[2000-04-07-CMLL] Negro Casas & Tarzan Boy & Emilio Charles Jr vs Blue Panther & Dr Wagner Jr & Black Warrior

[soup23]

Fantastic lucha that harkened me back to January/February glory days. Panther is awesome and twists and stretches everyone in such a dickish way. Casas also really shined here as the tecnico and everything was moving along really smoothly sans a terrible botch by Tarzan Boy. This rudo trio in particular was really meancing. The submission Panther lays on Casas to win the second fall looked like it hurt like hell. ***1/2

[Loss]

Negro Casas with his first real breakout performance of the year. Aside from Tarzan Boy's attempted dive where he tripped over the top rope, everything else clicked really well. Wagner and Panther make a great team. Negro did most of the work for his team and look awesome doing it, setting up a few potential programs for himself. I liked the number of big nearfalls at the end, because the way the match was laid out, I really was expecting Casas to come back against all odds, but he did eventually fall prey to the numbers game. Great match. ****

[Tim Evans]

The Warrior/Wagner/Panther team was my favorite team when I was really getting into lucha in the early 2000s. They do a good job taking out the tecnicos with submissions and awesome double team work. However, the Tarzan boy botch overshadows the match to me. That was nuts and looked like it really hurt.

[ohtani's jacket]

This was all right. Anyone hoping for a classic title match will be disappointed. It was hard not to notice the influence from Casas and Wagner's recent Japan tours, iI don't like to see too much Japanese influence in lucha but it was inescapable at this point, Strangely, Wagner is more charismatic in Japan than he is in Mexico but he's not really top billing in CMLL. Panther was game early on but Tarzan Boy isn't a great opponent for him on the mat. Tarzan Boy looked like he put himself out of wrestling with that botch. Emilio didn't really add much here and it's always weird seeing him in alternate colours but the thing that really stopped me from loving this is that I don't really like tecnico Casas. Especially this Casas with his lack of swagger. Where's the cockiness that makes Casas great? The crowd was into him but he's going through this weird workman phase instead of outshining everyone on the card. I wonder when the real Casas will turn up.

[Laney]

I thought the first fall was excellent and then the match kind of fell apart after that. The most notable thing was the botch by Tarzan Boy and it looked like he was really shaken up and couldn't continue. They did a decent enough job of recovering from that spot to end the 2nd fall, but it seemed kind of rush. This seemed to really throw things off for the third fall as they tried to eliminate Blue Panther early to make this 2 on 2. The referees were not on the same page and there were two botched pinfalls as a result, just ugly stuff right there.

[Moonsault Marvin]

This had some nice exchanges between Casas and Panther and Casas and Wagner. That submission by Panther was awesome. The botch by Tarzan Boy seemed to veer the match off the tracks. I wasn't sure if he was hurt or just embarrassed. Wagner came up with the big moves to finish off Casas. This was the most we have gotten to see Casas in 2000, but I would like to see him in some longer, stronger performances. Good match.

[Sean Liska]

Blue Panther and Tarzan Boy get us off to a good start. Now we get Casas and Wagner as we begin to build to the Anniversary show. Really fun sequence with them, I like Wagner hitting the People’s Rolling Senton. Casas with the sweet springboard headscissors, incorporating some flashy tecnico offense into his game at this point.

 

Oh, Tarzan really botches that springboard but Casas and Charles recover to get to the finish of the segunda And they keep replaying the botch! Shoot is Tarazn legit hurt? Tercera seems a bit improvised as a result. Negro and Wagner exchange near falls as we continue that build. Very good match.