warrior hits a huge tope to get himself and Niebla out of the way for the finish, where Warrior very clearly screws up a baseball slide to the ramp. He had been trying to dodge a handspring (presumably a back headbutt) by Niebla. It's clumsy as hell. He recovers by owning it, by standing up, by waving his fingers to the crowd. There's also a moment at the end of the match where Santo and Casas (who had only been teaming for a couple of months after the turn) go for a big high five. It doesn't go well at all. Something that should be triumphant ended up strangely awkward.

Those two moments sum the match up in a nutshell. Amazing talent. Legendary talent, really. A pair of young wrestlers who are game and could go. It's a total mess execution wise. Absolute mess. While, yes, I care less about flawless execution than pretty much everyone else who watches lucha, I put forward the notion that this match is fun enough that it simply doesn't matter.

Panther's an underrated rudo stooge. In a lot of ways he's been misclasified by history. Fuerza is the king of rudo stooges. A huge chunk of the primera is Fuerza and Panther stooging for Santo and Casas. Some of it (like Fuerza hanging on to Casas' hair after every attempt to get out of a headlock or Casas refusing to let the beatdown start and fighting back, pissed off, repeatedly until Fuerza cut him off with a low blow) is pretty standard but still gold. The end of the fall, however, has Santo and Casas working in tandem, setting up double team tecnico spots. It's all mis-timed to a ridiculous degree, and not even in that sort of "faux organic struggle" sense you can sometimes bs. It's still an absolute joy to see the two of them working together like this, especially on Panther and Fuerza. It's downright charming, and while it should be no one's introduction to these wrestlers, if you're heavily familiar with them, it's well worth watching.

Also charming was Fuerza squeezing Santo's hand while he's in a nasty Blue Panther submission that ended the segunda. I have no idea why he might have done it (he had been helping to torque the arms a moment before as they're opponents), but the replay catches it and it's weirdly endearing. Look, if Negro Casas teaming with Santo and winning a fall by using his partner's trademark flipping-rana-sunset flip on one rudo while Santo locks on the caballo on the other is the sort of thing that excites you, you should watch this match. If it's not, then we look for very different things out of lucha.

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posted by Matt D @ 11:12 AM  0 comments

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

MLJ: Recent Uploads: Kahoz vs La Fiera [hair]

1996-07-09 @ Arena Coliseo
La Fiera vs Kahoz [hair]


This was a poor man's Sangre Chicana vs MS-1. That said, even a poor man's Sangre Chicana vs MS-1 is still a rich man's match. Lately, Kozmic Trooths (sic) has been posting more matches than I have time to watch, lots of stuff from mid-late 90s CMLL that's gone under the radar from the most part. I'm not going to write up the Cibernetico from 99 he posted, for instance, but it's a worth checking out as a fun look at where guys like Olimpico, Black Warrior, Ultimo Guerrero, and Rey Bucanero were at that point in their development.

What I am going to write about is this. I'm not entirely sure what the backstory was here. Kahoz had lost his mask to Shocker in 1995 (which seems very early for Shocker to pick up that sort of a win even if it was December and after he won the Gran Alternativa). I'm sure everyone knows that Kahoz was a gimmick that Pena himself had used but had given to Astro Rey in the 80s. I hadn't known that until now. Anyway, it doesn't look like there was a ton of build to this. It really doesn't matter.

This followed the beautifully minimalist Chicana vs MS-1 format, though here Fiera was a full tecnico. That meant that Kahoz took over early, spent long minutes beating Fiera to a pulp, bloodying him all around the ring and the ringside area. This was where Fiera shined, selling broadly, bleeding huge, drawing a ton of sympathy. There was little attempt to fight back but that just build up the pressure for the eventual comeback all the more. Kahoz ended the fall with three pick-up/drop downs in a row (which I'm not sure I've ever actually seen. He could have finished him but kept picking him up; more on that later), and a stepover submission. As a primera, it was just as good as MS-1 vs Chicana, I think, a bloody, brutal beating.

The segunda and tercera were still solid, even at times transcendent, but there just wasn't quite enough there to match the very best bloody one-sided brawls. In the moment, like with all Fiera tecnico performances, I kept waiting for the trademark spin-kick to signal the comeback. As a single move, it's not quite as good as Chicana's punch, but it's more stylized, flashier even if less visceral. He hit it early in the segunda, but not until countering a caught kick into an vicious enziguri. From there it was a short but utterly triumphant revenge beating, capped off with a picture perfect frog splash. The Tercera was more of the same, awesome punches, blood and selling, a spot-on kick to the back of the head to send Kahoz to the floor followed by exactly the tope the match needed, all capping with a finish that called back to Kahoz arrogantly picking Fiera back up in the primera.

There was also a commercial for "La Sexy Olympia," and normally, I'd post a gif, but this match is too good to distract from. Watch the match. You can catch the commercial right before the segunda. Like I said, if you like MS-1 vs Sangre Chicana, you'll probably like this too. Even though it's not as good, that's still as good a company as a hair match can be in.


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posted by Matt D @ 4:00 PM  0 comments

Friday, January 13, 2017

MLJ: 8/1/1997 Torneo Cibernetico

1997-08-01 @ Arena México
Torneo Cibernetico



There was a moment where I thought we were looking at a MOTYC here. Then, after a major detour, there was yet another moment where I thought the match could still pull it out. Ultimately it didn't but it's still well worth watching. In some ways it's late 90s CMLL at its best.

