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. 

Read more!

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.

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: CASAS~! CHARLES~! SIGNO~! DANDY~! HAMADA~! AZTECA~! TERRY~! FELICIANO~! SILVER KING~! BATMAN~?!

Batman/Chuy Escobedo/Ausente vs. Halcon de Oro/Mongol Chino/Astro Negro (Monterrey 1991)

MD: Some great names in the next couple of matches, but we have to see what we have here first. Astro Negro looks like a guy who never had a chance at recovering from losing his mask. Apparently he lost it to Mongol Chino so he's a forgiving sort. He is a mask maker of some renown ("El Pony") too. It's possible that Batman is a young Mr. Niebla but I couldn't say one way or the other (he had the swagger at least). The central story of the match was Batman vs Halcon de Oro.

I do have to admit that watching these six a month, it's nice to see the structure change up a bit. This was about Halcon dodging Batman. They cycled through Chuy vs Astro Negro (which was fine if slight) and Ausente vs Mongol Chino (nice and flowing; Ausente looked pretty good throughout) before teasing that third pairing between the prime combatants. Halcon took a powder, however, and upon reentering the ring, staged an ambush and started the beatdown. I haven't seen that sort of disruptiveness in a primera in a bit with these matches.

I'm not going to say that these were the smoothest guys we've seen in the Monterrey footage, but the segunda and tercera had the sort of wild abandon that's found in the best of these matches. The segunda started with a comeback and a lot of quick exchanges. Here we finally got a taste of Batman vs Halcon and they worked well together but it was just a taste, as Halcon got run off to the back to draw a count out. The tercera had a pretty brutal second beat down and an even more brutal comeback, wrought with mask ripping, before they cycled through submissions and break-ups and went for the ring-clearing dives: Chuy got all caught up on the ropes in a dive so that was brutal in its own way. Still, that left Batman and Halcon and from there it was a clear, crisp and direct tecnico triumph. The talent wasn't a high as it could be here, but the effort was admirable.

Negro Casas/Emilio Charles Jr/El Signo vs. El Dandy/Gran Hamada/Angel Azteca (Monterrey 1991)

MD: We lose some of the beginning, I think (my guess is an initial Signo vs Hamada pairing). We lose a lot of the tercera. It's still 22 minutes of these guys being absolutely amazing. The level of talent, commitment, trust, confidence is just off the charts. You have matches that follow a certain structure, that might be one dimension or two dimensional, moving this way or that on an axis or two. With these guys, there's a new dimension added. At any point they can deviate from what seemed to be going on in the match, take a side journey, but never, ever lose the true north of where they need to return to and their destination for that point of the match.

Look at the primera. We come in on Dandy and Casas doing their thing, sweeping movements, counters and counters to counters, all building to Casas putting his head down and getting kicked backwards and the two brawling out of the ring. Then it's Azteca and Charles, with tighter holds full of struggle. It breaks down after that, with the rudos having an advantage on Dandy, only for him to flip the switch and make a rolling hot tag. That allows Hamada to come in and crush everyone with headbutts. That entire mini beatdown segment was a deviation and they managed it flawlessly before heading back to where they would have been going without it. It adds drama and a sense of organic believability in the match. So much of lucha is ritual and meeting expectations, but these guys were good enough to switch partners and weave in whole bits without ever losing the plot or confusing the crowd. It could be something as simple as a Hamada/Signo strike exchange or Casas rope running with Hamada, eating an enzuigiri and stumbling right into Dandy's fist.

With lesser talents, the match would leave the ground, devolve into chaos or endless spots, and would never come back. These guys, though, could take moon leaps and always move in the right direction and land and sprint before leaping off again. There's talent and then there's mastery and people like Casas, Dandy, and Charles are in that rare, rare group of the latter.

Jose Luis Feliciano/Black Terry/Mr Terror vs. Silver King/Asterisco/Centurion Negro (Monterrey 1991)

MD: Great to see two thirds of the Temerarios here, but man is Mr. Terror ever not Shu El Guerrero. Moreover, the focus on this match was Terror vs Asterisco. There were pros and cons to that. I'm not going to say Terror brought nothing to the table. There was some mask ripping, some decent enough battering during beatdowns (though Feliciano and Terry were kind of edging him out to get shots in), and he took an entirely admirable bump on a back body drop on the floor to set up the finish to the primera, but his big move tends to be a clothesline (in a match where Silver King's was way better) and there's not much else there.

The flip side is that we got to see Terry and Feliciano go up against Centurion Negro and Silver King for a lot of this and all of that was great. Terry started with Centurion with all of the little movements and earnest openings you'd want from lucha matwork. Feliciano and Silver King brought the motion and all of them hit hard when it was time to do so. This one had too much heat on the ref too. That wasn't uncommon for the Monterrey footage but here it played too much into the finish and the ref got his comeuppance instead of Terror. Usually when watching a match with a singular focus like this, you come off annoyed that the apuestas match either never happened or we don't have it. I could probably live without seeing Asterisco vs Mr. Terror mano a mano though.

Read more!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: BABY MISAWA~! ONITA~! SATO~! INOUE~! TENTA~! KABUKI~! JIVE TONES~! CADETES~! MISIONEROS~!

