CMLL on ClaroSports.com: 2018-07-13 

Mistico

Recapped: 07/13/18

Matches: 

Metálico & Sangre Azteca beat Príncipe Diamante & Súper Astro Jr.
(20:50 [9:31, 3:53, 7:26], 1/3, ok,
VideosOficialesCMLL)

Audaz, Fuego, Star Jr. beat Kawato San, Okumura, Universo 2000 Jr.
(15:03 [4:06, 2:28, 8:29], 2/3, good, 
VideosOficialesCMLL )

Dalys beat La Jarochita in a lightning match
(4:27, powerbomb, ok,
VideosOficialesCMLL )

Carístico, Dragón Lee, Mistico beat Cavernario, Gran Guerrero, Negro Casas
(11:40 [3:00, 1:49, 6:51], 2/3, good,
VideosOficialesCMLL)

Atlantis, Octagón, Rayo de Jalisco Jr. beat Fuerza Guerrera, Máscara Año 2000, Último Guerrero
(12:59 [1:59, 3:55, 7:05], 2/3, ok,
VideosOficialesCMLL )

Rush & Terrible beat Valiente & Volador Jr. © to win the CMLL World Tag Team Championship
(23:01 [5:19, 4:13, 13:29], 1/3, great,
VideosOficialesCMLL)

What happened:

bringing back an oldie

Rush & Terrible won the tag team titles, though with a foul on Volador to do it.

Atlantis was honored for his 35th Anniversary. All the wrestlers wrestled in their mask for a traditional match. Money was thrown in after. Atlantis Jr. & Hijo del Atlantis appeared with Atlantis prior to the match.

Carístico and his partners didn’t get along, though it wasn’t played up a lot. They had a standoff post-match, but the camera shot the crowd instead.

Thoughts: 

doomed

The main event worked as the show ender on a big show. There was a simple story of Los Ingobernables just being a little bit better in form as a team than Valiente & Volador. One team crashed into each other on a dive, the other successfully distracted the referee for a foul. The match itself tried to bridge the two different styles; this wasn’t quite the athletic display of other Volador big matches, nor was it the brawl Rush has been doing with LA Park. Terrible still seemed nervous taking the big Volador moves, but it and the Spanish fly on Rush went OK. The crowd made this feel like a big match, taking the matchup from good to something more borderline.

The legends match was a perfectly fine match – so much better than usual CMLL legends match. Including Último Guerrero feels like cheating, it brings the average up so much. Still, Fuerza Guerrera and Mascara 2000 also worked well off the técnicos too. This might have been Mascara’s best performance of the year, or at least the one where he felt least out of place. Fuerza taking backdrops in his sixties is crazy. The rudos were able to work thru the técnicos usual spots, and there was never a sad moment where they were failing at them. Rayo seemed to wrestle an out-sized portion of the match, but it means less Octagon and a little less Atlantis and that was fine. Everyone got what they wanted out of this and it didn’t overstay their welcome.

The fourth match was primarily a técnico showcase. They were so focused on the técnicos doing neat moves that they didn’t really have time for the técnicos to feud among themselves and they went out of their way to ignore after the match. This wasn’t the most they could do, but plenty to impress a crowd which seemed more willing to cheer the técnicos on this show. It was notable to see Gran Guerrero catching the big diving headscissors to the outside. These matches used to go out of their way to keep Gran Guerrero from being in those positions and now he was in the center of them.

Audaz comes at it from a different direction

Dalys matches continue to look like a cold repetition of match practiced many times, and a single match exposes that style more. The match had plenty of action but was short because they were running thru their prescribed spots at a fast pace, and didn’t think to do anything in between. Both women also reacted to the moves when they expected them to be happening, not when they actually did. The style did have a lot more moves than expected for a women’s match, but those weren’t performed well. La Jarochita’s big spot is her facewash running boot to the face, but her kick and Dalys’ face didn’t come close to each other. Jarochita’s suplex looked good, and she didn’t have much more offense to go wrong, because Dalys seemed to take 70% of the match. It’s unusual to control so much of a match and still win, but that’s about where the women’s division is right now.

The segunda was better fun than it looked on paper. Kawato and Star Jr. have been working together enough that they have some chemistry and a lot of spots to do. (Star Jr. could use something other than a cutter though.) Universo did more basing for Audaz in this match than their lightning match, and they could hide the errors better in a trios match. Fuego was way over and Okumura also existed. The third fall went long and the crowd seemed antsy for them to get on with the parts of the show they came for, but the action was still good. This was closer to being great than OK.

The opener got a lot of time, more than usual, and it allowed us to see more of the técnicos than usual. The absurdly long first fall lost my interest a bit, but surely allowed the Atlantis photo session to go on a bit longer. It got better in the second fall once the técnicos finally got their comeback and picked up the action. The wrestling wasn’t clean. Metálico took Principe Diamante’s to end the second fall really nicely, though only after he and Diamante got lost on the spot to set it up, and after he lost Astro on a headscissors. Super Astro has an advantage on most of these rookies of late by being able to do his father’s spots, which are still recognizable but still seem fresh since he hasn’t been wrestling regularly in a long time. Astro is talented him, but it’s helped him stand out in a way Principe Diamante hasn’t gotten to yet.

Kawato can do a sequence.

