MLJ: Hijo del Santo vs Blue Panther 4: El Hijo Del Santo, Octagón, Rey Misterio Jr. b Blue Panther, Fuerza Guerrera, Psicosis

1995-03-17 AAA Sin Limite
El Hijo Del Santo, Octagón, Rey Misterio Jr. b Blue Panther, Fuerza Guerrera, Psicosis

I'll be perfectly honest here. This was a great trios, but at the end of it, I only wanted to talk about three things: Fuerza being awesome, how far I thought Psicosis had come in a short time from the few matches I've seen from him here, and the match structure. The last of the three is actually quite simplistic. It's a basic A-B-A structure (and I'm introducing this here). The tecnicos dominate in the primera, sort of your typical babyface shine. The rudos take over in the segunda (your heat) which builds to the hot comeback in the tercera. It's Tito Santana's wrestling psychology 101 and I thought I might contrast it to some other structures you often see in lucha like a B-A-C sort where the rudos lead the match off with a mugging and the tecnicos come back in the segunda leading to a reset in the tercera. I'm not going to do that here, because this isn't the match for that. It's too good to take up too much time with something so basic. What I will say instead is that the A-B-A structure is one of the most time tested things in all of wrestling. Shine-Heat-Comeback works. It works well. It especially works here, but it also achieves different effects than something that's more predominantly rudo-centric. The last match I saw with this pairing was far more intense even if this may have been more entertaining.

With the structure defined, you know most of what you need to about the match's narrative. Let's talk about performances then. First off, Blue Panther was an afterthought here. There was next to no matwork and while he did alright as a base and a bully against Rey, he just didn't seem to be in there much at all. In fact, he was so much of an afterthought that I left wondering if maybe I should have done this project on Santo vs Fuerza instead, because frankly, I love Fuerza. Character work matters so much more to me than flashy moves or great dives or hard punches, and he's just a king at it. He's such a slimy rudo, and especially so here. There has to be two-three times he calls for the ref to DQ his opponent on a ludacrisly imaginary ball shot, the best being after a quebradora which both refs saw clearly and where the physics just made such a thing impossible. I've seen him do clean handshakes/hugs in a few matches now, so it was great to see him, at the start of the segunda, put an arm around Rey, walk around the ring with him, kiss him on the forehead, and nail him in the skull. It wasn't the exact start of the transition to rudo offense, but it was close. The great thing about him is that he's not all sthick. He also is great at eating offense and serving as a base, especially with Octagon, and he'll take these crazy bumps over the guardrail, which he then decorates with additional charcter-driven flourishes. He's a joy to watch.

While Rey hit some incredibly daring spots, stuff that would honestly seem cutting edge now, and played face in peril quite well, and while Santo hit his stuff as smooth as ever, Psicosis really stood out to me the most. First of all, he was the one taking a lot of that daring Rey offense, including the 'rana to the floor that if he had timed even a second differently could have snapped Rey's neck in half. I also loved how he took Santo's offense, sliding across the ring with each bump. It was very distinctive and it's something more wrestlers should probably figure out how to pull off. He also had a fairly impressive twisting senton to end the primera. It was more than that, though. In the last match, he felt mainly like the guy in there to face off against Rey, his rival flyer. Here, though, many months later, he felt like a much more total package. He wasn't just selling moves but also attitudes and reactions to what the crowd did or what his opponents did. The best part might have been when Santo was mocking him with bullfighter moves while the crowd shouted Ole. The second he got a shot in, he shouted it back to the crowd. The other big contender would be the transition, where Fuerza and Panther had Rey in a standing submission and Psicosis thought it would be a good idea to stand on top of him and pose. He got shoved off from behind leading to the tecnico comeback. I'm not sure if it was teaming with Fuerza so much or what, but this was a much broader, though still athletic performance from him and it makes me a little frustrated for how we lost a few of his prime years in WCW. I imagine at the time, the sentiment was that it was great to be able to see so many luchadors on weekly TV, but now, looking back, most people would rather they have been working more in Mexico and that we had tape of those matches. I'd read recently someone mention that he was fairly overlooked in this period and while I hadn't picked up on that so much in the match from the year before, I was definitely feeling it here.

Octagon looked good once again. He seemed to me like someone very good at playing his role and hitting his stuff. He also seemed like a great foil for Fuerza, including the moment in this match when Fuerza tied his mask to the ropes. The two of them were spotlighted at the end of the tercea, leading to the finish where Octagon ultimately got the upper hand. This was a textbook trios match. I could have probably used a slightly longer beatdown in order to build the anticipation for the comeback, but in general, for a match of this type it was extremely well executed and hugely entertaining.