Mitsuharu Misawa/Atsushi Onita vs. Mighty Inoue/Akio Sato AJPW 12/08/82

MD: This is, I think, the earliest Misawa match on record that was identified in a handheld cache from a couple of years back and that's now online due to our new friend in Japan. We have some Goto vs early Kawada matches that we'll hopefully take a look at in the next couple of weeks too. A lot of this was putting Misawa through his paces with the basic spots you'd expect from someone in the system at his age. There was one point where he seemed a little lost on a whip and there were some things he did, like a big backflip off the top that you couldn't quite attach to the wrestler he'd someday be. In general, it was a good showing for his experience level, generally competent. Onita had that electricity that made you think that 82 Randy Savage vs 82 Atushi Onita would be the most interesting match in the world. He drew the eye with everything he did because it stood out so much to everyone around him. And it's not like Sato and Inoue were slouches. These two had as good a finishing combo as you'd see in 82, with Inoue's fireman's carry gutbuster, two flipping sentons, and Sato's wind up hook kick. 

ER: This was mostly simple juniors stuff, a lot of armdrags, some grounded headlocks, and some movements that seem destined only to ruin knees. You see Onita leaping off the top rope to the floor and landing on his feet, just to back off Inoue, and you think about how his knees were pure bone dust less than two years later. Inoue and Sato work over Misawa's knee (Sato had a really nasty grapevine kneedrop that did not prevent Misawa from backflipping off the top rope late in the match) and has a cool backbreaker. Misawa gets to show some spunk with a hard back suplex that gets paid back shortly after. I loved how the match built to a wild Inoue/Onita exchange, with Inoue hitting his high cross block and then FLYINF over the top to the floor after missing the immediate follow up, giving Onita the opening to fly into him with a great tope. The Misawa/Inoue stuff was nice and spirited, with Misawa missing a cool leaping crossbody off the top and getting his insides rearranged with a gutbuster and two fat flipping sentons. Misawa was only 20 years old here, but you could really see how high his floor was just from his young boy work. 

The Jive Tones (Pez Whatley/Tiger Conway Jr.) vs. John Tenta/Great Kabuki AJPW 9/2/89

MD: Jive Tones were generally supporting Abdullah (who was building up to his big, heavily promoted singles match with Baba) on this tour. We get them in some six mans but it's nice to see a straight tag match with them doing their thing. Tenta was winding down on his way to the WWF, having not been utilized all that much in 89. Kabuki, of course, would jump between lower card matches like this and being a second or third guy in Jumbo vs. Tenryu main event trios matches. Maybe that's why it was so enjoyable to see him goof and stooge about with Conway and Whatley here. There was a beautiful exchange where Conway escaped a headlock by dancing this way and that and Kabuki answered by mocking his little dance. The crowd was definitely into the act, popping for each bit of oscillation or jiving that Conway or Whatley pulled out. You never quite got the sense that they were going to win, between the hierarchy of it all and Tenta's sheer size, but they definitely irritated their opponents along the way. That made the post match dancing and strutting around the ring of Tenta and Kabuki all the sweeter after their victory.

ER: Matt really has a strong grasp on the kind of matches that will lure me into writing late on a Friday night. I didn't know the Jive Tones worked an All Japan tour, let alone in a featured tag match, so I was going to be here for this. You see, it's the way Conway shimmies Whatley's white jacket down his arms and shoulders, really taking his time, wiggling his partner free. He will continue wiggling his way through the match, but building to some surprising stiffness and a cool story. I would have enjoyed this if they had kept the early match vibes, like Kabuki barreling out of control doing rope running with Conway, leading to him eating an armdrag and dropkick, or how Tenta swung super low on a clothesline and then caught Whatley's high crossbody, only to go down in a heap from Conway's Thesz press. 

I thought this would settle down pretty quickly into Tenta and Kabuki dominating, and the fun twist in the match comes when Conway gets manhandled into the wrong corner. This is clearly where he was about to take a long beating, and instead, wins a punch out with Kabuki that turns into a nice heat segment on Kabuki, even giving us a Conway butt butt off the ropes. One of Tenta's best traits as a wrestler is how good he is at looking Actually Mad in the ring. He has great body language and is good at selling, but he's so good here at looking genuinely pissed off at Whatley's antics, coming off like someone who was upset that the Jive Tones weren't treating Professional Wrestling with enough Respect. It's so cool seeing such a big dude get knocked around by Conway and Whatley, and my favorite part of the match was this excellent last second pinfall save by Conway, flying into frame with a stage dive that Charles Peterson should have captured in black and white. Kabuki barely gets the win with an inside cradle as Tenta is getting smashed into the ringpost on the floor. Negative points to the cameraman for not giving us more of Tenta and Kabuki's celebratory in-ring strutting. 

Solar/Súper Astro/Ultraman vs. Black Terry/El Signo/Negro Navarro Primer Festival De Lucha Libre Regia 3/21/10

PAS: Always cool to see a new match from Navarro and Terry when they were in their mid 50s and smack in their prime. Terry was the greatest brawler in the world in 2010, but this was more of a Navarro vs. Solar style llave exhibition, which was fun but not revelatory. Everyone kind of hit their beats here, pretty heavily matched up, so we didn't see much of Navarro or Solar doing their things with the other guys in the match. We did get a nice Super Astro tope and some flips from him, and I liked how they teased the traditional Solar vs. Navarro double pin finish, only to switch it up and have Solar win by submission. 

