Recapped: 05/03/2019
Matches:
Magnus & Oro Jr. beat Akuma & Grako
(12:28 [4:59, 2:49, 4:40], 2/3, ok, 00:01:13)
Avispa Dorada, Kaho Kobayashi, La Jarochita beat Amapola, Dalys, Reina Isis
(15:01 [6:59, 2:39, 5:23], 1/3, good, 00:21:23)
Soberano Jr. beat Mephisto in a lightning match
(6:33, guillotine moonsault, ok, 00:45:28)
Ángel de Oro & Niebla Roja beat Adam Brooks & Mecha Wolf 450
(22:58 [8:16, 3:14, 11:28], 2/3, great, 00:57:10)
Cuatrero, Máscara Año 2000, Sansón beat Euforia, Gran Guerrero, Último Guerrero
(11:43 [4:48, 2:45, 4:10], 1/3, good, 01:30:50)
Carístico, Valiente, Volador Jr. beat La Bestia Del Ring, Rush, Terrible
(12:22 [3:13, 1:53, 7:16], 1/3, good, 01:57:19)
What happened:
Mascara got away with a foul on Último Guerrero. UG wants a hair match, but he and his partners were unmasked by the técnicos.
Terrible & Bestia are bald again for whatever reason. Los Ingobernables took a rare clean loss.
The fourth match was a The Crash vs CMLL special tag match.
Thoughts:
The main event seemed set up to be a quick match with a typically screwy Los Ingobernables finish. Instead, the rudos worked surprisingly hard in the third fall. Rush had a great sequence with Volador, Terrible does the giant swing much better than Vangellys, and La Bestia del Ring did nothing La Bestia-like. They let the técnicos look great too. This was close to something you might expect with the flyers and Los Guerreros than Los Ingobernables. I have no idea why they did it this way, but it worked.
The latest edition of the flying Guerreros was fun until Euforia’s misaimed tope ended the party. I prefer to see Euforia catching people rather than being caught, but this was one of the better matches of their matches playing against type. The NGD worked well with them and Mascara 2000 seems motivated by the decision to give him another feud. This was about as good as this match up could be. Mascara/UG seems not a good use of anyone’s time to me but they got the crowd to care.
The CMLL versus The Crash guys may have been the names people were hoping for but it was the match the show needed. This felt different than normal CMLL, and much different than what a normal fourth match in this position. It was the best or cleanest match. The first fall was a bit dry and there were moments where Brooks and his opponents (and occasionally his partner) didn’t seem familiar enough with each other to be on the same page. It got a lot better over the last two falls, with the effort from guest wrestlers once again driving the CMLL wrestlers to raise their own game to match them. This had the Canadian Destroyer on the apron level of violence not usually seen in Arena Mexico (at least when Dragon Lee isn’t around.) It also had something as basic as a tease of a countout and someone sliding back in 19 to keep fighting, something that’s so routine to be a cliché elsewhere and totally unheard of here. (Earlier in the night, the 20 count was taken so much for granted that the opener was treated like it was over while the referee was still counting. That made this bit seem even more surprising.) I liked Adam Brooks more than I had after seeing him in PWG and this was a really good night for MechaWolf. CMLL teased the idea of this being the beginning of a series of matches. It is tough to believe them – The Crash doesn’t lose the first match if there are real plans – but this demonstrated the reason to do to this sort of thing. It may not necessarily need to be these two guys, but adding people on short term basis has frequently helped CMLL to be better over the last few years.
Soberano went his whole match without doing a tornillo but Mephisto went his whole match without doing much of anything so it worked out. Soberano looked great with everything else, though it felt flat because it was one-sided. Mephisto’s big spot was a powerbomb on the floor that was more about Soberano’s flip and a Canadian Destroyer that was also about Soberano’s flip. He did a lot of flips.
The women’s match didn’t totally work for me but still felt like one of the better ones of this year. Kaho was moving faster than any woman in CMLL in recent memory and hitting her spots well. She seems very into this feud, and Amapola looked the best so far in this feud. Avispa’s new dive looked great and I was amazed it was caught well. Dalys wiped out Jarochita too, and this match moved pretty well. The action just doesn’t impress me as much as other matches but the effort was there.
Opener seemed like it could be good at full intensity. It had something less than that. It wasn’t actively bad but they moved around as if it was the rehearsal match rather than the normal one at times. Rudos too a lot of the match in uninteresting ways as well, with only the Oro headscissors at the end sticking out.