MLW Azteca Review - January 6, 2022

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Aramis, Destiny and Myzteziz def. Arez, Black Danger and Dinamico

The only two men I was familiar with from this match were Aramis and Arez, who MLW has used a handful of times since September when I started tuning into MLW. This was your typical lucha rules six-man tag team affair in that it was all over the place and hard to follow at certain points but also entertaining and chaotic. In other words, it was a total spot-fest. Your enjoyment of this match will entirely depend on whether that's your thing or not. I'm okay with spot-fests if they aren't overdone and I thought this one worked because it set the tone for the Azteca series.

Psycho Clown def. Richard Holliday

Alicia Atout accompanied Holliday to the ring (kind of), and although she denied supporting him and said she only did it to appease him this one time, the commentators acknowledged that she was cheering for him later in the match. She was brought to the back by one of Cesar Duran's masked henchmen, which caused Holliday to be distracted and cost him the win. The match was decent, but a majority of it felt like it dragged with a whole lot of nothing happening. If nothing else, the crowd loved Psycho Clown.

MLW World Heavyweight Champion Alexander Hammerstone and Pagano def. King Muertes and Black Taurus in an Apocalypto Match

I had no idea what an Apocalypto match was supposed to (other than the one "Broken" Matt Hardy did in IMPACT about five years ago), but it was basically an all-out Street Fight with no rule or sense of structure. Credit to the four performers for keeping the crowd invested and utilizing the extreme environment well, but this was a bit too slow for me at times and just a mess on the whole. Pagano turned on Hammerstone afterward at the behest of Duran and attacked him alongside Muertes and Taurus like they didn't just beat the hell out of each other minutes prior. Duran has it out for Hammerstone, so we'll see where that goes.

Overall Show

This was the debut of MLW's latest mini series, Azteca, and I believe the next several shows will also emanate from Mexico. IMPACT's Mexico shows were always hit or miss a few years ago because they tended to focus more on the Mexican talent than they did their own, but it is nice to see some fresh faces thrown in the mix and this was a solid show from an in-ring standpoint. Additionally, there was a fair amount of storyline progression with what we got backstage, so it was a serviceable hour of wrestling. Hopefully upcoming episodes are a bit better because this format will only work for so long.

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