New Japan Pro Wrestling on AXS TV Episode 14 Workrate Report

1. Taichi vs. KUSHIDA (6/8/14)

Well, these two have a bunch of offense that doesn't look very good. KUSHIDA almost seems to be working a parody of high flying gimmicks, as he'll do a springboard but just lightly tap Taichi with a chop on the way down. He also busted out some amusing double axe handles. It's like he's a junior flyer implementing a 70s territorial heel offense. Before the match Taichi attacked KUSHIDA with a chair in some pretty convincing ways, and the match had tons of interference from TAKA, then Alex Shelley came out to even things out. But that pre-match interference led to some good early pinfalls as KUSHIDA wasn't as beaten down as Suzuki-gun thought. A lot of KUSHIDA's strikes don't look great, but he oddly has a bunch of great missed strikes where he cuts close and looks like he woulda just knocked Taichi's block off. At one point we get a nasty moonsault where Taichi gets his knees up and KUSHIDA basically crashes his knees and shins into Taichi's knees and shins. It looked sick. Buuuuuuuut it wasn't a part of the finish so neither man really acknowledged how painful it looked immediately afterwards. Eh. This was what it was.

2. Ricochet vs. Ryusuke Taguchi (6/8/14)

Taguchi took most of this which made it pretty clear that Ricochet was moving forward to the finals. Taguchi looked good in his moments, with a big dive, nice kicks, couple big vertical suplexes, took Ricochet's kicks on the chin. But he also rushed through his moves the way a guy losing a short match rushes through his moves. I've seen Ricochet look better than he looked here, but hey, this was short and designed to make Taguchi look strong in a loss so whatever.

3. Ricochet vs. KUSHIDA (Best of the Super Juniors 2014 Finals)

Hey this was fun! Not that I was expecting it to be bad, but for a 24 minute match this thing just cruised right on by. I enjoyed it all, too, just a fun little match. The opening felt like early 2000s indy stuff, but in a good way, like the first time I saw Low Ki vs. Red. And the handsprings and backflips actually got integrated well, instead of feeling like a well-rehearsed dance routine. And it led to our first great moment, when Ricochet went for a handspring elbow and KUSHIDA hit a low dropkick right into his arm mid-handspring. Great spot, followed by KUSHIDA hitting a massive and accurate flip dive over the buckles (and Ricochet did a good enough selling his wing the rest of the way). KUSHIDA's Hoverboard Lock is a cool/goofy/fun/effective submission and I dug how it kept playing into the stretch. Ricochet goofed around maybe a little much during this, but that is his personality and the fans over there like him so it's probably a nitpick. Tons of good stuff in this, a real satisfying addition to a tournament that used to be one of my favorite yearly things and is now something that I don't really care about.

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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: Invasores Interlude I: Shigeo Okumura, Taichi, Virus vs Hijo del Fantasma, La Máscara, La Sombra

Taped 2010-04-12 @ Arena Puebla
Shigeo Okumura, Taichi, Virus vs Hijo del Fantasma, La Máscara, La Sombra

3:03 in

http://youtu.be/bTe9kb_kykY

http://youtu.be/0-NFrnKuvBY

I know what you're thinking. Why the heck am I watching a Taichi match for no apparent reason? There's no Volador here at least (I'm on anti-Volador, Jr, kick right now and will avoid him when possible), but Taichi is definitely there and Mascara is looming too. Even 2010 Virus isn't enough to offset that. There's a method to my madness, though. This isn't any match but the start of a fairly big angle (I say fairly big because while it had a big footprint, it started in Puebla and there just seems to be something off about that).

The entrances were pretty great. Virus' look back then was awesome. He had this cool robe, a mask over that, some spiky arm things. I get that there's a sort of maestro feel he has now, where some of this might take away from his skill or distract from it, but it was a really great look and it's a shame he went away from it. Kemonito, carried by someone, came out wiht Mascara, wearing a shirt. More on this later. Sombra and Taichi were captains. I have no idea how Taichi gets to be captain of anything.

