DVDVR Puerto Rico 80s Set: Carlos Colon & Miguel Perez Jr. vs. Los Pastores (January 1986)

Disc 2: Match 3: Carlos Colon & Miguel Perez Jr. vs. Los Pastores (January 1986)

At the time of writing this, we're still waiting for La Boricua to start his sure-to-be-awesome history/context bits that were delayed due to a Puerto Rican island wide power outage (EDIT: He has started it and it is great: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/35658-historycontext-thread/). I pulled together some stuff on my own, which is probably going to be shortly moot by the time this drops, but it shaped how I saw the match: Perez is obviously the son of a huge star (and Colon partner). He was somewhere between 19 and 20 at this point and had debuted back in 1985 in an angle with his dad and Eric Embry, leading to his debut match which he won (by countout with a big celebration afterwards). Prior to this tag, he had a feud with Rip Morgan as the Crusher. They'd want him as a draw for the 86 Anniversary show, challenging Flair on night 2 of 3, so this is all part of the build, teaming with Colon and wrestling the dreaded, triple-tough Sheepherders. With the way that they had completely destroyed the Sheepherders at the end of 85, you have to wonder about diminishing returns here, but for this specific purpose, they still meant something and could help to let Perez prove his toughness.

And here, he was able to as a face in peril. After the initial brawling, he ate a knee to the back from the outside in a rope-running exchange. They targeted the back for a little bit, drew Colon in for double-teams, and had some interesting offense (not just the double gutbuster, but also a great move where they charged Perez, back first into a foot in the corner). Perez was fine as a face-in-peril, but you could tell his lack of experience in some things like how he hit the corner on a whip.

Colon's hot tag was great. The tag itself not so much, but the house of fire bits. His cartwheel is always effective in its own way, as the crowd's into it and he tends to know exactly when to do it, but here, it was part of him entering the ring and dodging the first Sheepherder punch which was absolutely perfect. I have to imagine he did that throughout his career when coming in after a hot tag because it's too good a spot not to run into the ground. The comeback was properly fiery but things went around in circles a few too many times at the end with Perez looking a little rough and the sense of drama slowly fizzling out. I think it served its purpose in helping Perez on, however. As a bonus, them destroying the Sheepherders after the match with chairs and the guardrail to the sounds of upbeat Caribbean music is a true highlight of the set up to this point.