Found Footage Friday: BRAZOS~! CASAS~! COTA~! WAGNER~! SATANICO~! GARZA~! PANTERA~! CARAS~! FIERA~!

Bronco/Máscara Mágica/Pantera vs. Astro Rey Jr./Guerrero De La Muerte/Mocho Cota CMLL 2/23/96

MD: Roy's uploaded a bunch recently and we'll hit some of it. I'm not going to say no to new Mocho Cota, even 1996 Mocho Cota. He's a step slow, but what he does with that step is still great. He'll bump to the floor off a dropkick and then careen towards a little kid, halting at the last moment and menacing him with his missing fingers. What a guy. He also fed into rudo miscommunication as you'd imagine, so they kept things brisk, moving, and fun. According to Rob, this was a couple of weeks before Pantera jumped to AAA. He was matched up with Guerrero here early and looked good the whole way through, especially down the stretch where he got to stand tall at the end with the last pairing, post-dives, hit a great dive of his own, and then come back in to win the thing, which is honestly not a structure you usually see. He also drove the comeback, so he was certainly being featured. Mascara Magica was paired with Cota and they did ok, even if you got the sense that maybe he was still trying to figure it out a bit. You take Pantera and Cota out of this one and it wouldn't be as engaging (even if they did wildly different things) but as is, I enjoyed it.

Los Brazos vs. Negro Casas/Dr Wagner Jr./Rambo CMLL 3/15/96

MD: Apparently Brazo de Plata and Negro Casas really wanted to work with each other on this night, because they put on one hell of a show. Porky's fist was laser focused to Casas' face and it was great. Just the most brutal, mean-spirited, single-minded punches you'll see, no matter if Casas was standing, on the ground, in the ropes. And of course, Casas would just slide back into the ring at full speed only to get walloped again. They had an early exchange too where Casas did a reverse leg sweep and then Porky did the same in return. Great stuff. Porky had his shoulders bandaged and that made him a target overall. They primera had a great bit where the rudos, two at a time, tossed one Brazo after the next off the top rope. Then they tried Porky with all three and got squashed and pinned. Perfect comic build and timing. The segunda had them really hone in on Porky's shoulder, double teaming him and forcing hum to the floor. The remaining Brazos held their own for a bit, but Rambo pulled out an object and bloodied El Brazo and it became an inconclusive mauling. This was great while it lasted though.

ER: You go into this excited to see whatever happens between Super Porky and Negro Casas and then all of the Porky/Casas interactions turn out to be even better than you expected. The whole thing is great but everything that Porky and Casas do - especially to each other - is better than you expect and that means it's all time great. There is one especially great exchange between them that is like extravagant lucha morphing into shootstyle. No, this isn't UWFi, but damn when Porky gets swept and ankle picks Casas on his way down I flipped. Porky aimed carefully guided punches at Casas's face a dozen different times and Casas kept falling for them in bigger and bigger ways. Porky would knock Casas down and lean his weight on him and throw punches from half mount. It all builds to one of the most incredible ways to end a caida, when the rudos press slam El Brazo and Oro off the top turnbuckle. Two men handled them, but all hands were required on deck to press Porky. They all backed him into the corner and Porky started throwing potato shots at everyone, flat footed lefts and rights. Casas gets hit so square that he banana peels all the way to the opposite corner. When all three rudos finally get underneath Porky to slam him, they wind up crushed underneath. 

The segunda shows Porky as one of wrestling's great Targets. Rambo and Casas target his taped up shoulder. Injured Porky is one of my favorite salesmen in wrestling, his movements feel so suddenly real but delivered by the incomparable physique of Porky. He has one of the most sympathetic faces in wrestling (and here he doesn't even cry!) and the way he plops on his butt and kicks his legs while Negro and Rambo and stomping and kicking him is like a giant baby getting stomped out. 

Rambo is always great in matches like this. He's great during bumping for tecnicos (loved him hopping on his back across the ring after a Brazo de Oro quebradora) and then becomes the most violent rudo during the segunda. His wrapped fist shot to Oro was so good it held up in slo motion, and when he gigs El Brazo he really gets the blood flowing. Rambo knows several ways to open a cut, slamming Brazo's face into his boot in the corner as blood gets all over it, then starts kneeing him directly in the cut repeatedly. I wish the DQ had happened in the tercera so we got the full set of falls, but this was great stuff.   

