Inside La Parka's Burning I Can See Clear Through

La Parka/Psychosis/Villano IV vs. Juventud Guerrera/Silver King/Hector Garza WCW 6/30/97 - GREAT

PAS: This was a dark match for a Nitro and all six guys just went all out for seven minutes. Everyone was moving at a pretty breakneck speed, Villano IV is a stout guy, but he is flying all over the place, and even hits a great looking tope. La Parka comes off like such a big star in matches like this, even when he isn't the guy doing the most work. I like how they mixed in some classic lucha trios spots like the Star and everyone missing dives from the top. WCW Lucha trios were so much fun I really wish they ran them on every TV show and we had hundreds to watch, cool that a HH showed up though, I imagine there are dozens of house show trios which were just as good.

ER: So many of us were so lucky to have been exposed to lucha through WCW trios matches, just a bunch of unselfish guys trying out material, knowing they weren't even making tape but still going all out on a Nitro dark march (though I guess there's a chance they didn't realize it was dark...). What I loved about these guys going all out in a Vegas dark match, was they structured the match so that 2/3 of the moves missed. I don't know if I've seen that before. By the end of the match we got a few big dives, bullet topes from Villano and Juvi, Silver King's plancha, and a huge hangtime crossbody from Psychosis; but outside of the traditional multiman lucha spots (the Star, the tandem surfboards while Juvi crawled underneath everyone for a nearfall), most of the moves were designed to miss! We had a huge section where everybody misses splashes and sentons off the top rope, and the crowd gets more and more excited the more guys dive into an empty pool! But it's not just missed top rope moves, a lot of spots are set up by guys missing everything: missed dropkicks, missed clotheslines, missed spinning heel kicks, all misses! Most of the bumps in this match come from guys missing their moves. I've never seen a match so built around offense completely missing. La Parka and V4 were my favorite guys in the match. V4 threw a couple hard lariats and was working like a little bulldozer. Parka gets easily the best reactions of the match, that guy could have been a real superstar in WCW. Phil is right that he always stood out in matches like this, even with everyone doing crazy things, he had such a style to his hits and misses. Here he's taking bumps bigger than 1997 Psychosis, which are indeed huge bumps. Watch him violently miss that upside down in the buckles bump, and listen to the crowd get louder everytime he runs in and cuts someone off. Silver King took a big spill early to the floor, V4 and Parka had a contest to see who could take a bigger backdrop bump, and it really is a shame that so many other matches just like this just weren't recorded. There is no excuse for WWF/WCW to not be setting up a hard cam at house shows for the past 30 years. No vision.


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