MLJ: Emilio Charles Spotlight 1: Emilio Charles Jr. vs La Fiera [mano a mano]

1994-04-01 @ Arena México
Emilio Charles Jr. vs La Fiera

I will get back to Dragon Lee soon, but I wanted to take some time to linger on some older stuff. I'm ever trying to fill in the gaps in my knowledge and of my watching (which are near-infinite) and for now I've settled on Emilio Charles, Jr. My early indications of him, from what I've seen in passing, have him as very good and very versatile. He's someone with a relatively long career, much (but not all; more on that later) of which we have on tape and a good amount online. I like doing chronological looks but I'm not sure that's the way to go here due to spottiness. So instead I'm going to pick another wrestler and do interactions, sometimes in specific feuds, sometimes not. I'm going to do a couple of matches with Fiera here, and then, in order to round out next week, do a couple of matches of him tagging with Fiera against Hijo del Santo.

Why Fiera? Well, because I came across this mano a mano match and it's pretty awesome, that's why. I think the footage we have of Fiera can be fairly hit or miss, but one thing that he could do extremely well was build up the tension on his comeback after taking a big beating. That skill is one of my favorite things in the world. He did it in the Negro Casas hair match and he did it here as well.

It was a monumental beating too. Charles, with his amazing music, came down first. Fiera (whose promo picture was hairless, probably taken after the Casas match actually) stormed down to the ring, ready to go but immediately got ambushed anyway. Charles was very good at spacing things out and making things matter. He'd beat on Fiera a bit, play to the crowd, come back in. Very methodological in the best way. Here he was moving Fiera around the ring, slamming his head into the corners, punching, stomping, and then gloriously slamming his head into the wooden apron cover. He brought him to the post outside and I think that's where the initial blading happened because after one huge back body drop back in the ring, he started working the forehead a little, biting the head.

Fiera'd fight back here, but only once or twice. There was the mild tinge of a heel ref that brings everything down just a tiny bit, but only a tiny bit. It delays and distracts Fiera on his comebacks but it just FELT too early for him to come back. Anyway, Charles finished off the primera with another massively high back body drop, a crushing senton, and a submission. That didn't end the beating though. At the start of the segunda, he chucked Fiera into the stands, keeping him there and beating on him any time he tried to get up. It was pretty grisly. Fiera would keep trying to recover but Charles would roll in, celebrate, and roll out to attack before he could. By now, Fiera was bleeding pretty thoroughly, to the point that when Charles went to bite again, blood ended up all over his face.

As I said, Fiera was good at gradually coming back. It started with him walking around the ring. Yes he got cut off but he was drawing in his strength. This happened a couple of times. Then, in the ring, he was able to get his hands up and walk it off a bit, only to get distracted by the ref and cut off again. Finally, as Charles got just a bit too complacent, he hit his signature spin kick. Even then, Charles fought back and it took another reversal of a whip and a revenge back body drop and then, after leapfrogging out of Charles' way, one of the best superkicks I've ever seen to drop him and pick up the fall.

The tercera is more back and forth. Fiera gets in a revenge posting that opens Charles up and a shot of his own onto that wooden ring apron enclosure as Charles tried to crawl out of the ring. I love revenge spots in bloody lucha matches. I really do. He held the advantage until he missed a diving headbutt. Charles was a bloody mess now but holds the advantage, in part, by ducking a spin kick in the corner and launching his foot up for a near foul. Ultimately, though, he missed a senton (the same sort that set up his win in the primera; I love callbacks too), which let Fiera get in one last flurry of great fist-drops to Charles' wounded head. The finish was a little lackluster, a cross body block rolled over by Fiera and a pin that didn't look quite right, but that's okay. This was to set up a hair match later in the month. It did everything it had to in that regard.

Which brings us to the hair match. Has anyone seen this? Cubs has it as 4/25/94. As best as I can tell, it was the same night that the Grand Prix tournament was filmed that year and that made tape but I've seen no sign of anyone seeing the apuestas match. Anyone? What we do have is the trios match the following week, which is fun because it doesn't just encompass this feud, but the Cota vs Casas one as well.