Dos Caras/Héctor Garza/La Fiera vs. Bestia Salvaje/Dr Wagner Jr./Satánico CMLL 4/3/96

MD: The primera here was a super fun two minutes. First Caras and Fiera mowed through Bestia and Satanico with double teams, including a Hart Attack of sorts on Satanico. Then Wagner got the better of them with a flying double clothesline and Garza flew around for him before hitting a clutch roll up. From there, they did one of those multiman submissions where the third guy kneels on the shoulders of the person/people being stretched. You almost never see the tecnicos doing that and Garza paid for his hubris with Wagner pulling him off so he took a nasty bump into the ropes and then got posted, but the tecnicos still took the caida. 

The segunda started with in and out exchanges, with Wagner getting the best of Fiera and then everyone basing for Garza (who had to make frequent comebacks admittedly). They went around with it until Wagner ended up dangling from the ropes on a great bump/stooge spot, before the rudos finally took over. Wagner finished Garza off with both a superplex and a top rope splash, one after the other, doing it all himself (well, Satanico held Garza down at the end, not that it was needed). The beatdown that followed was short and nasty, with Satanico driving his foot into Garza's groin as the other rudos held him and chewing on his fingers. He meandered too close into the tecnico corner and they turned it around for some final exchanges, some rudo miscommunication, and then a triumphant tecnico victory including Wagner walking around forever with Caras on his shoulder holding an armbar before they finally rolled forward. As fun as you'd expect with guys this talented. 

ER: This had a great ramshackle feel to it. Tight rudo team who all had different ways of bumping cool in a large flat CMLL ring. It's a powerhouse rudo team with three workers who were all cool in different ways in 1996. Wagner got to show off his power, Bestia got to show off his speed and his grace while being built like Vincent Pastoricito, Satanico got to show off his cunning and sadistic leadership. But where they're at their best, is coming together to assault sweet young Héctor Garza. I don't know why Garza's magic didn't work in the United States. You watch his work in Mexico before his US run and his tecnico connection to crowds is so obvious, and it's just not there in WCW or WWF. His babyface presence and charisma mostly vanished on US TV. 

He was brought in to both WWF and WCW with plans on making him one of the pushed ones among his niche, but both bailed on him quickly. In WWF he was a two month foreign babyface firebrand, a busted experiment that stumbled so the later-that-year Taka Michinoku foreign babyface firebrand push. He was given the big solo in all the early WCW trios matches but never connected as even a top 5 luchador babyface with any WCW crowds. The charisma always instantly returned in Mexico and it's evident here. Any time the rudos focus on Garza the match becomes laser focused and Important. He is a tecnico muse to each rudo and inspires them to increased punishment. Satanico and Wagner seem like they take joy in assaulting Garza and I think Garza connects the way he does with Mexico crowds because some felt that sadistic joy and either felt he deserved it for being too pretty while other felt he was too pretty to deserve it. Wagner's top rope superplex and Superfly splash on on him was a real highlight, some real Welcome to the Big Leagues moment, and Garza in Mexico was still great at being the victim of those moments several years into his career. 

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New Footage Friday: SCHMIDT! YUKON ERIC! FUERZA! CRUZ! PANTHER! CARAS!

Hans Schmidt vs. Yukon Eric Chicago 9/25/53

MD: Great to see new Chicago footage and to see it in full color from 1953 is particularly nuts. I wouldn't say the color added a ton to the action itself (as that has to be a word used carefully here) but I do think it let you see the crowd reactions more vividly, and at times your eyes were going to wander in this match. Schmidt's excellent. Everything looks credible and precise. His holds are perfectly cinched. His shots are mean. His hairpulling is just matter-of-fact and inevitable. He doesn't miss a beat. Eric had size and charisma but not a whole lot else. The long first fall was primarily him controlling with basic holds as Schmidt sold and worked his way out. The finishing bearhug was excellent though, as Schmidt desperately pulled at the hair and threw in shots to escape but ultimately couldn't. The end of the second fall was really strong as well, with a series of backbreakers, each one a bit harder for Eric to kick out of (he tossed Schmidt onto the ref with the first). Then the third was abrupt and full of all the action with Schmidt flying around the ring with crazy dropkicks. It's obvious how good Schmidt was here, but this was probably not the opponent you want to see him against. And hey, if anyone has $50K lying around, we can probably get all of the remaining Chicago footage converted.

