Found Footage Friday: ANGEL BLANCO~! HOMBRE BALA~! BABE FACE~! CENTURION NEGRO~! SOLAR~! MR. TERROR~! SIGNO~! KAHOZ~!

Angel Blanco Jr./Babe Face/Hombre Bala vs. Milo Caballero/Monarka/Centurion Negro CMLL 1991

MD: Pretty straightforward trios with a very fun ending. The rudo side wasn't flashy but they were solid, with Angel Blanco stooging, Bala bumping, and Babe Face, being heftier than one would generally think of him, throwing nasty headbutts and swipes more so than taking offense in any sort of fun way. We've seen Milo and Babe Face match up before and they were still more than willing to take each other's shots. Centurion and Bala probably had the best exchange in the primera, though everyone looked pretty good on the second set when they picked up the pace. There was chaos at the end of the primera and the start of the segunda with things breaking down.

The beatdown was ok, nothing too exciting, but the comeback was hot and the finishing stretch hotter. They really worked over Centurion's mask to start the tercera and right when they almost had it off, the tecnicos fired back big. This lead to revenge mask ripping on Angel Blanco and a great spot down the stretch where Centurion Negro and Angel Blanco switched masks. That played into the finish as the rudos fell to miscommunication and confusion, allowing the tecnicos to hit synchronized sunset flips for the win. Pretty professional and polished stuff all around until the big comeback and wild finish. 

Solar/Astrerico/Megatron vs. El Signo/Mr Terror/Azteca de Oro CMLL 1991

MD: Going through this footage is really lucha comfort food for me. The structures had stabilized from a few years earlier so things build to an actual finish and not just the celebratory and comedy-laden tercera you'd often get in 80s lucha. I'm not sure if that's regional or time-based here. It means we get very standard trios: two sets of exchanges in the primera leading to things breaking down, some chaos and then a rudo beatdown in the segunda, and a comeback and finishing stretch in the tercera. Exactly how these things play out has variation, as does the centerpiece, but it's time-tested, tried and true, and familiar. There's a comforting ritual to it which is why the crowds came back again and again and why I can watch match after match of it even if sometimes it's hard to write about en masse.

Here, the centerpiece was the battle between Solar I and Signo, and that was a nice change. Solar came off as a complete star, drawing eyes to him, unquestionably at the center of the match. It started with him trying to draw Signo in by patting him on the cheek patronizingly. It ended (after the rudos stole a win on a banana peel) with Solar calling him out for a mask vs hair match, waving money that had been thrown his way in Signo's face. In the primera, they delayed their exchange, as Signo only teased coming in from the get go. Megatron and Terror and Asterico and Azteca were fine, though I'll admit having a hard time telling the tecnicos apart given the VQ and that Mr. Terror in the second match in a row doesn't live up to his name (though I loved how he sold Solar's quebradoras in the comeback).

Solar and Signo were really good together, nice heated matwork that boiled over into throwing hands. I liked Azteca's use of his size and past Terror seeming a bit off once or twice, everyone did their part, but Solar and Signo really stood out as being "bigger" than the match and leveraged that as a strength; it made things seem all the more important when either were in and let you believe in a comeback that was just Solar walking over to break up a hold because he had enough. Like with so much lucha, the frustrating thing is simply not having an apuestas match between the two coming out of this. 

Solar/Milo Caballero/Chuy Escobero vs. Zeus/Kahoz/Mr Terror CMLL 1991

MD: This is billed as Asterisco (including in the on screen graphic) but it's Chuy. It gets a lot of time but the last five+ minutes are all post match interviews based around the finish. As always, I beeline to Mr. Terror to see if there's anything there to go along with the black mask and amazing name and there's not much. They traded partners during the multiple exchanges of the primera and he only looked worth watching basing for Chuy. He did that pretty well though. His big move in the segunda was a series of clotheslines which felt very out of place. Ah well. Solar and Kahoz were fun when they were in there and Caballero looked solid. Chuy had the most energy, especially crashing up against Zeus.

Once things broke down at the end of the primera, they broke down for most of the rest of the match. Kahoz was a guy who'd try some interesting and different things, like eating a cross body from Escobero while running across the ring to tease a dive or the great spot where he'd chucked out of the ring between Zeus' legs (which were on the apron) and ends up running into the post on the outside with him on his shoulders. His deal where he runs into the turnbuckles wasn't as good. What was great was the tecnicos continuously moving the turnbuckle pad so the heels ate steel. Very funny bit. The finish was equally funny as Solar's mask got messed with and he was so angry he started hitting quebradoras on everyone, including Chuy and a ref, which led to the rudos taking the win and all of the tecnicos asking about Solar's big mistake (he apologized for his blind fury). Disjointed but fun overall even if Mr. Terror just isn't living up to his name. Chuy was an improvement over Asterisco, who's fine but doesn't have Chuy's energy.

