Found Footage Friday: QEPD EL SIGNO~! VILLANO III~! MR. ARGENTINA~! LA MUMIA~! CAPOEIRISTAS~!

Mecânico Paulão vs. Mr. Argentina Astros do Ringue 2000 

MD: Mr. Argentina passed away earlier in June as well. We've covered one or two of his matches before but as some more have popped up given said event, I thought it was time to head back to Brazil. This had a dinner theater type setting with round tables with white tablecloths surrounding the ring. They were sparsely populated. Argentina was older at this point, balding with strands of hair on either side. Everything he did was interesting though, every entry, every exchange, every counter. Not one thing seemed rote or boring. It all had an extra twist or spin or bit of torque to it. You were eager for them to lock up just to see what he'd do next because none of it was familiar. 

Paulão was, as stated, a mechanic, and he had a way of asserting himself in the ring. All of his offense involved moving Argentina this way or that. Where he had advantage, however, was that the ref was on his side. If Argentina was going to try to do a crazy headstand bridge on a pin, the ref was going to push him over. That sort of thing. This was in rounds and they made it to the third round before the ref really crossed a line by putting Argentina in a full nelson, he got his legs up to headscissors Paulão though and took them both over, drawing a particularly frustrating DQ. Argentina just shrugged though, confident and at peace with what happened. 

El Signo vs. Villano III CMLL 7/15/01

MD: Far more found than new here, but it's a Signo match we haven't covered and you probably haven't seen. It also kicks off with a training video of him just crushing people before showing off Satan's Knot. He takes over immediately controlling the ring. When Villano makes it in, Signo rains down headbutts and knees. Villano fires back but eats a foul in the corner. Amusingly, they reshow the skull covered knee going up and down on the replay repeatedly. Signo hones in on the skull with a noogie and close-in punches to open Villano up and then wins the primera with the knot. The segunda's quick as Villano hits a rana out of nowhere and the tercera is clipped but has them going from trading holds to Villano hitting a tope and then the two of them rolling around and punching each other in the face before Villano tries to commit homicide by dropping a row of chairs on Signo causing people to swarm out from the back. Two masters pushing 50 beating the crap out of each other. 

ER: I have nothing but fond memories of watching pro wrestling in 2001. What a great year to be in college and trading tapes and watching Tenryu matches in girls' dorm rooms and telling them what a Shining Wizard was. I love 2001 pro wrestling, and yet it's apparent that some of my favorite matches from the year are still being found. Because THIS. This match between two old men - old men who are somehow just a couple years older than I - is a fight. Not a pretty fight, but a fight between two older men in a moderately nice cruise ship casino. Villano III looks like a Richard Kind character. One where he doesn't have to do anything with his hair, because Richard Kind and Villano III have the same hair. It's in the tuft. Villano takes an excellent ringpost bump and falls off the apron in the same way that I think Richard Kind would have fallen off the apron: Holding onto the ringpost, eyes crossing, swinging around the post into a pratfall to the floor. Signo is a great little fat guy here. The fatter Signo got the shorter he looked. He bites at Villano's face and headbutts him five times in the side of the head and right in the eye, and from there the struggle looks like the messiest fucking fight as they both grab at each other's hair and gnash teeth from close quarters, no longer looking like the smooth trained fighters of their youth but instead like two men getting into an incredibly boring fight at a wedding. 

I am sad that the limb work section of the tercera is clipped because what we have is incredible, as they scream and fight over leg locks while each getting to lock in a nasty deathlock, rolling slowly through them in ways that made them feel even more agonizing, old joints popping and muscles getting stretched. The matwork clips suddenly into Villano III hitting a great tope that sends Signo flying fast into a fan's sharp knees. The match is thrown out as these men literally start punching and kneeing each other while lying on the floor, fighting from their sides, refusing to stop. Villano tries to break Signo's arm by throwing a short front row of those hard Arena Mexico seats into the bone, and the pull apart felt like a real wedding dance floor feud. This was outstanding, a CMLL gem I had never seen from the era where I had just been starting to actually watch CMLL on my local Galavision affiliate.  