MD: This felt like these guys playing the classics, especially with the initial exchanges, but they're classics for a reason and even though we shouldn't have been surprised by it, because we have Solar vs Navarro even a number of years later, it's absolutely impressive on paper. It was a lot of fun seeing Super Astro use Signo's sheer size as an absolutely literal base to use to bound around the ring. Navarro and Solar had a lot of time and they used it to the fullest with one interesting tricked out hold after the next, holds that almost no one else in the world could make plausible but them. Things opened up a little on the second or third set of exchanges and that let Black Terry unleash some of the shots you'd expect out of him from this time and it gave things some variety, but they snapped back to old form shortly thereafter. Past the action itself, my favorite bit of this was the audio of someone explaining to their kid who each tecnico was based on the color of their gear. It was matter-of-fact and wholesome, spreading the love of these guys across generations.

Read more!

New Footage Friday: New Old Lucha

Killer vs. Enrique Vera Torreon Coahuila 8/13/89

MD: Pretty good lost title match with some slight clipping but not enough to be egregious. The annoying ref and Dusty finish were worse. The primera matwork was ok. They stayed in some simple holds a bit more than I'm used to but they were working things at least and the fans were into it. Killer was billed from NY if I'm not mistaken so at least a few rowdy kids were happy to chant Mexico over and over. Vera had a wide array of pinning combinations and these sweeping Robinson backbreakers that he used often and to high effect. Segunda had rudo control after a jumping clothesline with Killer mainly making use of a nice elbow drop, which was especially nice off the ropes in a back springboard, which is what he used to take the fall. The big comeback moment was a back cross body off a corner whip. We lose the ending to it but I assume it was a missed knee drop by Vera (he had a good kneedrop too) which led to a long Killer figure-four. The finish involved a ref bump and Vera getting a visual win on a submission but the ref giving it to Killer instead. They avoided a riot by letting Vera hit the ref after the match at least.

Jerry Estrada/Espanto IV/Espanto V/Latino vs. Hurican Ramirez/Ramirez Jr./Rodriguez/Megatron Torreon Coahuila  8/13/89

MD: A little clipped and with the weird slow-mo freeze frame for big spots that makes you long for the gentle production touch of Kevin Dunn. This was a pretty classic set up though, given some color by Latino and Estrada having issues. Espanto IV and V were pretty new in 89 but they worked well in there, feeding and stooging for both Ramirez and Megatron. Rodriguez looked fine with good exchanges with Estrada and Latino and had a ballsy no hands dive (well, there was a hand but it was flailing wildly) at the end. The other big thing he did was eat a huge chairshot that turned the rudo beatdown into a rudo mauling. Estrada unsurprisingly bumped to the floor multiple times. The big comeback was a call back to the early Latino/Estrada issues and they went right into the dive train and the finish after that. I could have used a bit more in the way of revenge violence, but otherwise, this was pretty good stuff.

Hurican Ramirez/Hurican Ramirez Jr/Mano Negra vs. El Signo/Texano/Crazy Boy

MD: Ultimately, this felt like a slightly less hate-filled version of the Santo retirement match. It was Ramirez' match before he was willingly taking off his mask in a post-match ceremony (maybe due to rights issues?) and they started it quick with the rudo ambush/beatdown. Some good stuff here including a really nice missile dropkick. The comeback was Mano Negra, who is not someone I'm used to seeing as a tecnico, coming in with a couple of nice shots to break up a gorilla press slam. After that, it was celebratory tecnico dominance, with Ramirez Jr. looking good against everyone and the old man getting a rana or two. The rudos stooged up and down like you'd want them to. The dives at the end cleared the ring so Ramirez could have that last moment of triumph.

Read more!

New Footage Friday: ROCK N ROLLS! MX! DANDY! PSICOSIS! REY JR.! PANTHER! SUPER CALO!

Rock and Roll Express vs. Midnight Express NWA 9/7/86

MD: Pretty rare RnR vs MX match from WCW Sunday Edition featuring Dusty on commentary with Tony. It was what you'd want, flashy opening stuff that didn't at all wear out its welcome and a couple of heat segments with all of the roll-up hope spots you usually get from the RnR. Everyone looked great but Eaton looked like one of the best in the world, feeding big, hitting huge offense (the Alabama Jam here was used to cement the first bit of heat and really give the Express control, for instance), and doing tiny things like taking out a leg with a small kick to stop a block on a suplex. There were a couple of cuts due to commercial breaks but they didn't mess up the flow. We saw the transitions clearly, including them using the replay to take us back after a break. The finish was wonky with Dusty literally causing the MX pin to be reversed, but the post match with him sacrificing himself to a Bubba splash was good pro wrestling. It made me want to see a six man at least.

