Recapped: 03/28/2017
All matches aired live from Arena Puebla and can be viewed here.
Matches:
Centella Roja & Hijo de Centella Roja (1/3) El Perverso & Sombra Diabólika (15:06 [5:03, 4:51, 5:12], OK)
Apocalipsis, Inquisidor, Policeman (2/3) Black Tiger, Espíritu Maligno, Millenium (13:18 [5:10, 4:30, 3:38], OK)
Misterioso Jr., Skándalo, Toro Bill Jr. (2/3) Fuego, Pegasso, Soberano Jr. (14:36 [8:02, 2:30, 4:04], OK)
Princesa Sugehit (2/3) Zeuxis to keep the Mexican National Women’s Championship (14:09 [3:11, 2:30, 8:28], great)
Marco Corleone, Matt Taven, Volador Jr. (2/3) Euforia, Gran Guerrero, Último Guerrero (12:01 [6:05, 1:42, 4:14], OK)
Diamante Azul, Mr. Niebla, Terrible (1 DQ/2 DQ) La Máscara, Pierroth, Rush (8:36 [3:45, 4:51], ok)
What happened:
Los Ingobernables attacked Marco Corleone & Voladora after their match. (Matt Taven disappeared during replays.) Diamante Azul and his trio made the save. Pierroth was DQed in the first fall for unmasking Pierroth, and Diamante Azul tossed his own mask to Pierroth to draw the DQ. This set up a Azul/Pierroth singles match for next week (though, like most sane people, Rush & La Mascara did not believe that was a smart idea.)
Princesa Sugehit cleanly defeated Zeuxis in a title match. No challenges followed.
Misterioso and Soberano feuded during their match, with Misterioso winning clean and unmasking Soberano after the match.
Policeman and Espiritu Maligno continue to feud, if Policeman beating Espiritu in the third fall of every match counts as a feud.
Thoughts:
I’m probably overrating the title match, but I was really impressed. This was the best Princesa Sugehit/Zeuxis match yet, a highly competitive match between with some cool spots. I’m not sure if it would totally work for people who haven’t been watching them to jump in on, with the last couple of spots especially built on noticing they were escaping each other’s big finish (and the announcers didn’t react big enough to put that over), but there was a lot of stuff to enjoy before it. They worked a lot of near falls, coming up with some different ideas for some of them. I’m not sure we’ve seen the rolling inside cradle by Zeuxis before, and they went back and forth the final few minutes. The big chair toppling bump on the outside was an impressive if probably actually safe moment. Crowd seemed more into this than last week. There weren’t the big high risk moves (closest was Zeuxis’ moonsault, which didn’t appear all that close to connecting to Sugehit), but this had a solid base of ideas building to the big finish. This match with a few more big spots and the natural drama of an important Arena Mexico fight would make for a pretty great mask match, if that’s where they’re headed.
The opener was solid if artificial feeling. There were sequences that felt too practiced and the finish didn’t fit the flow of the action. Centella Roja Sr. does the slow old man moves without having being around on screens for two decades to have earn the pass for it. H’s trying, he just got around too late. His son looks better, and Perverso at least improved his shirt section.
The Policeman/Espiritu feud keeps on going on. CMLL’s inability to tell their stories in different ways hurts with programs like this. They’re clearly killing time until some already known date to have the big match, but they have only one idea what to do with these guys until then. I know this was a different match than past weeks because we hardly ever see Apocalipsis, but it didn’t feel like a new match.
The Misterioso/Soberano was the closet to work of the undercard trios matches. Toro Bill had a nice tope, which alone was better than the last matches. Misterioso’s main tactic for dealing with Soberano was laying down on the floor. It seemed to work. This was better build to the inevitable singles match than other feud, mostly because Soberano got to look cool for a little while before getting beat. It wasn’t as much of Soberano as I’d like, but it was more reason to care about him than Espiritu has been given. CMLL kind of messed up the surprise in the first fall, following with Soberano as he came in the ring instead of letting us see Misterioso being shocked by being cradled from behind.
Semimain was an unexpected Marco Corleone showcase. The other guys didn’t disappear, Taven did a good job of annoying the Guerreros often, but Marco seemed to go thru everything from his normal routines and won with Aero Italia. It worked well, everyone like his offense, and the leapfrog bit sticks out more now because we don‘t see it as often.
The main event was the same general match as last week with some different finishes. Terrible & Niebla were sufficient as mean guys who were sick of Los Ingobernables, but my general disinterest in this rivalry definitely wasn’t overcome by this match. They’ve shown they can have a boring match, which causes me to believe we’re not even going to get mishap hilarity next week.