CMLL on CadenaTres: 2013-01-05

recap

taped 2013-01-01 @ Arena Mexico

Polvora out dives Titan!

Delta, Guerrero Maya Jr., Tritón vs Kráneo, Olímpico, Psicosis: good midcard Invasors match as the slow build to Kraneo vs Guerrero Maya continues. They didn’t do anything extraordinary here – especially Triton, who feels like he’s being restricted some matches – but what they did went okay. Fine match for the show, with bigger stuff to come.

Polvora steals his brother’s finisher, though it’s not like he’s using it much

Pólvora vs Titán for the CMLL World Welterweight Championship: One of the best matches of the year to start the year. These guys probably could’ve wrapped up six minutes prior to when they actually did and people would’ve still felt like they had seen a really great match. It’s not as though they past their peak either, they just kept getting better and had saved enough of the really big stuff for late. There was a lot of Pólvora doing un-Polvora stuff like in this match, but the story of this to me was the remaking of Titan. It feels like this was part of effort to reposition him as a fully rounded luchador. He’s got more of a singlet look, he was doing more than token mat wrestling early and the roll thru half crab seemed like a legitimate finish (not just Mascara Dorada doing a hold as a joke about how Mascara Dorada doesn’t do holds.) He had the neat multiple chop spot and the impressive torture rack strength lift. Titan still do plenty of flips and the biggest near fall of the match was the handwalk bacflip headscissors cradle, but the match was a lot more than Titan high flying. That’s totally atypical from what CMLL’s young técnicos do and have been trained to do. Triton, Delta, even an Angel de Oro (who’s been around here for a lot longer), would’ve had to rely on doing four different dives in the match to make it work. Titan did one, and even that one was more about Polvora’s huge dive into the crowd and not some crazy flip Titan did. It’s not really like they’re nerfing, it’s that they’re expanding what Titan does in a way that makes him very different than most of his técnico competition. Titan’s going to be here for the long haul.

Zavala wins like a rudo

Leono & Tigre Blanco vs Bobby Zavala & Disturbio for the hair: A good brawl between two teams who seemed really angry with each other. I find it hard to believe Disturbio as a threat, but he was good here and Bobby Zavala remains always good. Leono was fine and, like the Rayo Tapatios, Tigre Blanco went out with all he could. Finish was fine for young rudos need to win like young rudos.

Shocker in 2013

Atlantis, La Máscara, Shocker vs Averno, Mephisto, Tiger: usual okay main event. By the numbers for a crowd that’s using to seeing these guys as stars (maybe not Tiger) and gave them a decent chance given what they were following. It was tougher on TV to care all that much about this match after the last two were clearly bigger (but then it would’ve been weird to end a show with Disturbio too, so I dunno.)