I quite like Fantasma; he never really wows me but he's always more than solid, someone who was ideal in matches like this because he could really serve as the glue, as someone who knew his role and could play it well and by doing so, helped to keep everything together, usually without going into business for himself like Wagner or someone. He was fairly young at this point too. I've said it before but it's a shame that they didn't keep him around (he jumped to AAA in 2013). Okumura, on the other hand, never really makes an impression on me.

The structure was a little weird here, which is quite often a red flag for the finish of the match. I've seen people complain about the typical CMLL structure lately, but I've kind of come to love it over the last year. It's the ebb and the flow and it provides a great point of comparison because you get to see how a number of different wrestlers work within the same constraints; more often than not, to reach this level, they know how to do great things within it.

Whenever the match diverges, it changes the mood because it raises your attention a little. That was the case here. They went through the motions of a standard back and forth opening with a rudo takeover. Fantasma carried Taichi to something halfway tolerable. Sombra and Okemura turned up the pace a bit,  but the rudos swarmed immediately thereafter so we never got to see what Virus would have done with Mascara.

At this point, in a normal match, we'd skid to a relatively quick rudo taking of the fall, ride the beatdown into the segunda, have a tecnico comeback, an then reset for a lot of tecnico-vs-the-world antics, some posturing, and a few dives for the finish. Instead, Virus, directing traffic, set up Fantasma for an Okumura missile dropkick and the pin, but then Sombra ducked past everyone to tope Virus and planchaed his way back in off the top onto Taichi. He ducked a double team kick and hit his split legged moonsault on Taichi (still inexplicably the rudo captain) to take the fall. They basically rushed through the beatdown to the comeback in one fall. It was a sign that either this was going to go two falls or that it was going to have that added loop of a second beatdown.

As it was, the segunda was mostly everything you'd want in a tercera from these pairings. Virus got to stooge a bit. We had those tecnico-vs-the-world spots where one tecnico fought off all three rudos. There were dive cutoffs to cycle to the next tecnico. Kemonito got to do the shirt-take-off spot where he can't get it off and then recovered to hit a legdrop. Someone hit that lightning flip over backdrop counter sunset flip I really like. They made Taichi look stupid, and finally, Fantasma and Mascara hit tandem topes. That left Taichi and Sombra in there and almost immediately, the former fouled the latter and the tecnicos got the DQ win.

All well and good, right? Once the match was over, the real fun began. Out of nowhere ran in luchadores who had, until recently, been working for the independents, Perros Del Mal and other places: Psicosis II(Reaper/Ripper), Histeria, Manico, Alebrije(Kraneo) and his mini Cuijo. The post production called this the "Invasion en Puebla" and the fans were unsurprisingly going nuts for it. This was about as formula breaking as it got, a mauling from a group of wrestlers not even in the company.

Eventually, the tecnicos set to wrestle the next match, Strongman, Porky, and Mistico hit the ring to chase them off (with Mistico being so good and aware of the situation that he was quickly able to get all attention himself by press slamming Cuije to the outside; he had a chant shortly thereafter). In one of the biggest Crash TV segments I've ever seen in CMLL, the rudos they were to face: Terrible, Averno, and Texano, Jr. followed them right out and started the match. I decided that Strongman and Porky together were probably not something I was up to perusing and decided to move on.

This was certainly a match rushed through to set up an angle, but as such things went, it was an enjoyable one and I thought the angle came over extremely well, the mood set by the weirdness of so sudden a two fall match.

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MLJ: 2010: A Garza Odyssey 16: Hiroshi Tanahashi, Shigeo Okumura, Taichi vs. Héctor Garza, Hijo del Fantasma, La Máscara [CMLL TRIOS]

Taped 2010-05-07 @ Arena México
Hiroshi Tanahashi, Shigeo Okumura, Taichi vs. Héctor Garza, Hijo del Fantasma, La Máscara [CMLL TRIOS]

6:28 in

http://youtu.be/HvgnH1KfEvQ

http://youtu.be/gV9BSDqbtWo

http://youtu.be/N30FjtzLy6c

Hey, it's that Tanahashi guy, air guitar and all. So, I don't watch NJPW, which is some sort of cardinal sin in 2015. I also don't complain to Phil and Eric that, let's say, the really fun Cesaro vs Sheamus handheld from Dublin that no one saw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkuHlFuNO-s) should be ranked higher on the 2014 MOTY chart than some match with Tomohiro Ishii so at least I'm doing no harm, right? After one match, I can safely say that he's someone I'd rather see than Taichi(with the Garza turn I think this is my last Taichi match, thankfully). That's about all I can safely say though because this was the Hector Garza show once again.