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Found Footage Friday: DUSTIN~! INOUE~! STEEL~! BATES~! CASAS~! MARKUS~! ESPANTO~! RAMBO~! PANTERITA~! ARANDU~! SHEIK~! SULTAN~!

MD: So long as Roy keeps posting new lucha, we're going to take a look at it so nothing slips through the cracks. That is the service we provide. It's just going to take a while. Don't worry. We've been at this for five+ years. We'll get to, let's say, the Jumbo vs Billy Robinson hour-long match that just showed up unclipped for the first time ever. Eventually. Thankfully I don't have to cover the Lawler vs. Dundee 2011 match that Bryan Turner just uploaded since Phil and Tom were actually there. Still, we'll slip in some other things when we can. 

Negro Casas/Gran Markus Jr/Angel Blanco Jr vs. Tigre Canadiense/Jalisco/America CMLL 1992

MD: Really fun rudo side here. They started with the beatdown so that was a good thing. Just constant motion and violence. They'd put someone in the ropes and nail him and switch to the next guy doing it, so ona nd so forth. Casas was a ball of energy. We're talking DDTs on the ground and bursting across the ring and then pointing and laughing to the crowd. Every Negro Casas match you see him do something interesting or unique; a different pose or interaction with the ref or sell. Here at the end of the primera, instead of the standard lift and drop (like a spinebuster slam) that is typical in lucha to set up a submission he spun around once or twice with it, just to add some flair to it. I've never seen him do it before and I'll probably never see him do it again but that's Casas for you. He also had a great with America at the end of the segunda where he drew him in after his exchange with Angel Blanco, just completely disrupting the structure and then took an awesome bump over the top rope after they rolled around the ring. Then on the finish in the tercera, he turned a Saito Suplex into a German for the hell of it (again, something I've neve seen him do before). That's our Negro Casas.

Markus and Angel Blanco were pretty natural partners, a mini Ola Blanca and all of these guys worked well together. Markus always had big meaty shots and he based well for Jalisco in their one exchange. The Angel Blanco vs Jalisco exchange wasn't as strong. Tigre Canadiense did silly walks across the ring and had a punchable face. He was a fine foil for Casas but then who wasn't? America hit an awesome dive over Jalisco to set up the finish in the tercera, but I don't have a ton to say about any of the tecnicos really. Fun match that didn't wear out its welcome though.

Tigre Canadiense/Monarka/Colosso vs. Rambo/Espanto Jr./Corsario Negro CMLL 1992

MD: This one had me a little more worried. All you really need to know about it though is that it was the Rambo show. He was all over this and in a pretty good way. I don't think it had much more to offer though. In the primera, he was naturally paired with Colosso and his camo pants. This was a great one-time act as Rambo kept going for nerve holds and Colosso just flexed his way out of them. Then Colosso put one of his own and Rambo sold it in a panic, before shifting to a bearhug; somehow this ended with the more-or-less rudo ref in a bearhug, hilarity ensuing. I wouldn't want this act ever week but it was a good one time thing.

The transition to rudo beatdown in the segunda was great, with Rambo getting accidentally hefted over the top by his own partner. They start to tease the break up but finally swarm and hug. He had pretty solid chops and a running powerslam and then stooged all over during the comeback. Our Canadian tiger friend continued to dance funny, throw dropkicks, and be punchable. His pre-match interview was one minute away from him saying "totally tubular." Otherwise, these guys were fine. I wanted to see more out of Corsario Negro; he was tubby and I kept expecting him to do something cool because of it but nope, nothing. This was a one man Rambo show.

Panterita del Ring/Ciclon Ramirez/Aguila Solitaria vs. Arandu/Gran Sheik/Sultan Gargola CMLL 1992

MD: Panterita is obviously Safari/Epheso, and a helpful youtube commenter is saying that Ramirez was also Pegaso and Tiburon, the Sultan was Pancho Zapata, Jr, the Sheik was Ari el Gato Romero. So hopefully that helps someone. I wasn't too sure what to expect here and the primera didn't help. Everyone was fairly competent during the initial exchanges, even if Sheik (who did a lot of the work) didn't have a look to match his partners. Arandu looked especially good (surprisingly good?) in there against both Panterita and Ramirez.

