July 18 Saturday Arena Coliseo

This is the second in a series of posts covering my last trip to Mexico City, on July 18-19. After the Lucha Mutante show, which I wrote about previously, one of Black Terry Jr.'s cousins very kindly gave us a ride to Arena Coliseo. We arrived in time for the fifth match (Tritón vs. Okumura), the last of the one-fall singles matches on the card.

CMLL Sábado Retro
July 18, 2015, 7:30pm, Arena Coliseo, Mexico City

We had purchased tickets in advance, for the front row to the left of the walkway to the ring. I'm
horrible at guesstimating, but I'd say that there were perhaps about 500 people in attendance, maybe?

5) Tritón b Okumura
This was a very good match; Tritón got in most of the usual highspots in his repertoire, including some neat multi-springboard stuff, and Okumura gave Tritón a brutal DDT on the apron. Additionally, Tritón played off and acknowledge the crowd so much more than he usually does. This was definitely not a match you'd see on a random Arena México show.

We didn't get to the see the previous singles matches on the show, but my impression from this match is that Saturday Arena Coliseo singles matches are worked as if they were in an indie venue in the DF metro area, with the same rough attendance levels, levels of crowd interaction, and less of the standard CMLL match formula.

I'd be in favor of replacing the "match relámpago" with an nominally untimed one-fall match of this format. I have this match at about 11 minutes, which isn't too much past the relámpago length limit. Maybe the rescinding of a time limit would remove a mental roadblock and get more luchadors to change up the formula.

6) Guerrero Maya Jr., Delta b Hechicero, Luciferno
The técnicos took falls 2 and 3 in what felt more like a standard CMLL match. There was nothing wrong here, and it's always fun to see Hechicero and Guerrero Maya work together, this was only on the border of "okay" and "good" for me. I could make an argument for either, but if pressed, I'd probably stick to "okay", if only because there wasn't anything that we haven't seen before. Again, it's a high-end "okay", but we've seen better matches with these guys.

One side thing that did detract from the match a little bit, and I have absolutely no idea what was going on here, was that Delta was constantly angry at the referee (Edgar Noriega). He physically confronted him after every fall, even after the técnicos won clean; and there were no really obvious referee mistakes. A técnico being angry with the referee is not news, but usually it's an isolated event and doesn't carry through the entire match. Delta's behavior here was odd by any stretch of the imagination and smacked of unprofessionalism.

7) Rey Bucanero, Terrible, Vangellys b Blue Panther, La Máscara, Máximo
Outside of a few bits with Blue Panther, this match had lots of trouble keeping my attention and felt like it dragged on for most of the three falls. Not good.

Overall

I have an admittedly small sample size, but my impression is that the singles matches in the undercard are what makes Arena Coliseo Saturday shows substantially different. The tag and trios matches at the top seem like they're more or less worked the same as on any other show. Unfortunately, I didn't arrive in time to see most of the singles matches (I would like to some day), but the one that I did see was lots of fun.