La Múmia vs. Kid Abelha & Guto BWF 2005

MD: A different styles fight between a mummy and two capoeiristas. Can that be the entire write up? It sums it up pretty well. No? Fine. This lived up to its promise. The first third was La Mumia just tossing these guys around with solid technique, mares and beales and the sort, right in the middle of being a guy who came out of a sarcophagus and being an actual trained wrestler. The middle of the match were the two of them getting to work together, bounding and flipping about, redirecting him, and hitting double dropkicks. Then the ref made one get out and the last third was a mauling again, a nice effort that got quickly cut off. He spent the last minute tossing one onto or into the other, including a nice butterfly roll back and a grisly press slam to the floor before he ended it with a powerslam. For ten minuets of this, it was pretty much exactly what I wanted. We don't write up a ton of wrestling mummies or capoeira around here and this was both.

ER: As advertised. This is the most Mummy vs. Capoeira Guys match I have personally seen. I assume this is a pretty common match type in Brazil or whatever pro wrestling footage we haven't yet uncover from East Timor. I still don't think I've witnessed capoeira that actually translates to pro wrestling, but I can see why it's been attempted. It never seems like it's far off from working, but nothing ever lands well. It reads visually as the lightest of the fruity martial arts. To make it work, you need a tall, largely padded mummy alternating between lumbering and feeding for dropkicks. It's amusing seeing a Mummy feeding normally for dropkicks but then also sometimes getting up from them and moving his arms and legs like Angry Frankenstein. Kid Abelha feels better at wrestling than the other guy, but only because he's mastered the high folding upper shoulders bump and takes it several times in a row, making me think that he could have adapted easily to Jersey All Pro within a month. La Mumia hits a dangerous looking vertical suplex on both capoeiristas, dangerous because none of the three looked like they fully understood what a vertical suplex was, or how it should land, or where it should land. Mumia press slamming one of them to the floor was another moment that made this feel like Shaolin Wrecking Crew vs. Rainchild or Ghost Shadow, without a rec center wall to stop the distance of the throw. 

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Found Footage Friday: SERDAN~! AQUILES~! VERNE~! MCCLARITY~! VILLANOS~! TEXANO~! SIGNO~! NAVARRO~!

Michel Serdan vs Aquiles Brazil 9/13/87

MD: We've covered two other matches from Brazil and they've both been tremendous. This was no different. If someone is just sitting on a bunch of Michel Serdan matches, please come forward with them. We'll watch them all. This was billed as his retirement match, one last fight in a cage against Aquiles to prove the better man once and for all. Aquiles cut a fun quick promo before the match saying he wanted Serdan to be calm because he was scared to face him. Serdan had a more celebratory one where he got to thank the fans. This was escape rules with rounds of all things. The cage was flush to the ring, so much so that there were no turnbuckle pads.

That came into play immediately as Serdan ran Aquiles right into the corner a couple of times to open him up. He was already bleeding when he ran him into the cage. He had wild sweeping strikes meant for the last row. I wouldn't call them conventional or even tight but they were very effective and dramatic, like he was riding the music of the roaring crowd. The round breaks served as potential transitions, but even more so were attempts out of the cage. That's when Aquiles got to first take over on Serdan, who had beaten him enough that he was satisfied and went to leave but was immediately pulled down. He quickly got color too though not quite as much as Aquiles (though he had the bald head to help it go a little further). From there they went back and forth, utilizing either escape attempts or round breaks as a way to fire back at one another, just repeatedly slamming fists into heads from every angle.

