Found Footage Friday: BACKLUND IN KUWAIT~! BUSHWHACKERS~! CONDOR~! ESTRADA~! PSICOSIS~! VOLADOR~! WINNERS~!

AAA TV 5/21/95

MD: A new Roy Lucier drop. I think the top two matches were already out there so we'll dive into the undercard. 

Karloff Lagarde Jr./Mr. Condor/Perro Silva vs. Brilliance/Diamante/Zafiro

MD: I loved the primera beatdown here. The rudos just hopped out as Mr. Condor wrapped a cape around a tecnico's neck even as he was coming in with the valets and the commentators were just casually announcing who would be in the match. Business as usual. Some gnarly stuff on the beatdown with Condor's arching power bombs, a giant lifting face plant, and Perro Silva looking like a beast between the way he threw himself into things and this brutal reverse hotshot where he dropped the back of the neck onto the top rope with a spinebuster like twist instead of the throat. Argh. 

This was going just two falls with a fed up fiery tecnico foul finish so they actually teased a comeback early in the segunda which was pretty spirited, tossing rudos into the crowd and what not, before it got cut off to set up yet another comeback a minute or two later. Sort of a false short segunda (almost makes you wonder if there was a cut, but I don't think there was). Down the stretch Mr. Condor bled all over the place even on the undercard and the tecnicos got a lot of revenge but they lost their cool and the rudos took this one by DQ. Everyone leaned hard into their roles here and the match was fun because of it.

Antifaz del Norte/Panterita del Ring/Volador/Winners vs. Arandu/Jerry Estrada/Misterioso/Psicosis

MD: Some of our Monterrey pals here in the form of Panterita and Arandu (who came out to the Flash Gordon theme by Queen!). Very nice to see them in this mix with some of the AAA mainstays. That's an awesome rudo side right there. And honestly, this was great. The primera was at least somewhat subdued. Misterioso was leaning hard into his gringos loco look and attitude and was dodging Volador. Arandu bumped all over the place. Estrada teased his big bump over the top but didn't give it to people. Psicosis was an absolute jerk paired with Antifaz. I love watching him just exist and antagonize people, even on top of his basing and offense and bumping. He's one of the best bullheaded jerks in wrestling history. Anyway, the tecnicos took it after some exchanges and general chaos with Volador getting a shot in on Misterioso on the outside too.

Things went absolutely nuts in the segunda though. They started destroying both Antifaz and especially his mask. Somehow Estrada got a fork and started to stab away, lick the thing, paint his face with blood, just have a merry time. Then the comeback had all the crazy bumps you might imagine. Psicosis took the corner knee over the top bump as wild as I've ever seen it. Estrada just got yeeted into the third row like a rocket on a reverse whip. I'm not sure I've ever seen that concrete ground look harder and more solid. Finish was the rudos getting back in and getting Antifaz' mask off so thoroughly and clearly in the camera that someone could have picked him out of a police lineup. Just wild stuff in the back half.

Mr. Bob Backlund/Leif Cassidy vs. The Bushwhackers WWF Kuwait Cup 5/11/96 

MD: Recent Richard Land upload. I had thought we'd be getting the Yokozuna tag vs. Backlund, but nope, we've got the Bushwhackers instead. I don't know exactly how much Mr. Bob Backlund heel footage we have but whatever we have, especially after he got shunted down the card, it is 100% not enough. He's as absurd and over the top here as humanly possible and it's wonderful. First off, he comes out to the Rockers theme with Leif and he wants absolutely nothing to do with him. Cassidy tried to bow down to him and go for a handshake and point to the Bushwhackers and everything under the sun and Backlund just shook his head and shouted NOOOO. 

Then, there'd just be random booing no matter what Cassidy and a Bushwhacker was doing in the ring and the camera would cut over and Backlund would be out there on the stage gesticulating to the crowd and going wild and getting huge heat. When he came down he went right after some kid in a Bret shirt and he never really let up. It takes minutes for the match to begin because every time you think it might, he has another fit to huge crowd reaction. When they get going, they do some heel miscommunication spots almost immediately and then have Backlund get shown up by a Bushwhacker, including sneaking out and pointing to his head only to have him right behind and then hiding in the corner just to get bitten on the butt.

They eventually take over on Luke's arm and it's all pretty good with some hope spots and cutoffs until he finally makes the tag and they do one last bit of miscommunication before Butch gets the roll up. Just unbelievably entertaining. Lightning in a bottle. If you could follow one wrestler around to every house show, 96 Backlund feels like a great one to pick. 

ER: When you get access to a 1996 Kuwait show where Bob Backlund is the third oldest (second youngest?) guy in the match, I feel we are then obligated to write about that match. There is so little footage of Mr. Bob Backlund from this era and now we officially have our most substantial look at him. I loved Backlund's look and attitude during 95/96, when he was mostly a house show worker and cantankerous TV presence, but we don't have a lot of footage of him actually wrestling. We have so much footage of his 92/93 babyface return, which I think is mostly awful (unless I find one credible source telling me that it was an elaborate troll and he was fucking up every single non-Doink wrestler's timing intentionally, then I might like it), but not nearly enough of heel Mr. Bob Backlund. Now we have real footage of Backlund charging at a Kuwaiti 11 year old and getting in his face, just because he was wearing a Bret Hart shirt. Backlund singled that kid out and went straight for him (and the kid loved it). 

Throughout my wrestling fandom, not that long ago in the grand scheme, I had no room for bullshit in my wrestling. I wanted action, and I wanted wrestlers to get to the action. I'm not sure when it changed, or what inspired my initial dislike of it. I viewed it as "guys not wanting to work" and maybe it was due to Scott Keith and others demonizing of stall tactic wrestlers like Larry Zbyszko, spurned on by older local indy wrestlers who were taking a Friday night off in the ring. When we did the initial WWF 80s set, I had the Rockers/Rougeaus Full Bullshit match (from France or Italy) ranked very, very low. Not many years after that, the Rougeaus match in Puerto Rico where they take forever to lock up while getting pelted with diapers and other garbage became one of my favorite matches to show friends who were and were not wrestling fans. I don't know when the change happened, when I went from wanting action to embracing bullshit. The change happened quick, I know that, and is surely directly related to indy wrestling styles becoming about All Action, no doubt caused by similar people to me who grew up being told that bullshit and stalling in wrestling was bad. 

