taped 2012-08-24 @ Arena Mexico
This was easily the better block of Universal tournament. It was still the same rushed matches and some of them didn’t work, but a couple of the early round matches were laid out better and weren’t clipped to death. The strategy always seems to be a quick cut to the last four minutes of a normal match, which worked better for some combinations the others.
Not Good: Whoever put together Pólvora vs Diamante Azul appeared to confuse them for Angel de Oro & Niebla Roja. The strength of these guys is not agility or aerial ability, but somehow this match was built around dives and not them hitting or lifting each other. Hiroshi Tanahashi looked depressingly like he was going to mail in this trip baed on how he started versus Marco Corleone, but it got better.
Fine For What It Was: Volador Jr. and Máximo didn’t go two minutes, and really was just a finishing squence. Beside the short times, it was peciular to see so many usual match enders as quick kickouts; Maximo’s kiss cradle was not just a near fall, but totally ignored 3 seconds later to get backcracker in.
Okay, but hurt by the circumstances: It feels strange to ask for a longer La Mascara singles match, especailly with Volador Jr., but their match was way too compressed to totally work here. They included some reasonable drama in the finish, but it still came off as clipped. Volador’s other match, versus Hiroshi Tanahashi was slower than it really needed to be (they were selling the grueling 8 minutes of wrestling they had done previously.) There is no doubt they could have a much better one on regular circumstances, but the finish didn’t work for me under any circumstances. Volador should’ve had some hope of a win in between the missed frog splash and the one that worked. If that corner spot was supposed to be the Volador Spiral, it didn’t come off that way. (Announcers who know the lucahdor’s finishing moves might have helped.)
Actually good matches: I’m not sure I’d ever want to see a 10-15 minute Dragón Rojo Jr. versus La Máscara match, but they did well with the 4.5 version of one here. A lot of hot action and believable near falls. Maybe a little too much stopping to play to the crowd but the action was good when they were acting. Pólvora should lose ever match the way Dragon Rojo lost this match. Hiroshi Tanahashi vs Diamante Azul was the best laid out match of the tournament. Diamante Azul seems caught in between playing a bigger version of everyone else and a totally different power wrestler, and the totally different power wrestler is the one that interests me. Tanahashi playing this off as 1980s Ric Flair, lightly regarding the local hero only to realize the tremendous danger he (and the NWA World Heavyweight Title) are in and narrowly escaping, was perfect. Props to Wally Karbo for putting together the match.