Day: January 27, 2020

Recapped: 2020-01-10

Matches:

Fuego & Ryusuke Taguchi beat Douki & Kanemaru
(7:52, Fuego La Guelaguetza Douki, ok)

El Audaz, Guerrero Maya Jr., Uemura vs Euforia, Luciferno, Namajague
(8:34, German suplex, ok)

Flyer & Soberano Jr. beat Negro Casas & Tiger
(6:27, Soberano springboard legdrop Tiger, ok)

Ángel de Oro, Niebla Roja, Titán beat Cuatrero, Forastero, Sansón
(10:09, Angel de Oro campana Cuatrero, good)

Bushi, Hiromu Takahashi, Naito beat Dulce Gardenia, Hiroshi Tanahashi, Tsuji
(10:08, Takahashi crab Tsuji, ok)

Bárbaro Cavernario, Okumura, Último Guerrero beat Carístico, Kojima, Stuka Jr.
(11:27, Okumura cutter Stuka, ok)

What happened:

Nothing important. This is the annual tour kickoff show with slight builds towards later matches and no English commentary.

Thoughts:

The finish came abruptly in the main event, which happened a couple of times on this show. The only difference here is this was a mostly CMLL match with a non-quite CMLL feeling ending. The action leading up to it was fine. Kojima taking the UG front superplex on a show like this surprised me, and it may have been more than anyone else watched. This match, like the rest, was fitting of a current CMLL b-show.

The semi-main was Dulce Gardenia plugged into a NJPW house show match and worked just that hard. I think Naito tagged in but I’m not entirely sure. There were brief moments of triple submission fun and nothing was blown, but it is entirely skippable.

A lot of the CMLL matches on this show seemed a little bit slower than usual. It may be the environment or the Japanese wrestlers just working at a different pace. The NGD match felt the same way for a while but picked up a lot during the comeback. It did follow the usual NGD pattern – Titan got triple-teamed on the outside to start the beatdown – but the work was sharp. Titan looked great on the rope flip spot. Cuatrero may have handled a bit more of the action near the end but Sanson didn’t stick out as greatly limited by his injury. They’ve got better in them but this was a good start towards the title match.

Soberano diving to nowhere on tour shows in Osaka is not recommended. A plus for effort though. Not sure if that threw off the rest of the match, but it felt short and got the end quickly. Flyer looked smoother here than he has in Mexico, which is a nice start. 

The segunda was not an authentic CMLL presentation because the rudos managed to perform La Careta without someone jumping into headscissors the rudo posing on top. Audaz & Namajague had good chemistry early and less so during the beatdown. The Mexican tecnicos could’ve got more, but this was a set up to Namajague beating the young lion and that part went fine.

FantasicaMania is lucha tag rules, but the opener was building all to a hot tag – where there was no for Fuego to hit. They eventually got his offense going a bit, though still not as much as you would’ve thought. The rudos took a lot of this. Douki’s transition to the Gori Special set up looked smooth at least.