Found Footage Friday: EL SANTO~! EL HIJO DEL SANTO~! MEIKO~! KONG~! PANTHER~! COLON~!

Carlos Colon/El Santo vs. Barrabas/Rebelde Rojo 2/1/75?

MD: Hijo del Santo posted this and at the very least, the quality is better than whatever we had before. We hadn't covered it and it's a good, focused look at both Santo and a relatively young Carlos. There's so little footage of Santo that you look as closely as possible and really watch how he moves. He was mainly paired with Rebelde Rojo at first and there are the throws you'd expect, but also a nice mat transition into a stretch muffler type submission and these really nice kneelifts that come in from the front instead of the side. Later on, he'd throw Barrabas around by his beard and hit headscissors takeovers and post match, he had a nice tope where he squared up and ran all the way across the ring to build up speed. The heels were game here and Colon had zip to everything he did. In the absence of footage, you always wonder, but from this glimpse of Santo there was oomph and swagger behind his movements and you do really get the sense that there was something tangible to the legend.

PAS: This was just a glimpse, but any glimpse of Santo is pretty great (honestly a glimpse of young Colon is pretty awesome too). Santo moved a little like his son, although without that incredible lightness of foot that Hijo brings to the table. Love those straight knee lifts up the middle, really felt Mr. Wrestling 2ish, which is really what you want from a kneelift. His tope looked good to, and he landed it almost like a Thez press. The rudos mostly bumped and fed, but did it well, would have liked of course to see this in a fuller version, but it's El Santo we take what we can get!


Meiko Satomura vs. Aja Kong GAEA 4/24/98

MD: This is apparently their first singles match. Satomura wasn't even twenty yet most likely. I'm a big fan of these ten minute GAEA Aja matches where someone has to try to figure out how to solve the puzzle/problem of her. Meiko started strong with a trip and some pummelling, but it ended with Aja just staring her down in the corner and crushing her as she ran back across the ring to build momentum. From there, Kong played with her like a cat with a toy. When Meiko dared to come back, Kong smashed her with the aluminum box (fairly mirthful about it as she played keep away with the ref). Yet, as the match went on, it went from being about Satomura surviving, to her just scoring a point or two and not getting completely shut out, to her getting a moral win by really doing a little bit of damage, to her actually having a shot. It was one thing to get a lucky, gutsy slam. It was another to pry off an arm and force Aja to make a rope break. It was something else entirely to struggle Aja up for a death valley driver and the closest of nearfalls. All the while, Aja would shake it off and crush and compact Meiko with one bomb or another. When she finally put her down with a death valley driver of her own and the meanest Uraken imaginable, it felt definitive, but not at all like the mercy killing it might have felt like earlier in the match.

PAS: This was an iconic rivalry which produced some incredible matches. This wasn't one of those, instead it was a really young Meiko just starting to chip away at the mountain in front of her. I loved how Aja just walked through her early kicks and dropped her with one of her own. Meiko was only really able to get an advantage when Aja would get too cocky and head to the top rope, where Meiko was able twice to use cool armbar take downs to bring her down. That Death Valley Driver Meiko hit felt like a big moment, she had tried for it multiple times before, and dropping a big girl like Aja on her is really nasty. Aja DVD was even sicker though, and the uraken was .95 RAW Chaparita Asari level violent. We are going to have to dig through this GAEA youtube channel, lots of stuff on there, and I imagine a bunch of it is new and cool. 

Hijo del Santo/Blue Panther vs. Nosawa/Scorpio, Jr. FCW 5/15/04

MD: A little bit clipped, but 15+ minutes of action with clear transitions and most of the big moments intact. First two thirds of this felt a little like an exhibition, the traveling show, with Santo as the world's best Mil Mascaras and Blue Panther as his trusty Dos Caras. The interesting things to me were how good Nosawa's punches probably would have looked in the crowd but how the camera angle betrayed them and how the announcers were struggling valiantly to fit lucha into their pro wrestling box. I do think we missed some of the violence of the rudo beatdown in the segunda. It started with Panther's knee going out mysteriously but by the time the comeback occurred, Santo's mask was ripped from the bottom and he was out for blood. Maybe it's just the last few matches we've seen with him, buy my favorite Santito now is pissed off tercera comeback Santito. Here he opened up Scorpio with a chair and decided to just run across the ring and kick him in the wound to open it up more. He had a stutter step on the senton-into-a-dive on the finish but by that point I didn't care because he was running about kicking rudos' wounds open and apparently that's my guy.

PAS: Any Santo is great, and he had cool chemistry with Scorpio Jr. over the years, including taking Scorps hair in an incredible tag apuestas match. I always dig Santo working his headscissors spots, and it was cool to watch him snap and bloody up Scorpio. Panther and Nosawa were just kind of there, second banana technico is not working towards Panther's strengths as a wrestlers, and Nosawa is more of a fun character then a good wrestler. I am into Santo digging into his tape library and posting random shit, hopefully there is more iconic shit out there, but this was a fun diversion.