Espectáculos Promociones Panama: Idolo vs Exterminador 2: Idolo! Exterminador! A Chain Between Them!

Idolo vs Exterminador (Chain Match) - July 1988

MD: A Chain match! At some point I'll stop gushing on this, but the fact that we have a three match series on tape from 88 with an iconic turn, a bloody chain match, and the mask match is just amazing to me. I feel like even with Mexico we don't have a ton of situations where we have a three match feud that ends with a mask match from the late 80s. It's not like we have a ton of 1980s chain matches from Mexico either.

So it's always great to see a gimmick match as part of a big feud from another culture. It's funny here especially as you get halfway through before realizing that either pinfalls or four corner touching work to win. That's a testament to the first ten minutes being as close-combat and gritty as possible. They spend the first five minutes doing nothing but choking each other with the chain and jockeying for positioning in believable and interesting ways. Then the next five minutes are more focused on hammering one another due to the fact neither can get away, more choking, and mask ripping and biting. It's only after that where they start trying to touch corners and continuously pull one another down.

By this point, they're bloody and battered and there's a sense of wild desperation to things. Idolo was fresh off his rudo stint and still willing to get down and dirty, absolutely meeting Exterminador where he was fighting. When they realize that neither party can get an advantage by pulling the other, they fight to the outside, and here, even though the scene is obscured by arena placement, it's a combination of nasty whips into hard surfaces, errant chairshots both from the person doing the beating and the one trying to protect himself, and this awesome little video slip where Idolo just disappears off the screen as Exterminador pulls him down. That gives him the advantage he needs and he's able to get Idolo back in and after a clutch fireman's carry and some confusion on which corner he needed to touch, he takes the match to heat him up as much as could possibly be before the mask match.

I loved the escalation of this, starting from a point of strangling one another, moving to punching and mask ripping, then to winning, then to trying to put one another away as violently as possible. It makes so much sense, but I'm not sure I've ever seen a chain match quite like this. The crowd was a steady buzz during the close combat stuff but they went up for the corner reaching and became the usual near mob scene when they hit the floor or brawled after the match. Certainly, this was a way to build excitement for a mask match!

GB: As Matt mentions, it’s rather special to have pretty much the entire feud here on tape, for quite a number of different reasons. I believe there might be a singles match lost along the way but the big strokes are all here for us to enjoy.

For all intents and purposes, this is the only on-tape look into Idolo’s signature booking against foreigners. We have a spattering of mask matches lying around, but nothing is presented in full as it is here. His calling card all began with Steve Clements in May 1970 when Idolo would challenge Clements for the NWA European title (the title Idolo kept for a few years and “unofficially” unified with the NWA World Middleweight title in his match against Guajardo). As a way to spice up the rivalry, and to play into Idolo’s more “rudoistic” nature, the promoter of the time (Manuel Jose Hurtado) set up a succession of gimmick matches that Idolo would need to survive before he was awarded a title shot. The debut was simple and pretty straightforward by how we know Panama to go - a tag match where things break down and the feuding pair take umbrage to each other. Next, Idolo would face Clements in an “unsanctioned” no referee, no rules match to prove he had the chops to hold an NWA title. While “Sin arbitraro” isn’t all that uncommon a match-type in Panama, it was already a high-stakes affair, the final pitstop before a mask match, so the addition of a follow-up singles match was new to the Panamanian audience. In order to ramp up the violence, Don Hurtado would introduce a four-corners “chain match” that saw Idolo take the win and the right to challenge Clements for his title, pitting his mask against the Brit’s championship. Idolo was already a fan favourite at this point so it wouldn’t really cement any legacy, however, this title win kept Idolo’s momentum going and allowed a sure-fire recipe for booking success for promoters bringing in foreign talent to take on the local champion.

While it may have taken us a few go-rounds to get into understanding Idolo’s appeal, it wasn’t quite the slow burn for fans in Panama. They took to him like hot cakes. But what were/are we missing? Well, as Samy de la Guardia described Idolo, he had what few others fighters had, he had "ángel” (a Spanish term of endearment for someone with special charm) and that charisma was what the fans latched on to. Although he might have had money behind him, Idolo had quite a humble background to his character. He was an all-star athlete and Olympic wrestler introduced to wrestling via his good friend, Shazán. While he would get his formal training through La Amenaza (the man he substituted for in his professional debut) at the Gimnasio del Colegio Javier, Idolo loved training with Shazán at the latter’s Academia de Lucha Libre which was nothing more than a basement room across the road from the local ice cream parlor.

Idolo was tough and unafraid and it was this pluckiness that would catapult him into the annals of Panamanian lucha libre after a hard-fought victory in July 1965, simply three years into his career. Colombia’s Furia Roja had been running rampant throughout the territory and was leaving Panama’s prized tecnicos in fear of his challenges. None of them dared to stand up to his mask challenge, and, as much as fans willed on their supposed heroes, these wrestlers continued showing their yellow spines. That was until Idolo answered the call turning tecnico in the process after a career as a rudo’s rudo, not quite in the vein of a bloodthirsty Gálvez, but rather in the “skillful strength” of Chamaco Castro. When Idolo prized off Roja’s mask, thousands of fans roared his name. This was when Idolo as “leyenda viviente” (living legend) was born.

There would be a slight recapture of that moment in the Exterminador feud as Sandokan willed Idolo to fight alongside the tecnicos once more - for the glory of Panama if for nothing else. Just prior to their tag match we covered last week, Sandokan faced off in the last of only two singles matches between him and Idolo. While we could deride the decision of leaving a huge money match on the table in a hair/mask match, both singles matches had their reasons. The first came after Sandokan dropped his mask and didn’t need to be as protected. He was tasked to give the rub to Idolo as the true “champion” of Panama in a hard fought match that went to four falls (1st Sandokan, 2nd double-pin, 3rd and 4th Idolo). Their second encounter in May(?) 1988 was to lay the ground for Idolo’s turn. It might be easier to imagine the two as Goku (Sandokan) and a more misguided than evil Vegeta (Idolo) at this point, with Goku egging on Vegeta to “do the right thing” in fighting the lurking evil together (Parka/Exterminador). Of course, Idolo does, as we saw him embrace Sandokan in the tag match lead-in. In the eyes of the fans, it was all she wrote for Exterminador (who’s importance in ushering in a South American boom we’ll cover next week).  

So, as we finally “get” Idolo, that issue is more on us and how we are voyeurs of this world, devoid of the cultural impact it had on those around it. It’s pretty difficult to convey just how much Idolo and Sandokan meant to Panama’s pop culture. Many children feared hearing their parents scream “Not even Sandokan will save you from this beating” after they had done something wrong. Idolo was on billboards and busses across the country for years after his death. While it seemed the media wanted to shun wrestling in favor of boxing, its fans never forgot their roots.

After a long fight against cancer, Idolo passed away on the 4th of August 2009. Over 500 hundred fans flocked to the cathedral to witness just a glimpse of his coffin as it passed by in the funeral procession. Wrestlers old and young carried him to the el Jardín de Paz where he was laid to rest with his iconic black and orange mask.

So, no matter what Matt and I might think, these two men were real-life superheroes to an entire generation.