Lucha Worth Watching: TOMK on Sangre Chicana vs. Satanico

Sangre Chicana vs. Satanico 8/11

So I started seeing grainy cell phone clips of Sangre Chicana v Satanico from Sunday on my feed and went looking for the complete match. Took me a while and saw stuff from multiple angles in the process. Sangre Chicana and Satanico are two of the greatest luchadors of all time and both are now way past their prime in their late 60s. Satanico is the older but has stayed athletic and working for decades. Chicana has looked physically shot for a while but in his fifties still had superstar charisma a punch, one or two athletic moves, neat reversals, some bumps and the feel of unpredictable violent motherfucker who will stab you with a broken bottle at any moment. He’s now 67 and this is his retirement hair v hair match. You want to see both of these guys in their prime, but once you’ve become emotionally invested in them you can’t turn away from watching them at the end.

Chicana comes out in a shirt and the mask he lost in the 70s. And Satanico just beats on him relentlessly with Chicana completely unable to make a comeback, gets dragged into the ring and pinned in a minute. A part of Sangre Chicana match formula is that he will eat a beating one-sided beating, but he’s now 67 and so this feels like an old man getting beat up on bus. Satanico continues to punch him and kick and bang his head into chairs & ring posts and Chicana needs his kids to help him remove his mask and shirt. He kind of looks at this point like the halfway point between Mr Donnie and Larry Storch. He was still imposing in his early 60s, looked like a guy who would stab you over a game of euchere, but now he looks like an ex-hippy who wants to forget that he stabbed someone for stealing his nitrous tank. Lots of old luchadors look worn down from time, Sangre Chicana somehow looks genial. All of this means when he does finally throw a punch to mount a comeback it is completely unexpected, cause you didn’t think possible. And goes straight to chair throwing. Satanico bumping for Chicana punches is really impressive cool stuff. Post second fall Chicana follows Satanico to the floor and has a gleeful look as he leaps out of ring to floor and leaping to floor looks like an amazing physical accomplishment for a 67 year old. Third fall is two old men punching each other and exchanging deliberate submission reversals. When first watched described it as “feel of two grandpas fighting in state fair parking lot where everyone is uncomfortable by old man violence but no one going to call police to break up.” And it’s about 5 minutes and what you want from this match, 2 old men attacking each other in way that feels uncomfortable because it is two old men. 

Super athletic buff young ref leaping around to do the two count near falls is kind of preposterous but totally works here. I bet 84 Kevin Von Erich refereeing a Fritz v Bronko Lubich match would have gotten super heated reaction. 

Post-match they do speeches putting each other the fans and the sport over and these are all time great talkers in that position. The drama of the post-match and retirement feels like something a newbie might get and enjoy. Otherwise, it is a ten minute match that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone who isn’t already heavily emotionally invested in the last 40 years of these two. It’s pretty ridiculous to write up a niche match that is only for the people who were going to go out of their way to watch this as soon as they found out it exists…but yeah those people will dig.