All Time MOTY List HEAD to HEAD 2001: Honda/Inoue v. Hashimoto/Yasuda V. El Hijo Del Santo v. La Parka

El Hijo Del Santo v. La Parka Monterey 12/23/01

PAS: Obviously the truly harrowing amount of blood is going to lead off any review of this match, Santo looks like someone who got shot in the forehead with a nail gun, the blood pools underneath the mask, puddles all over the ring, and stains La Parkas alternate white jersey so badly he looks like he jumped off a high dive into a pool full of cherry Kool Aid. It has to be right up there with the bloodiest matches I have ever seen (excluding death match stuff where guys cut each other with glass shards and shit.) It would be well worth watching even if it was just a geek show, but there is a classic violent and awesome lucha brawl underneath all of that plasma. I am not sure what the rudo y technico dynamics of this match were, Santo dominates early (taking the MS1 role in this structure) and beats Parka all around the ring before beating him easily in the first fall. Parka gets the big momentum shift spot, as he sidesteps an in ring tope, and takes over, destroying Santo and unleashing the crimson tide. Parka is awesome as a guy on top, he is great at working a guy over on a ringpost, at one point he is smashing the back of Santo's head into the post, and does a bunch of other spots around it, including taking a big bump into it. Once Santo fires back we have a really dramatic finishing run, including some huge bumps by Parka, and some great dives by Santo including a ringpost tope which must send Parka 20 feet into the entry way. Finish has some regrettable Monterey ref horseshit (I remember buying Monterey tapes from Alfredo back in the day, and shitty ref nonsense would ruin 75% of these great on-paper matchups), but it wasn't so bad that it took away from the greatness that came before it.

ER: Oh man I love this match so much. In March 2002 my friends Jason, Devin, Brian and I drove down south to LA in Jason's RV for a weekend of indy wrestling shows. We saw Rev Pro at a Boys and Girls Club, Millenium Pro at a Jewish Community Center (where after his match Adam Pearce did a promo that killed the crowd, breathing hard and saying he was "blown up like the Twin Towers"), and a beyond fun lucha show at Franks and Sons flea market where Super Boy landed on me doing a chair breaking dive, and a La Parka/Shocker main event (before the show Devin pointed at a man in a mint polo shirt and Jordache jeans and said "Check out the fat dork in the La Parka mask........oh wait I think that's La Parka"). We would drive the rig around to all the wrestling shows, and in the downtime we would watch wrestling in the RV and play Nintendo 64. At the flea market I bought a few lucha tapes (and now that I think about it, Alfredo was probably the one I talked to and bought lucha from in person...), two different shows with Santo/Cerebro matches, and this La Parka/Santo Super Libre match, which said BLOODY on the printed out tape label. Getting to Franks and Sons a couple hours before a show is deadly because suddenly aside from lucha tapes we found ourselves lugging obscure trading cards and Brujeria t-shirts as well. Later that night, we all watched this match on the RV and couldn't really believe it.

First off, I have no explanation for the ending. I can't explain it and don't understand it, but I also don't care. One man pinning another wouldn't have made this match any better. This was about two men ripping each others scalps off and still managing to execute the most beautiful lucha libre. This is the bloodiest match I've ever seen, and even knowing that going back into it, I forgot how bloody it was. The primera has both men looking like specters, in their ghostly white and silver. 10 minutes later they would be dark red. But this isn't just men biting at heads, as the match would have worked wonderfully with no blood at all. You'd still get the great brawling, the incredible dives, Santo's beautiful combination of grace and violence; that we get an absurd amount of plasma just makes it legendary. You get all of Santo's great push kicks, his bullet topes (his big comeback one past the ringpost that sends Parka flying out of camera view is an all time lucha highlight reel spot), and you get Parka beating him bloody around Monterrey. The way Parka takes control by dodging a dive and just slamming Santo down to the mat on his way down was vicious....until you see all of the more sadistic things he does after. Both men get introduced to several chairs in the building, Parka beats him with a beer bucket , Parka flies into the third row off a tope, and it's all just spellbinding. Jason hasn't had that RV for a decade or more, and we've been on wrestling trips before and after that one, but that trip always stands out in my brain; and a big part of those memories was watching this match with some great friends in an RV, parked at a Wal Mart.

Z1 Tag Review

Verdict:

PAS: I am going to have to go with the lucha match. I love the Z1 tag, but this was such a spectacle, in addition to the great work that it beats it out.

ER: Big fan of that Z1/NOAH tag, but this match beats the pants off it. New champ.