NEW JAPAN/CMLL FANTASTICA MANIA 2011

January 23, 2011

The second half of the New Japan/CMLL double header! New Japan tries to take more gold in the form of the CMLL Trios Titles. Apollo 55 looks to regain their IWGP Jr. Tag Titles. Mistico has his final match before becoming Sin Cara!

Taichi Ishikari . . . stands up to the challenge of Giant Bernard, with all the success you’d imagine.

Tiger Mask . . . almost has a good match thanks to his willingness to paste Ishii with a bunch of stiff kicks.

Mistico . . . goes one more round with his longtime rival Averno before he heads to the ‘E.

GEDO/JADO vs. MAXIMO/DANSHOKU DINO

If Dino and Maximo were working with a team who was more willing to play along with them, then this might have made a fun comedy match. Jado and Gedo aren’t willing to play along though, so for the most part this is rather dull. Maximo and Dino try to get into their heads (and other places), and Jado and Gedo are the straight men (get it?) and don’t give any reaction, they just plod along and don’t take the match anywhere. Even the finish, with Jado countering Dino’s Cock Bottom into the crossface doesn’t really show any emotion from Jado. He just stands there for a minute, almost like he’s in shock, and then quickly takes Dino down into the hold. It’d have been neat to see Jado and Gedo react to Dino and Maximo’s antics by getting even meaner, but they don’t bother reacting at all.

GIANT BERNARD/KARL ANDERSON/JYUSHIN LYGER vs. ATLANTIS/DRAGON ROJO, JR./TAICHI ISHIKARI

While this is fun, at times, this is mostly a waste of Lyger, Rojo, and Atlantis. Like the IWGP Tag Titles match from the night before, Atlantis looks the best out of everyone by virtue of having the others sell for him, as well as planting Lyger with a few nice spots, including a tilt-a-whirl backbreaker. Ishikari is mostly comic relief for the match, which seems to suit him. The rudos have a fun little run of offense on Lyger and celebrate, Bernard tags in and Atlantis and Rojo split, leaving Ishikari on his own. They encourage Ishikari to take the fight to Bernard, which he tries with as much success as you’d imagine. There’s the usual diving sequence, ending with Bernard crushing his partners, Atlantis, Rojo, and several ring boys. Ishikari manages to avoid the big shot and tries to take advantage and beat Bernard, but that goes as well as can be expected and Bernard finishes off Ishikari. Lyger’s reaction to Ishikari getting spiked with the Bernard driver is pretty cool though.

LA SOMBRA/MASCARA DORADA/LA MASCARA © vs. TETSUYA NAITO/YUJIRO TAKAHASHI/OKUMURA (CMLL World Six Man Tag Team Titles)

Apparently it’s not a La Mascara match without him embarrassing himself, in this case it’s a tope suicida that lives up to its name, with Mascara catching his feet on the ropes and dropping to the floor (and getting laughed at by the commentators). Other than that, there isn’t a whole lot to see here, it’s a lot of feeling out type of work, with a quick ending of Sombra pinning Yujiro and then Dorada killing Naito with DDT (complete with an RVD style head spike). It’s disappointing that there isn’t more to this fall, seeing as OKUMURA is full time in CMLL and No Limit evolved from junior heavyweight young boys to being a legit tag team thanks an extended stay down there.

I guess this could be considered the rudo fall, since the rudos win to tie the match, but the bulk of the match doesn’t look like it. Dorada and Sombra control the heels with relative ease, only for the Japanese team to turn the tables on Mascara thanks a well-timed cheap shot from the apron. OKUMURA takes Mascara out of commission with a dive (in theory, he actually barely touched him on the way down). Naito pins Dorada with a swank rolling cradle, and then No Limit hit Sombra with Limitless Explosion to tie it up.

This starts out looking like it’s going to be the best fall of the match (and it is, but not by the margin it should have) but this is still woefully short. There’s some serious ass whooping dealt by the challengers to start, until the champions even the odds, and hit stereo dives, even La Mascara gets it right. La Mascara and OKUMURA have a quick exchange in the ring before going back to the floor. No Limit tries to the turn the tide, but has no luck with Dorada sending them both the floor and slipping a bit on his trademark dive, but still hitting them, followed by Sombra’s moonsault to the floor. That leaves OKUMURA and Mascara back in the ring, and Mascara quickly gets the submission with La Campana. The action was good while it lasted, but the fall (and match) could have benefitted from at least another ten minutes to add some drama to the mix.

