Lucha Capital: 2018-11-14

Recapped: 11/14/2018

Matches:

Máscarita Sagrada beat Keyra
(6:52, Máscarita Sagrada cradle, below average,00:17:39 )

Texano Jr. beat Niño Hamburguesa
(7:54, Texano superbomb, ok,00:33:31)

Australian Suicide beat Taya
(8:07, Australian Suicide SSP, ok,00:59:12)

Fénix beat Golden Magic
(11:40, Fenix Mexican Muscle Buster, great,01:31:40)

What happened:

Dave the Clown did the arm wrestling challenge and comedically lost to a child (with some help from La Griega.)

Thoughts:

Fenix wrestles as the plucky underdog challenger most everywhere now. This match – maybe this tournament – is a rare chance to see him as the ace of a promotion. Fenix was the man the crowd had clearly come to see, he was in the main event spot, and he’d got a memorable match out of a wrestler who was clearly nervous to be in such a big spot. This seemed like a good but shaky at points match in the first watch thru, and more of a great Fenix performance on a rewatch. Golden Magic has talent and can do athletic things, but he seemed to freeze up before going for the first dive of the match, there was an odd exchange on the top rope later, and there were a couple times where he wasn’t quite in the right position. Fenix is so good that it didn’t really hamper the match. It did seem to lead to some occasional hard kicks to get Golden Magic’s attention. They did plenty to convince the fans that Magic had a chance for a gigantic upset, while Fenix still was able to end the match the moment he wanted it to end without question. I’d put Laredo/Drago ahead of this one as the best match of the tournament, but Fenix has had the best individual performance so far.

The Taya/Suicide had cute bits that’ll look good in GIFs (maybe the ones you’re seeing right here) but never really came together as a match. Suicide choice to play up a lot more comedy than usual, which made it even weirder when he got the surprise win. Suicide didn’t take it easy, the moonsault on the table couldn’t have felt good, but he was way over the top to get a reaction at times. Taya was over as a tecnica, though it was unclear if that was a one match role for her or a permanent change for this run.

Texano was the slowest moving of the top guys on this show, keeping it at more a house show level effort. It may have been more about trying to keep Niño Hamburguesa from running out of steam in an eight minute match, but Hamburguesa still felt like he was doing much of the work. It was still an improvement over the opener but not great back to back.

Keyra and Máscarita Sagrada were incompatible wrestlers. Sagrada did so little that I’m concerned about how all the matches in this tournament could go. Maybe Keyra wasn’t the right base for him, because he did no flying and a bad small package counter at the end. Keyra tried making it work by working heavily ruda, but it only led to Sagrada losing his mask on his own finish. This was not any good.