Found Footage Friday: SANTO~! PARK~! MIL~! GARZA~! DAMIAN~! AGUILA~! CEREBRO~! FELINO~! SILVER KING~! FUERZA~!

IWRG Retro 28 IWRG Retro 3/8/2001

Halieen/Ryo Saito vs. Siky Ozama/Bestia Rubia

MD: Undercard lucha made fun more for the visuals of Halieen and Bestia Rubia clashing than anything else. Halieen is a little green man gimmick, like nothing I've ever seen, just really leaning into the notion, including some sort of weird Power Rangers collar. Bestia Rubia has a wolfman mask, but it'd be as if Bowie did Thriller instead of Jackson and turned into a Wolfman at the end, or if they made the Ron Perlman Beauty and the Beast ten years earlier and it was the people making Buck Rogers that did. They need to make more masks like these.

Saito and Ozama are fine and do simple straightforward stuff well enough. Saito has fire. Ozama's a bit of a jerk. But you spend the whole match waiting for the wolfman and the alien to get back in there and see lucha sequences you've seen a thousand times, but never from a wolfman and an alien. Pretty solid finishing stretch (this was 1 fall and went around 16 minutes) with the teams trading falls and trying for Last Rites style pin attempts. This was more of a novelty than anything else but you can't imagine these guys didn't get over just on their looks alone.

Hijo del Santo/Dr. Cerebro/Felino vs. Silver King/Fuerza Guerrera/Cirujano

MD: Star-studded, talent-packed trios here. Rudos ambush to start. At some point, Cerebro really gets opened up. I wouldn't say any rudo particularly stands out here. Fuerza's going to sneak in low blows as you will. Cirujano brings a bit more heft. Silver King looked sharp even post-prime (he had a very smooth figure-four in the primera, for instance). Things picked up in the segunda as Santo ran right through Fuerza for an initial comeback. I loved Cerebro's selling here as he was fumbling about punch drunk even in the midst of the comeback. The tecnicos got swept under again and Santo had to mount a second comeback before Felino was able to hit a moonsault on Silver King to set up Santo's big tope off the top and the caballo on Fuerza.

The tercera was short gave us a little bit of the pairings we had missed in the primera but was primarily cycling through until the big finish. Santo hit an absolutely mammoth tope suicida onto Silver King, just a head-crashing, head-crushing impact. It was so good that they reshowed it in super slow motion so that the action missed the finish (Cerebro getting a submission on Cirujano). I don't usually say that something's worth just seeing for the dive, and this has other things going for it too, of course, but people should see the dive.

Hijo del Santo/Mil Mascaras/LA Park vs. Hector Garza/Damian 666/Mr. Aguila Monterrey 2/3/07

MD: Very odd one on paper. Perros del Mal vs. three of the biggest stars ever, in 07 Monterrey. It's a night show and you can see their breath. Park's in blue. Mascaras has a matching bengal body suit and mask. We come in at the start of the segunda after what seems to have been a Perros beatdown. Garza immediately crashes and burns in the corner allowing Santo to pull his pants down and send him to the floor. Chaos ensues. Park is the guy to watch here, hitting a jumping body slam off the apron onto Damien, putting him through a table. Then he hits a suplex on Aguila on the floor splitting a plastic table. Finally he hits a huge dive through the ropes. Meanwhile, Mascaras hits a couple of ginger atomic drops and things and Santo more or less does his "vs the world" routine against everyone. The finish of the fall is Damien creating motion for Mascaras and ending up in an abdominal stretch.

The tercera starts with almost seven minutes of shtick, and it's Hector Garza shtick, and LA Park shtick, and your mileage is going to vary on this, but for me, it goes real far. It all hit. Garza gets funnier and funnier as the decade goes on but even in 07, he had a lot of the act down. They run a minute or two of Park trying to pull his tights down and Damien saving him until Garza accidentally kicks Damien and Damien pulls Garza's tights down and it's unapologetically hilarious. Then they get the ref in on the act with him doing dual spots with Park and the commentary say he looks like "a crazy panda from Chapultepec" and for a spotlight match like this, it absolutely works. Things broke down pretty quickly after that with Mascaras pinning Aguila and Park clowning Damien before Garza, a cooler lid in hand, chose to attack Park instead of Santo. Santo got it from him and threatened but Park turned around and thought Santo had gotten him and attacked Santo who was quickly pinned before Park laid down for Garza as well. It was a little silly, but Garza was the perfect guy to be in the middle of all this and I'm sure it set up something great (or didn't, because Monterrey). What a show.