We're on the cusp of the full rudo turn which is a bit of a shame as passive aggressive, highly distracted Hector Garza was a lot of fun. He was claiming that he was still a tecnico and that it was all just confusion or his partners being closed-minded and really, who's going to doubt someone who prays as much as he does? He made a massive cross over his chest on the way down the ramp, after all.

This was for the trios titles and there seemed to be a moderate fan worry at the time that he was going to be turned without dropping them which would have been a bit of a mess (and that the worry existed at all spoke to the perceived importance of belts, I think). There's something innately terrible about calling the Japanese guys the Yellow Wave, but that's lucha for you I guess.

There really wasn't much to this match, action wise, which is the problem with Hector Garza being passive aggressive and gobbling up all the attention. It was definitely the right move for the angle, but it meant that this, as a title match, was hardly memorable. There was no dynamic matwork to start off. The comeback was pretty haphazard, though amusing, and then the tercera was about Garza taking his ball and going home as much as anything else.

I think the consistency of character shown was well done though. There are a lot of little moments of back and forth and they would have been hard to script out. The rudos took over in the primera because Garza tossed his shirt to Mascara and Mascara disrespected it. That distracted Garza and he got nailed from behind. Then, once he got out, Garza held on to Mascara long enough that he got blindsided as well. He'd pull his hand in when his partners were nowhere close to the tag and pull it back when they did get close. At one point Mascara tried to toss him back in only for him to dart out the other side of the ring and sit in the crowd.

This went on and on. Garza would grab Fantasma's leg from the outside and then shrug with a smile and the praying motion when the Japanese questioned his actions. He tried to cut off his partners when they were coming back but they ducked him, hit double superkicks on their opponents and then tandem dives, leaving him in the ring with Tanahashi who he quickly rolled up after pointing the other way. In the tercera, he'd even hit a plancha to help set up the finish, during which he just walked away and let his partners get outnumbered.

That was the fun in the match. He wasn't being an evil bad guy. He had claimed that he teamed with Polvora in the Gran Alternativa that he wanted to show everyone that he could be just as good working with a rudo as tecnicos. He was playing an arrogant, rather lazy, character who thought he was above all this, and that came through far more than him wanting to turn on his partners. It reminded me a little of the world's best possible Rob Van Dam, if that makes any sense.

Over the last few matches it's been fun, but it's not the sort of thing that can generate heat in a bubble. There's something almost admirable about it even as it's reprehensible but at the same time, it undermines the babyfaces a little too, so while it was entertaining, I am glad that shortly after this match he does shift more fully onto the rudo side of things.  Here, a few months into the year, I think he's been very impressive. None of the matches I saw him in were over the top great, yes, but he's been consistently good at balancing athleticism, crowd interaction, ongoing character development, and playing his role effectively in the matches. He was very good at what he did.

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MLJ: 2010: A Garza Odyssey 14: Héctor Garza, Shocker, Toscano vs Rey Bucanero, Shigeo Okumura, Taichi

Taped 2010-04-25 @ Arena Coliseo
Héctor Garza, Shocker, Toscano vs Rey Bucanero, Shigeo Okumura, Taichi



On the one hand, I don't entirely get what's going on here. On the other, it's really not important enough for me to figure it out. This was about a week after he had just wrestled Toscano and Shocker and really, there wasn't much of the way of dissension. Garza had mentioned that he had done the previous match since he really just wanted to show people he could do it on both sides of the aisle or something dismissive like that.

Dissension: after the primera, Shocker seemed surprised when Garza made sure to raise his hand. Later on Garza didn't seem too excited about helping his partners when they were getting beat down, even, and this is much more a travesty, when poor Kemonito was eating a suplex from Rey. That seemed to incense Shocker, at least. In the tercera, Garza stopped a Shocker dive since he wanted to do it himself. Shocker persisted but the delay meant that he got kicked from the outside. It didn't really impact the finish.