Now, most wrestlers are petrified to let anything breathe. Well, either they are petrified or they honestly have no idea what it even means to let a match, or sequence, breathe. They surely never watched wrestlers who knew how to do this, and they surely won't be seeking any who did so. Bullshit became extremely rare (and has only gotten rarer) and now that action is the literal only thing on the menu, I find that I cannot wait to shove my nose in a steaming plate of Bullshit whenever I have the opportunity. And Mr. Bob Backlund was allllll Bullshit. This entire match is 90% bullshit, and I chose to prioritize it over the two awesome lucha matches unearthed above. I don't think anyone takes a bump until well past the 10 minute mark, although Backlund does get knocked off the apron by Cassidy, and he hits the ground running and gets in the faces of more fans. So look, I'm not saying all of this was good. The Bushwhackers are old and they aren't going to bump or throw punches that look good - although Butch Miller throws a fucked up clothesline to Cassidy's neck on his hot tag - and a lot of the bullshit won't seem unique to anyone who had the privilege of seeing guys like Honky Tonk Man work indy shows in the late 90s, but the unique setting and the bizarre pairing and the rarity of Fully Unhinged Mr. Bob Backlund made this well worth your time. Backlund does none of his strength routine, none of his amateur wrestling, and I don't even think he took a bump. Yet he was On during every second he was on screen, a true weirdo being his weirdest self in the weirdest possible live wrestling environment. 

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Found Footage Friday: PIPER~! VALENTINE~! SATANICO~! GARZA~! VILLANO~! ARANDU~! VULCANO~!

Roddy Piper vs. Greg Valentine JCP 8/4/83

MD: Elliott has been putting together great primer threads on twitter with match recommendations and came across this while looking for Piper. It's obviously from JCP TV but it wasn't on any of our radars. Just a great piece of business during a chaotic time centered around the US title. Valentine had it. He had damaged Piper's ear. Piper wanted revenge. Fellow heels Slater and Orton wanted it too. The episode was set up with Piper having the match but not expected to make it to the show, so they were going to give it to Slater instead. Piper did show up however and he came in hot.

They covered a lot in ten minutes here. The early stuff was so chippy and uncooperative. Piper wanted revenge but he also wanted the belt. An early sunset flip seemed so uncooperative that it almost turned into a flipping power bomb (and this is a good thing). Piper lit Valentine up with great punches too and a killer posting and the wild abandon kneelift where his limbs went flying as well. He kept going in too hot though and Valentine was able to take advantage. A lot of that was with escalating elbow drops but Valentine had this great gutbuster that hit almost sideways. Valentine could never hold Piper down for long and fired back and opened Valentine up, only to get tossed out of the ring on a fluke. That let Slater rush in and beat on Valentine to draw a DQ Piper didn't want. When Piper tried to fight him off, Orton came out as well. As best as I can tell, this never let to a tag match with the rivals on one side, which seems like a shame. Just great JCP TV.

PAS: This totally ruled, one of the great match ups in wrestling history and such a mitzvah Elliot uncovered another version of it. It is more of a TV match then the arena and Starcade matches we have, so it was trying to do a different thing, but the interactions were first rate, with Pipers handspeed and activity contrasting with the power of Valentine's strikes. It really feels like a boxer vs. a puncher. There is a an incredible section where Valentine bull rushes Piper into the corner and Piper just uses head movement to avoid and parry all of Valentine's shots and fire back. Whenever Valentine landed you could feel Piper's body shudder and react, Valentine was one of the great power punchers in wrestling history, everything he landed felt organ shifting. Finish was a good bit of business, although less satisfying then a clean finish would be. Really wish we had gotten the Parajas Piper and Valentine vs. Orton and Slater match this seemed to be setting up 

ER: This is just the best. You spend 10 minutes of your night watching this and you fully understand why so many people in the south rejected the wrestling product of the north. This is a bell to bell fight and then somehow ends with a different, just as good fight. I've been watching a lot of 1997 Piper and Valentine (although never against each other in 97, sadly) and I love them. It's crazy how good they both were in their mid 40s. But 1997 is not 1983. Nowhere close. It's like how I enjoy watching current Negro Casas and always will, but then you watch any 80s or 90s Negro Casas and go "oh, yeah. Right. He was this." Just because I love old man wrestling an inordinate amount, I don't know if anything else could ever compare to this era of JCP. No shit people watching JCP wouldn't be enthralled by Tony Garea or Swede Hansen or Sal Bellomo. 

It's all hammering Valentine punches or straight rights to the head. I forget how quick he was, how spry. Seeing a Valentine elbowdrop off the middle rope performed with a luchador's speed and grace feels almost anachronistic, my eyes having seen so much more Old Valentine than Young Stud Valentine. How wild is it that Piper's rabbit punches hit just as hard as Valentine's famously heavy fists. Look at that camera shot from the floor when Piper is punching to comeback, Valentine's head mostly obscured by the camera being aimed up at the lights of Carolina Civic Center. It's perfect. Piper's jittery style of selling damage is so electric when he's in with a real fighter like Valentine. They're perfect for each other. The way he stutters and moves his head when he starts fighting back and the way Valentine glances his blows while walking into Piper's fire. Piper's airplane spin was a real impressive surprise, and I love how it quickly turned on him when Valentine held the ropes and forced a momentum shift. Slater and Orton run in and act just as violently as Piper and Valentine and at this point I expect Bugsy McGraw matches to also look super violent. Orton wrecks these men with cowboy boot stomps and Dick Slater is like pissed off Tenryu. It's all so beautiful. 

Arandu/Vulcano vs. Villano III/Panterita del Ring

MD: This was something. We come in with Arandu and Vulcano with the advantage. Vulcano was mostly matched up with Villano and they were working the mask. Just a big beatdown. Villano was able to sidestep and take over but before they could press the advantage, Vulcano lost his head and pulled the loosened mask off to draw the primera DQ. Immediately thereafter, after Villano had put his mask back on, Vulcano charged back in and this time both took it off and ripped it up. Villano rolled to the floor and some kid ran up and immediately put his shirt over Villano's head so that he could be helped to the back. Just a super wholesome moment that you'd think you'd see more in lucha but that I haven't come across much if at all. 

From there, the rudos pressed the numbers game, hanging Panterita up and laying it in until Villano could come in with another mask to break things up and get revenge. Get this, though, he was punching them with the white shirt around his hand! Super iconic moment. Apparently he either fouls or Vulcano feigns a foul as they have Arandu hung up (for revenge!) so the rudos get the segunda. In between falls Villano ups Vulcano up in the stands and things settle back in for a loose and chaotic tercera of them going back and forth until Villano crashes into the ref on purpose and then pretends Vulcano had fouled him. Such beautiful bullshit in this one. The best.

ER: 2/3 of this match is somebody being pinned in the corner or held in the tree of woe while being punched and kicked and yelled at. I'm sure some would read that sentence as a criticism but I'm also sure that none of those people are reading that sentence here. Arandu is a south Texas Mocho Cota, with less shtick but somehow better hair. Vulcano does an incredible thing where he's so focused on keeping V3 in a  modified abdominal stretch that he just ignores Panterita Del Ring's strikes as he's trying to break the hold. Vulcano is laser focused on Villano and Panterita is just going to have to throw better elbows if they are to be acknowledged. 