Fuerza Guerrera/Talisman/Al Rojo Vivo vs. Hombre Bala/Javier Cruz/Aguila Solitaria Pista Arena Revolution 1986

MD: Pretty complete and enjoyable trios. Fuerza looked like an all-timer here with struggle-filled matwork with Cruz in the primera including some neckbreaker style spots where both guys went over. He had a moment in the faster segunda where he threw an early missed kick just for the hell of it on a rope running exchange before getting armdragged and sliding across the ring and out. It's the sum of little things like that which just brings such an atmosphere to a match like this. He also hit a crazy back suplex in the segunda. I don't know how much footage we have of Rojo Vivo (don't think much, if any) but he had a good Mocho Cota But Red sort of look and stooged pretty well; not quite as much as you'd like, but pretty well. He strung a bunch of arm takeovers together and then did the Ingobernables invisible punt, which I don't think I've seen in the 80s before. I like 80s Talisman (more so than 90s Hijo del Gladiator at least) and his shots looked good and he based well, especially for Cruz's tricked out armdrags in the segunda. In the tercera, they took out Cruz and put on a pretty solid beating on the other two leading to Cruz finally recovering and a big comeback. My favorite bit there was Fuerza preventing his partner Talisman from rolling out of the ring because he didn't want to get back in there, and then Talisman returning the favor on him when he tried to roll out. I'm not sure I'd ever seen that before either. Just another sign that this was probably the week to week baseline for this stuff and it's a crime we don't have more of it.

Blue Panther vs. Dos Caras 9/25/04 AWS

MD: Pretty ballsy match as they work holds for ten minutes straight in front of a crowd shouting for curb stomps and what have you. It's good though, with them working in and out smoothly and smartly, for the most part chaining from one thing to the next, and it worked more as a maestros match than with any tecnico/rudo leanings. Early on, I don't think the crowd knew what to think of it, but by the eight minute mark, or so, as they've escalated into more complex holds and escapes, they get a big, earnest ovation and it's the sort of thing that can't help but put a smile on your face. There's real appreciation there from the crowd and not just some jaded sense of wanting to seem smart. They move on with even more advanced stuff at that point, before picking up the pace in the last minute. Unfortunately, the first two bits of the latter don't really hit and it's the sort of thing that could lose a crowd and, given their preconceptions of lucha, probably made it all seem a little anti-climactic after ten minutes of great matwork. I'm just glad we got to see those ten minutes though.

PAS: I remember getting this match on tape when it happened, but it is cool to see it show up online. This was well before we had tons of Maestro stuff on Youtube, so this was a real shock to the system. Both guys are so skilled and still retained a lot of athleticism at this point and I loved all of the different ways that they attacked holds. The Tapitia sections were especially cool, as was all of Panther's arm work. Caras is a master, but Panther hits a slightly higher level, not sure if more then 10 wrestlers ever had the kind of smoothness and precision on their holds that he had, especially Panther in his 40s rather then his 60s.

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New Footage Friday: Destroyer, Abby, Finlay, Fish, Navarro, Roadblock, Vilano III

The Destroyer vs. Abdullah the Butcher AJPW 5/23/80

PAS: This match had been on the schedule for a while, and it obviously has larger significance with the Destroyer's passing yesterday. Destroyer is such a legend, that any new chance to see him wrestle is a treat. I really loved the push and pull of this match, Destroyer want's to wrestle a Destroyer match, lock ups, a big butt drop on the knee to set up the figure four etc., and Abby wants to drag him into an Abby match with blood, bumps into chairs and head severing elbow drops. Destroyer keeps getting battered and bloodier, until he says fuck it and goes to war and we get a double count with Destroyer chocking Abby with a chair. Not a ton of Destroyer bloody brawls, but when it breaks down, he shows he can hang in this atmosphere just as well as he can on the mat.

