My Favorite Wrestling! WCW Worldwide 9/22/96

1. Jerry Lynn vs. Juventud Guerrera

This was really fun, got about 7 minutes and both guys were just sorta throwing stuff against the wall. Lynn is wearing his absurd purple and gold puffy sleeve sequin jacket that says "Dynamic Lynn" on the back. Both guys spend the whole matches plumbing the depths of their offense, which is one of the most fun things about this era of Juvy. He does a crazy springboard somersault dropkick that looks like it should've caved Lynn's chest in. Lynn does some cool armdrags that Juvy bumps fast, as Juvy will do. This was the kind of stuff I ate up when I originally watched it. Fast armdrags, big ranas, missile dropkicks, springboard stuff, all of it. A lot of those matches have been kinda disappointing on rewatch, but occasionally you get one like this that fills the time admirably and delivers.

2. DDP vs. Disco Inferno

A guy who looks a lot like Dwight Gooden is in the crowd here with his kids, and Schivaone even says that Dwight Gooden is here. Which would be weird since He would've been on the Yankees at this point, who certainly would have been in middle of a playoff push in the middle of 1996. I'm not sure when this was taped but unless it was taped over the All Star break, that's the only time I could see Gooden being in the front row here. He could have been at tons of 1995 tapings. Dude had nothing going on that year. This match was short but fun, with DDP being enjoyable as a muggy, cigarette smoking heel. At one point he drops a low elbow on Disco and gets up slapping his belly, saying "you know where that was". Disco was a pretty easy guy to appreciate looking back. He seemed like he enjoyed his gimmick and here he had nice stomach kicks, solid jabs, a nice eye poke and bumped all over for DDP's offense.

3. Super Calo vs. Brad Armstrong

Short match, with Armstrong going over! Wasn't actually expecting that as the luchadors were getting a good push at his point and Armstrong was Brad Armstrong. Calo hits a sweet back elbow after running up the turnbuckles, and then hits his awesome slingshot senton to the floor on the Worldwide stage! Crazy. Armstrong takes luchador offense really nicely, and he folds Calo in half with a clothesline and then rolls him right through for the Russian Leg Sweep. Wish we could have gotten more than the 2 minute they delivered, but both guys looked killer in the wimpy time given.

4. Meng, Barbarian, Ray Traylor & Hugh Morrus vs. Scott & Steve Armstrong, Pepe Prado & Tony Mella (?)

Boy I couldn't tell you much about the two non-Armstrong boys. Heenan clearly doesn't know their names and keeps saying things like "Hey Tony, you know this guy who Meng is beating, right? I'm just checking to make sure YOU know." I assume they're both just Florida area workers. Mella is a big dumpy guy, and Prado looks like a more Cuban Keith Hernandez. Shoot "Cuban Keith Hernandez" would have been a cooler gimmick. I normally love when Saturday Night or Worldwide throws on a random WAR multiman, because they almost always get time and then you get to see weird 10 minute matches with an entire team made up of jobbers. But this barely gets 3 which is a waste. Traylor looked good here and laced into Steve Armstrong, who then tagged out to Prado, and the rest of the match was basically the Dungeon of Doom taking apart Prado. Barbarian launches him with a belly to belly off the top, Morrus splats him with the No Laughing Matter. Mella comes in for the save and gets punted out the ropes to the floor. Scott Armstrong wisely stayed on the apron through all of this. Not a horrible payday for Scott Armstrong.

5. Rock & Roll Express vs. Arn Anderson & Chris Benoit

Needless to say I was pretty excited to see these teams hit the ring with 10+ minutes left to go on the broadcast. And the match is totally great. Both teams get to go on nice long runs, neither works face or heel, which is really best option here as they work more of a mutual respect thing but with neither team going over the top with any of the "I respect you!" stuff. Instead we get a hot match with some nice turns, and then a long heat segment on Morton  (you're shocked, I know). All of Ricky's comebacks are really good, and all the Rock & Rolls showing off offense was really fun. It's always a kick seeing Gibson break out the delay headscissors. Morton does a real slick armdrag reversal of a Benoit powerbomb that I loved. Another great moment was Gibson going in for a deep armdrag, whiffing the hook, and just getting kicked by Benoit. Everybody throws snug punches and elbows and it makes the overall work more desirable. Ricky throws some nice corner punches, Benoit elbows Ricky in the mouth. There was some real great arm work on Arn, starting with him missing an elbow to the post. Ricky and Robert tearing the arm apart was real cool, matadoring Arn into a missed shoulder-first corner charge, and Robert doing a neat little slingshot knee drop to the arm after tagging in. I mean, Arn stops selling the arm at one point, but it doesn't really matter in a match like this. Finish is cool with the RnRs getting a visual pinball on Arn after hitting the double dropkick, but Benoit drops a cool top rope elbow on Ricky and flips Arn on top. Not a match I ever realized happened, let alone on a C-show main event, and didn't know the Rock n Rolls were even signed this late into '96, but it was as good as it sounds on paper.