I was enjoying this and would have honestly enjoyed just a light punching and choking and fake ball shots kind of match...but nobody could have seen one of the greatest REAL moments in pro wrestling history happening. Who could have been prepared? Now I'm sure this has happened before, on camera, and I'm sure the matches that it happened in are all common knowledge, and I'm sure I have written about this kind of thing happening before but my memory is so bad that the only thing I remember about wrestling anymore is that the date 6/3/94 is significant for some reason. Old language. The moment happens when Vulcano rips and tugs Villano's mask off and Villano rolls to the floor covering his face. As he hits the floor, a sweet chubby kid is seen literally giving Villano III the shirt off his back so that he could protect his identity! A reverse Mean Joe Greene! What a sweet boy, who sprang immediately into action the moment he saw a hero unmasked. Villano returning, masked, from the back with the white t-shirt still in hand, wrapping his fist in it and throwing blows? Incredible. No American child would have given their wrestling hero the shirt off their back. The closest anyone in the states came to this was when some 10 year old in Revere handed a frying pan to John Kronus.  

Satanico vs. Hector Garza CMLL 1/6/95

MD: We had 9 minutes of this title match previously. This gives us the entire 20 and you can really get a sense of the narrative at play. One thing that makes Satanico stand out even more is that he could implement narratives that would be more conventional elsewhere, even in places like title matches where you usually get things along different lines. Here, in the primera, he controlled Garza on the mat, Garza was able to get back into it once things got moving, and then Satanico, realizing that, hit a cheapshot and started to lay things in. Garza was able to use his speed to turn it back around, dodge a shot in the corner, and lock in the torture rack. Just a nice and neat story executed well and engaging to the crowd.

The segunda is where things turned a bit. Satanico came out with a handshake attempt but Garza would have none of it, taking him down and starting on the leg. Satanico spent the entirety of the segunda as Honky Tonk Man, basically, already down a fall but playing the vulnerable champion. This lasted a few minutes until Satanico was able to shrug Garza out of the ring by countering a camel clutch. He pressed that advantage with lift up/drop downs until he could put on Satan's knot.

For the tercera, it started as back and forth nearfalls, before Satanico got a mini beatdown in until Garza was able to toss him out and hit a dive. Finish was very clever as Garza locked in a back bridge. Satanico ensured that he himself was pinned, a sacrifice, to also ensure that Garza's arms were trapped down. Just an absolute confident leap of faith in his own ability to ensure mutual destruction knowing that in the event of a draw, he would keep the title. I can't think of almost any other time in wrestling I saw a heel pull off that trick to keep his title. Very clever stuff.

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Black Terry May Simply Be a Single Drop of Rain

I was looking through the C+A Black Terry and realized the last match on the list was the incredible Mr. Condor match in 2021, so I wanted to check in and see what he has been up to in the last couple of years as he moves into his 70s

Black Terry vs. Arandu Dark Sun Wrestling 5/30/22 - GREAT

PAS: This was a maestro match between Terry and long time Monterey rudo Arandu, and hit all of the points you would expect in a match like this. Opening with matwork, moving into some chair shots and some nasty punch exchanges. It was a solid performance by a pair of pros who know exactly how to deliver the hits to an audience. Terry took some bumps and threw some good looking rights and lefts. It didn't really have the moments to elevate it to the next level, more of a solid B, then an A+, but it definitely showed Terry still has some juice. 

Black Terry vs. Vinny Massaro Lucha Memes 9/18/22 - GREAT

I remember digging Vinny in the early 2000s in APW, as a guy with some nice suplex. He fell off my radar for decades, but came back as a guy who is working a bunch in California indies in dream match scenarios. He is a fun guy to get the chance to travel to Mexico, and I dug this as a pair of trainers from very different worlds matching up. Massaro has nice open hand shots and the best parts of the match were the pair of these guys throwing at each other, and Massaro looked solid on the mat, and I liked his Fujiwara finish. There were a couple of moments near the end where they were slightly on the wrong page, and it was an opening round tourney match, so they never really pushed it to the next level, still a fun WAR booking match.

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Found Footage Friday: REMO BANDA~! PRINCIPE ISLAND (LA PARK)~! ARANDU~! GRAN MARKUS~! ANTICHRISTO~?

Remo Banda/Coliseo 2000 vs Panico/Zorro de Oro CMLL 1989

MD: Remo Banda is Super Parka/Volador , with his glorious head of hair. I think Zorro de Oro is actually Anticristo of the famous promo which makes this particularly well timed in some ways. Coliseo had a colorful costume with his name in big letters (like a sign almost) and Panico was just a scuzzy looking rudo doing scuzzy rudo things. Primera had him get the best of Remo Banda with a bunch of armdrags but then also refuse to engage at times as well. All of these guys were perfectly competent, even if Zorro de Oro had me look twice as he went twisting over the top rope to the apron once or twice. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. The primera had bodies flying about chaotically to end but things settled down with a segunda beatdown. The commentary was trying to paper over that even though the rudos tossing Remo Bando around by his hair, the refs didn't dare disqualify these men with "sewers for their hearts." Also that Gran Davies, since he had been a rudo when he wrestled, tended to favor the rudos as a ref. Also that the ropes should be an ally to the fighter, not an instrument of torture. Lots of fun commentary here that only got more flowery when Morales took over in the tercera. Anyway, the tecnicos took over too with Remo Banda pinballing the rudos as they pretty quickly got their revenge and won the day. This had an undercard feel but colorful characters at least.  

Cachorro Mendoza/Rudy Reyna/Jose Torres vs Principe Island/Arandu/Gran Markus Jr (Monterrey 1990)

MD: Kind of a murderer's row of Segunda Caida rudos here, with my new appreciation for Arandu and the idea that Principe Island is, in fact, pre-Park. He had a swanky black jumpsuit with shoulder tassles and the announcers likened him to Michael Jackson. Markus mainly directed traffic and while he had some dubious kicks, he also stooged when it was time to stooge so I forgive him. Tecnico side was interesting. Torres was better known for his football gimmicks Super Maquina and El Invencible and Reynes had graduated (through older age) from being an Exotico to being a more straightforward tecnico. Both of them controlled the center of the ring with armdrgs and hiptosses and even a neat dragon screw takeover variation and had the rudos create motion for them. And boy did Arandu and Principe want to create motion, skidding and flying and bumping all over the place. You half had the sense they were trying to outdo one another, but it was really just who they were. Rudos ambushed at the start and controlled things until Mendoza took everyone out early in the segunda. From there the rudos fed plenty to make the older tecnicos look like experts until Markus got caught throwing a foul fairly early in the tercera. Nice to see all these guys as it was sort of a weird crossroads of time. And hey, you have to love that rudo side.

