Recapped: 09/08/2017
All matches aired live Arena México
Matches:
Akuma & Espanto Jr. beat Astral & Oro Jr.
(11:21, 1/3, ok)
Drone, Fuego, Guerrero Maya Jr. beat Puma, Tiger, Virus
(18:28 [8:11, 3:37, 6:40], 2/3, ok)
Rey Cometa, Soberano Jr., Stuka Jr. beat Cavernario, Negro Casas, Sam Adonis
(13:09 [6:40, 6:29], 1/2, ok)
Rey Bucanero beat Titán in a lightning match
(8:04, moonsault boot counter, ok)
Kojima, Pierroth, Rush beat Diamante Azul, Valiente, Volador Jr.
(10:48 [2:44, 1:35, 6:29], 2/3 DQ, below average)
Euforia, Gran Guerrero, Último Guerrero beat Dragón Lee, Marco Corleone, Mistico
(11:43 [4:41, 2:15, 4:47], 1/3, good)
What happened:
Kojima & Volador feuded. Rush pulled the ref out to stop a Volador win, and Kojima faked a foul to win.
Sam and his partners didn’t get along from the start, and Sam was never much interested in the match as much as annoying his partners. Casas and Cavernario fought Adonis, and held him in place for Stuka’s splash. Everyone attacked Sam Adonis after the match.
Espanto Jr. replaced Canelo Casas. Akuma and Astral seemed shaken up after an Akuma third fall dive, though it might have just been mostly selling.
Thoughts:
A largely boring show. The best matches were slightly different versions of matches we’ve seen many times. You can easily skip this one.
The main event was a good match in very much the normal fashion between the two teams. Like the other good match on the show, it picked up a lot in the third fall. Dragon Lee & Mistico doing crazy things were the highlights. Gran Guerrero pinning Mistico made sense in the building up, where few things have been logical. Not sure it’ll make much of a difference at this point, nothing on this show felt like it mattered.
The semimain has notably low effort, with Volador and Kojima the few people who felt into this at all, and most of that was them doing comedy bits. Valiente & Rush had an awful exchange where they were selling moves that were missing by miles. I hardly remember Carístico in this match, except for Pierroth failing to catch a dive like usual.
The lightning match was slow and mostly uninteresting, about what you would expect out of Rey Bucanero in a pointless singles match in 2017. Not sure why this match happened, not sure why Bucanero needed to win, not sure why I watched this. Titan going into the crowd was neat. That was all you need to see.
The tercera was just a weird waste of time, something that didn’t really work. The rudos spent most of the first fall doing the breakup, fought during the break, and then apparently felt a need to go thru a normal match so the técnicos could get in some spots in the second fall. They had made the ending pretty inevitable after the first fall, to the point where a second fall didn’t even seem to have a need, but they made it go long anyway. Sam Adonis getting destroyed was popular but it didn’t make for a good match.
The second match had slow first fall, with the crowd not feeling the Virus/Maya mat work (which may have caused it to end early) and the other exchanges not impressing. It picked up a little bit in the second fall and a lot in the third fall, which was good in itself. Still, there’s so many similar matches with that guys, this seems below average for them. Fuego looked like the best guy all match, and definitely the one the crowd was most into. The ending sequence with Drone & Virus was well done.
The still-new dives livened up what was a normal opening match; they put more creativity to them than much of their work inside the ropes. Oro looked worse than usual, Astral maybe slightly better.
