Jumbo Tsuruta vs Mil Mascaras (AJPW) 8/25/1977
This is a 2 out of 3 falls match. They went hard on the Lucha vs Puro clash in this match. The story of the first fall, and an overarching story of the entire match, was Mil wearing down Jumbo while Jumbo tries to get out of Mil’s holds. Some of the early holds were very boring. The idea of Mil transitioning from hold to hold when a hold is not working or Jumbo is about to escape is great in theory it failed in execution. The holds and transitions looked very cooperative and Mil did not do anything interesting while applying a hold. Jumbo was also not very good in the beginning. His selling was underwhelming as he sat in a hold looking more bored than me watching a Hideki Suzuki match. Even his escape and comeback spots lacked urgency. Towards the end of the fall this improved as the match began to look more like a struggle rather than a dance. Mil wins with a arm submission (I forget what it’s called and I’m too lazy to describe it, watch the match).
The second fall picks up where the first fall left off with Mil doing more submission holds. This was done better and had the crowd raging. It was a short fall and Jumbo won with a dropkick off the top rope. That comeback was the highlight of the match.
The third fall was just there to get to the finish. Nothing else really happened and Jumbo wins it via countout.
There really isn’t much to say about this match other than it was kind of bad and boring during the first 20 minutes. Mil worked multiple body parts and most of it didn’t matter to the overall story of the match. The match did get better after the first fall but wasn’t anything special. Mil did a reverse Romero Special that I actually popped for and that bumped this match a quarter star for.
Final Rating - **3/4
No comments:
Post a Comment