CMLL on Fox Sports (Mexico): 2013-02-23

recap

taped 2013-02-15 @ Arena Mexico

Dalis la Caribeña, Estrellita, Silueta vs Amapola, La Comandante, La Seductora: felt way too long, and that was before the four minutes of promos tacked on at the end. Maybe it would’ve not felt that long if more of it was good, but these matches are becoming less interesting. Amapola is working down to Estrellita’s level, not the other way, and it’s making for dreadfully boring matches.

La Sombra vs Volador Jr. in CMLL’s Reyes del Aire Tournament final: This is a hard one to rate. It’s pretty clear someone royally messed up the times here – this match goes down as lasting less than the woman’s match, which is a poor allocation of resources – and whoever was editing this complicated the problem. They started out just editing out the rest periods but still leaving in enough to make sense, but were jumping over 15 seconds of the match at frequently lost all pretense of a flow. By the end, this was worse than the editing job to their match on 52MX in 2011, because it was even more cut up and also probably a better match. It was as if they were halfway thru the match when they found out the show had to run 3 minutes shorter than expected, and just started cutting this to shreds just to get it done instead of doing something sensible. The women’s match really could’ve been cut down, but they didn’t even have to touch that to give this match more time – the 79th Anniversary promo had no reason to be here, and no one’s going to miss the intros or the extra replay segment at the end if they’re cut out. The match (and the interaction after the match) should be the important parts, but a great one was sacrificed for everything else here. (Crowd noise seemed weirdly turned down.)

In between the crowd shots, there was a lot of good stuff here. I’ve mentioned my concern about both guys here stagnating in other recaps – Volador’s FantasticaMania match with La Mascara was an effort to have the best version of the same match they’ve had many times, and Sombra has started to adopt Ultimo Guerrero tendencies of doing the same group of moves in about the same order in all singles matches – but those concerns were unwarranted here. They did a lot of the big spots they do in their previous matches, but they miced things up a bit, and they added enough different to freshen it up. The headscissors into the barricade spot was good, the Sombra ringpost tope con giro was great and something he doesn’t normally do. It felt like two guys pushing each other to get better, what two guys trying to be the best in their company should be trying to do. A clean finish would’ve been better, but a finish where the rudo trick was foiled is better than nothing. This is a hard match to rate for MOTYC purposes; the match itself was excellent, but the list itself is an advisement of what to rewatch, and rewatching this will just make you frustrated about what was missed. I think I’m leaving it off (and you’ve seen this week so you know if I did), but not without some doubt.