Espectáculos Promociones Panama: Africano! Cobra!

El Africano vs El Cobra

GB: Ah, the perennial el Africano. Perhaps not one of the most famous luchadores Panama has had to offer but certainly one of its stalwarts. Africano, then named “Kimba”, debuted at the age of 17 in the early to mid 70s.While the exact date of his debut is difficult to pinpoint, I managed to dig up some old newspaper clippings that show a fresh-faced Africano taking on Relampago in August 1975. Nevertheless, if we’re to believe him in a recent interview, his debut is as universally carny as any other in wrestling:

Africano had been invited to watch a show at the Eneco de la Guardia. Little did he know that the local promoter had secretly planned a debut for him on that very same night. Suddenly, the promoter approached him and said, "You're next." Africano felt a wave of panic wash over him. He was already intimidated by the talented wrestlers surrounding him, and now he was expected to perform in front of a packed arena without any preparation.

"Get your pants off and go out there!" the promoter barked at him. Africano was hesitant, but his nerves were quickly replaced by confusion. There was only one problem: he was underage and the local commissioner, Napoleón, refused his debut without permission from his parents to wrestle. The promoter sent him out in a taxi to find his parents and get the necessary paperwork signed before his match started.

It was like a scene out of a Benny Hill skit as Africano raced against the clock to make it back in time. Finally, with the ink barely dry on the signature, he burst through the doors of the arena just as the announcer was introducing him.

However, a star was not quite born. Back in the 70s and 80s, Africano was often relegated to the lower rungs of the card (this match was second from the bottom of the card, for instance). With bigger names and better wrestlers, he struggled to get his career consistently off the ground until around two decades later. To his defence, he was still relatively young by the time he got more of a break in the 1990s when, amongst other notable accomplishments, he became the sole Panamanian to defeat Mexico’s Mr Jack and win the UWA World Junior Heavyweight Championship.

Still, even as a rookie, he was a legitimately tall, towering presence and, as such, was the perfect “first challenger” programme for Sandokan, fresh off the latter becoming a “triple world champion” in March 1977. While I’ll assume the praise to be heaped on Camacho Castro’s shoulders in getting him that over, the young Kimba/Africano was always viewed by promoters as someone with a lot of promise.

In the match, though, we’re over a decade into his career and Africano is still seemingly stuck in that “promising” stage. Meaning, he was still quite the mixed bag of talent. Also quite the mixed bag of tricks. Africano wears his influences quite apparently on his sleeves. As a teenager, Africano was a student of the Olympic wrestling academy and also dabbled a little bit in gymnastics (acrobatics?) and that certainly plays out in how he wrestles. You get the slight roughness and raw talent in his chain wrestling with the nuttiness in his bumps, too. However, while I think he has some interesting enough ideas, I’m not quite sure he has the acumen to pull some of them off. What I can say, though, is he certainly played to the back with his selling. Cobra is much more the polished wrestler and a lot more alive here than other matches I’ve seen of him where he often disappears into the background in tags or plays second fiddle to his opponent. The highlight of the match came in the moment Matt likens to a “nudo” hold, though I’d argue this is much more the Jim Breaks special just with Cobra rolling Africano around to embarrass him. As an ardent Jim Breaks dissenter, this was the closest I will ever get to my hopes of seeing Rush punt the bejesus out of Breaks and that idiotic spot.

As for the booking, this match here, much like last week’s post, was seemingly done to set up an apuesta at a later date. The ending promo was slightly bizarre with Africano being attended to by the local medics. He’s in a lot of pain but valiantly saying he’s welcoming of an apuesta against Cobra. Really strange for someone billed as the “rudo”. Even stranger for the tecnico Cobra to blindside him up front as he did. I wish I could tell you more but there’s not a whole lot written about either man, let alone this feud. The only tidbit I can add is to Africano’s debut in which, coincidentally, one of his opponents would be none other than Cobra (the full match being: el Barón/Cobra vs Africano/Gemelo Infernal 3).

MD: This was in three falls, with a very short first one. Cobra had a mask and a snazzy cape on his entrance. Africano was black and came out with tribal beads or jewelry maybe? Despite the roles being very clear, Cobra ambushed Africano on his introduction; he was standing on the ropes to look at the crowd and Cobra dropkicked him off and followed it up with a pretty hearty beating before stretching him for the quick pin. Africano slowed things down with some chain wrestling at the start of the segunda, but just long enough to absolutely crack Cobra on the spine to take over. He had some pretty stylized stuff, including this weird shoulder/arm strike off the ropes and a sort of skidding elbow drop and a specific sell job i’ll get to in a moment, but he could hit pretty hard as well.  

After two fairly short falls, they went a little more back and forth, with Cobra trying to come back but Africano shutting him down, until Cobra was able to hit a catapult out of nowhere and things opened up. Cobra followed up with atomic drops and Africano’s true calling was in selling those. Somehow he managed to bump head over heels over the top rope for the first one and then retreated into the corner. For the second, he started hopping around the ring, planting himself twice and then propelling himself over the top like he was doing a Super Mario triple jump. Cobra followed it up by tying Africano into a “nudo” (knot, if you never knew that translation from Blue Panther matches) and then hitting a dive from the top to the floor for a countout win, so it was quite the celebratory finish.  I liked this more on a second watch. The stylized bits of offense and selling were fun and in between there were glimpses of real technique on things like armdrags and some hard shots from Africano.