It really opened up with the rudo beatdown though. The central story here was Arandu vs Panterita and they did a great job portraying hatred and violence. Arandu smashed Panterita into the seats again and again and Panterita came back not once but twice with fiery punches and revenge shots. Arandu wasn't afraid in the least to bump over the top all the way out of the ring. They were heating up an apueastas match that I think we get later on and from the opening cageyness of Arandu all the way to Panterita's flip dive to the floor to set up the finish, they made me want to see it. Ramirez had a belt and felt like a bigger deal overall but Panterita really gave off the vibe of a local hero in this one.

Ace Steel/Dustin Rhodes vs. Masao Inoue/Jason Bates WLW 9/25/04

MD: For some reason they gave us the hype promos for the show as inserts. This at least tells me that Steel and Bates used to be partners and that Dustin was stepping in for Trevor, which let Ace Steel do a Dusty impression. After some feeling out between Bates and Steel, Dustin tags in. There's a bit early on with him paired with Bates where he takes a punch in the corner. I have literally no idea how good or bad the punch was because Dustin's selling was so great. He leaned into it and then dropped immediately in the corner. Then he comes back and hits a beautiful shot of his own and it was twenty seconds of absolutely ideal pro wrestling. Slightly more dubious was Steel deciding to do the flip, flop, and fly, with some iffy punches while Dustin watching on the apron, but he was a good enough sport to come in for tandem figure-fours with Ace. Say what you will about the guy but always did come off as slightly deranged.

The crowd was full of not just the one guy who kept shouting for Ace to "go crazy" but a bunch of kids too, and they ate up the southern tag structure of Dustin rushing in to try to help his partner and Bates/Inoue taking advantage of it. It wasn't a big crowd but it was a buzzing one. Inoue wrestled this like he was Masa Saito or something, with big slams and eye rakes and double clotheslines (well, the eye rake I'd expect out of him). He ate a pretty comedic heel miscommunication version of the Shattered Dreams on the finish, but both he and Dustin were supporting players for whatever was going on with Bates and Steel. While I think they got pretty good mileage out of Dustin, and while it was surreal to see Inoue there at all, I'm not sure they got all that much out of his presence in the match.

ER: I am just in love with NOAH sending Masao Inoue as their representative for Harley Race's 5th anniversary show. This was a crowd made up of 80% children and one man who with all sincerity yelled "Get Crazy, Ace!" at least a dozen times, in a way where he wasn't seeking attention for himself, he just really wanted to see Ace Steel get crazy. This is an enthusiastic crowd at a family wrestling show on a Saturday night, who like heels to tell them to shut up in the kind of way where you can tell he really isn't the kind of guy who would tell a bunch of children to SU. There is no need to send Misawa or Kobashi. This is a show where you send the 27th man on your hierarchy out to and give him a two week American vacation. Masao Inoue is exactly the same person as Jun Akiyama would have been to Eldon, MO, and nobody in attendance was upset that they didn't get Takayama, the way 12 year old me was upset when I went to a Giants fan day in 1993 hoping to meet Barry Bonds and Will Clark and Rod Beck but instead wound up with indifferent pictures of me with Steve Scarsone and JR Phillips. 

The ring announcer has never heard a single word of Japanese in his life. He has never heard or said the name Masao Inoue before and proceeds to announce him as "Muhsoaaa Hagaoooooooowaaaa", somewhere between Adele Vazeem and covering your mouth with your hand so the parking attendant at your job somehow won't notice that you wiped your mouth every time you mumbled his guessed name. Inoue comes out in full Minoru Suzuki head towel and makes his wrist tape eye rubs and eye rakes the focal point of his Missouri offense.

I really need to go through my spindles of NOAH dvds to see if I have Jason Bates/Akitoshi Saito or Ace Steel/Haruka Eigen. 

Inoue does fun theatrical hopping body slams, with a little leg kicked out at the end, like a Leprechaun doing a slam in a musical. He also big times a lot of Dustin's strikes, not moving his head at all on 80% of Dustin's punches. I'm no lip reader, and I'm certainly no mind reader, but Dustin Rhodes privately questions on the apron whether or not Kishin Kawabata would have been this casually unprofessional. This match pioneers the idiotic "needlessly long inset promo over the actual action" and peaks the genre by playing Dustin's promo over his entire hot tag, 8 minutes after everyone else's inset promo had ended. He delivers his promo in a harsh whisper as if he recorded it in a public restroom and didn't want anyone else to know he was cutting a wrestling promo in the last stall. Jason Bates eating a Dustin drop toehold face first into Inoue's balls and getting high cradled by Dustin is an EXCELLENT finish to an event that sent dozens of kids home happy, laughing at the name Bull Schmitt one more time before their mothers tell them "I said no MORE." 