ER: Outside of the finish, I thought this was great, and a real strong Loverboy Dennis showcase. Everyone was part of this showcase, though, Dennis just had a performance that made him look like one of the toughest men in wrestling. A big chunk of this was MX taking apart Robert's leg in real sicko ways, and even though it didn't actually lead to anything, it was work I loved to watch. Condrey has a ton of fascinating work out of half nelsons and 3/4 grapevines, so good that I want to see the entire alternate timeline of Condrey working shootstyle in Japan once his stateside gigs dried up. Condrey's Alabama U Style, where are you? He really knows how to tie up Ricky and Robert on the mat, and the pins he forced them into with his leg grapevines looked impossible to escape. And when he wasn't tying up their legs to work headlocks and pinfalls, he was dropping his knees into Robert's thigh, into his shin, violently twisting his ankle, and then handing it off to that savage Beautiful Bobby! At one point Bobby is hyperextending Robert's entire leg over the edge of the ring apron. Robert is on his stomach, and Bobby is slamming the front of Robert's femur into the apron, then pressing and forcing his leg down over that edge, truly disgusting legwork. Cornette adds one of his all time great racket shots to the match, flying in from offscreen with the handle of the racket aimed straight at the jugular. HHH always looked like a dweeb for using the handle of a sledgehammer as his weapon of choice, but Cornette really looks like the master of making a short handle look like a deadly weapon. Hell, in the post match melee, Cornette even shoulderblocks Ricky Morton through the ropes to the floor, like a man tripping another man into a fountain display. Rock n Rolls looked great and matched strikes with the fierce strikes of MX, and even with the actually stupid Dusty finish, this whole thing was classic stuff. 

El Dandy vs. Ray Gonzales CMLL 8/26/95

MD: A lost Dandy title match. Interesting primera here. Gonazlez controlled with fairly simple armbars, with Dandy working from underneath with a few hope spots, only to get cut off and contained with the arm again. I don't know if they didn't trust Gonazlez to do more complex matwork or not but it still worked because Dandy was working so hard to sell everything. I know on paper, that doesn't sound like much, but you don't often see a primera in a title match worked like this and I'm not sure there are many guys who could have done it quite like Dandy, so it stood out. The segunda was quick with a short bit of revenge with Dandy working over the leg and then a beautiful Northern Lights Suplex. The tercera had some back and forth and chicanery but eventually settled down to them returning to what worked in the primera, Gonzalez working a bodypart (the leg) and Dandy selling. They rolled out of the ring on a figure four and both got counted out and it ended up pretty anti-climactic. If this was building to an apuestas match, it would have worked but it seems like this was the end of the program. Still, a good look at just how great Dandy was at selling.

PAS: A new Dandy title match on paper is really exciting, this was a miss though. Gonzales is a guy who got pretty great in Puerto Rico later in his career, but he looked way out of his depth here. There was one of the worst clotheslines I have ever seen and Dandy really had to dumb it down for him on the mat. His little heel struts and stuff looked bush league too, just a zero of a performance. Dandy had a nice moment or two, his selling of the leg in the tercera was cool, and I like the figure four roll to the floor spot, but you are hoping for a missing gem when this passes by your youtube feed and this wasn't that.

ER: I had no idea Gonzalez ever showed up in CMLL, even though just a few years after this he became the reason I started trading for Puerto Rico tapes. The Ray Gonzalez I traded tapes for was not the Ray Gonzalez here, and many of the flaws in this match look like they could be blamed on miscommunication. I think Phil tuned out early on once Gonzalez hit that flying "clothesline" but considering Gonzalez follows it up with a crossbody block using the exact same form he used for that "clothesline", I assume it was just a spot that wasn't supposed to happen. It's amazing how much poise Ray had just a few years later, that was mostly absent here. It was a mistake to work this as Gonzalez trying to fit into Dandy's lucha setting, as while he had a nice missile dropkick and a couple decent bumps to the floor, he couldn't facilitate the level or speed of work Dandy was capable of. The most interesting this got for me was the beginning of segunda, where we got a glimpse of what could have made for an excellent title match. Ray got rudo heat during the break between falls, and knew it. The fans were rejecting him and it looked like he was going to really run with that, approaching Dandy with an extended right hand, left arm tucked behind his back, and a telegraphed double cross kick getting caught. Bringing some Puerto Rico rudo bullshit into the elegance of a skilled tecnico lucha title defense would have made for a great style clash, like a southern US heel just punching his way through a match opposite Blue Panther. But almost right after that Gonzalez falls back into line, and the rest of the match is worked like the boring end of the Flair vs. Terry Taylor spectrum. Dandy really did a lot to try to make this work, but it's hard to deny that Dandy could have likely had a better singles match with any wrestler on the CMLL roster. Let's all just go back a few days and remember how cool "El Dandy vs. Ray Gonzalez" looked on paper. 