TOMOHIRO ISHII vs. TIGER MASK (Hair vs. Mask)

This is as close to a good match that I’ve seen out of Tiger Mask in quite some time. It’s probably telling that the best parts of this feature TM and Ishii forgoing any attempt at working a match and opting to paste the crud out of each other. Ishii adds some nice heel moments, such as his sneak attack at the bell that takes out both TM and the ref, and his attempt to get a cheap win by getting TM counted out. The last half of the match is the standard TM affair, with him running through his moves without any real reason to care about what he does. The crucifix near fall was rather nice, but TM didn’t need to do the same spot twice in a row, and it was cool to see him block Ishii’s attempt to foul him and hit the Tiger suplex to keep his mask. I think I’d rather watch them paste each other for ten minutes, then attempt to have a real match though.

MISTICO vs. AVERNO

The first fall is over almost as soon as it begins. Their exchanges are very smooth, which they should be with as often as these two have worked together, the only real highlight is Mistico busting out a sweet plancha. Averno counters a head scissors and plants Mistico with the Devil’s Wings to draw first blood.

Don’t blink or you might miss the second fall! They work a cool rope running exchange and Averno takes Mistico down and out the floor with a jumping rana and then hits his own dive. Mistico hits a kick from the apron and takes down Averno with a rana to stun him and then quickly takes him over with a sunset flip to tie it up. Even shorter than the first fall.

Excluding Mistico’s slip off the top rope (which still isn’t anywhere near as bad as what La Mascara had done) the final fall is rather good from bell to bell. It helps that, unlike the trios titles match, they gave the third fall plenty of time rather than doing another quick ending. It’s also nice to see them play off the finishes to the previous falls, with Mistico getting a quick near fall from the sunset flip as well as Averno trying a super Devil’s Wings for his own near fall. The work itself comes off like a spotfest, had they had this match is Arena Mexico they’d have probably had the crowd going crazy, but the New Japan fans. . . . not so much. There’s a smart spot that foreshadows the finish when Mistico counters the Devil’s Wings into an Fujiwara armbar. After a nice exchange of La Magistral cradle attempts, Averno runs himself right into La Mistica for the big win.

Well, if you’re a big fan of junior spotfests, then this will be right up your alley. It’s hard to not be impressed with Ibushi and Omega, their spots and precision timing is a thing of beauty. But, while it’s easy to marvel at what they do, it’s not enough to make me not notice what the match is woefully lacking in, that being a reason to make me get behind the champions or the challengers. Yes, it’s damn impressive to see the DDT boys pull off a tandem 450 to Taguchi (and Devitt’s diving stomp to break it was nice too) or their stereo dives to the floor, but that’s doesn’t make me blind to the fact that there’s a noticeable lack of real story here to make me care about the match or the outcome. That should have been the easy part, it’s the top junior tag team in tNJPW challenging the DDT outsiders who took their titles. This should have been filled with hate. It’s not. In fact, the DDT team gets just as many, if not more, cheers than the home team.

One of the better qualities about the match is that it’s short, especially for a title change, clocking in at sixteen minutes and change, so the spottiness doesn’t get a chance to get too old and mundane. It doesn’t help that Omega loses his head toward the end and completely blows off a Tiger suplex. He pops right up as though he thought he was wrestling in NOAH. It also doesn’t help that a few early attempts to take the match somewhere, namely Apollo 55 working over Ibushi’s arm for a spell wound up going nowhere. Just as it seemed like the arm work might be headed somewhere, Omega and Ibushi sprung to life with a pair of stereo ranas and it was time to let the spots begin. I suppose I should feel lucky that the finish wasn’t anything too silly, Omega had nearly been pinned by Taguchi’s Dodon and Devitt sealed the deal with the Black Sunday, but that’s the only real build to it. But it’s better than Omega surviving a huge barrage of big moves. I’m not entirely surprised at the DDT team’s penchant for throwing out big spots, that’s probably how they got to NJPW in the first place, but I expected better from Taguchi and Devitt.

Conclusion: The first night was decent and I was hoping that this would be even better, but it wasn’t. The best things here are the hair/mask match, which is fun, but not anything special, and Mistico/Averno, which was straight up Lucha Libre. I barely recommended the first night, this night is safely skippable on its own.