MLJ: El Hijo del Santo One-Shot 3: Satanico, Hijo Del Santo, Emilio Charles, Jr. vs Negro Casas, Shocker, Mr. Niebla

1998-03-06
Satanico, Hijo Del Santo, Emilio Charles, Jr. vs Negro Casas, Shocker, Mr. Niebla

It's actually harder to find disposable El Hijo del Santo matches than you'd think. Looking for something that's 30 minutes long and seems epic? Not so hard. Looking for a disposable 15 minute trios, though? Something to get some sense of things to build up in your watching to those longer matches? Harder than you'd think. This one did pop up, eventually, though, and it had a lot going for it. First, a new wrestler, new to me at least, in Emilio Charles, Jr. I'm pretty certain he's on the tail end of the DVDVR 80 set but I haven't made it that far yet. Next up, young masked Shocker and Niebla, which is kind of exciting. They were a team at this point and I think actually champions, having beaten Charles and Wagner for the belts. Of course, we've got Casas rounding out the tecnicos.

Finally and most important for this exercise, we have rudo Santo, which is pretty much the most surreal thing ever. I'd seen the turn before because it's such an amazing, crazy moment, but I've never seen him work this way, especially in so routine a setting as a weekly TV match to set up someone else's feud. As a bonus, I got to see Satanico team with Santo as rudos which had to feel like one of the signs of the apocalypse. I'd seen him in 2007 when he was really over the hill (though still effective) but he had a lot more in the tank here. I do hope there's a lot of 2001-2 available because I want to see all of that stuff.

I thought both Niebla and Shocker represented themselves well. Shocker was more than passable against Satanico on the match to start. Niebla really stood out though. He has that crazy goofy rudo charisma now but it was turned up to eleven back then. He literally bounced around the ring with Santo, more spring than man. He was wildly entertaining to watch but at the same time, it was also very, very satisfying when he got nailed in the face by a Santo dropkick. There were times that the two of them did look lost though, especially when they were working together. One would set up to whip his opponent and the other would meander about not quite sure what he was supposed to be doing. That sort of thing. You get to take the smoothness in a lot of these exchanges for granted. Casas was, of course, smooth as ever, and unsurpisingly matched up against Santo especially well even if it was a pretty strange role-reversal to watch.

As I said, this was more of an angle than a match. Towards the end of the first fall, Emilio crashed into Satanico on a pretty fierce tope suicida. It was Santo who was supposed to jump on a held Casas but Niebla had grabbed Santo's leg from the outside. The delay allowed for Casas to regroup and escape and one rudo crashed into each other, allowing for the masked tecnicos to hook a fun double submission on Satanico for the first fall. The rudos recovered into the segunda, with Charles (who had a great look) serving as a very solid base. Satanico continued to sell his arm, looking dejected and annoyed, and refusing to tag, which left Charles vs the world. When he finally locked an armbar on one of his opponents, Satanico came in and nailed his own partner over the miscommunication. Santo, himself frustrated and exasperated, tried to break them up and only accomplished getting them to stop long enough to both hit him at once. They went outside brawling and the tecnicos hit a pair of diving headbutts on Santo for the pin. Post match, the brawling continued and set up a hair match later in the month, which I do hope we have.

Ultimately, Santo was the third guy on his side. This was fairly late into the rudo run and I think it might have been wearing a bit. He made a good foil for the tecnicos, though, both Casas and Shocker, and it was a lot of fun to see Shocker and especially Niebla so young. Anyone know if that hair match is out there?