Misterioso/Rey Mysterio Jr./Súper Caló/Volador vs. Blue Panther/Heavy Metal/Piromaniaco/Psicosis AAA 8/11/95 - FUN

MD: Not your average atomicos. You had Rey as captain, Signo as Piromaniaco, maskless Volador, and Calo in hatless, sleeves-only shirt, dancing glory. The story was Rey vs Psicosis, first delaying it and then paying it off. As they cycled through the pairings in the primera, Panther made sure to intervene and rob the fans of that first Rey vs Psicosis exchange. After a mini-beatdown, Rey would mount a comeback and allow the tecnicos to take the primera. The bigger beatdown came in the segunda, and watching Heavy Metal toss Rey around made me really want a 95 singles match with them. In the tercera, Rey came back again and we finally got a killer little Rey vs Psicosis exchange with a spectacular finish. Piromaniaco looked good using his size to bully tecnicos and eat their stuff, but the gimmick had no legs. Panther didn't do a lot but everything he did (the aforementioned cut off, choking Misterioso with part of the ring, ripping up what I choose to believe to be an anti-Tirantes sign, stooging with Psicosis on miscommunication spots) was very good. At times this was fast and loose and all over the place. The camera work missed half the dives. It's really hard to go wrong with cleverly building a match around Rey vs Psicosis though.

PAS: I thought this was mostly pretty forgettable outside of the Rey vs. Psicosis stuff which was incredible. I kind of enjoyed Signo adding some 80s style bumping and brawling to more 90s style lucha, but it didn't really lead to any exciting moments or anything. Psicosis taking the segunda caida with a brutal top rope guillotine was great though. The tercera exchanges between Psicosis and Rey were the highlight. Rey at this point was as elusive and fast as anyone ever, Psicosis was his perfect dance partner, and the finish top rope spiked spinning DDT was awesome. Is that a move they only broke out once, or is there a WCW Pro match which ends in it too?

ER: I was really excited for this one just to see Signo as Piromaniaco - a hood I've never seen him under and one with next to no footage of - and he did not disappoint. In fact, most of the guys in this didn't disappoint, but none of this really turned into anything that felt like a full match. Things were a little disorganized and a lot of the threads got abandoned, but there were plenty of individual moments to make this an easy, fun watch. Obviously, with these names there are going to be some moments. Heavy Metal worked fast and a little reckless, lead to a few moments of clear miscommunication and awkward repeat spots with Super Calo, but when Heavy Metal ran into someone with that speed it looked great. Volador had this fantastic huge hair, like Stefanie Powers in Hart to Hart, and based on the crowd reaction we missed a big late match plancha and bump off the top from him (This is AAA, my friend). I liked Piromaniaco working like El Brazo was great, using his status as stockiest man in the match to absolutely run over Rey a couple of times. He even no sold a Rey missile dropkick by acting like a cartoon kissed him, then did a silly dance. We got a decent dive train with Calo hitting a high quebrada crossbody and Misterioso getting out quickly, and of course all the Rey/Psicosis moments were what you'd want. The tornado DDT with Psicosis on the middle and Rey swinging from the top was wild, with such a high starting point it landed them past the middle of the ring! 

Read more!

New Footage Friday: EL NINJA! EL DANDY! MISSONAIRES DE LA MUERTE! ROLANDO VERA!!?!!

PAS: On one of my youtube dives, I discovered a youtube page for Monterey maestro El Ninja, with some super rare Monterey footage from the 80s and 90s, we will be digging more into it over the next couple of months, but we wanted to highlight a few of the biggest finds


Rolando Vera vs Benny Morgan CMLL 1989

PAS: Vera is a legendary figure, the first big Monterey star and a guy who trained Rene Guajardo, Blue Demon and Sugi Sato. He is in his mid 70s this match, but wrestled more like a guy in his 50s (which is the real sweet spot for luchadores). He had some really great looking flippy takedowns, sweeping the leg and sending Morgan ass over teakettle, he also did a really cool arm drag and dropkick. So much control of both his body and his opponents body. Have to give Morgan a bunch of credit for making a guy that old look that credible, and he had some nasty offense too, including an awesome flying cross armed chop to the throat. The finish submission was so cool looking with Vera pressing Morgan up with his legs and jerking his arm back down. Lets hope someday we get a French Catch style lucha drop, because prime Vera looks like it would be amazing. 

MD: Vera was in his 70s here but this was a lot more complete of a match than I was expecting. The first couple of minutes were more along the lines of the maestro exhibition I thought we'd see. For most of the rest of the match, Vera worked from underneath as Morgan took unmistakable but maybe not entirely egregious rudo shortcuts. Vera obviously wasn't at his athletic peak but he still threw out a flying headscissors and an up and over on an arm drag and a dropkick. He also took some fairly big bumps considering, including two off of these arm trap throws by Morgan. Where he shined the most was in the sheer fluidity of his manipulation of Morgan's body, though. Trips and throws didn't necessarily feel like spots but instead a careful and precise, yet wholly reflexive use of leverage. It didn't feel like he was teasing grabbing a limb to set up a throw two counters in the future, but instead that he was able to drift with the wind to whatever opening his motions caused. One of the major narratives of lucha watching is the understanding of what we simply don't have and the way they worked here made me wonder what the first fall of a title match when Vera was in his 40s instead of his 70s might have looked like.


El Ninja vs. Aladino Monterey 89?

