[1998-10-23-CMLL] Olimpico vs Halcon Negro

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

This was the type of mat-based title match that seemed to be far less frequent by this point. It reminded me of Dandy-Azteca. It didn't quite hit that level, but I thought it came closer than expected, and ended up as one of the best matches of the year. Olimpico impressed me with his technical precision and selling. He was the flashier of the two, and Negro made a great base. That in some ways undermines how great Negro was in this match as he was more than the guy who caught Olimpico's highspots. He had plenty of great offense and matwork of his own. But I think his timing on bumps was one of the things that made Olimpico's offense look so good. One of the best matches of the year and I can't wait for the rematch. I'd normally complain about a screwy finish in a match worked so straight but I won't here since it sets up another match with these two, and while what we got was great, I can't help but think there's more where that came from. What a nice surprise. Thanks to OJ for recommending this.

[ohtani's jacket]

Thanks to Phi Rippa for uploading it many moons ago.

[soup23]

I love title match lucha when done correctly and this was great stuff. Mixing of holds seemlessly into one another and working towards an escalation finish. Olimpico is a guy that has been creeping around for a while and someone I haven't paid much attention to but he was pretty awesome here. Flashy, but effective and getting the crowd around him. This was his first main event in Arena Mexico according to what I read so this was an impressive feat. I actually really loved the foul finish and the way it was executed based on how sporty the match previous to the foul was. (****1/4)

[Zenjo]

Great matwork during the opening fall. There was impressive technique and counter holds, all done with a wonderful flow and rhythm. It was a joy to watch, and I don't really know who these guys are! That's part of the joy of discovering Lucha, you're never sure if unknowns are going to be good or not. For whatever reason the segunda caida was MIA. It was probably short, yet it was still damaging not to have the missing link. The 3rd was title bout Lucha dramatica all the way. It was VG in itself, although it felt like two really good matches spliced together. That made the whole less than the sum of its parts. Negro won with a foule which I wouldn't generally like. Here it was well worked in as opportunistic rudo activity. Halcon only obeyed the rules whilst the ref was looking and took advantage of an opening.

[PeteF3]

Oh, good, I thought I'd had a stroke or something wondering how I missed a fall. This was really good and maybe that missing fall could qualify for status in the "Holy Grail" thread among a million other lucha matches, since there didn't seem to be anything perfunctory about this--the two falls we got were both really long with a lot of near-falls, which isn't always the case in lucha. A really good classic lucha title match between two guys I don't really know.

[Jetlag]

Quality match. Liked it a lot better than their hair match because this had that classic flow and build. The 2^nd fall missing is really unfortunate. I also thought the screw finish looked lame. It's really weird that Olimpico ended up not doing much until he ultimately became Mistico fodder. He was a really good technico who could work the mat stuff aswell as fly with a cool look and mask and it's not like there was an overflow of those.