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Found Footage Friday: Monterrey Lucha: WAGNER~! ESPANTO~! SOLAR II~! DANTES~! PANTERITA~! JALISCO~! LENADOR~?!

Dr Wagner Jr/Halcon de Oro/Espanto Jr vs. Colosso/Potro/Solar II CMLL 1992

MD: Roy got a lot of uncovered lucha from Monterrey and we'll hit all of it in the weeks to come. Not cherrypicking these means coming in and seeing what there is to see and sometimes that means you get a match that's just sort of a match. That's what we have here. Rudo ambush to start as the tecnicos were getting into the ring one at a time. A short primera beatdown, a segunda beatdown into a comeback, and then some exchanges to start the tercera before the rudos shut things down. This was probably low on the card since we had a dive teased but no actual dive.

I don't know a lot about Colosso or Potro (the latter of which had a "colt" gimmick with a horse on his chest). During the tercera exchanges, Colosso got the most  shine with Espanto basing very well for him. I'd say out of everyone in this one, Espanto looked the best, directing traffic, relishing the beatdown, playing to his partners and the crowd. Said beatdown was very dependent on the ref not allowing the tecnicos to come in to help each other or punch. Wagner already had his flair in making just an elbow to the skull seem more important and took a fun bump out of the ring, but the nature of this was that no one got to show too much of anything.

 

Guerrero Negro/Hombre Bala/Angel Blanco Jr vs. Apolo Dantes/Panterita del Ring/Jalisco CMLL 1992

MD: This was more like it. It was built around Panterita (Sr, being Ephesto, I think) and Guerrero Negro, with all of the build and payoff you'd want. To be honest, the primera was just there. It was nice to get initial exchanges and everything had time but a lot of this was Dante and Angle Blanco Jr. and it was fine but didn't have a lot of build to it. The bit of we got of Hombre Bala sliding out of the ring over and over on bumps for Jalisco was more fun. Where things shined here, however, was in the beatdown. It was brutal and chaotic as you'd like, with Guerrero Negro battering Panterita around the ring and tossing him repeatedly into the seats and Angel Blanco picing up a row of chairs to crush Dantes with them before punching him in the head repeatly as he was stuck. Some great visuals there. The comeback had some of the revenge bits you'd like but they really got right to the finish after that, with some dives and a quick tandem pin clearing things for Guerrero and Panterito but having the tecnicos almost immediately cheat to win thereafter.

I like the little bits of character for the stadium, whether it be the commentators complaining about the fans letting their kids' near the ring, the rudos signing things for said kids before the match, the giant Panterita signs, or Dantes having his own cheerleaders (I think at least), not to mention the chaos of wrestlers tossed into chairs or having chairs tossed at them. It was a good atmosphere overall and this match certainly had more meat to it even if I wish a bit less time had been spent in the primera and a bit more in the tercera.


Tony Rodriguez/Lenador vs. Chuy Escobedo/Sergio Romo Jr CMLL 1992

MD: I had no idea what I was going to be getting with this one. Long story short, I got Lenador. What a wild rudo. He was a balding guy with hair ties in strange places who made absent-minded expressions while strutting around the ring. Plus he hit hard and had just whacking flying clotheslines and a storm zero sort of quick pile driver. So that's that guy. Escobedo was solid, still and calm waters that kept the match flowing. Romo tried more things with about a 70% hit rate and the rudos doing their best to bump it as high as possible.

They were pretty compelling in general, between the surreality of whatever Lenador was up to and Rodriguez bumping through the ropes or darting up into the third row or begging off to lure a tecnico in (which led to the announcers complaining that the tecnicos never learned). I can't say this ever felt like it had tremendous stakes (the heat wasn't that hot and the comebacks weren't that exciting) but it kept moving and had a pretty iconic lowcard rudo side. These felt like the sort of El Batallon de la Muerte style local rudos that no one necessarily bought their ticket for but that entertained the crowd each and every week during the first match. Hopefully more Lenador shows up because I want to see more of that guy.

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New Footage Friday: Santo, Casas, Panther, Eddy, Fuchi, La Ola Blanca Jrs.

