CMLL on ClaroSports.com: 2018-07-13 

Recapped: 07/13/18

Matches: 

Metálico & Sangre Azteca beat Príncipe Diamante & Súper Astro Jr.
(20:50 [9:31, 3:53, 7:26], 1/3, ok,VideosOficialesCMLL)

Audaz, Fuego, Star Jr. beat Kawato San, Okumura, Universo 2000 Jr.
(15:03 [4:06, 2:28, 8:29], 2/3, good, VideosOficialesCMLL )

Dalys beat La Jarochita in a lightning match
(4:27, powerbomb, ok,VideosOficialesCMLL )

Carístico, Dragón Lee, Mistico beat Cavernario, Gran Guerrero, Negro Casas
(11:40 [3:00, 1:49, 6:51], 2/3, good,VideosOficialesCMLL)

Atlantis, Octagón, Rayo de Jalisco Jr. beat Fuerza Guerrera, Máscara Año 2000, Último Guerrero
(12:59 [1:59, 3:55, 7:05], 2/3, ok,VideosOficialesCMLL )

Rush & Terrible beat Valiente & Volador Jr. © to win the CMLL World Tag Team Championship
(23:01 [5:19, 4:13, 13:29], 1/3, great,VideosOficialesCMLL)

What happened:

Rush & Terrible won the tag team titles, though with a foul on Volador to do it.

Atlantis was honored for his 35^th Anniversary. All the wrestlers wrestled in their mask for a traditional match. Money was thrown in after. Atlantis Jr. & Hijo del Atlantis appeared with Atlantis prior to the match.

Carístico and his partners didn’t get along, though it wasn’t played up a lot. They had a standoff post-match, but the camera shot the crowd instead.

Thoughts: 

The main event worked as the show ender on a big show. There was a simple story of Los Ingobernables just being a little bit better in form as a team than Valiente & Volador. One team crashed into each other on a dive, the other successfully distracted the referee for a foul. The match itself tried to bridge the two different styles; this wasn’t quite the athletic display of other Volador big matches, nor was it the brawl Rush has been doing with LA Park. Terrible still seemed nervous taking the big Volador moves, but it and the Spanish fly on Rush went OK. The crowd made this feel like a big match, taking the matchup from good to something more borderline.

The legends match was a perfectly fine match – so much better than usual CMLL legends match. Including Último Guerrero feels like cheating, it brings the average up so much. Still, Fuerza Guerrera and Mascara 2000 also worked well off the técnicos too. This might have been Mascara’s best performance of the year, or at least the one where he felt least out of place. Fuerza taking backdrops in his sixties is crazy. The rudos were able to work thru the técnicos usual spots, and there was never a sad moment where they were failing at them. Rayo seemed to wrestle an out-sized portion of the match, but it means less Octagon and a little less Atlantis and that was fine. Everyone got what they wanted out of this and it didn’t overstay their welcome.

The fourth match was primarily a técnico showcase. They were so focused on the técnicos doing neat moves that they didn’t really have time for the técnicos to feud among themselves and they went out of their way to ignore after the match. This wasn’t the most they could do, but plenty to impress a crowd which seemed more willing to cheer the técnicos on this show. It was notable to see Gran Guerrero catching the big diving headscissors to the outside. These matches used to go out of their way to keep Gran Guerrero from being in those positions and now he was in the center of them.

Dalys matches continue to look like a cold repetition of match practiced many times, and a single match exposes that style more. The match had plenty of action but was short because they were running thru their prescribed spots at a fast pace, and didn’t think to do anything in between. Both women also reacted to the moves when they expected them to be happening, not when they actually did. The style did have a lot more moves than expected for a women’s match, but those weren’t performed well. La Jarochita’s big spot is her facewash running boot to the face, but her kick and Dalys’ face didn’t come close to each other. Jarochita’s suplex looked good, and she didn’t have much more offense to go wrong, because Dalys seemed to take 70% of the match. It’s unusual to control so much of a match and still win, but that’s about where the women’s division is right now.

The segunda was better fun than it looked on paper. Kawato and Star Jr. have been working together enough that they have some chemistry and a lot of spots to do. (Star Jr. could use something other than a cutter though.) Universo did more basing for Audaz in this match than their lightning match, and they could hide the errors better in a trios match. Fuego was way over and Okumura also existed. The third fall went long and the crowd seemed antsy for them to get on with the parts of the show they came for, but the action was still good. This was closer to being great than OK.

The opener got a lot of time, more than usual, and it allowed us to see more of the técnicos than usual. The absurdly long first fall lost my interest a bit, but surely allowed the Atlantis photo session to go on a bit longer. It got better in the second fall once the técnicos finally got their comeback and picked up the action. The wrestling wasn’t clean. Metálico took Principe Diamante’s to end the second fall really nicely, though only after he and Diamante got lost on the spot to set it up, and after he lost Astro on a headscissors. Super Astro has an advantage on most of these rookies of late by being able to do his father’s spots, which are still recognizable but still seem fresh since he hasn’t been wrestling regularly in a long time. Astro is talented him, but it’s helped him stand out in a way Principe Diamante hasn’t gotten to yet.