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MLJ: Los Guerreros Flashback: Los Nuevos Infernales vs Villanos IV & V/IWRG Mr. Niebla

2000/05/04 - Los Nuevos Infernales (Satanico/Rey Bucanero/Ultimo Guerrero) vs. Villanos IV & V/IWRG Mr. Niebla

I decided that before moving on to the big title match between Rey Bucanero and Ultimo Guerrero, I really should go back and watch a couple of older matches. This is the sort of rabbit hole that I can go down and never come out of, so we're going to limit this. One Nuevo Infernales match. One match where Ultimo and Rey are pitted against Satanico and that's it. I'm tempted to hit something from the few years after, a title match maybe, when the GdI were thought to be one of the best teams in the world, but there's only so much time, and depending on how much we have of that, I'd actually love to give it a real look later.

I really like Satanico, and more than that, I love that his fingerprints are still all over CMLL, even into this last year. Los Guerreros and Hijos del Averno are both his legacy, and while Averno's gone now, they're all over the place in the 2000s, really. On top of that, he trained a ton of different luchadors. He was incredibly versatile, able to shift from stooging to blood feuds, from true evil to comedic evil, skilled in trios and title matches. If I could watch a thousand Satanico matches I would. Here, he was great, directing traffic with his two young partners and looking like he was having the time of his life.

So, then there's the other side: I need to see more of the Villanos. That goes without saying. I haven't really found the footage to latch on to yet, but I'm sure I will at some point. IWRG Niebla was, of course, not the Niebla we're used to, but the version created due to a legal dispute, or lack there of. I've seen the mask match between the two Nieblas and enjoyed it and I'm glad guy stuck around, because really lucha needs more guys with ridiculous physiques. He was slimmer and pretty agile here, but didn't stand out at all personality-wise. The Villanos looked great, but I couldn't really tell one from the other. That's my own failing, I'm sure, though the VQ didn't help. Apparently this was on ESPN 2 at some point?

Structurally, this was a sort of weird rudos vs rudos match. I have no context, no idea what the story was here or really what role either team played in IWRG at the time, or the nature of the TV show, or anything at all. This was at least a number of months into the Nuevo Infernales run and probably at least a few before they rebelled against Satanico and picked up Tarzan Boy. It was worked with Villanos and Niebla as the de facto tecnicos, actually, getting swept under in the primera, coming back in the segunda, getting swept back under at the start of the tecera, only to come back again to lead to the finish. Thanks to cut aways to the ring girl, I'm not even sure how some of this worked. When we really get into the action, Los Infernales are already taking the advantage. When we come back after the segunda, it's pretty much the same thing, but it's not a cut so much as the camera amusingly looking the other way.

We'll chalk it up to superior teamwork, because Satanico and company had that in a big way. That was the story of the primera. Like I said, he's directing traffic and he seemed like he was having a blast doing it. The three of them worked well in unison, hitting corner charges (including a lesser form of UG's corner seated senton), and even Los Guerreros' triple alley oop body splash onto the dangling back of their held opponent. I hadn't realized that was a move with so much history for the group. They did the catapult into a shot too, and finished with a couple of triple submissions, one following a triple wheelbarrow facebuster. It kept on into the segunda too, as they did these cute little flips as a team before corner charges, until Rey, who, by the way, looked a bit more goth than pirate here, as if he was trying to capitalize on Vampiro or something, was dodged by a Villano, allowing the other side to take over.

As I said, the Villanos' side ended up working rather tecnico by default. That included the Villano getting some revenge on UG (who had worked on his mask in the primera), by undoing his mask a bit, and then keeping the advantage as UG desperately tried to keep it on, but more pointedly, a bunch of arm drags and hip throws and agile reversals and what not, with Los Infernales feeding them by bumping around the ring, and in Satanico's case stooging, making them look good. I liked Niebla's back headbutts (topes sans the suicida) around the ring and sort of wish people used them more now. They took the fall with a dive and a windy submission and a powerbomb on Satanico. After some back and forth in the tecera, it looked like it was about to end the same way, with captain Niebla getting the better of captain Satanico, but UG, clever and deft, tossed his mask of in the midst of a quebrada, and Los Infernales pick up the well timed DQ win. I actually had to go back and see it again because I was focused on Satanico and missed it completely.

This was a fun look back. Satanico and the two young, flashy guys, made for a nice trio. I don't think Rey entirely had it yet as he looked choppy or unsure at times, but it's easy to see why he got better quickly. It's sort of a shame that there was only a year or so of this version of Los Infernales and not more than that. Hopefully there's a lot more footage out there for me to catch at some point.

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