MD: I've been pushing this one for a while and it just happened to work out that it was at the top of the list the day after Beyer died. I'm glad for the kismet even if saddened by the overall situation. There is generally a joy to Destroyer matches, a sort of whimsy. He was a wrestler who was exceptional at his craft, just a wizard on the mat, but that was also so confident in his own abilities and his presence that he allowed himself to emotive and even comedically vulnerable in a way that added to the match and did not detract from it.

And here we get an entirely different side of him. The first half of this match has him trying to solve the problem of Abdullah, and more power to him because he decides the way to go is with repeated figure-four leglock attempts. The back-half, however, is a straight-on headbutt war. I'm pretty certain he loads the mask in there to even the odds, but regardless, the two of them just go at it. It's not at all what you'd expect and it's at times unrelenting and triumphant. There's one headbutt where he staggers Abdullah, which is as good a comeback moment as you'll see. This is Abdullah in AJPW in 1980, so obviously it devolves further, but it does so with blood and metal and escalation.

That this vivid image, a bloody yet valiant mess of a masked man choking out an absolute monster with a chair, is now how I am going to remember the Destroyer is simply a testament to how great he was at so much else.

ER: I must point out that Phil sent me a text saying we were writing this match up WELL before news of Beyer's passing, which would have felt like a coincidence if he hadn't also been sending me a bunch of Airwolf texts the past several weeks. Destroyer is a guy who has been criminally underwritten by us, and I'm not just saying that because he passed, but because he's clearly a guy who is as much a Segunda Caida Guy as anyone. It's a lame observation, but I just love the way he moves in a ring. He has a bunch of his own Finlay type moves, the kind of things that come off so natural but obviously must be way harder or else we would see them more often. I love early on how he takes this big (but safe and smart) bump to the floor, Abby chucking him down the length of the ring and Destroyer bumping out to the apron to the floor; later on Abby does something similar and Destroyer grabs the ropes at the right time to effectively stop it. He's really smart at leaving those kind of breadcrumbs in a match. 

There are not many things I like more in wrestling than Abby dropping elbows, I love the way he angles his elbowdrops, love the degree they land, love when he charges in and misses his big killshot sliding elbowdrop, love them all. They're really smart about pacing them out so they still feel strong, and throwing in the missed shots at the right time to give Destroyer a chance to go back in control. By the time it devolves into headbutt exchanges I'm in love. One of my favorite matches ever is Destroyer and Killer Karl Kox (under a mask) doing just think, and I love the visual of these two locked in and just clunking heads together. The red color scheme on Destroyer only adds to the visuals of this wrestler pushed too far, this man dragged down to Abby's level, and him finally grabbing a chair and smacking him with it was great. I'm confident you'll be seeing a lot more Destroyer on these electronic pages.

TKG: Maan, I'm a fan of the Destroyer and am pretty sure there is another match between these two that I dug a ton and he just passed, but this match left me empty. Abby normally brings more structure to a match and this felt like it could've been Destroyer working this match vs anyone. A good chunk of this is Abby bumping rudo missing stuff as Destroyer evades him. It's not Rayo doing Ole spots as rudos tumble. And Destroyer has neat evade moves, especially liked the spot where Abby wants to take it to the streets and goes to toss Destoryer out of ring only for Destroyer to land on apron (real early in match), and Abby is a fun rudo tumbling....and then the final AJPW no finish out of control brawl, doesn't feel that out of control.