Kendo Star/El Magnifico/Kendo vs Principe Island/Carlos Plata/Milo Caballero (Monterrey 1989)

MD: This was prior to the 1990 match but I'm covering these per post order. This is a younger Park, stringier, with shorter hair. He's matched up with Kendo here, with their first exchange being mostly posturing and kicking at the air and shtick and their second being all of Kendo's fast tumbling with Principe running behind him and left in the corner, laughing at his own comeuppance. We know that he's one of the most charismatic wrestlers ever, but this isn't a Wagner Jr situation where he took years to work it out. It's a Gino Hernandez situation. We knew it a bit from Panama but it's so clear here. He got it. He was honest and earnest and coy and brazen. Unmasked Principe with a face full of character, sort of a face only a mother could love, isn't just bumping and sliding and feeding. He's reacting to everything and you watch him and imagine an entirely different career where he could have been amazing unmasked, like another Negro Casas. And of course, he was able to tap into so much of that and amplify it in his own way with the suit, but you look at this and wonder.

Magnifico is Justicero, and Plata is another one of those plain looking guys who could go exactly as much as he needed to. There are dozens and dozens of them. They matched up well enough and were actually the final pairing though the match itself would have told me it would be Principe and Kendo. Kendo Star had the mask and the gear but wasn't nearly as over the top as Kendo and didn't stand out nearly as much here, but Milo fell about for his act well enough. This didn't go quite deep enough into beatdown and comeback to have the emotional stakes you'd want; Principe and Kendo bolstered it but if they had leaned into the violence and revenge just a little more, the payoff would have been visceral given the pieceson the table. As it was, it's mainly a great look at this young man who would someday become legend.

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Found Footage Friday: MONTERREY~! CARAS~! ARANDU~! HERODES~! VOLADOR~! BRAZOS~! SATANICO~! PIRATA~!

Cien Caras/Javier Cruz/Arandu vs Herodes/Volador/Angel Azteca (Monterrey 1991)

MD: I started writing about lucha here in 2014, primarily because I couldn't make sense of the DVDVR 80s set. For any number of reasons, I'm glad I did. Probably top on that list? I can just dive into a match like this and ride it like a wave. What an enjoyable twenty+ minutes here. I'm mostly familiar with Herodes from the 80s set and his Japan excursions, but here he was the beloved Chacho, basically babyface Norman the Lunatic dressing up in fun costumes, everything but a teddy bear. Basically, he was a couple of comedy spots away from being early 2010s Porky in CMLL, that role on a tecnico side. This was a little too heated for that, which is a good thing of course. Cien Caras was paried with him and the rudos swarmed from the get go, including tearing off his doctor's costume.

Things settled back down quickly into a really solid primera though. I'm confident in saying that Arandu is a lost rudo base. He was there for everything Angel Azteca and Volador had for him over two exchanges, could shut them down well with strikes, and almost always took a crazy handstand bump over the top to the floor. Plus he had the crazy hair and was just larger than life, at least in a provincial sort of way. He's come out as the real star of the Monterrey footage. Cruz had a good bit with Volador where he acted like a Cruiserweight Bully, jamming all of his stuff until he got monkeyflipped three times. And Caras and Herodes were fine with their shtick. They didn't do much but they didn't have to as the crowd was up for it.

The segunda had a lot of Caras directing traffic for a rudo beatdown, and he was good at that. Not Satanico level but still probably top tier. The real good stuff was in between the segunda and tercera where Arandu lawndarted Azteca into the chairs as people threw trash at him and Caras beat Herodes around the ringside area. The comeback was spirited but the match got thrown out due to constant triple teaming/brutality by the rudos shortly thereafter and things devolved to challenges. I get that lucha can be a lot of things, but I'm way more sympathetic to this form of it than any of the others.

Los Brazos vs Pirata Morgan/El Satanico/Justiciero (Monterrey 1991)

MD: This was much more of a house show Brazos match than I was expecting considering Morgan and Satanico were in there. I thought we'd be getting more of a crazy brawl but I really did enjoy this. The primary pairing was Porky and Morgan, and the sort of matches I was thinking of, you don't really get a primary pairing like that, just violent chaos. Here, the beatdown was pretty gnarly, with Morgan and co. cutting through Brazo and Oro before leaving Porky alone to get beat upon, but it was alway sa little funn too. For instance, at the end of the fall, they tossed Porky into the post on the outside and he bumped into the lap of someone in the first row. Great balance between violence and mirth.

The rudos took the first two falls here, but at the start of the primera and for most of the segunda until the finish, it really was the Brazos comedy hour. Morgan tried to avoid Porky early, but ended tossed around and squished off the apron. All of the rudos had very giving performances here (easier when you're winning two falls in a row I assume). Satanico was more of a secondary player but perfect as always when, for instance, he was getting his hand bitten by Porky on a devious handshake attempt. And everyone hit everything clean, of course. Great punches by both Morgan and El Brazo. Very fun rudo miscommunication down the stretch. Justiciero wasn't going to stand out as much in a match with both Morgan and Satanico but he was fine as a cog in the machine. I would have liked it if they ramped up the violence a bit and got bloody, sure but for the setting, this was entirely enjoyable for what it was.

Marlin/Sergio Romo Jr vs Marabunta/Enjambre (Monterrey 1991)

MD: Full disclosure here: I was sort of dreading the almost 27 minute length of this coming in relative to the matches above, but it was actually a lot of fun. Since I'm feeling nostalgic, one of the best things about getting into lucha when I did was that CMLL was livestreaming both Friday and Monday shows. The Monday shows were from Arena Coliseo and had their own feel, almost always with Rey Apocalipsis and Toro Bill, Jr. in a tag match on the undercard. They were always very entertaining for their role, and I got that same feeling from Marabunta and Enjambre (Hijo de Espectro) here. Early on Marlin was getting Marabunta into holds for their first exchange, and Enjambre kept coming in to interfere, until Marlin chased him off. Good pesky rudo stuff, sure, but he came back from deep in the crowd with someone's cowboy hat on. Just amazing.

There was a ton of stooging in the primera, as you'd expect. I never got much of a sense of Romo or Marlin here, except for that they were game and capable. The finish in the primera was a dropkick doomsday device that was set up very organically. It was a great beatdown though, tying Romo's leg up in a chair, lawn darting Marlin, smacking faces into the side of the ring, hanging people upside down and kicking them on the way down, just swarming bug brutality from Marabunta and Enjambre. They had a great tandem submission of a seated satan's knot combined with jarring knee shots to the back of the skull. We miss the very start of the comeback (just seconds really) but it's all heated with the revenge spots you'd want and building to a dive train. Marabunta and Enjambre were the sort of guys you'd want to see low on the card week in and week out.