Buddy Rose vs. Tenryu Shimata Big Time Wrestling 1978

PAS: Two all time greats in a well executed television studio match. Most of the match has Tenryu working a really tight side headlock, Rose is a guy with lots of great, in a tight headlock, shtick. He gets on his tiptoes to relieve pressure, holds his breath to make his face red, flops around a bunch. Meanwhile Tenryu was relatively new in the sport, but he knew how to grab a headlock until the ears flower up. Rose finally breaks the headlock and bangs away at Tenryu's back with a suplex and a couple of nasty backbreakers. Simple match but really well executed and a cool early look at Rose and Tenryu.

ER: I had no idea these two crossed paths at any point, and if I was told they had then I would have assumed it happened during the period of the 80s that Baba was working a bit with AWA, not 6-8 years before that! This is a lean lump-free Tenryu against a lean Buddy Rose. Naturally we get some talk about how Tenryu is a martial arts expert, a martial arts expert who apparently practices the deadly art of the side headlock takeover. This match feels like it could be older than it is, as it's worked strike free and most of the spots are worked out of a side headlock. And it rules. Early on Tenryu gets a cool ankle pick while Rose goes in for a go behind, and Rose was engaging in the headlocks as Phil said. Tenryu wasn't going to hold a loose headlock, and I'm always going to love when someone holds onto a headlock after the guy in the headlock tries to shoot them into the ropes. I dug all the headlock stuff, and the payoff builds nicely: Tenryu gets dropped with a back suplex out of the headlock, and later misses a dropkick which aggravates the damage done to his back with that suplex. In the 90s and 2000s I always thought Tenryu sold spine/neck damage better than maybe anyone, especially piledrivers. Here he is just a couple years out of sumo and already selling his back in interesting ways. Buddy smells blood and drops him with a couple of brutal backbreakers for the win. Totally simple stuff where the key is the execution and knowing how much of one spot you could keep engaging. They knew.

MD:  The advantage we have in Buddy Rose, relative to some of his contemporaries, is that we have a few years of week-in and week-out TV footage. We don't have that for everyone. What makes it all the better is that it's also arena footage where you have a middle ground between legitimately great, big matches, and Buddy letting lesser guys hang with him. what I've learned from that, as much as anything else, is that Buddy Rose is never, ever boring. This is the guy who supposedly got flack in New York for giving the TV jobbers too much and trying to have exciting matches with them. Anyway, this isn't the Saturday Portland TV show, but the idea is sort of the same. Here he led a pretty green Tenryu through a straightforward headlock-driven match from underneath, moving in and out of the hold and making his opponent look good. Buddy, maybe more than anyone in the history of wrestling, could shift gears on a dime, clowning for two-thirds of a match and then presenting himself as dangerous, vicious, and legitimate. There's such a great example of that here as he just brutalizes the back. This was just a really fun laser-pointed crossroads TV match. Boy would I have loved to see it five years later though.


El Hijo Del Santo/Eddie Guerrero vs. Blue Panther/Negro Casas Juarez 1987

PAS: What we have here is an unearthed tag with four of top 20 greatest wrestlers of all time as kids going out there for 20+ minutes and having a banger. This was super grappling heavy, with several long mat sections with Panther and Eddie and Casas and Santo matching up. It is normal for the first fall in lucha matches to be on the mat, but we get a long Segunda mat section too. So many cool little moments, Santo does a front flip off of Casas back into a rana on Panther to win the first fall. I love the Casas fights out of holds in this match, he really struggles to avoid Santo's Cabello and he is amazing the way he tries to avoid getting thrown by Eddie. Casas is the all time greatest at small moments, watching him struggle and adjust, it is like he is on a whole different level of performance then nearly anyone else ever. 20 year old Eddie was a monster, he was throwing multiple great looking suplexes, and had this great mat section with Panther where he applied a bridging Indian Deathlock, Eddie became such a great performer during his prime, here he was a full speed ahead wrestling machine, almost like Dynamite Kid or Benoit. We get a couple of nifty dives in the very end (although the camera man misses Santo's mostly) and a vicious Cabello on Panther for the win. This didn't have any brawling which made it feel a little more like an exhibition then most all time great lucha matches, but man was it an epic all timer exhibition.