Dos Caras/Canek/Villano III vs. Negro Navarro/El Signo/El Torre Infernal UWA 10/31/92

ER: This is not an important match, not a spectacular match, but a match I instantly swooned for because I actually had no idea we would ever get footage of ROADBLOCK working Mexico, The Towering Inferno himself (which is a GREAT name for a giant fat gringo in lucha), the man with some unexplainable gaps in his pro wrestling career, but someone who managed to have stays in Japanese garbage feds, big lucha feds, and the biggest company in wrestling for several years. He's an odd footnote who probably should have been a bigger deal, the classic "if you were born 10 years earlier" kind of guy, but also a tall fat guy during an era when Vince still loved tall fat guys, but apparently didn't love Roadblock. He would have had to have been on their radar, so perhaps there's a semi-interesting story about why Roadblock never went north? Anyway, Roadblock is a fun towering inferno in the center of this very standard match, bullying much smaller men into corners, missing elbowdrops to give them comebacks, falling into fans in the front rows during tecnicos comebacks, takes his mammoth bump over the top to the floor in spectacular fashion, and somehow gets to pin one of the biggest stars in lucha history TWICE. There are better wrestlers in the match, but they couldn't possibly have the presence of El Torre Infernal. Villano III had some wonderful athletic moments, loved how high he stood in the air before delivering a monkey flip; and we got some great Misionarios moments, with my favorite being Negro Navarro getting armdragged to the floor and taking that smooth feet first through the ropes to the floor lucha bump, causing him to give El Signo a baseball slide dropkick. But this was about The Towering Inferno, who looks like a truth giant while getting his hands raised by the tiny ref. There are other Roadblock UWA matches, and I will be reviewing those, obviously.

TKG: They line this up at the start with Roadblock v Canek, which makes sense as you expect the big spot to be Canek bodyslamming Roadblock. And Roadblock's a guy who you always loved as the guy in a match built around "can an opponent with a power offense lift this big motherfucker" (Luger opponent setting up Luger v Giant). And it's bizarre cause that Roadblock v Canek match up never seems to be as heated as it should be. On the other hand every Villano v Roadblock and every Roadblock v Dos Caras interaction is fire. Should also be said that Navarro starts out matched with Dos Caras and Villano III starts with Signo and Navarro seems more fired up when working Canek and Signo with Caras. Signo pulls out a fork or some type of foreign object way early in first fall and him thowing blows with the shank is violent but also kind of out of place. Roadblock as bumping big rudo is fun and yeah it's a shame he didn't get a longer big run somewhere.

MD: Did we know that Roadblock was in WWC in 1991 as well? I didn't. Also, he'd been wrestling since 87? Trained by Larry Sharpe too? All of these are things I did not know. Look, I liked his presence here. A lot of times when you get bigger guys in lucha, they're short but fat, your Brazos or whatever. Even Kraneo is only billed as 6'1". Sometimes you'll get a really tall guy who isn't fat like Thunder or Marco Corleone. Rarely do you get a towering guy like Roadblock and it was a nice visual to see him up against everyone else. You got the sense that the Missionaries were glad to have him in their corner and to sort of use him as an element to shape the match around. So, I liked that, and yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing him more, both here and in Puerto Rico. But yeah, this was pretty sloppy all around and not just Roadblock. Villano III looked great. Roadblock had, as I said, a super presence. Things even sort of built to a fun moment where he faced off against Caras that was better for the anticipation than the actual payoff. That's all I've got though. Still, I'd see more if there is more.

Bobby Ocean/Drake Evans vs. Bobby Fish/Fit Finlay IYFW 5/18/12

MD: Good, grounded local indy tag match. I've seen less Bobby Fish than you have, but I was at least somewhat happily surprised here. He lost focus a little bit at points, relative to Finlay who was casually laser-focused (casually everything actually; more on that in a moment), but his stuff looked good and appropriate and I have no qualms.

Finlay was great. Completely nonchalant while still being as violent as ever. The targeted offense to Evans' leg was nasty, especially the bodyslams into the ropes. If you're going to have a smaller ring, use it. I loved how he crossed his heart in front of the ref to show that he had made the tag when he had not and how he just encroached into the ring later on when there was no chance at all that he'd get away with it. There was a hint of mischief there that you'd see much earlier in his career but not in his WCW or WWE runs.

This was structured well enough with a double heat and a couple of relatively hot tags for the crowd size. The babyfaces were fine and played their part well enough. The time limit restart was weird and unnecessary and hurt the flow a bit but overall, it was fun to see Finlay in this setting, a setting which probably did Fish some favors as well.