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Found Footage Friday: PANTERITA~! ANIBAL~! ARANDU~! TIGRE BLANCO~! DILUVIO NEGRO~! LENADOR~!

Zeus/Diluvio Negro vs. Sergio Romo/Johnny Curiel CMLL 1991

MD: Zeus is probably Ray Richard here. He'd lose the mask against Transformer the following year. So not the original. Curiel is new to me but he came of as an older journeyman tecnico. So much of this match was rudo miscommunications and he was great at being the straight man for that. I don't think I've ever heard a word in the lexicon for that role, he's almost "basing" for the antics, but he did a great job at it, just like Diluvio and Zeus did a great job of stumbling over one another.

Opening exchanges were good, with Zeus and Curiel putting a real sense of competitiveness and struggle to it while Romo and Diluvio were natural (and almost certainly well-rehearsed) rivals, quick and slick with stare downs (and a brief strike exchange in the tercera). They peppered in the comedy in all three falls and the beatdown only took up a bit of the segunda. I did like Zeus' segunda-ending submission though, which was in a sort of Air Raid Crash position. It was a good balance for an opening match, with a lot of the fat trimmed. They got right to it in the tercera with the tecnicos storming the ring to start the comeback right from the get go before cycling into the submission trading in the finish. Certainly a better twenty minutes than it would have been twenty-five or thirty.

 

Anibal/Panterita del Ring vs. Arandu/Tigre Blanco CMLL 1991

MD: Anibal was in the midst of a comeback here; he'd lose his mask in a big match the following year. He was relatively broken down but knew what to do to get big responses. He was primarily matched up with Tigre Blanco who was up there in age as well. It felt like another bit of rub for Panterita and Arandu, who felt more or less at the peak of their 'local star' power. Arandu came off like across between Estrada and Barbaro Cavernario here, big bumps to the floor, flailing limbs, wild shots and temperament, a surprising amount of superkicks. He and Panterita created the motion, both against one another and for their older opponents.

This had its share of rudo miscommunication too (and that's where Anibal shined the most, in setting it up) but with more purpose than sheer entertainment. Arandu and Tigre Blanco came to blows multiple times, all building towards a moment at the end of the match where Arandu had worked on Panterita's mask and it accidentally came off with a labored pick up slam on Arandu. That led to the DQ and gave the tecnicos the win and everyone, the commentators most of all, were very excited to see things boil over and have the rudos come to blows. I don't think we get what this led to, which is a shame, but it was fairly effective in the moment.

Trueno/Ausente vs. Lenador/Diluvio Negro CMLL 1991

MD: I can't pin down exactly who this Trueno was. He might have been Mascaras' godson, from the timing, but he had a pretty unique black frayed mask and look fitting the "thunder" gimmick that doesn't seem the same. He did have some interesting offense down the stretch though. Ausente is a pretty run of the mill tecnico, competent enough but not dynamic: he runs into the post headfirst well and has a fun leg-hooked surfboard submission. Lenador we'd seen once before and he is a fun stooge. The VQ meant that we missed some of the antics admittedly.

What stood out the most here were some of the exact same rudo miscommunication spots between this match and the last. They did the bit where the got the rudos to sunset flip one another and more strikingly, the bit where both stumble to the floor and a tecnico slides between them on the apron and slaps both on the back, causing them to start fighting in confusion. Diluvio Negro was the common thread (and he was smooth and sharp here too) but I wonder if it was just the zeitgeist at the spot; we'd seen that with French footage too. Sometimes spots just catch on and get overused. Some of this stuff I hadn't seen too much before or after but it's in both of these. As things didn't boil over for the rudos (they actually went over after an exciting tercera), it didn't have quite the same oomph, even with Lenador being over the top. So maybe less novelty for rudos fighting rudos but a looser, more chaotic match overall.

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Found Footage Friday: ANGEL AZTECA~! MANO NEGRA~! PANTERITA~! MA 2000~! ARANDU~! GARGOLA~! WAGNER~! BLUE FISH~! ESCOBEDO~! MR. TERROR~!

Angel Azteca/Mano Negra/Panterita del Ring vs. Mascara Ano 2000/Arandu/Sultan Gargola CMLL 1992

MD: We've been covering these more or less chronological on when Roy posted them and I don't always check to see if they've been easily available before. I am, however, skipping Mascara Sagrada/Atlantis/Panterita del Ring vs Negro Casas/Jerry Estrada/MS-1 because it wasn't just available but available with better VQ previously. Ah well. This footage has been a lot of fun to go through overall. Monterrey had a pretty wild feel for most matches and this was no different.

Here, though, the focus wasn't on Panterita but on Angel Azteca and Arandu. Obviously one of the big advantages of this footage has been Panterita/Ephesto/Safari/HsN and really getting a better sense of him in this stage of his career as a local hero, but Arandu has quickly become a favorite too. In some ways he looked like Estrada's bulkier brother, the Gordy to his Buddy, but he loved to bump out of the ring just as much. Whereas most guys would fall to the floor on a dropkick or armdrag, he'd go absolutely sailing through the ropes. On the comeback in the segunda here, we don't see how it happened, but when we cut from the ring to the floor, we just see him sprawled over six chairs. Azteca held his own when it was time to chase Arandu around the ring or what not too and obviously, he's the guy who lawn darted him into the seats, even if we didn't see it.

Everyone else was fine here. Mascara Ano 2000 matched his partners well in green. I probably don't give Sultan Gargano's mask with the turban enough credit but he was perfectly solid from what we can see and a natural partner for Arandu and obviously well-practiced working Panterita. Mano Negra really was just there save for one spot in the tercera where he got to punch everyone enjoyably. Panterita had one great flip off the top into a pin to end the segunda too. Finish was fun with Arandu fouling only to drop to the ground selling himself and somehow conning the refs into letting the rudos win. Judging by the objects flying into the ring after the fact, the fans really hated it in the best way.  

Mongol Chino/Blue Fish/Rey Venus vs. Ausente/Luminoso/Chuy Escobedo CMLL 1991

MD: This was undercard stuff and I can't tell you much about the tecnico side past Escobedo. He looked pretty slick here in his exchanges and crazy as he missed a flip dive off the apron to the floor. What probably made this most interesting was how much of local rudo Blue Fish we got to see. No single move or spot stood out, but he was confident and assertive, always in the right place at the right time. Chino was a solid cheapshot artist and did a really nice plancha over the top. While things ended with Fish and Austene after everyone else cleared out with the dives, there was never a clear central story that I could pick up on. The rudos ambushed early, the tecnicos came back, and things went more even for the tercera, sure, but there wasn't one pairing that seemed to be at the center of everything. Amusingly, rudo-leaning ref Guerrero got wiped out into Chino on the outside and the two were at odds for the rest of the match, only making things easier for the tecnicos. This one wasn't essential but I have a better feel for Blue Fish now at least.