 

Puma King leaves CMLL, Ovett takes X-Fly’s hair, Cuatrero/Angel de Oro tonight in Puebla

Puma

IWRG (SUN) 07/15/2018 Arena Naucalpan [+LuchaTV, The Gladiatores]
1) Atomic Star & Death Metal b Ángel Estrella Jr. & Shadow Boy Facebook video (posted by )
2) Aramis & Mexica b Hijo del Mosco X-Fly & Lunatic Xtreme
Mosco & Lunatik did not get along
3) Ra-Zhata, Shil-Kah, Teelo b Leo, Mike, Rafy Facebook video (posted by )
4) Cerebro Negro & Dr. Cerebro b Freelance & Relámpago Cabellera vs cabellera: Ovett vs Mosco X-Fly en IWRG (posted by +LuchaTV) Facebook video (posted by )
5) Danny Casas, Hijo del Alebrije, Imposible b El Hijo del Medico Asesino, Trauma I, Trauma II Cabellera vs cabellera: Ovett vs Mosco X-Fly en IWRG (posted by +LuchaTV) Facebook video (posted by )
Impossible pinned Medico.
6) Ovett b X-Fly [hair] Cabellera vs cabellera: Ovett vs Mosco X-Fly en IWRG (posted by +LuchaTV) Facebook video (posted by ) Mosco X Fly vs Ovett  ¡¡¡ CABELLERA vs CABELLERA EN LUCHA EXTREMA !!! (posted by Estrellas del Ring)
Extreme match with syringes. Lunatik Extreme helped out Ovett. X-Fly needed medical help for an eye injury after the match, and got his hair cut after.

Streaming was back this year, maybe because both +LuchaTV and InterneTV/AYM were both allowed to do it alive. +LuchaTV has the better pictures but the streaming seemed to buffer a lot. AYM showed more of the show, though they inexplicably went to a break for the entirety of the second match. None of this was advertised ahead of time and who knows if it’ll happen again.

Cuartero and Angel de Oro meet once again tonight in Arena Puebla, one of two Chavez brothers versus NGD title matches in two days. Cuatrero and Angel de Oro had never had a singles match before Cuatrero won the CMLL middleweight championship in January. Cuatrero has won all four of their matches so far, including Angel de Oro’s mask. That probably won’t change tonight, but it still should be a good main event.

The semi-main probably won’t be as good. Los Ingobernables face Atlantis, Caristico, and Euforia, in what was appearing to set up an Atlantis/Rush match last week. The tercera has Dragon Lee, Stuka, and Valiente versus Forastero, Sanson, and Hechicero, which might be a good match if they feel up to it. Local Puebla idol Policeman teams with Kawato & Okumura and Drone, Star, and Stigma in another possibly good match. The show opens with Espiritu Maligno, Fuerza Chicana and Rey Apocalipsis and Milenium, Robin and Tigre Rojo Junior. It’s only a five-match show, which should allow the main event to get plenty of time. The show will air at 9pm on CMLL’s YouTube channel.

Puma King has left CMLL and is now an independent. Last Tuesday’s good trios match was his final match in the promotion. CMLL originally listed Puma as working tomorrow’s show, but replaced him; they had known he was going for a least a while. Puma told MedioTiempo that he was leaving on good terms.

This decision seems like it’s been coming for a while. Puma was the youngest person ever to win a mask match at the Anniversario show in 2012. He’s been stuck at roughly the same place for the six years since. He, as well as Tiger and the Panthers, have been having some of the best matches in CMLL over the last couple years. They have seen little benefit from it. Puma’s gotten some opportunities to wrestle in the US over the last year plus. He seems to have liked them, and I think you’ll be seeing him working north of the border more often now. (BOLA weekend, and the springboard PWG has been for indie wrestlers, is going to be a huge factor in how his career goes from here.) Puma will probably still be wrestling in Mexico – and maybe AAA if he can show up without signing a contract in a similar bit to Zeuxis on the ELITE show – but I think this move out of CMLL is about trying to see what the world has to offer rather than just shifting over to any promotion full time.

This seems worth trying for guys at Puma’s level even if there’s no guarantee this is going to work. Wrestling in the same level for years and decades in CMLL tends to kill luchador’s motivations to care. (If only US indie work was an option when Sangre Azteca was good.) CMLL seems willing to take people back if they leave on good terms, and doubly so if they have about a half dozen family members working there. Puma’s father Felino tried something similar to this in 1999, jumping to AAA to join brother Heavy Metal. It didn’t work out, but he was still able to jump back to CMLL six months later and keep his spot. Puma has a little bit of a buzz with some work in the US, and is still young enough to even get a WWE look. He’s got an opening to take this sort of chance, and it makes the sense to try it. People who watch CMLL regularly are going to miss him, and Tiger is really going to miss him, but it’s easy to understand why Puma’s taking this shot.

Lineups

CMLL (SAT) 07/21/2018 Arena Coliseo
1) Bengala & Retro vs Camorra & Cholo
2) Shockercito, Stukita, Último Dragóncito vs Pequeño Olímpico, Pequeño Universo 2000, Pierrothito
3) La Jarochita, Maligna, Princesa Sugehit vs La Comandante, La Seductora, Metálica
4) Audaz, Niebla Roja, Tritón vs Forastero, Hechicero, Sansón
5) Atlantis, Diamante Azul, Valiente vs Mephisto, Shocker, Terrible

Back running here this week. Maybe no program happening if they’re off in two weeks.