New Footage Friday: SANTO! CUCHILLO! SLIM J! POSEY! BUCK! HANCOCK

El Hijo Del Santo vs. Cuchillo El Toreo 10/30/88

PAS: This is available from Santo's Patreon. It's pretty clipped up which is a shame, but what we got is a Santo 80s mask match which is pretty undeniable. Cuchillo seemed pretty replacement level. He had some nice brawling, missed a flip dive, but this was a Santo show, and what a show it is. Santo turns the mask red, flies into the hard chairs a couple of times, and hits a gorgeous plancha headbutt where he just levitates in the air before landing with real force. I also loved the start of the tercera, where Santo is coming forward with such fury that Cuchillo tackles a fan just to try to get away.

MD: 12 minutes, clipped, of a lost Santo mask match. I was a little wary during the primera as it was heavily clipped, to the point where you couldn't really get a sense of it, but everything else was great, clipped or no. Momentum shifts in old lucha often start at the end of one fall and carry into the next. It's always a big moment for Santo to lose a primera; here it was with a tie-up pin out of nowhere. What followed was a segunda where Cuchillo smelled blood and immediately went on the attack. Santo tried to fire back but the ref slowed him down and allowed some fouls. This is where we got the mask ripping and bloodying of Santo you'd want in a match like this. We miss the absolute moment of comeback but see the aftermath, first in Santo getting the pin with a tope headbutt off the top and an insult to injury legdrop, and then the bleed into the tercera where he chases Cuchillo into the crowd to create a chaotic scene with bodies flying and gets his revenge mask ripping in. I t builds to some good nearfalls and a nice Santo dive before a bloodied Santo dodges a top rope flip and locks in (with tangible effort) the caballo for the win. Again, it wasn't the ideal look at this match, but it's worth it just to see Santo's red hot fire at the start of the tercera.

Ultimo Dragon/El Dandy vs. Negro Casas/Mocha Cota Monterey 1990s?

MD: Any new Cota is a good thing in my book, and a match like this with a unique pairing and a different than normal setting is even better. Don't get me wrong, new Casas is new Casas and new Dandy is new Dandy but with them we just have more. That said, while we do get a nice stretch of Cota vs Dragon on the mat, where they cycle well enough from one thing to the next for a unique pairing, and we absolutely get a brilliant moment with Cota that I'll talk about later, the best stuff here is definitely Dandy vs Casas. They seem to be working with a healthy respect for one another at first, moving in and out of holds, doing a little bit of repetition and mirroring with a caught leg bit throughout their sequences, just smooth as silk all around, a nice balance between respect and mean-but-mutual grittiness. Everything comes to a head when Dandy has Casas set up for a tapatia and Cota comes in with a kick. Casas feigns being pissed as Cota lays on the mat posing proudly like the malignant goblin that he is. Casas ultimately leans into it for a rudo ambush (as Cota claps from the outside) that gets reversed by the tecnicos to the end of the fall. It's all we get for this but ten+ minutes of these for is definitely better than nothing.

Brody Chase vs. Mike Posey vs. Slim J vs. CB Suave vs. Billy Buck vs. Stryknyn vs. BJ Hancock Anarchy Wrestling 11/25/14 - GREAT

PAS: This is an elimination gauntlet cage match for the Heavyweight title, with each match going five minutes. This was an all cage match show (let's hope the War Games main even shows up someday), so this wasn't the wild brawl that you expect from an Anarchy cage match, but more of a workrate match. Still, this had some very good moments. Slim J was tremendous in his two sections, he comes in after Posey beats former Crockett job guy Brody Chase, and tools Posey with fast takedowns and amateur rides. Posey catches J off the top ropes with a knee to the stomach and works the body a bunch, before J reverses a submission into a choke for the tap. They worked well together and I want to track down more of that match up. Buck and Stryknyn had a good face versus face section. Buck is one of the better guys in 2010s Cornelia wrestling, and I have seen him mostly as a heel, but he is a great traditional face too. The Buck versus Hancock final section was pretty good too, full of big moves, like a top rope Samoan drop and some cool near falls, and Hancock countering the superkick with a low blow was awesome 

MD: I ended up liking this a lot. It had some things working against it. The blood and guts was going to be in the main event (a War Games) so while this was in a cage, the cage was mostly used to help with some top rope moves and to add a sense of urgency. That urgency was important due to the five minute limits on the matches. If that limit was hit, both guys in would be eliminated. It was a problem when you had fresher guys in there since most matches just don't end in five minutes period, but they worked it pretty well, with wrestlers making mistakes they might not otherwise. It also let them do the false finish to put heat on the heel champ and shine up Buck. I think what I found most impressive here is how they weaved in the history over the last few weeks: Chase's knee had been damaged previously by Posey, which made the self-damage done by the kneeling powerbomb (a spot I've never seen done quite like that) work; Hancock had previously hurt Buck's neck, which made the pile driver the focus for the final pairing. I thought the guys who got time in here were fine, but I did want to see more of Slim J. He looked absolutely great when he came in and started riding Posey all over the mat. I like how he lost the offense vs Suave by getting tossed into the cage on his rope assisted headscissors (a move he used successfully on Posey). Some of the cage assisted spots looked good, especially the huge Samoan drop off the top in the title match. I could nitpick a thing here or there (like Posey using his spell-out-his-name legdrops on Slim J a couple of minutes after missing a legdrop off the turnbuckles on Chase) but overall, I think it was a difficult match to put together and as a total package (layout, wrestling, announcing) it worked out well.