With Satan's Hog No Pig at All, and the Weather's Getting Dry, Pirata Morgan Heads South from Altamont in a Cold-Blooded, Travelled Trance

Pirata Morgan & El Hijo del Pirata Morgan vs. Los Traumas vs. Pantera & Mascara Ano 2000 Jr. vs. Damien 666 & Bestia 666 IWRG 7/14/2011 - FUN

I am not one to conform to pro wrestling conventional wisdom if I don't actually agree with it. If I think the first Punjabi Prison match was better than the first Hell in a Cell match - and I do - I'll hold to that view regardless of how loony it looks from the outside. So it goes with my feelings on three/four/etc.-way matches. Conventional wisdom is that if you do them at all, you do them with elimination rules - as they do in this match - rather than a single fall. And well, I understand that line of thought and why it developed, but looking at it in practice, I could never bring myself to agree with it. It's a gimmick that tends to get in the way of a lot of basic wrestling psychology, and most wrestlers - even really good ones like some of the guys in this match - kinda strain to get around it in ways they don't with single-fall rules. Most obviously, there's tendency for wrestlers to break up nearfalls even though elimination rules mean that one opponent eliminating another will only benefit you. "Everybody wants to be the one to eliminate the Franchise!" Whatever, Joey. It's as dumb of a multi-man trope as the three-way's "one guy is dead on the outside while the other two have their turn", and I don't see a point in excusing one and not the other. But that alone could be accepted as a problem with the wrestlers rather than the match type, except I've seen an elimination rules four-way tag that was wrestled logically, and it made it wildly apparent that even when applied sensibly, the gimmick is just lame. The very first thing I ever reviewed on this blog was TNA's 2005 Unbreakable PPV, where a match of this type was wrestled without the stupidity usually associated with it (well, it had some of it's own unique stupidity, but nothing traditionally associated with elimination four-ways), and the result is that is that is was basically a glorified gauntlet match, so even at it's best, the gimmick is effectively useless. The only time I ever really got into an elimination-rules multi-man was Santo/Casas/Dandy, and that's really a Santo/Dandy match where Casas beats up both guys for a little while before leaving. By contrast, ROH's Four Corner Survival matches were rarely great, but they pretty consistently entertained me, since everyone involved was actually...well, involved, and it made sense for them to be. And again, it's a minority opinion, but it's still my opinion.

I say all this because I want to be clear that while I consider this match merely FUN, there are certain extenuating circumstances effecting that judgement. If those circumstances don't apply to you, I could see this getting the bump to GREATness. After the last 2011 Pirata match I reviewed - where he was good, but definitely showing his age - it was neat to see him all energetic and mobile here, especially in his exchanges with Damian. I also really dug his eliminations of Pantera and Trauma II. The rolling kimura to Trauma II was just plain cool, and the slingshot somersault senton to Pantera was a neat example of his lack of mobility actually being used to his advantage. Imagine an invisible Tully Blanchard doing a slingshot suplex to Pirata onto Pantera. There was also a lot of fun matwork early on from pretty much everyone, and a really fun, high-energy Pantera performance before his aforementioned elimination. For me, the structural problems still hamper the match, but for you, that might be less of an issue.

Pirata Morgan, Jerry Estrada, & Hombre Bala vs. Rayo de Jalisco Jr., Atlantis, & Alfonso Dantes EMLL 3/1987 - EPIC