 

Super Punk/Platino/Asterisco vs. Dr. Wagner Jr/Alacran/Mr. Terror CMLL 1991

MD: Luchawiki is not a ton of help here. For Mr. Terror it basically tells us that he exists. For Alacran (the Scorpion), it basically says that he existed and was thought to be poor. The Asterisco noted is a Reynosa guy but the mask checks out. Despite what the on screen graphic says, "Latino" is "Platino," and he's got some great gear and robotic taunting. I'll be honest that I spent the whole match tracking Mr. Terror hoping he'd do something cool and it never quite happens. Really, the interesting thing here is that Asterisco eats a nasty toss into the chairs (something common for this footage, right?) at the end of the comeback in the segunda and gets taken to the back and it becomes 3 on 2 with the rudos having a deficit. They were booked to win too and I don't know if it's because Wagner's the biggest name or what, but they didn't switch it. So you get some fun stuff of Wagner and Terror fighting for their lives to try to keep as much advantage as possible with double teams and fouling and attacking people on the outside when they really should have been in heavy deficit. They definitely didn't come up with any narrative reason why the third guy wasn't turning the tide except for the ref occasionally holding him back. And then they won it after a dive and a caverneria by Terror. Post match, Super Punk blew off an interview because there was no way of talking to the match without looking like a chump.

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Found Footage Friday: CASAS~! PANTERITA~! PIRATA~! ASTRO~! SMILEY~! CARAS~! ARANDU~! SCORPIOS~! DEMON~! VERDUGO~!

Black Magic/Panterita del Ring/Centurion Negro vs. Negro Casas/Cien Caras/Arandu CMLL 1991

MD: Back to another wild trios here, another exciting match in this feud. There's such energy and almost elasticity whenever Casas and Panterita are in there. No one else moves like Casas. The way he hits the ropes almost seems to stretch reality itself, like he's always threatening to tumble off screen at any moment, like the ring itself would give way to him. It was true throughout but most especially as they were careening towards the finish of the tercera (Casas going for a 'rana and getting power bombed). The primera started with Panterita going right after Casas. It looked like there would be an immediate rudo advantage as Casas turned it around but Black Magic was there to toss him off the top and they rolled into exchanges.

This had to be pretty early into Smiley's sojourn into Mexico (in the pre-match interview, he pronounced Panterita's name wrong and couldn't remember Centurion Negro's name, not that he did much in this match) and he has raw size and presence but is still trying to figure out how to fit into a match like this. That's my takeaway at least. He has Casas, Arandu, and Caras to help him along but there are moments where he's coming back way before he's supposed to and I think there are spots here where he ends up getting goozled for his own good. They still were able to get a lot of use out of him though, like Arandu leaping back off the second rope only to get caught or Caras trying it on Smiley later only to get rolled up (the segunda finish). There were little bits of clipping here and there, maybe around fouls, but the long stretches of the beatdown and comeback were still satisfying. Casas was all over Panterita, tossing him into collapsing chairs, ripping the mask, trying to force his head into the space already occupied by the turnbuckle. They started the final exchanges with Casas tossing something in the air to distract him for a punch and set up the finishing stretch with Casas feigning getting fouled so his team could swarm in. I'm not getting sick of this pairing yet, that's for sure.

Panterita del Ring/Asterisco/Centurion Negro vs. Megatron/Scorpio/Scorpio Jr CMLL 1991

MD: Unfortunately, this was pretty clipped. We got a clear mat exchange between Megatron and Centurion Negro to start, which looked perfectly fine, and then bits and pieces of the beatdown and comeback and then the complete finishing stretch in the tercera. Therefore, I don't have anything intelligent to say about Asterisco (who I don't think was the Asterisco who feuded with Santito) for instance. I do want to stress how over Panterita was with this arena though. He had a cheering section; last match they had pom poms and here they had little flags. He had all the fire you'd want out of a local hero when fighting from underneath or making his comeback. He was probably matched with Scorpio, Sr. here but we didn't get to see much of that. It's a shame because Scorpio, Sr. feels like such a perfect wrestler for this blog given his size and overall scumminess. His nickname is apparently "El Rey Feo" (the Ugly King). Whenever he pops up in footage, I'm glad to see him. Anyway, this ended with things breaking down, the rudos controlling until the Scorpios had a mishap, and then a foul that the refs missed letting them win it anyway. This probably would have been pretty good, if somewhat slight, if we had gotten the whole thing.

Blue Demon Jr./Super Astro/Panterita del Ring vs. Arandu/Pirata Morgan/Verdugo Monterrey 1991 

MD: This is not actually new, but this video is in way more watchable form since it was cut up and misnamed before so we're going to cover it again. Here's the last review: 

(https://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2012/08/just-call-me-pirata-morgan-im-sure-to.html)

It was epic then and it's epic now. While Panterita is in almost every match that have popped up in this dump and while I think it probably helps Ephesto's case over all to see these, and while seeing Casas off the beaten trail here has only spoken well of him too, Arandu is a guy who wasn't on anyone's radar and that really looks great in these matches: wild offense, big bumping, a lot of presence, fits right in with Estrada or Angel Blanco, Jr., or whoever. And here, he makes a great third Bucanero with Morgan and his brother. The story of this one was Arandu vs Super Astro and while everyone else played their part, it was some great contrast. Astro was willing to be lawndarted into hard objects and have his mask (and forehead) torn and chewed upon by Arandu and Arandu was more than happy to get chased around the arena and play into all of Astro's signature spots, including bumping out of the ring on the taunt spin.

My favorite moment in this was probably Demon dodging a punch so that Morgan hit Verdugo and then, when Morgan was selling his fist by shaking his hand in the air repeatedly, reaching his hand out to shake Morgan's, causing our one-eyed friend to freak out. The second was definitely Super Astro's final comeback where he burst into the ring and hit a DDT on Arandu that felt just as appropriate as punching him in the face due to how explosive it was. Even Blue Demon looked good in there, flying into hard objects for the rudos and hitting a nice Northern Lights Suplex. And Panterita fit right in on the tecnico side, hitting some of the more complex armdrags and vaults. Just a very complete match with blood, violence, comedy, big spots, something for everyone really.

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Found Footage Friday: CASAS~! PANTHER~! PANTERITA~! HAMADA~! ARANDU~!

