CMLL FantasticaMania Tokyo Day 3: 2018-01-22

Recapped: 01/22/2018

Matches: 

Fuego & Ryusuke Taguchi beat Disturbio & Puma
(8:53, Fuego La Guelaguetza Disturbio, good )

Okumura, Rocky Romero, SHO, YOH beat Jushin Liger, Kushida, Star Jr., Tiger Mask 
(11:13, Okumura reverse DDT, good)

Cuatrero & Sansón beat Ángel de Oro & Niebla Roja to finish third place in the CMLL Hermanos tournament
(9:17, Sansón super Poder Dinamita Angel de Oro, good)

Bárbaro Cavernario & Gedo beat Atlantis & Hirai Kawato  
(9:14, Barbaro Cavernario cavernaria Kawato, ok)

Bushi, Hiromu Takahashi, Tetsuya Naito beat Drone, Soberano Jr., Volador Jr. 
(8:38, Bushi bridging backslide Drone, good)

Rush beat Satoshi Kojima  
(10:14, Rush Driver on Kojima, good)

Gran Guerrero & Último Guerrero beat Dragón Lee & Mistico to win the CMLL Hermanos tournament
(18:46, Último Guerrero Guerrero Special on Mistico, great)

What happened: 

Los Guerreros won the brothers tournament. Kawato finished up in NJPW for now. Volador & Naito had issues in their match.

Thoughts:

The main event is the only must see match on the show. It’s a fairly easy watch the whole way thru. It’s also a pretty quick one with no intermission. That’s part is slightly disappointing; the main event and the LIJ match might have been even better with a little more time and they seemed to have it if they wanted it.

I’d have the main event below the Gran Guerrero/Niebla Roja match on the tour, but it’s not that far behind. They got nearly 20 minutes to make something of it, and we got a lot of the big spots we’d normally see in a singles match. Mistico looked on all match, with the platform headscissors coming off really well among the rest. Dragon Lee and Gran Guerrero’s two long chop fights got over well (though I probably would’ve been OK with one; the second one seemed like they got lost for a second and used it to reset themselves.) It was noticable they pretty much stuck to Mistico/UG and Dragon Lee/GG matchups for most of the match. I woudl’ve liked to see some intermixing, but I wonder if we’ll end up seeing more Gran Guerrero versus Dragon Lee this year. Lee’s double stomp to apron looked brutal for Gran Guerero, and the one big flaw of the match was how the finish came so quick afterwards – so fast that the bump didn’t get time to sink in and so quick that it wasn’t clearly how Mistico and UG got into that position anyway. Still, it was a suitable fun way to close out the tour.

Kojima & Rush was about as good as could be expected from those two. It was the hard hitting match it kind of needed to be. The chair shot to the head is going to be the thing talked about most from this match, but the rest of the match was interesting too. Rush taking a DDT just like his brother was amusing, and he sold big for most everything Kojima did. Rush tried, and that’s all I hope for out of Rush. That he won, and won cleanly, makes me think there’s a good chance he’ll be NJPW’s issue come August.

The fifth match was fun while it lasted, and it was just a shame it ended so quickly after the triple dive. Drone seemed to be doing better but also seemed to be get trashed for most of the match and it was no surprise he got pinned. This trip went from “maybe he has a chance to open some NJPW eyes for future bookings” to “I hope he doesn’t suck” really quick. Volador seemed to really want to work with Takahashi, to the point of ignoring when Bushi was standing right next to him and kicking him. Takahashi did some strong work with Soberano too. The Naito/Volador stuff was interesting and felt like a tease of a match, but I’m not sure when or when it would happen. This had the potential to be even more than it was, but it was still worth watching.

Kawato can do a springboard and a dive so I’m not really sure he has a lot more learn in CMLL. It seriously doesn’t seem like he’s going to need a long adjustment, and the bigger adjustment will be for us waiting for CMLL to actually do something with him. Cavernario worked great with him, giving Kawato enough to look like he had a chance before swatting him down. Atlantis didn’t even do the old man tope on these shows. If he wasn’t Atlantis, they probably would’ve told him to take the tour off.

The third place game was a much better outing for the NGD, who showed more of the offense and selling that made them stand out so much this past year in CMLL. They were all around to make the Angel brothers looked good, and seemed more aggressive on offense. Niebla Roja’s hurting and was moving slow at times, but his brother was making up for it. It’s strange how Angel de Oro always seems to fit in better in Japan, but he did well here and all thru the tour. This was a good change adjustment to a more serious fight after the early foolishness.

The atomicos was the kind of silliness that only works on these shows and only really once a year. It had Mima madness, had the técnicos all doing Star Jr.’s dance, had Lyger getting to do the tapatia, and had all sorts of Rocky Romero references on CMLL. It was far from the most serious match, and I didn’t really want to see Okumura win, but I guess he’s in a main event trio in the moment and at least that meant Mima won too. This would’ve been too much on anything but the tour ending show but it worked here.

Opener was a perfect opener, the right mix of comedy bits with Taguchi and some actual lucha mixed in. Disturbio looked much more into the match than yesterday, and even got a Kamehameha to work on Taguchi. The rudos were here mostly as stooges to make the técnicos look great and the técnicos did look great, so it worked out well enough. Taguchi and Fuego came off as a stars before getting the win.