So those were the interesting interpersonal bits (and the mascot getting suplexed). Past those, it was a sort of lackluster trios match. Taichi was a fun foil for Garza when it came to some of the comedy spots but he was not very good. Okemura was better but didn't really do anything of note. Toscano was just there too. He's a capable role player in these matches but never really stands out as a tecnico. He was a bit lost in the shuffle back in the GdI matches in 06 as a rudo, but even then, his athleticism shined through more.

From what I can tell, Rey was having a great little rudo year on these Coliseo shows. Here he was a complete and utter chickshit dick to Shocker, running and nailing him at times and then dashing away before he could get his comeuppance. I don't think we have any sort of blowoff singles match between them but I would have liked to see it if we did. It actually looks like they had two singles matches BEFORE this and we're on the downslope of the feud. None of them seem to be easily available though. Ah well. Maybe it's not the worst thing because lazy Shocker was in full effect here. There was a lift-up dropkick in here which saw Shocker barely getting off the ground even after the assist from Toscano.

Outside of some fun Kemonito moments (face off with Rey, legdrop, splash, getting suplexed, the Shocker headband!), Garza being passive aggressive, and Rey Bucanero's great chickenshit work, there wasn't much notable here. I'm tempted to track down more of Rey from 2010 though. If I make it into summer, 2010 with Garza, I'll get a few fun looking Invasores vs Peste Negra matches so those might be fun.

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MLJ: 2010: A Garza Odyssey 10: Héctor Garza, Hijo del Fantasma, La Máscara vs Taichi, Terrible, Texano Jr.

Taped 2010-04-02 @ Arena México

Héctor Garza, Hijo del Fantasma, La Máscara vs Taichi, Terrible, Texano Jr.

2 mins in

http://youtu.be/OV7yWOIidDA?t=00h04m12s

http://youtu.be/JD7L8Z7_Lzg

Ok, I'll admit it. There are probably better ways to watch lucha. Maybe I should just be watching a number of apuestas matches and the few weeks leading up to them. Or I should find the most critically acclaimed stuff, or something extremely topical. Or every Negro Navarro match ever. What can't be understated, however, is just how little I knew coming into this project when I started back in April. A number of people have been a big help in suggesting matches or clarifying things to me, but I'm still feeling things out. Going through a year, week by week, helps me see a lot of different things. I'm bound somewhat by the footage available online and then somewhat by having an entry point, or a control. Here it's Garza. I could have used Ultimo Guerrero or Mistico or Casas just as easily. I wanted someone I was a little bit familiar with, but hadn't seen that much of, and I knew his rudo run from later in the year seemed interesting. Mainly, I wanted to see what CMLL looked like in 2010 and to be exposed to a lot of luchadors I hadn't seen much of or any at all. That said, I'm probably going to try to stack the deck by phasing out Cavernario on Monday and phasing in either Hechicero or Virus. We'll see.

For now, this is a great way for me to see more Terrible and Texano, who had a hugely entertaining act. It lets me see some Hijo Del Fantasma too, who seemed more than competent. I love the gimmick. It feels very detached from its comic strip roots. Instead, he seems to be over for being his father's son and that legacy means more than the particular gimmick. That, kind of ironically, actually sort of plays into the Phantom's own generational mythos.  I have no idea if that resonates with fans or not.

One major change between then and now are the fans. This is a few years after the hottest period as best as I can tell but there seemed to be a much larger tecnico following. In this match Mascara and Fantasma both received chants (though, like in most i've seen in 2010, Garza was the captain). With the blurred lines today there's hardly any real tecnico to even get behind. It feels like a lot of the loudest fans have left accordingly.

This was an A-B-A structure, with a very long first A. In a southern style tag, that's generally a week point. More often than not, you'd want the heat to start as early into the match as possible so that the emotional resonance has a lot of time to build. With recent lucha matches, everything tends to be so stilted that having a nice long back and forth showcase for the tecnicos before things break down can be really enjoyable and add to a match.