Blue Panther vs. Panterita del Ring CMLL 1991

MD: Panterita took on the identity as tribute to Blue Panther and they worked this one with the level of effort and intensity you'd expect accordingly. It was chippy throughout and this was my favorite iteration of Blue Panther, that perfectly balanced rudo, able to work the mask, beg off when the time came, play to the crowd, be absolutely brutal with the outside guardrail, but really to overlay all of that over the things that Panther is known for: crispness, technical soundness, etc. It's the best of both worlds. This is a guy who could tie you in a knot but that's also going to win the second fall here with a foul just because he can, both endlessly credible and a total shitheel all at once.

Panterita was the local hero that you'd expect, meeting Panther halfway with violence in the primera, eating his beating after heel ref Guerrero held him back in the segunda, and then coming back big in the tercera leading to a series of exciting nearfalls from both wrestlers. There were no stakes here. This was a prelude to the title match and that was supposed to be prelude to an apuestas match, but between the hard shots, mask undoing, and nearfalls, they worked it like it was a bigger deal than it was, like it was a feud ender instead of a feud starter. And hey, Guerrero even got his by eating an errant Panterita dropkick which allowed another official to reluctantly come in and count for Panterita. That gave all of this the proper air of disruption and unfinished business to set up the next match. 

ER: Oh the foolish things I would do for the woman in giant hoop earrings and white bike shorts who accompanies Blue Panther to the ring. I really liked the pace of this, how quickly Panterita takes Panther out with a tope, and how fast and violent all of the strikes look. Panther throws short arm fast knife edge chops that really sting like hell, and it's one way he's able to outquick Panterita. Panterita gets a quick primera win and Panther pays him back by kneeing him in the balls in the segunda. I love how Panther is able to switch back and forth from technician to asshole, with some small elements of John Tatum panic. The fought-for sunset flips looked great, with Panterita really looking like he was trying to drag him over and Panther looking like he was constantly adjusting his weight to stop it, but it got even better when Panther was nearly screaming while holding the ropes, freaking out until Panterita got off him. And of course, whenever Panterita was separated from him, Panther would go back to being an asshole with a fresh start, ripping at his mask after Panterita was stopped from doing so before the segunda. Heel ref Guerrero takes the best bump of the match, a dropkick from Panterita sending him crashing fast to the floor with Fuerza-like speed. The nearfalls were all strong and all felt like they could actually end the match, and the Panterita huracanrana win was a legitimate surprise, with Panther throwing a fit on the house mic after. 

Negro Casas/Ponzona/Monje Negro vs. Panterita del Ring/Gran Hamada/Shibata

MD: I was super high on the two Casas vs Panterita trios from last week but this didn't quite rise to the same level. Some of that was the VQ being as rough as we've seen in this footage, but a lot of it was a lack of that single-minded focus. This was trying to have it both ways too much, threatening to boil over again and again only to settle back down to stilted exchanges. There wasn't a long beatdown or big comeback. The finish was a Casas dodging a kick and pretending to be fouled.

There was still a lot to like though. Whenever Casas and Panterita got into it, it was strong scuffling, no question. They had great chemistry. It makes me wonder if there's not some random Negro Casas vs Hombre Sin Nombre or Ephesto exchange worth tracking down. Monje Negro is a guy I want to see more of, just a hefty monk who is like a brick wall out there. We got a tease of Hamada vs Casas but just that; he carries himself with so much confidence and certainty though. And Shibata looked really good too; he's a local known for training people as varied as Hechicero and Latin Lover if I'm not mistaken. Just a competent pro. So this was fine but it I would have liked it to commit a little more either to set exchanges or the chaos of Casas vs Panterita.     

Arandu vs. Panterita del Ring CMLL 1991

MD: Again rough VQ here with some clipping of key moves, but not anything you can't look past. We didn't lose the overfall flow, just seconds here and there. Given that there were less people in the ring, it was easier to follow too. Arandu was quite the journeyman and this had the making of a provincial grudge match. We've seen enough now to know that Panterita could hold his own in the role of local hero. Arandu made a great foil for him.

Here he ambushed him from the get go, dropkicking him off the apron on his way in. He took a lot of this overall, which was good because had plenty of stuff, slams and suplexes, plenty of asserting himself and pressing his size advantage. He had Guerrero the ref to help hold Panterita's hand so he couldn't punch too (tecnicos have to act like tecnicos!), at least until an errant shot knocked the ref back and allowed for the comeback in the segunda. This led to a pretty hot tercera with a lot of dives (hit and missed) and drama, including a pretty spectacular asai moonsault from Panterita and Arundu's flip dive off the apron. Good, complete, satisfying match overall.

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Found Footage Friday: RYUMA GO~! BARR~! BRUISE~! HAMADA~! SCORPIOs~! ESTRADA~! ARANDU~! SUPER PUNK~! DIFUNTO~!

Super Punk/Kendo Star/Milo Caballero vs Sultan Gargola/Ulises/Difunto CMLL 1992

MD: I thought this would be uneventful since we only get ten minutes of in, but we come in during the segunda right at the comeback with Difunto's masked ripped to shreds by Super Punk (Luciferno?) and the tecnicos getting some serious justice on the rudos. Super Punk's mask had been ripped as well and between the segunda and tercera they continued to really go at it.This got a little silly with the tercera exchanges (though I ended up kind of wanting to see more Caballero and his unnecessary flipping) before settling down to Punk and Difunto smacking each other in the face again. The finish was great though. In the midst of the brawling, Difunto ended up on one of the refs. Super Punk tried to leap off the top on him and landed on the ref. That let Difunto get in a foul. Pretty creative stuff. Just at a glance, I don't think we get the undercard apuestas match that this hopefully led to. That's a shame. As for the match itself, who doesn't want to watch ten minutes of goofy chaos, right?

Gigante Warrior/Scorpio Jr y Sr vs Solomon Grundy/Gran Hamada/Centurion CMLL 1992

MD: Pretty out there attraction match. I think that Gigante Warrior is Butch Masters who I've spent a bit too much time with in late 90 AJPW. He'd been around a bit by this point and could contribute in a match like this, even if he'd never be your first choice. Scorpio, Sr. always comes off like the world's best possible Rey Mysterio, Sr. opponent in size, shape, and temperment, so take that as you will. Hamada is there to give this a weird WAR feel. Honestly, I almost had the vibe of one of those matches with Porky and Marco Corleone in them, just with less charisma. Hamada, even in 92, still had bursts of explosiveness and some solid strikes. Scorpio, Jr. could match up with anyone on the other side, which says something, I suppose. Centurion didn't exactly impress, however. Grundy was there to get hit by Warrior and splash people in the corner. I'm never not going to have at least some fun with a matchup like this, but your mileage, gentle reader, may vary.

