taped 2014-03-11 @ Arena México
Dragon Lee, Metatrón, Oro Jr. vs Canelo Casas, Disturbio, Guerrero Negro Jr.: I guess they were committed to airing this match – and not the tercera, which goes unaired from this card – as soon as they decided to use Canelo & Guerrero in the intro. They may have seconds thoughts when portions of this match turned out to be not good at all. Dragon Lee, who’s all over place getting in moves (including stealing Magnus’ gimmick of stealing WWE spots) loses momentum for the técnicos here by falling on his head on a flip bump. That’s not a good idea, and also not good are the other rudos screwing around and losing Oro because they’re waiting for Guerrero Negro to stop messing around outside. It was better it other parts, but definitely an atmosphere of a long of young (or new) guys not especially knowing what they were doing. It was all the way to Canelo Casas tossing Dragon Lee’s mask instead of hiding it for the finish, exposing the ending in a way that the ref probably should’ve just disqualified him. Many of these guys are not ready for four weeks of focused singles matches.
Atlantis, Delta, Guerrero Maya Jr. vs Misterioso Jr., Pierroth, Vangellys: Simple Rey del Atlantida match with not much going on. Right team won, which shouldn’t be taken for granted here, but the rudos weren’t the right mix to get much out of this match. Comandante Pierroth remains bad, but was not asked to do anything complicated and did not embarrass himself today. Delta waiting for Misterioso to get up so he could tope him instead of Pierroth was highly amusing, as was Misterioso waving around the Puerto Rico flag. Misterioso got more out of being Puerto Rican than Pierroth did!
Diamante Azul, Máximo, Titán vs Cavernario, Herodes Jr., Rey Escorpión: A long match for this position, very focused on building up Rey Escorpion and Máximo for the big kiss at the end. The young Peste Negra members were energetic and didn’t run into any serious problems. I’m unsure how Herodes can see half the time. His hair appears to constantly be in front of his face, even more than Babraro.
Mephisto vs La Máscara for the Mexican National Light Heavyweight Championship: First fall finish was nice, when Mephisto pulling out a different way to get in the campana by turning a normally perfunctory spot right into the finish. Second fall was the opposite, a brief fall where Mephisto was done in ordinary. Clearly, the third fall wasn’t going to end until someone at least tried a campana, so they had a choice of teasing a campana strongly early to get past that expectation, or not doing unbelievable near falls until they were ready to do that campana. Mascara and Mephisto took the third choice, to do all the cliched near finish spots (cavernaria!) and dives for about 13 minutes before finally getting to that campana. It was hard for me to suspend enough disbelief for this to work. And it didn’t get much stronger after the finish tease; this went much longer than it needed to. . I didn’t think Mascara could pull off the super crucifix bomb reversal into a huracanrana, and it turns out he re ally could not. Tecnicos kicking out of Mephisto’s middle rope Devil’s Wings doesn’t get a reaction now. He’s done that bit a few too many times. Crowd was into La Mascara the longer they went, though not as strong as other people. The fan did get into the ring, but was also over so quick that I’m not sure La Mascara and Mephisto knew it actually happened.
