CMLL on CadenaTres: 2013-09-21

recap

taped 2013-09-17 @ Arena Mexico

Metálico & Sensei vs Espanto Jr. & Zayco: Live, I spent the first third of this match hanging around the merchandise stand. That was a bad move. I should’ve spent the whole match (and maybe some other ones) hanging around out front. This was a low energy, not very exciting opening match. Can’t even blame it on being new guys, since Espanto is the only one of those (though he’s not very good), just blame it on Tuesday.

Diamante, Fuego, Sagrado vs Ishii, Namajague, Shigeo Okumura: Kind of like the Anniversary match, only if you took things down 7 or 9 notches. And Sagrado and Diamante are not Stuka and Rey Cometa. Ishii didn’t stick out in any way except for the superplex at the end, and really neither did the match. Much better than last match but still definitely only OK.

Delta, Guerrero Maya Jr., Máximo vs Ephesto, Mephisto, Negro Casas: This one took me twice as long to watch because I kept getting distracted (by paint drying) and had to rewind to see why a different side was in control. There usually wasn’t any good reason. Lucha libre is definitely better live; I knew this wasn’t a good match in the arena, but it bored me much more on TV. The interplay with Negro Casas and Maximo that was fun live after the match was totally missed here, which surely didn’t help. Disappointed at the near zero Maya/Negro interaction.

Máscara Dorada, Mistico, Valiente vs Euforia, Gran Guerrero, Niebla Roja: Best tag match on the show by a large margin, even despite Gran Guerrero not being ready for prime time. He struggled with Mascara Dorada in a fashion no one else seems to, or maybe it was just the torito move itself which was too much for him since it went wrong three times. Místico looked really good here, Valiente was good in what he got to do and Mascara Dorada is from a different planet. This one felt longer live and I wonder if I missed some edits or it just felt longer because it was actually good.

Terrible vs Shocker for the CMLL World Heavyweight Championship: GREAT. Liked this so much more the second time thru; the story they were telling and the subtle parts of it came thru to me so much claar this time (either because it’s on TV or because I wasn’t sleepy.) Shocker, perhaps inspired by all the maestros matches, trying to beat Terrible by wrestling and nearly pulling it off worked very well for the first two falls, and Terrible selling the figure four as a reason Shocker was able to catch up to him make the third fall even more fun. This match seemed slow live, but absolutely did not feel that way on TV. It was well worked and smartly worked, and Shocker even survived a near death experience.

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