Jerry Estrada/Arandu/Angel Blanco Jr vs Blue Demon Jr/Panterita del Ring/Transformer CMLL 1992

MD: Pretty straightforward match here. Up front, the biggest things to note are how well Estrada and Arandu fit together visually  and that Panterita continued to feel like a big deal locally. Demon did not impress for the most part, but I'm not surprised there. It did surprise me a little how he let Angel Blanco kind of eat him up on the mat (even with simple things) in their initial exchange and had to goad him back for another go around so that they could at least feign evenness before tagging out. Transformer is Super Kendo, I think, and he's got fun gear but didn't stand out a ton otherwise. Estrada's stooging and selling had the announcers proclaim he was out to get the Oscar for Best Actor. Arandu still wasn't afraid to bump out of the ring.

They went around a couple of times in the primera with Demon looking a little better on his second exchange with Angel Blanco. He did have his timing down on the punches on the outside at least. The beatdown in the segunda was solid but probably not long enough in the grand scheme of things and then the comeback and finishing stretch in the tercera was blink and you'd miss it though Demon did hit a tope to set up the finish at least. Nothing egregious but not super interesting either.

Bruise Brothers (Ron and Don Harris) vs Ryuma Go/Jesse Barr Orienal Pro-Wrestling 12/3/92

MD: As best as I can tell, they'd been feuding both in general and over the tag belts and otherwise off and on since July. This was the big blowoff, a Texas deathmatch in a cage, but one that otherwise followed tag rules for the most part, and Ryuma Go's last match in the promotion.

There was a lot going on here but most of it really worked for me. Bruise Brothers were more apt to break the rules and double team while the faces tended to wait for tags though there were a lot of transitions based around the partner having enough and intervening. The Texas Deathmatch rules allowed for any number of big impressive bombs from Ron and Don (assisted powerbomb, double suplex, Slaughter Cannon with a double axe-handle, top rope power slam, etc.) which would lead to the three count and then the drama of whether Go, or for a huge chunk of the match, Barr (who took the broader heat), would be able to beat the count. Mostly everything else would lead to a somehow still dramatic two count.

The Harris Brothers were good at imposing themselves and solid at clubbering even if they were never quite as wild as you'd want. Maybe they made up for it with the big power moves. Early on the cage was the equalizer for Go and Barr (that and Go's headbutts and Barr's fire) but between it and the Deathmatch rules, it never became quite the force I would have wanted. It wasn't a huge part of the beatdown on Barr for instance, just there as part of the connective tissue at times. That's not to say the beatdown and the instances of just barely making the count after some big bomb wasn't compelling, because it was (gushing blood or no; here it was no). I thought it was so well done that my biggest criticism of the match is that he recovered way too soon after the hot tag to set up the finishing stretch (wherein they did this neat belly to back/high angle side slam combo). It also ended on an Octopus Hold, and I get the idea that surrender is probably valid in a Texas Deathmatch but you want to see the count come into play at the end, just like you do the cage; that said, it was really novel to see it used as it was, to ramp up the drama during a face-in-peril segment of a tag match. I can't think of many other tag team Texas Deathmatches and I can say pretty safely that as a proof of concept, there's more there to mine.

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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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Lucha Worth Watching: Arandu vs. Miedo Extremo! Blue Panther in Alabama!?

Arandu vs. Miedo Extremo AKE 4/6/19

ER: I am listing this as Lucha Worth Watching, though I wouldn't actually personally recommend it. It's a match that's been recommended to me a couple times, and one I've seen talked about in the weird corners of the internet that talk about small attendance Tijuana lucha shows. It's a match I've seen praised, so I wanted to at least show my work that it crossed our desk. And while there were several individual moments to like, but this did not need to go 25+ minutes, and it really felt like they wanted to do every kind of match they could in that time, regardless of it fitting or not. This starts on the mat, with Arandu working as dime store Navarro and Miedo working more MMA style submissions. It's fine, and it builds nicely to an Arandu tope after shoving Miedo off the top to the floor, with nice brawling around ringside (especially liked Miedo's hard kicks to Arandu's spleen). There were a couple of big bumps before then, including Arandu hitting a real beast of a lariat after a brief chop exchange, really flipped Miedo upside down and inside out. But the match suddenly devolves into a bad American indy match, and I hate when my indy lucha suddenly gets plagued by the worst American indy tendencies. They do a German suplex exchange completely out of nowhere, and both sold them less than any move that had happened to that point in the match. These were two neck crunching Germans, Arandu in particular really ate a rough bump on his head, and there was nothing else to this point in the match anywhere close to as big, but they each treated them like a simple armdrag exchange and quickly moved on while I checked out. The improbably take this to a gigantic garbage spot, with Miedo taking some time to set a large piece of particle board on two freaking tractor tires (were those there the whole time?!) and putting lighttubes on top of that. Of course he's the one who goes through it, and it is a pretty spectacular bump off the top, bouncing off those tires and coming up with a bloody back. It gets a 2 count. A package piledriver immediately after gets 2. A nice tapatia gets the win for Arandu, but it's anticlimactic after the big stuff they suddenly felt justified in doing. This wasn't it for me, but your mileage may vary.

Blue Panther vs. Antonio Garza IMLL 6/8/19

ER: We are living in an era where old lucha maestros get flown in to work shows in states they've likely never been to, so it shouldn't be a surprise that Blue Panther showed up working in Alabama, but it still is. And we get 12 minutes of a really fun match before a silly kendo stick run in by two masked tubs (Kato Kung Lee Jr. and Elemento?) which I'm sure might eventually beget a tag match that won't be as interesting as the singles match they interrupted. I wrote earlier this year about Panther finally transitioning into Rusher Kimura, but I'm clearly incorrect. I think the problem is Blue Panther in CMLL, as he's trying to do rope running and base for flippers and work way younger than he should be working, but in a maestro environment he's still clearly sharp. If he had Negro Navarro's touring schedule and the ability to work more Navarro maestro matches, he would still look in his element, as he does here. Garza has been around for awhile working small southern indies and small southern lucha, and they bill this as Garza facing his idol. As recently as 2016/2017 we got to see a lot of Panther matwork in CMLL matches, even getting to see him in lightning matches. That's not really the case now and I lapped up every second of seeing one of my all time favorites break out some mat tricks that even I hadn't seen. When I watch BP in a match like this I am endlessly satisfied if I get just one cool trick, and I love when I see something like BP hooking his left leg behind Garza, then maneuver into better position by shifting his left ankle with his right. I love that stuff and it's a crime we never got luchadors working the World of Sport guys, it would have been mat trick paradise. BP even maneuvers him into a cool inverted Gory special, and the strength to hold Garza up while Garza starts to climb out of it and ends up on and near Panther's shoulders was really impressive. Garza hits a nice cannonball off the apron, and I was really excited for how this was going to wrap up, but then the run in happened. Normally I'm through the roof for fatties getting involved in a match, but this wasn't the time. Still, this is more than worth it to see Panther working the mat for many minutes in an Alabama strip mall in 2019.

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