Espectáculos Promociones Panama: Idolo vs Exterminador 1: Idolo! Exterminador! Sandkan! Emperador!

Idolo/Exterminador vs Sandokan/Emperador (June 1988)

MD: I have to admit that I've spent a couple of months just wondering what the big deal with Idolo was. You can read from Graham's history posts that he was up there with Sandokan, if not definitively above him, as the top start of the territory, but we've been seeing a bunch of lukewarm rudo performances where he's outshined by the people he's teaming with again and again. He did carry himself like a star and like someone important, and the fans reacted accordingly, but there was a spark missing. Thankfully, we have a place to try to find it here with the Exterminador feud and this is a great start. This began with me more or less reaffirming my priors albeit with a glint of hope and ended with me starting to see the light (even if it might simply be the light at the end of the tunnel of Idolo's rudo run).

Right from the get go, Exterminador stands out more than Idolo. He brings a kid into the ring before the bell, flips in and out of the ring on tags, has some very fun chain wrestling with Sandokan, takes an atomic drop by spasming through the ropes and all over the floor. Just a lot of charismatic body language as he bumps, feeds, stooges, and batters Sandokan around the ring. Idolo honestly looks pretty good here in shorter exchanges despite it all, with a clear smoothness and familiarity with both Emperador and Sandokan, but he can't help but be overshadowed by a guy wrestling for the back row like Exterminador is.

That's especially true once the story of the match kick in and we begin to get the rudo miscommunication spots. They have to hit each other at least eight times and each one seems to matter more than the last. By the middle of the segunda, Exterminador has gone from being apologetic to begging off (which led to a funny moment of him hugging the ref and cheapshotting Sandokan) to trying to prove himself by taking all the offense, to trying to steal shots from Idolo as he got way out of hand. It boils over with an absolutely amazing turn as Sandokan comes back and someone starts interfering for Exterminador and everything begins to break down with the rudos coming to blows and Idolo, with the cheerleading and help from Sandokan and Emperador, starts mauling Exterminador around the ring and ringside area as the fans begin to mob in excitement.

When watching this, I had no idea how long Idolo had been a rudo, but it's obvious he had once been a beloved hero and there's building pressure during this post-match chaos as Sandokan and Emperador have their hands raise and continue to throw Exerminador back into the ring as they egg Idolo on. Throughout it Idolo has stopped caring about them and is solely focused on Exterminador building the suspense more and more until, after clearing the ring once and for all, Idolo and Sandokan embrace and the already wild crowd goes ever more so. I've mentioned before but sometimes with this old footage from a culture not at all our own, this stuff that has never been spoken about in our circles, that isn't part of some "canon" we all know like, for instance, Santito turning rudo, well, it can feel like sneaking into someone else's family gathering. Sometimes you get the sense that this isn't for you, that you don't belong, but here, it's impossible not to feel the elation of the crowd and the excitement of the moment and to share in the universality of pro wrestling at its most emotional. This was a huge, important, iconic moment and we're so fortunate that we've gotten to share in it, just as we're fortnuate that there's a chain match and a mask match to come.

GB: Exterminador would grace Panama roughly the same time as La Parka, with Parka obviously squaring off with Sandokan and Exterminador being the Mexican for Idolo to beat. By all accounts, this is either one or two weeks after the Sandokan/Parka mask match placing it toward the tail end of June 1988. It’s a relatively brief feud, culminating on July 17, but it saw its fair share of violence and hostility. The main matches (this tag, a chain match, and the apuesta) we are lucky to have on tape and will write them up in the coming three weeks.

As Matt eloquently put it, this was a huge cultural moment for Panamanian wrestling. Their hero, El Idolo, would turn tecnico after I believe his final run as a rudo during his peak. Cards on the table, this post was to be a recap of what led up to this moment. The plan was to recap a few questions, most especially: “Why had Idolo turned rudo to begin with?”  “How long had he been rudo?” and “What caused the return to the tecnico side?”  Unfortunately, the trail ran cold on me and I’ve seemingly exhausted every possible avenue. In terms of information, El Idolo is possibly the most written-about wrestlers out of Panama. So much so, in fact, that he has his own website covering his career. Yet, the information is more fanciful. Nothing quite detailed enough to glean.

Panama is an incredibly proud yet protective territory. I've mentioned it before but there's a very insular network going on where even local fans are gatekept in a sense. I do believe a lot of it is due to bad experiences with foreign writers who seemingly used Panama for their own gains, whatever that may be. Sammy de la Guardia has referenced some previous writers as "pirates of history" and Don Medina has taken great exception to what he believes are frauds in wrestling journalism. Those guilty are big names; ones that, if you're a follower of lucha, will have definitely heard of and might have read. It's daunting in that sense as I'm just one man, writing on a blog for the first time. I don't have credentials or authenticity to my name. These posts are my portfolio of evidence to that end. My hopeful key to getting to the fabled historian I keep hearing of but never encountering. All in the bid to share as much as I can of the beauty that is Panamanian lucha. Thus, dear reader, we will need to hold off on the big turn for this week in hopes that I can cast my net wider to those in the know.

Look, if this feud was as simple as just Idolo and Exterminador, I'd feel a bit better in connecting dots that may not be there. After all, Exterminador was just a statistic. Another notch on Idolo's belt. Number 31 of 78 (40 masks, 38 hairs). And although I have a small sense of the background and believe it similar to Idolo’s first tecnico turn (which took place during his feud with Furia Roja where he would take the Colombian’s mask in July 1965), it would be wrong of me to offer my guess work here. Not on something so important such as the reunion of Sandokan and El Idolo.