taped 2014-07-15 @ Arena México
Hombre Bala Jr., Oro Jr., Súper Halcón Jr. vs El Rebelde, Hooligan, Metálico: These técnicos have never been the most consistent, but this was an unusually sloppy match for them. It was the worst Hombre Bala match in quite some time, just not on the same page with the rudos multiple times. Hooligan and Hooligan Jr. got to do a few fun things, but not enough to make this work. Generally, I wish this was 15 years ago and they were still doing prematch vignettes, because the three rudos plotting might have been better than this match.
Dragon Lee, Sagrado, Starman vs Okumura, Skándalo, Virus: Way too much Skándalo and not enough Virus. Skándalo was not much good, and was not much interested in protecting Dragon Lee on his package piledriver. Skandalo seemed concerned with getting in his usual spots, and not in catching Dragon Lee’s dive. The best part of the match is how casually Sagrado walked over to the corner and crotched Okumura. There was no urgency, because Okumura was being a dope. Dragon Lee was doing about a 1/5th of what he did in the tournament. Other guys were average. This was very skippable.
Guerrero Maya Jr. vs Kamaitachi: Up until the death spot, this felt like an unusually one sided match. I like Kamaitachi’s selling, but he’s got not much more than that. Kamaitachi doesn’t have a lot of offense, and his big showcase move (the ramp running dropkick) is probably one that’s not going to be of much use to him back in NJPW. I have no idea what how they were thinking they’d safely get the spinebuster to the floor spot to work, but it didn’t look like it was meant to be the finish – Maya was lining up for a dive until he realized Ghost Squirrel wasn’t getting up. They should never do that again and they almost certainly will.
Black Panther, Blue Panther, Cachorro vs Puma, Tiger, Vangellys: Very much a Blue Panther complex trios match with odd structure and twists (a double pin outside of a cibernetico!) but it didn’t come together as well as the earlier Panther trios matches. It took a lot longer to get up to intensity. The first two falls went a while but didn’t have much too them outside of the move chain finishes (and the Panthers looked a lot more steady than the rudos). It seemed like the focus was a little but more on Black Panther than Cachorro, which would not have stuck out in January and now seems like a little bit of a disappointment. This reminded me of better matches which had happened and made me wish for better matches to happen – got to get a Puma/Cachorro match at some point – but wasn’t memorable on it’s own.
Cavernario, Euforia, Mr. Niebla vs Máximo, Titán, Valiente: Cavernario looked great but this didn’t feel like a real main event and was hurt by the cheap and unearned DQ finish. There were sequences there were good but the match didn’t hold together (and it was easy to just tune out after a less than interesting show to this point.) The matches with two short falls and one long fall are a good argument against three fall matches, but this stuck out as an even stronger one. The rudos scarcely cared about winning the second fall, it was an unneeded distraction from their outside the ring brawling and shenanigans.
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