A lot of the exchanges were very good too. I liked Fantasma and Terrible a lot, though maybe given his gimmick (which he worked quite well generally), Terrible shouldn't be doing a flip up to end it. Texano led Mascara through the paces fairly well. They kept relatively close contact but there were moments where I swear Mascara moved himself off of a pin in order to hit the next spot which is the sign of not being all that good at your job or at least not leading with the meaning behind what you do. Taichi was generally a good foil for Garza, and for Kemonito too as the two of them had a small face off. Garza got all of his clothes off without getting attacked here, which was a minor miracle and the sort of thing he could probably only get away with against a goof like Taichi. The primera ended with Garza dodging a kick (which went sailing to the apron and nailed Comandate in the face) and hitting a big dive which cleared the ring for Fantasma and Mascara to take the caida (with a German suplex from Fantasma and a submission that I should know the name of from Mascara - Oh hey, it's his Campana, which is apparently his finish, which I've never seen him use. Ok then; this is how I learn).

The segunda started with more exchanges and shine and ended with the beatdown. Mascara looked particularly bad here against Texano and Terrible. They fed into his offense and bumped around for him, but at times he didn't seem to be where he had to be which made it all look disjointed. The transition was fun as the rudos decided they weren't getting anywhere and had a huddle. immediately afterwards, they illegally nailed Garza during some rope running and swarmed. Rudo huddles are great and underutilized. The caida ended with a double heave how powerbomb of sorts followed by Taichi hitting a running kick.

The tercera was short and sweet. Between falls they did the double lift up/drop on Kemonito too (the fiends). After a triple corner attack on Fantasma, they tried the same to Garza, but he backflipped over and then ducked an unintentionally clumsy grab from Taichi who got double dropkicked by his partners. This led to Mascara barely getting Garza up for an alley oop top rope rana and a finishing frog splash from Fantasma and the win. There was a lot of fun stuff here, especially in the first caida and a half but Mascara and Taichi did drag things down a bit.

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MLJ: 2010: A Garza Odyssey 8: Taichi, Terrible, Texano Jr. vs Blue Panther, Brazo de Plata, Héctor Garza

2010-03-26 @ Arena México
Taichi, Terrible, Texano Jr. vs Blue Panther, Brazo de Plata, Héctor Garza

4:09 in

http://youtu.be/JFKLRFZKNRk

http://youtu.be/NTJVeefCBeA

http://youtu.be/KrQCJ5FnCBE

I'm definitely bumping into Porky a lot in these 2010 Garza matches. To be fair, he's sort of hard to avoid. Because he's fat. See? Sorry. You can hit your limit of Porky matches pretty easily, but it is fun to see him against different opponents to see how they utilize him. He's a prop, really, albeit a charismatic one. He was used pretty well here, to be honest. We'll get to that.

So this is actually my first Texano, Jr. match ever. He's obviously on top in AAA so I probably should have seen some more of him by now. I haven't. Maddeningly, this is a panned out shot for most of the match and the only way I can easily tell him apart from Terrible is that he has tassels on his boots. They were both in Averno's stable here. Taichi still has the awesomely goofy jester mask that he comes out with. It's a shame he couldn't wrestle with it on. He's about good for a dropkick and not much else, unfortunately.

There was actually a lot to like here. I just with there was a little more of it, which is a feeling I've had from a lot of these 2010 matches recently. For instance, the primera didn't give us all three match ups again. I'm okay with a beatdown from the start and I'm okay with a cheap cut off after the match-ups, but I do sort of feel cheated if they only give us one and a half before starting the beatdown. On the other hand, it's probably better, in context, if they change things up as much as they can. I still feel a little cheated. here, I liked Terrible and Panther's matwork starting out. I keep thinking that I might go back to Panther again sometime soon, but I doubt with Terrible. If I'm still doing this in six months, I'll definitely look at the Rush/Terrible series, though. I came up with a match list and everything. Also to be fair, they teased the beatdown before it happened. Panther got nailed from behind and rolled out but Garza got to fight back for a moment before the Commandante(?) grabbed his leg from the outside; when he was looking at her, he got taken out. Little twists make the world go round.

