MLJ: Guerreros del Infierno B-1: Dos Caras Sr., Mil Mascaras, Solar I b Apolo Dantés, Rey Bucanero, Último Guerrero

2000-02-08 @ Korakuen Hall, Tokyo, Japan
Dos Caras Sr., Mil Mascaras, Solar I vs Apolo Dantés, Rey Bucanero, Último Guerrero

7:43 in

Well, now I've done it. I spent money on Lucha. This is especially ridiculous because there's still a near-infinite amount of stuff for me to watch online. Keep in mind, I haven't even touched AAA except for some of the big 90s trios. I haven't seen an episode of Lucha Underground yet. I have the Casas vs Mistico and Rush vs Terrible feuds ahead of me. I still have more 2010 ahead of me. This is all stuff where we have dozens of matches for easily available. There's new 90s stuff popping up on youtube almost every day and it's all awesome.

But the heart wants what it wants and I wanted to watch old Guerreros del Infierno. One of the first things I latched onto when doing this (all the way back in June), were Los Guerreros del Atlantida and the painfully disappointing tecnico turn for Rey Bucanero. A lot of the reason why that was painful was because of the palatable history between Ultimo Guerrero and Rey Bucanero. It was always sort of striking to me, looking back, that GdI were so highly touted in the WON Tag Team Awards in the early 00s, if only because lucha isn't an area that usually does very well in those awards. I figured that since there was smoke, there had to be some fire.

Thankfully, Fredo had a comp. It's not as thorough as what I usually like (as it was a VHS comp that he retrofitted for me - Thanks!) but it has a lot of their prime era tag matches. It has fifteen matches, four of which were vs Negro Casas/El Hijo del Santo, and most of which aren't online. Now, I know most of the time, we find you guys matches that you can actually watch, so I don't want to just go through the comp itself (even though it is fairly inexpensive and I'll be able to tell you whether or not I wholeheartedly recommend it by the end). What i'll do is intersperse chronologically the comp with matches that are online. So GdI Spotlight A will be comp matches and GdI Spotlight B will be matches I can find online, which will usually be trios matches as the comp is solely tag matches. I'll keep the numbering going though, just to make things confusing, so the next match will be #2 whether it's from the A column or B column.

First up is a B match and this one was a sick amount of fun. It was the main event of a Korakuen Hall show and it had the lucha in Japan tecnico super team of Mil Mascaras, Dos Caras, and Solar I. I have little use for Mascaras but he's so over in Japan and in a trios, his worst match-slugging tendencies can be hidden a bit, especially when he has guys like Caras and Solar to do the heavy lifting for him and relatively young guys (all in their late 20s/early 30s) to eat his stuff and make him look good. Dantes is the son of Alfonso Dantes who was all over the DVDVR 80s set. He was bald after having lost a hair match to Porky in late November in arena Mexico (and hey, that match is online and I want to watch it now).

This was one fall and it was really focused on tecnico shine. It was a lot of fun though. I think that the rudos were game, given the great atmosphere, and the people that they were in the ring against, to really do their best and Solar and Caras brought a ton to the table. Mil gave the most on his way to the ring. He screwed up his bound over the top, admitted it, clowned with the crowd, and then did it again with a giant raise of his hands.

The opening matwork was very solid, with Rey letting himself get moved around by Solar. There was a bit that was a little overly choreographed, but that was counterbalanced by how organic everything else felt. One thing I noticed about UG here was that he's more agile than mid 00s Ultimo. Even so, he relied on his strength as a way to counter Caras' finesse, using a slam after getting out leveraged. Both guys were able to kip up at the end of their exchange though. Mil just did his stuff with Dantes, not showing any ass, and being glad to just do the headscissors flips from the ground because that's what the crowd wanted.

This first bit culminated with Mil hitting the flying headbutt, and then doing double ones with Caras to Bucanero and UG, followed by a Caras tope to the outside. After this they started doing tecnico vs the world comedy bits, including this really great exchange of monkey flips where Solar and Caras tossed GdI around the ring, out of the ring, and around the outside. The match is worth seeing for that, really. It was great action right up to the point where Mil out-muscled both Dantes and UG on a top wristlock spot (which was followed by ducking clotheslines, clotheslining people and tossing about atomic drops).

The rudos got a bit of heat, finally, as Caras came in and got triple teamed, including a really great triple wheelbarrow facebuster which felt effectively and jarringly out of place considering the tecnicos, then the GdI special body splash on Solar. Even Mil has to take some offense, though he fought back for far longer than the other two before succumbing to the triple team. This bit ended with another really funny spot revolving around arm wrenches, just classic lucha comedy.

From here, the match rolled into more tecnico shine, with rapid fire four-man star submissions, just hugely entertaining stuff, with the last pair doing various things (a bear hug, an inverted surfboard, etc), a dive train where everyone got to hit their dives, including a surprising UG Asai Moonsault, and the tecnicos going over with a double submission in the corner and Mil hitting a flying body press over them onto GdI and pinning them both.

There wasn't much substance or heat to this, but it was hugely entertaining for what it was between the atmosphere, the contrast of old vs young, and masters (and Mil is absolutely a master, knowing exactly what he's doing at all times, even if I don't always agree with it) really plying their craft with willing opponents. It wasn't a GdI showcase, but it did show that by 2000 they did belong in the ring with legendary characters.