ER: This was not the match I expected to show up, but who at all would be disappointed that it did? It's four of all of our favorites breaking out some tricks that you may have forgotten about. I believe this is definitely the earliest Eddy match I've seen, so it's neat to see a 20 yr. old throwing fast kicks trying to ape Negro Casas, take it to the mat with a mid-20s Blue Panther, delivering a no hands dive over the top to the floor that looked so different than the dive style we got used to from him (and he took quite a landing on his knees, so that might be why). Santo brings both the most gorgeous moments in the match, and also the most violent. His front flip rana on Panther would look spectacular if done by anybody today, and while I've seen Santo do plenty of graceful flying I don't think I've seen him do this, and it looked amazing. Later in the match he pulls off three consecutive headscissor/head and leg drags to Panther, all different, all looking like they were making it up as they went. Santo hits a flawless torpedo headbutt off the top to set up la Caballo, and earlier he flies out right past the ringpost and cameraman to hit a huge dive (that we don't see, because he went right past the cameraman). But the violence is always there.

Phil mentioned that this never devolved into a brawl, but there were several moments of struggle that felt as violent as any brawl. My favorite segment of the match was Santo going for a sub - any sub - on Casas, while Casas tried his damndest to turtle and oppose Santo's force. Santo goes for a surfboard, Casas strains his body to bring his momentum forward, so Santo goes for a bow and arrow and again you can see Casas straining to not go back, so Santo goes for Caballo and Casas suctions those arms close to his body and to the mat. Later Eddie blew me away by repeatedly grapevining Casas' legs while Casas was going for throws. We often see a guy block a throw, but it's typically so that he can get an immediate reversal. Here Eddie just snaked around Casas and kept purposely tangling him up, later hitting a Saito suplex of his own. The great struggling and flexed tension of the grappling exchanges looked far more like something you'd see in UWFI, not what I was expecting here. I don't think you're going to find two better Santo opponents than Casas and Panther, and he looked like an absolute legend in this match. There was so much to love here, really an incredible find.

MD:  I'm completely convinced that there's a treasure trove of 80s Juarez TV out there. A few years back, there seemed to be some local TV showing classic matches and we had a couple of uploads on a youtube channel, one being Hijo del Santo y Octagon vs. Fuerza Guerrera y Negro Casas. I don't think this was the other but I could be wrong.

What this is, however, is an absolute gem. Maybe it never QUITE picks up like I'd hope. I wanted a rudo beatdown in there somewhere and we never quite get it. They never quite stop trading holds to pick up the pace completely. This is us though, and in general, we're more than okay with that, because most of the hold trading is awesome in a number of different ways.

It's got to be a little bit who he's in there with, but Eddy looks so good for someone so young here. He has a ton of stuff, suplexes especially, and adds plenty to the exchanges with Blue Panther, though I do think some of that has to be Panther moving him around. He's pretty much always where he needs to be doing what he should be doing (like his perfect positioning at the end of the primera to let Santo bound over him).

Panther, in general, looks like the all-timer that he is but simply hasn't been for a long time. One of the first things I ever did on SC was looking at whatever Santo vs Panther matches I could find. There aren't a ton out there and here, they don't match up all that much, but when they do it's gold. They have such mastery over their bodies and their craft that they can seemingly pluck one another out of midair and into the next spot. Casas was just off his hair match loss and it's really cool to see him playing up respect with Santo, even if we never do get that beat down.

Plenty to see here. This is why we do this.


Masa Fuchi/Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Dr. Wagner Jr./Angel Blanco Jr. AJPW 10/24/87

PAS: Wagner and Blanco's fathers formed La Ola Blanco, one of the great tag teams in lucha history. This Jr. version of La Ola Blanco seemed like a bit of weak sister, although this has to be some of the earliest Wagner Jr. footage we have. There was some really awkward flying attempts from Ogawa, who definitely was better off as a sleazy cheapshotting dirtbag then a workrate junior. The were a couple of great moments when Fuchi and Wagner started going after each other, they are both pretty great charismatic brawlers and Wagner Jr. lived up to the "White Wave" moniker when he got rolling. Still more of a snapshot, then a great match.

MD: I was expecting an emptier sort of exhibition match here, even with Fuchi involved, and along those lines, I was happily surprised. They flew all over the place, but there was definitely some oomph and heat to everything. Blanco and Wagner played to the crowd as boisterous bad guys. Ogawa was a plucky flying underdog and Fuchi seemed like he wanted to tear off his opponents' heads, not just their masks. It never quite came together, but there was a lot of motion, some meanness, and ultimately it was just cool to see two of the most charismatic wrestlers ever go at it before they were two of the most charismatic wrestlers ever.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE SANTO AND CASAS RIVALS

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