The beatdown was fine but not super memorable. Texano's fireman's carry into a backbreaker was really nice and I like it a lot more than similarly contrived things like Valiente's facebreaker finish. I actually thought Texano and Terrible worked really well as a unit and I'd be open to seeing more there, certainly. I could have used a couple more minutes of beatdown. Porky only got in there very briefly, for instance. It ended, nicely enough, with Panther hitting a sunset flip and rolling through to toss his opponent into a Garza shot from the outside. I hadn't seen that before and it's a spot that should be used more. Unsurprisingly Porky falls on everyone (after kissing the valet after a Garza tease of it) and the tecnicos take the segunda.

The tercera was your standard reset so everyone could hit some stuff, but the stuff was good. Terrible made a great foil for Porky, flying around the ring for him and it was pretty funny. Garza has to be the best wrestler in history at doing stupid things like taking bits of clothes off and playing to the crowd that get him clobbered. He manages it, on average, three times per match. It's impressive. Charismatic though. This all went rather briskly with guys going in and out of the ring, including a Panther vs the world segment, and Taichi hilariously running into Porky. In the end Porky sits on Terrible for 3, but he still manages to interfere from the outside in to reverse a sunset flip and let the rudos win. Fun for what it was, but it needed to be a bit more.

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MLJ: 2010: A Garza Odyssey 5: Brazo de Plata, Héctor Garza, Toscano vs Naito, Ray Mendoza Jr., Taichi

Taped 2010-03-02 @ Arena México
Brazo de Plata, Héctor Garza, Toscano vs Naito, Ray Mendoza Jr., Taichi

6:49 in

http://youtu.be/kpXDyYGwkUs

http://youtu.be/fAbVrAYoxi0

http://youtu.be/NhojlPV6NYg

We're back to the land of Garza. I'm probably a terrible wrestling fan in 2014 for having never seen Naito before, but New Japan just isn't my thing. I can probably be forgiven for never seeing Taichi. Mendoza is the unmasked Villano V. I got confused for a minute because I saw a Rey Mendoza, Jr. in WCW but that was IV unmasked. He's probably my biggest draw into this match. Toscano is Tarzan Boy just as a tecnico. He'd peaked and was on the downslope (and I think he's still there). I swear that Porky looked better in 2013 than he did here.

This was a comedy match, no ifs ands or buts. Mendoza directed traffic well for his side and showed a certain glee when paired off against Porky. Garza fit in nicely as he does in most matches. Naito stood out due to the character work, including interacting with the ring girls which is pretty rare in these things. I wouldn't say he was good based just on this but he had been around CMLL for a year or so at that point and he certainly knew what he was doing. Taichi didn't show me much but I think he was fairly new to all of this. Toscano had one fun bit where he clowned Naito with fake handshakes but didn't stand out much past that. Ultimately, this was on the low end of Porky comedy matches.

There were some novel bits. I thought Naito and Toscano did well enough in their early matwork (prior to that Garza led Taichi around but it was not memorable in the least). The rudos took over with a triple kick on Porky and won the primera by making him run the ropes over and over again, which was amusing. The Japanese wrestlers had a thing where they'd send diving awkward kicks from weird angles.

I wouldn't necessarily call the comeback well executed but it was elaborate enough, in a trudging through molasses sort of way. It ended with a double drop toe-hold by Toscano and Garza sending a head into a groin and all three rudos into the corner for a Porky charge followed by a couple of roll ups and a Porky second rope splash on Taichi who certainly had dues to pay apparently.

I wish we had more Mendoza here. He was fun in stooging against Garza, messing around with the latter's taken off shirt like the world's greatest Felino, but he had been paired up with Porky to begin so there wasn't much chance. That probably says all you need to know about me though: I'd rather see old man Villano V than Naito if given the chance. Anyway, the slow trickle of comedy slowly slowly drained to its end and Porky hit a dive onto poor Mendoza on the outside and Toscano and Garza (who made for pretty good partners, really) locked in a fun double submission for the tecnico win. I swear that Porky seems bigger now, but he seemed way more likely to have a heart attack when I see him in matches from a few years ago. Ah well, they can't all be winners. I'd be open to see some more Naito now, I suppose, but I assume his NJPW work is more "main event style" and less dickish. Instead, let's just move on to a few more GdI matches, which is what's next.

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