PAS: Mascara contra mascara matches are the most meaningful matches in wrestling. Someones life is going to be forever altered and those stakes will elevate any match. Getting a previously unseen mask match is a real treasure, and while this isn't an all timer, it is a really cool match and a chance to witness history. El Ninja was a truly spectacular wrestler, he got tremendous distance on all of his bumps and dives, he gets posted and floats into the crowd like he was flying on one of those floating air compression machines in Vegas. He also hits two awesome dives to the floor, one a springboard back tope and a crazy regular tope where he goes vertical to the floor, I also loved his in ring back topes which set up the finish, he just levitates and lands with force. Aladino was more of an opponent, although he handled the bleeding and hit a reckless tope of his own. Finish never really felt in doubt, Ninja was clearly the better of the two and took a lot of the match, but that is a minor nitpick for a great piece of footage.

MD: I could have used a little bit more hate. Along those lines, it started off really well with Aladino bumping Ninja into the post on the apron twice. It never quite reaches that level again, except for one Ninja chairshot on the floor. That said, it had a lot of the other things you'd want from a mask match. Ninja's style is big and flouncy (except for his jumping front kick; that's solid), but it works because he throws himself into everything that happens. Aladino's a natural in that sort of setting, and not just because they're both basically wearing pajamas for gear. I wanted him to take a little more of the match (he really only controlled one other time due to a foul, mid-match and then was even for most of the finish). The struggle was believable. There was one point where Ninja was able to take back over because Aladino went too far over on a pin attempt and Ninja fell on him after the kick out. Plenty of dives, with the entire closing sequence being Ninja tossing himself backwards at Aladino dangerously. You get the sense that if any of those went wrong, it could have cost him big, which is exactly the sort of sense you want in a match with these stakes.


El Ninja/Tigre Candianese/El Dandy vs. Black Power/Negro Navarro/El Signo Monterey 91-92?

MD: I am torn on this one. On the one hand, you get a long (~10 minutes) El Dandy FIP. On the other, it's only because of some of the worst heel ref stuff; we're not talking looking the other way or holding back a punch, but just outright ignoring blatant tags over and over again. But, on the first, that's the only way we'd get Dandy to stay in there instead of cycling through for an extended team beatdown, and Dandy had his usual great selling and some really good hope spots for a lucha trios. But man, the ref stuff was bad. But, it's lucha, and with lucha, the hot tag doesn't matter almost ever. It's not about that moment of tag, it's abut the moment of comeback and momentum shift. In traditional tag team matches, the tag is that moment. In trios, it often precedes the moment of partners getting to come in. That's what it does here and it works, so in that regard, the ref holding back tags is fine, because the mandate of heaven hadn't changed yet and it doesn't really matter if they're beating on Dandy or Dandy, Ninja, and Tigre, and if given the choice, I'd rather see more Dandy than not. With that in mind, the match's biggest problem was that we couldn't hear the crowd well. That meant we couldn't feel the full value of Dandy's efforts. Otherwise, all good. MDM was having fun in the opening exchanges, with Black Power especially entertaining. Ninja's act was consistently entertaining throughout. After the comeback, Dandy was brilliant at dancing between rudo raindrops and stooging everyone. Even the grainy VQ wasn't an issue because you could always tell who was in there and what was going on.

PAS: It is kind of odd, old man Negro Navarro is one of my all time favorite wrestlers, but I have never seen an amazing younger Navarro performance. Maybe he just got amazing in his mid 40s. The MDM are a legendary trios team and you can see parts of that in this match, although it never really hit anything more then average, Average lucha trios are really fun to watch though, and I dug this. Favorite moment was early in the match when Navarro grabbed some gum from the ref to give to Ninja for his stinky breath, such a beautiful moment of heeling, something I could see Dougie Gilbert doing. Dandy is always great and I love when he strarts uncorking his right hand. Cool this showed up, but the search for the pre-40s Navarro classic continues.

Read more!

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.

Read more!

New Japan HandHeld Bonanza: Lucha Cherry Picking

Pete over at PWO has gotten his hands on a ton of New Japan HHs from the 80s. I am posting the Fujiwara matches in C+A posts, but I figured I would do some reviews of the lucha guys showing up and my buddy MattD showed up as well!


Tiger Mask/George Takano v. Brazo De Oro/Brazo De Plata 9/6/81

PAS: Slim and trim Brazos looking great. We have a couple of other 1981 Brazos New Japan matches and we don't have any lucha Brazos this early. They are here to serve as foils for the technicos and they do a great job eating fancy arm drags. We get a nasty Plata top rope senton which is less lung collapsing in 1981 then it was later. Takano is a big dude and he flies around quite a bit with some nice arm drags. Mask is at his best when he comes in, hits his stuff and leaves and he had some cool flipping sentons. Nothing mindblowing, but a great chance to see a couple of lucha greats early in their career.

MD: I'm going at this in a more comprehensive way than Phil, watching everything (including Tiger Jeet Singh handheld matches). He is a wiser man than I. For 81 Brazos, I jumped the line though. The setting on this is amazing. It's some sort of outdoor bathhouse with steam rising up in the foreground and a crowd that seems eager for all of the Brazos' relatively outlandish stuff. Tanako competently takes most of the match with Tiger Mask hitting just enough of his signature stuff at the beginning and end to leave you satisfied. Oro and Plata, despite being very young here, base perfectly both on offense in taking stuff (goofus and gallant) and fit in just as well as they would in Japan ten years later.