ER: I really liked this, and thought it was a tremendous Finlay performance. The bulk of this match was Finlay beating Ocean and Evans around the ring, and he looked as good here as he ever looked. It's truly amazing how he was able to come back after several years and still look like the best guy in the ring, age be damned. This was among his very last pro wrestling matches ever (you know, unless he decides to show everybody how he's the best AARP eligible wrestler in the world any day now...) and his skill level is still just off the charts, one of my absolute favorites, a guy who I always love seeing control a wrestling ring. There were a lot of gems from his indy run (and seeing Finlay/Thatcher live is a cool feather I get to wear in my cap) but I also really liked matches like this against guys you hadn't heard of and would otherwise not check out. Finlay sports a WCW era singlet and beats these two like he was working a WCW syndicated show. You're obviously going to love him dropping a knee to Evans' temple, doing a big butt splash right onto the inside of his knee, throwing the hardest short arm clothesline in wrestling, stomping on Evans' hand when it was lingering on the mat for too long, and slamming him leg first into the ropes. 

My favorite little Finlay moment was Evans reaching out for a hot tag and Finlay kicking his arm. Fish was fine enough as a generic indy kicker, and I dug he and Finlay cutting off the ring. Really this whole match was like 90% Finlay/Fish in control, and you couldn't get much of a feeling for Ocean or Evans until Evans late match tag in. That said, both were professional and handled their end of things well. I especially liked Ocean doing an across the ring leap for a hot tag, and really liked Evans' hot tag offense: he threw a couple of hard stiff arm lariats at Finlay's clavicles and hits two really nice spinebusters, and that's easily enough to make me like a guy. We get a goofus 15 minute time limit bell out of absolutely nowhere (and also only 12 minutes in) that leads to a clunky restart, and things would have just looked so much better had they just done the 2 minutes post restart without any kind of stoppage in between (obviously), but no matter, this whole thing was still a ton of fun and a great look at what a total badass in his mid 50s could still do on ANY card.

TKG: Being a Finlay tag partner is thankless, because Finlay is so fucking sharp that I'm just going to end up watching him on apron while you do whatever you're doing. Finlay always getting ready to break up pinfalls even when he never does was my favorite Finlay on apron move. Finlay bodyslamming Evans into the ropes was nasty as fuck but also Evans really made it look like his leg was fucked. It is so great that we have this.

PAS: This match was posted on Bobby Ocean's youtube page, which is a great thing about 2019 wrestling, we get a chance to see one of the last matches of an all time legend like Finlay because a random dude decided to aim his Flip video at the ring and post it on youtube 7 years later. Finlay and Fish were a really fun heel team, dominating most of the match working over Evans's knee, with some classic Finlay offense, loved all of the slams into the ropes, it is such a simple move and so brutal looking. I also loved his butt drops on the knee and nasty indian death lock. We did get a nice pair of hot tags, and I dug Evan's spinebusters. I agree with Eric and Matt that the restart was really unnecessary, but otherwise this was a blast and new Finlay is all we could want.

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MLJ: Guerreros del Infierno B-1: Dos Caras Sr., Mil Mascaras, Solar I b Apolo Dantés, Rey Bucanero, Último Guerrero

2000-02-08 @ Korakuen Hall, Tokyo, Japan
Dos Caras Sr., Mil Mascaras, Solar I vs Apolo Dantés, Rey Bucanero, Último Guerrero

7:43 in

Well, now I've done it. I spent money on Lucha. This is especially ridiculous because there's still a near-infinite amount of stuff for me to watch online. Keep in mind, I haven't even touched AAA except for some of the big 90s trios. I haven't seen an episode of Lucha Underground yet. I have the Casas vs Mistico and Rush vs Terrible feuds ahead of me. I still have more 2010 ahead of me. This is all stuff where we have dozens of matches for easily available. There's new 90s stuff popping up on youtube almost every day and it's all awesome.

But the heart wants what it wants and I wanted to watch old Guerreros del Infierno. One of the first things I latched onto when doing this (all the way back in June), were Los Guerreros del Atlantida and the painfully disappointing tecnico turn for Rey Bucanero. A lot of the reason why that was painful was because of the palatable history between Ultimo Guerrero and Rey Bucanero. It was always sort of striking to me, looking back, that GdI were so highly touted in the WON Tag Team Awards in the early 00s, if only because lucha isn't an area that usually does very well in those awards. I figured that since there was smoke, there had to be some fire.