This is a straight-up clinic on how to be an badass rudo trio. Los Bucaneros achieved a level of perfection in this field matched only by Los Infernales, which Pirata had also been a member of, making him sorta the Bobby Eaton of Mexico. Primera caida is built around the Bucaneros swarming individual tecnicos and mugging them, which is one of my favorite stock spots in lucha. They are fucking great at it, too. Really feels like a violent, out-of-control beatdown, which is what Pirata does best. They take the first fall after Pirata comes off the top with a great kneedrop onto Rayo, and then a badly beaten Atlantis gets thrown out of the ring, and it kinda looks like he's being forced to take a Jerry bump, like Estrada is giving him a taste of his own medicine. Second fall hits, and the technicos are all fired up and quickly retake control of the match. All three of the technicos are looking great. Atlantis has some beautiful exchanges here. Dantes - who I had seen nothing of before starting work on the Best of the 80's Lucha project - is a fucking tank, and is awesome bowling over the Bucaneros with his bulk. Even Rayo feels more serious than usual. He is still doing his comedy shtick, but it comes off less like silly fun babyface stuff and more like him using his quickness and unorthodox style to evade his opponents and keep them off-balance. And through it all, Pirata and his crew continue to work as a well-oiled machine, brilliantly setting up elaborate three-man stooging and bumping sequences like few other trios could. Really, just the fact that Jerry Estrada - one of the most coked up wrestlers in the history of the world - was consistently in perfect position to make all this stuff look right was amazing, and a tribute to their greatness as a team. The highlight comes after the technicos take the second fall, where the Bucaneros really turn it up. Let me see if I can walk you through this: one Bucanero (the lighting of the shot combined with the matching outfits and hairstyles makes it hard for me to see who is who here) holds Rayo while the other two try to double clothesline him. Rayo ducks, leaving the third Bucanero to eat the double clothesline. Rayo chucks one Bucanero into the ropes, but he catches himself and hangs in them a la T.J. Perkins. The second charges, but Rayo kicks out his legs, causing him to accidentally dropkick the first out of the ring. The third swings a wild lariat at Rayo, but he ducks and throws him into the ropes. He catches himself, but his legs still fly through and boot both of the other Bucaneros in the face on the outside. I guarantee my description didn't do the sequence justice. The Bucaneros take a moment to regroup after this, and after getting their minds right, they exact their violent revenge. A nasty triple dropkick to Atlantis' head takes him out of the match. Rayo makes one last valiant attempt at using his Rayoness to take back the match, but it's too little, too late, as the Bucaneros swarm him, pummel him, and then make him submit to the old Kaientai taunt where Estrada and Bala bend him over and hold him in place by his arms while Pirata stands on his back and taunts. They celebrate their victory by sending Rayo out of the ring with a big running dropkick, and then kicking at the fans surrounding the ring after the match. Could have used a more hectic finish, but everything up to that was hectic enough for my tastes. This is good old-fashioned lucha trios wrestling, just like mom used to make.

Pirata Morgan, Satanico, & MS-1 vs. Solomon Grundy, Mascara Sagrada, & Lizmark AAA 8/29/1993 - SKIPPABLE

The unlikely Pirata/Grundy war rages on, and you'd think adding Satanico to it would make it better than their last outing automatically. Sadly, this is not the case, as everyone other than Pirata and Satanico turn in sluggish performances, and even Satanico's isn't up to his lofty standards. Still, Pirata has a nice dive and a great bump. If I had my eyeball exploded because someone failed to catch me when I was doing a tope, I would probably be leery about ever doing them again, but Pirata was unafraid to dive headfirst into Grundy, so I was kinda impressed by that. Even more impressive - and something I'd be even leerier about doing - was his big bump of the match, as Mascara Sagrada hiptosses him over the top rope, and Pirata takes a no-hands back bump all the way to the floor. That was fucking terrifying, but in a very wrestling-appropriate way. One nice dive and one insane bump feels like it should be enough to get this match to FUN if anyone else gave a shit in this match, but they didn't, so it doesn't.

Pirata Morgan vs. Tiger Mask II AJPW 12/8/1984 - FUN

Pirata was a bunch of fun here. He wasn't afraid to smack Tiger Misawa around, both with standard brawling and with some flashier junior offense like his great second rope tope en reversa and another "so what if I lost an eye doing this" tope later in the match. He also isn't afraid to do some really neat bumping for Misawa. He gets a ton of height for a flip bump off of a back body drop. For his own part, Misawa shows some flickers of his future greatness (well, his tope rope somersault bodyblock isn't really indicative of his future, but it was indicative of greatness), but it's pretty clear he still has a way to go before reaching the legendary status he'd gain in the 90's. A flawed match, but still enjoyable, and another neat opportunity to see Pirata in a different setting. Definitely made me want to see him against some of the more substantive Japanese juniors of the era.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE PIRATA MORGAN