First of all, look at the talent involved. For tecnicos, you had Negro Casas, Felino, Ultimo Dragon, Shocker, and Fiera. For Rudos, it was Hijo del Santo, Scorpio, Jr., Bestia Salvaje, Dr. Wagner, Jr., and Satanico. Shocker and Wagner weren't fully developed yet (though they had years under their respective belts). Fiera wasn't what he had once been. Dragon has some definite flaws as an all-around wrestler, but ciberneticos were made to smooth out all of those things.

More importantly, there were two major feuds here, and there would be, in the subsequent weeks following this, two major apuestas matches, the Fiera vs Bestia Salvaje one a couple of weeks before the Anniversary show and then the long-overdue Casas vs Santo match at the Anniversary itself. That brought the heat and the structure of payoff, with Salvaje dodging Fiera until the very end (mainly using Scorpio as a shield), and with Wagner and Santo targeting Casas. It's what's so often lacking in modern cibeneticos. They're all action and usually worth watching, but they're rarely grounded with any sort of substance to them.

Here there was plenty of that, on top of a lot of fun pairings. Satanico looked great as a base for Felino. Dragon was at his explosive best. Santo and Casas differentiated their feud with that of Salvaje and Fiera by actively going at it. Fiera, on the other hand, seemed amused by Salvaje's stooging cowardice:


Great action and quality workers buoyed by two storylines is more than you can ask for from any CMLL cibernetico. Unfortunately, it veered too far into the realm of story progression. Just before the commercial break, Wagner dropped Casas with a brutal sit-out martinete. He and Santo continued on him in the corner and then as he was being brought to the back as Felino and Dragon tried to provide interference. It was super heated but both took a number of the best wrestlers out of the match and caused a distraction where we didn't see the action in the ring for a few minutes. Casas continued to sell it on the ramp but with Felino's help, he fought back enough where he was able to appeal to the crowd and make it to the back on his own power.


Even then, I thought everything would work out because we'd have a string of falls followed by some assuredly heated Salvaje and Fiera exchanges. They both had it in them after all. We did get the former, but the latter was a non-starter. They went at it a bit before an inadvertant ref bump ended the match. Fiera wanted things to continue and Salvaje, having tasted blood and also knowing that he had a DQ loss if things stood as they were wasn't playing chicken anymore, but they only got a few shots in before the ref separated them again. Deferring gratification is part of what makes lucha tick but in this case I wish they had been allowed to go at it a bit more first.

So this wasn't an all-time classic but it is a solid cross-section of what CMLL had to offer going into the Anniversary show. If nothing else, you'll get to see a deranged Lucky Charms commercial if you watch it (I'm sure Phil will love this gif being on the site):


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posted by Matt D @ 12:00 PM  0 comments

Saturday, January 07, 2017

MLJ: Blue Panther vs Negro Navarro [FMLL MASTER]

2016-11-20 @ Florentine Gardens, El Monte, California
Blue Panther vs Negro Navarro [FMLL MASTER]


Eight minutes of maestros lucha for the FMLL belt from CA that went under the radar. Fredo posted it on twitter (I went back and looked) but it's only picked up 71 views on youtube. It's a shame too because it's absolutely worth ten minutes of your time.

Apparently Blue Demon was supposed to be in this slot but he bowed out and we're so very glad he did. This is straight up maestros Navarro. They play to the crowd early (after a tricky first pin attempt that we come in on) but past that there's no shtick really. It's holds and counterholds, the game of human chess, etc., with some really unique submissions and subtle but logical transitions and callbacks.

There's nothing in wrestling quite like watching two lucha greats try to keep each other from breaking a hold. It's the little things that really stand out. Breaking down one moment: Navarro had an advantage towards the beginning; he'd freed his arm on a tied up leg submission and used that to turn it into a modified figure four. Eventually, Blue Panther made the ropes, but the selling of the hold allowed Navarro to go straight to a stepover armbar into a sort of Hechicero-style upside down contortion. He couldn't hold it for long, however, and Panther was able to create some space and hit an armdrag which he then locked in tight from the ground position. Navarro kept trying to get his leg over to break the hold and Panther kept putting a single hand up to redirect it. This lasted around ten seconds until Navarro was able to make it over and break the hold. How great is all of that? It's plenty great, let me tell you.

As I said, there was a decent amount of build through call backs too. Later on, Panther went for the Nudo only to get shoved off. He still managed the Fujiwara armbar though, and here we had a mirrored rope break to what came before. Part of the selling between them was the most natural thing in the world because there's nothing quite as believable as old man fatigue. They'd manage some vaguely athletic things (a reverse cross-body or a headstand out of a headscissors by Panther), but you absolutely bought that he wouldn't be able to follow up. That's how he was opened up for a big Navarro clothesline. At the finish, he tried one of his own only for Navarro to duck it and manage a herculean old man lifting armbar and backwards roll (execution could have been a little stronger but the level of difficulty was high). Just a little repetition there to instill meaning to the finish.

Anyway, it's always great when one of these FMLL matches pop up. I'm glad this one did.

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posted by Matt D @ 3:06 PM  0 comments