Thankfully, Fredo had a comp. It's not as thorough as what I usually like (as it was a VHS comp that he retrofitted for me - Thanks!) but it has a lot of their prime era tag matches. It has fifteen matches, four of which were vs Negro Casas/El Hijo del Santo, and most of which aren't online. Now, I know most of the time, we find you guys matches that you can actually watch, so I don't want to just go through the comp itself (even though it is fairly inexpensive and I'll be able to tell you whether or not I wholeheartedly recommend it by the end). What i'll do is intersperse chronologically the comp with matches that are online. So GdI Spotlight A will be comp matches and GdI Spotlight B will be matches I can find online, which will usually be trios matches as the comp is solely tag matches. I'll keep the numbering going though, just to make things confusing, so the next match will be #2 whether it's from the A column or B column.

First up is a B match and this one was a sick amount of fun. It was the main event of a Korakuen Hall show and it had the lucha in Japan tecnico super team of Mil Mascaras, Dos Caras, and Solar I. I have little use for Mascaras but he's so over in Japan and in a trios, his worst match-slugging tendencies can be hidden a bit, especially when he has guys like Caras and Solar to do the heavy lifting for him and relatively young guys (all in their late 20s/early 30s) to eat his stuff and make him look good. Dantes is the son of Alfonso Dantes who was all over the DVDVR 80s set. He was bald after having lost a hair match to Porky in late November in arena Mexico (and hey, that match is online and I want to watch it now).

This was one fall and it was really focused on tecnico shine. It was a lot of fun though. I think that the rudos were game, given the great atmosphere, and the people that they were in the ring against, to really do their best and Solar and Caras brought a ton to the table. Mil gave the most on his way to the ring. He screwed up his bound over the top, admitted it, clowned with the crowd, and then did it again with a giant raise of his hands.

The opening matwork was very solid, with Rey letting himself get moved around by Solar. There was a bit that was a little overly choreographed, but that was counterbalanced by how organic everything else felt. One thing I noticed about UG here was that he's more agile than mid 00s Ultimo. Even so, he relied on his strength as a way to counter Caras' finesse, using a slam after getting out leveraged. Both guys were able to kip up at the end of their exchange though. Mil just did his stuff with Dantes, not showing any ass, and being glad to just do the headscissors flips from the ground because that's what the crowd wanted.

This first bit culminated with Mil hitting the flying headbutt, and then doing double ones with Caras to Bucanero and UG, followed by a Caras tope to the outside. After this they started doing tecnico vs the world comedy bits, including this really great exchange of monkey flips where Solar and Caras tossed GdI around the ring, out of the ring, and around the outside. The match is worth seeing for that, really. It was great action right up to the point where Mil out-muscled both Dantes and UG on a top wristlock spot (which was followed by ducking clotheslines, clotheslining people and tossing about atomic drops).

The rudos got a bit of heat, finally, as Caras came in and got triple teamed, including a really great triple wheelbarrow facebuster which felt effectively and jarringly out of place considering the tecnicos, then the GdI special body splash on Solar. Even Mil has to take some offense, though he fought back for far longer than the other two before succumbing to the triple team. This bit ended with another really funny spot revolving around arm wrenches, just classic lucha comedy.

From here, the match rolled into more tecnico shine, with rapid fire four-man star submissions, just hugely entertaining stuff, with the last pair doing various things (a bear hug, an inverted surfboard, etc), a dive train where everyone got to hit their dives, including a surprising UG Asai Moonsault, and the tecnicos going over with a double submission in the corner and Mil hitting a flying body press over them onto GdI and pinning them both.

There wasn't much substance or heat to this, but it was hugely entertaining for what it was between the atmosphere, the contrast of old vs young, and masters (and Mil is absolutely a master, knowing exactly what he's doing at all times, even if I don't always agree with it) really plying their craft with willing opponents. It wasn't a GdI showcase, but it did show that by 2000 they did belong in the ring with legendary characters.

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