Tiger Mask/Gran Hamada/Kengo Kimura vs. Steve Wright/Coloso Colosetti/Black Man 3/5/82

Totally fun trios match, that was a better finishing run away from being a real lost classic. Black Man had a couple of fun lucha exchanges with Hamada, which included Hamada taking a couple of his legendarily high backdrops. Colosetti wasn't in a ton, but I liked his exchanges with Tiger Mask where he kept trying to brawl like a rudo, and kept getting caught with spin kicks, I loved how he finally got frustrated and just palm thrusted TM in the eye. The rudo star of this match was Wright, totally awesome performance, he may look like an accounts payable manager, but he is remarkable agile, at points looking more agile then Tiger Mask. He has really great looking cartwheels out of arm bars and a cool kipup, and when it got time to get nasty, he through some really nice uppercuts and some vicious bodyslams and an awesome looking judo throw. Match kind of ended abruptly, which is a problem for a lot of Tiger Mask matches, but it was a real treat to watch.

Junji Hirata v. Luis Mariscal 8/29/82

Mariscal is a 70s and 80s luchadore who worked as a Baby Face and Scorpio trios partner and lost his hair to Villano IV and Perro Aguayo, I don't remember seeing him before, but he was a fun discovery. Young Hirata was svelte but hit hard, and these two had a nice scrap. It started with some basic but solid grappling, and then Hirata actually got snippy and they had a bunch of nice punch and chop exchanges. This was an undercard match with little heat, but I could visualize Mariscal having similar exchanges with Enirique Vera and tearing the house down. Really liked the multiple in ring topes by Mariscal to set up the pin

Kantaro Hoshino v. Villano III 8/29/82

PAS: Pretty strange match, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. V3 jumps Hoshino at the bell throws him to the floor, posts him, and hits a plancha. The match never felt in control, with Hoshino ripping at Villanos mask and Villano constantly biting Hoshino's head. It really felt like someone should be bleeding, and I enjoyed seeing a real lucha brawl in New Japan. Finish had Hoshino DQed for trying to rip off Villano's mask, and he goes nuts and beats up the ref. Then he ties up V3 in the ropes and tries to tear off the mask again. Really felt like a match setting up an apuestas, and I guess we need another batch of handhelds for that.

MD: Yeah, this was enjoyable. V3 rushes Hoshino and just doesn't let up for a few minutes. Pure rudo beatdown to start a match. I love how he keeps things moving, using the ring as a weapon, leaping off the ropes inside and out for extra leverage, pulling Hoshino half out to hit a knee on the apron, bulldogging him into the turnbuckle, etc. If Villano was doing this here against a guy working a different style, what the heck was he doing in Mexico at this time, right? When it's Hoshino's time to fight back, he goes straight to the mask and then follows it up with some revenge usage of the ring as well. The finish is where the weirdness sets in as they move on to rope running and submissions, like the end of a title match primera. Thankfully, it cycles back to hate with the mask ripping finish and the never-ending post match with the two trying to get their hands on each other. This left me wanting to see about three dozen more 1982 V3 matches. Then I made the mistake of looking at what else he did in 82. Not much, just, you know, feuding with Los Misioneros, including apuestas matches with Signo and Texano. This was definitely better than nothing though.

Black Cat/Isamu Teranishi/Kuniaki Kobayashi v. El Signo/Negro Navarro/El Texano 1/1/83

PAS: This was one of the most exciting matches to show up on this batch of footage. We have so little prime Missonaires de la Muerte, we know how awesome all these guys were as oldsters, and their rep is so great, that any time 80s MDM shows up it is a lucha fan holiday. This was more like an awesome first fall of a great trios match, then a great match on its own, but it was a awesome demonstration of what made this team so special. They were just relentless, attacking at the bell and always moving forward. Their pace was really something to watch, never not moving, never not attacking. They didn't take many bumps but every bump was athletic and crazy. We don't get a ton of offense from the Japan team, Kobayashi has a couple of cool armdrags, which Texano bumps huge for. For some reason Kobayashi and Teranishi start brawling post match, as the MDM just strut out victorious.

MD: Los Missionaries were the prototype for a rudo trios side for a reason and here you can so clearly see why. Relentless is exactly the word I'd use, too. This was just the perfect combination of complex spots and improvisational bridging. They kept working back into their corner, kept switching up, kept helping each other whenever possible while their opponents weren't on the same page at all. This would have played well as a Guerreros primera twenty years later (give or take a powerbomb), maybe even thirty. You saw hints of the stooging and miscommunication that would have, in another match, been part of a tecnico shine or comeback. You saw hints of them basing and bumping. At times they were moving so fast that you'd think that there was no way they'd feed an armdrag in time, but they do. Primarily, though, this was their showcase and they brought it, from the initial ambush to the triple team hanging seated senton on the floor and the nasty, nasty tombstone that finished things. Again, it just leads you to imagine all the things we don't have.

Read more!

MLJ: Black Terry Boot Camp 4: El Signo & Negro Navarro vs Black Terry & Shu el Guerrero

2009-08-20 @ Arena Naucalpan
El Signo & Negro Navarro vs Black Terry & Shu el Guerrero

One rule that I've kept to pretty firmly in this project is that I never start with the best stuff. It ends up making everything else feel sort of like a let down. That was the case here. This ended up on the Complete and Accurate List as Great, and I'd aim it more towards Fun myself. The most glaring flaw, relative to the Traumas/Cerebros matches, is obviously that Signo and Shu just can't go like they used to. Even with that, this could have been great, but it had some structural problems that it down.