What a finish too. Aquiles managed to knock Serdan away and started to climb and you wondered, just for a moment, if he might get away. Serdan was there though, grabbing at his feet and it wasn't hard to see the rest of this playing out with Aquiles thrust back into the ring and Serdan rising victorious. However, the entire heel locker room rushed forth and pulled Aquiles over the top. The celebration that followed was one of the most jubilant ever in the history of heel triumphs. Though he was completely undeserving, Aquiles rushed back and forth, surrounded by the heels, arms in the air, as Serdan recovered, dejected, in the ring. I have no idea how they avoided a riot here; it was well-warranted. There's very little quite as beautiful in all of pro wrestling as a heel drawing heat with such exuberance and verve. I'm sure he got his comeuppance at some point but this is a world we only get a glimpse into so who knows what it was or when. I would have paid to see it though, that's for sure. 

Verne Gagne vs Roy McClairity NWA Chicago 8/6/54

MD: We had the first fall of this previously, but not the whole thing. It's a long 2/3 falls match, with a substantial first fall. Verne is Verne, dynamic, explosive, made for TV, carrying within him this bounding energy. You can see it in the way he moves. There was a promise of action in his matches, though, of course, it's the 50s, so that action never crosses a threshold from sublime to absurd in a way that more "action-driven" wrestlers from Race to Rocco to Angle to their modern counterparts can't claim.

A lot of the match was centered around McClaritiy trying to find an answer to the challenge of Verne, working hard to ground him and keep him in long holds, most especially a fairly complex grapevined leg stretcher. It meant that when Verne got an upper hand once again, he was more aggressive and frustrated than usual, looping in some chippy extracurricular bits of damage; for instance, in a toehold, he might slam the knee into the mat in a way that he might not have otherwise. It turned the crowd against him a little, or at least turned them more towards McClairity.

They were working the holds so hard and with so much spirit that without Verne's baldspot, it'd be hard to tell the two of them apart at times. The finish of each fall came down to battle over sleeper type moves, first Verne's straight on sleeper and then McClairity's cobra clutch. In the third fall, with neither able to get it on, McClarity went to the well with a side headlock one too often and Verne hit a 1954 belly to back suplex out of it (one that everyone seemed surprised by) to score the win. Between the underlying story of McClarity trying to contain Verne and Verne getting frustrated by it and just how hard they were working each hold, this felt a lot shorter than it was and remained enjoyable the whole way through.

Kato Kung Lee/Texano/Villanos IV y V vs Indomito/Signo/Tigre Blanco/Negro Navarro CMLL 1991

MD: Look, I love that we have all of these Monterrey matches. I've found something worth watching in 90% of them and some of them are legitimately great. We've got to see regionally pushed talents like Panterita and Arandu and more from the greats like Casas. But man, it can be so frustrating in the way lucha can so often be to see great builds to an apuestas match and then not even know if the thing ever happened, let alone having footage of it. The build to Indomito vs Texano was really good and this was another piece of that vexing puzzle.

They paired up for the primera, with Signo vs Villano (I think V; telling apart Villanos is my personal lucha weakness) really standing out as being smooth. Just a lot of fun talent here so it was nice to see them have their exchanges. The tecnicos took it and kept control into the segunda, though Indomito was dodging Texano for the most part, as well he should. Kato Kung Lee got to take advantage of sheer numbers involved in an atomicos match and did his usual shtick, just with more people to higher effect. Immediately thereafter the rudos had enough and swarmed. At times it was hard for Indomito to take center stage just because Navarro and Signo were there but once they got going, he honed in well enough on Texano and bloodied him. The comeback in the tercera was heated and focused on Texano rushing the ringing and getting his revenge. He hit a pile driver on the outside and back in the ring which was jarring especially because they weren't sold like death. Things built to a final exchange where Texano came in too hot and Indomito was able to get his feet up on the ropes for a cheap pin. Again, just a nice balance of blood and revenge and comeuppance denied. All building to a match that's not listed on luchawiki at least. Ah well. Lucha is a challenging mistress.

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