There were definitely pockets of greatness though, and they were pockets driven by Navarro and Terry. Once again, Navarro comes out larger than life. Terry is incredibly smooth in how he puts holds, even complicated ones on, the way he makes everything look effective and hurt, the way he sells everything to make it look better than it should. Navarro on the other hand is really quite clunk. If he's dropping down on a limb to set up a hold, he's a good number of degrees out of position and there's more friction than there should be, a near stumble. It comes off as intentional, effective, and really, downright brutal though. It's like forcing a square peg in a round hole, with the hole suffering for Navarro's insistence. There's such purpose to it and the end result is grisly enough that it adds to the match instead of subtracting from it, which is something I'm not sure I ever thought possible, let alone had seen before. He's going to twist people into a knot and if he has to plow through a limb or two in order to do so, all the better. I actively felt bad for Shu when the two of them were matched up because I couldn't suspend my disbelief that he was capable of doing anything at all to Navarro.

Terry was definitely great in the match, despite some of the things going on around him. There's a short heat segment in the segunda that did more to hurt the match than to help it. They worked over Terry's arm, which on paper should have been good, but it was worked like a Southern tag, with false tags and what not. All the weight of the heat was on the refs ignoring the tags instead of on the heels using misdirection, however, so it was a waste of Terry's selling ability and Shu's fat-guy-with-a-mask frustrated charisma. The comeback wasn't that impressive either; it felt deferred. Shu did his stuff with Navarro, eliminating him, then Terry matched up against Signo and they had a great little brawl. Signo held his own with some headbutts and shots in the corner, but it was Terry driving things, bloody and with the sort of fiery comeback you'd want. It just came too late. They spilled outside and it led to a DQ when Navarro got involved. So it was a good exchange, just in the wrong place. It was magic whenever he was in there with Navarro, too. My absolute favorite bit was how he sold Navarro's punches with this wobbly head motion.

In the end, this was fun. It could have been better with a bit more discipline and without some of the heel ref bs that never got paid off anyway. I think, if nothing else, it put into perspective to me how good the other matches were, but also just how good Navarro and Terry were in 2009 relative to their temporal peers.

Read more!

Sunday Night Digging in the Crates: Requiem for a Saint

El Santo/Gori Guerrero/Hurricane Ramirez/ El Solitario v. Missonaires De La Muerte/Perro Aguayo 9/12/82

A true lucha holy grail, El Santo's retirement match has show up on youtube. So much fun to see all of these legendary guys mix it up. Pretty much a brawl from the start, which is a bit of a shame as I would have liked to see what exchanges Gori and Santo still had in them, although this kind of kick and punch thing is easier to protect old guys in. The atmosphere was insane, although the actually wrestling highlights were limited to Perro Aguyao and Solitario having a blood soaked war in the middle of this tribute to a legend. They sort of hijacked it and totally stole the show. Man was prime Perro Aguyao a world beater, the more I see of him, the more I think he was a top five brawler of all time. Would have liked to see Santo's team go over stronger as they won both falls by DQ, with the rudo's surprisingly left to rule the roost celebrating at the end, I guess they had to come back to sell tickets.

Read more!

Everything Black Terry Does is Done with a Southern Accent, Where He Comes From

Black Terry/Jose Luis Feliciano/Shu El Guerrero v. El Signo/Negro Navarro/Black Power Lucha Lucha 2000 9/28/02-GREAT

One fall bloody brawl which was a ton of fun. No preface as all six guys go right after each other punching, stomping and biting at foreheads. Shu's mask gets ripped to shreds and he is just pouring blood. I haven't seen much of Black Power before, but he was an impressive tank of dude, really thick chested and could brawl. We got some great Navarro v. Terry as they had a couple of toe to toe exchanges which were really impressive. Terry was brilliant here, looked like the best guy in the ring, he had real impressive hand speed, and would throw some very cool combinations. Finish felt a bit flat for such a crazy brawl, as it just kind of ended, and I would have liked more a crescendo. Still a totally awesome discovery, good looking out to Rob for digging this up.

Black Terry/El Signo/Negro Navarro v. Solar/Super Astro/Ultraman Monterey 3/2/10-EPIC

One of the better maestro exhibitions they have done in recent years. Focus was on our traditional Navarro v. Solar match up which is always great. This one had some especially sweet leglocks. Navarro puts on this awesome tapitia Indian Deathlock combo which I had never seen before. The build from that matwork to some really intense throws and slams. Super Astro is one of my all time favorite wrestlers, and he still has some freaky agility and speed for a fat old man. He matches up with Signo who has had a bit of a resurgent 2010. Black Terry and Ultraman are paired and their stuff looks good, but it is probably the least of the match ups, Ultraman is the least of the six at this point, and doesn't bring a ton to the table if he isn't throwing hands. FInish had a really fun breakdown with Super Astro and Ultraman throwing sick topes, and Solar getting the submission with a very cool rolling keylock.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE BLACK TERRY

Read more!