Espectáculos Promociones Panama: Blue Panther in Panama! Kato Kung Lee! Tahur! Celestial! Baron! Gemelo Infernal I!

Blue Panther/Gemelo Infernal I/Tahur vs Kato Kung Lee/Baron/Celestial 1/17/87

MD: This felt like lucha comfort food to me. Maybe it was because both Kato Kung Lee and Blue Panther were there, but this followed pretty familiar lines. There are definitely unique quirks to Panamanian Lucha, bits of Puerto Rico or unique elements to the stadiums, some spots or moves you don't expect, some peculiarities that we can't explain just yet, but there's more overlap with what was happening in Mexico than not and this match is a testament to that.

Speaking of familiarity, we're getting increasingly familiar with the usual suspects here. I have a great sense of Tahur as a base and as hard-handed clubberer and as a guy who isn't afraid to make a heroic dive to nowhere. This is Gemelo Infernal I who is more of a character than his smoother, workrate-y brethren GI II (and I don't have a sense at all about III yet). He has weirder moves and weirder movements and here made a great stooge for Kato Kung Lee's kung fu strikes. With Tahur and Panther getting him up extremely high for his headscissors takeovers, Baron looked like a top notch junior here. He got to show a different side than in the Bunny Black feud but it made me want to see more of him in both settings. And Celestial mainly stood out late in the match, paired with Panther with heated mask ripping.

Panther, to his credit, fit right in. I was a little disappointed at first as he was initially paired with Kato Kung Lee, which isn't what I wanted to see him do in Panama but he rotated through to the others as the match went on. And Lee? This was the best I've seen him in Panama. The fans went nuts for his shtick like always but he just had extra zing and agility as he bounded around the ropes. You could transfer the exact same act into modern AEW and if he could pull it off like he did on this night, it would get over huge.

Structurally, this was also familiar, early pairings cycled through, escalation to rope running, stooging, and the tecnicos going over in the primera, a rudo beatdown in the segunda, comebacks and cutoffs, and it all coming to head in the tercera, where Tahur just had enough of KKL's kicks and fouled his way out of the match which likely led to something else we unfortunately don't have.

GB: This match is a bit of a lucky get for us. Truth be told, I came across this post by accident many months ago when my passion for Panama was still in its infancy. However, the original video had lost tracking and the end was cut off. A little dismayed, and with some digging, I managed to piece together the missing part and give us this gem.

There’s not much to be said here as the only memories of this fight I can find are two screen grabs from a video of Panther and Kato arriving at the Tocúmen International Airport for their match. For all intents and purposes, this was treated as a big deal. Ricardo Pitti was there, alongside fans, to welcome Panther to Panama and extend a warm “welcome home” to KKL who had just lost his mask to el Hijo del Santo two months prior (though this was never aired nor played up during his visit). Matt highlights the ending between Kato and Tahur and there is something there. Whether this match led to it (or led from it), el Tahur did take Kato’s mask at some point in the 80s. In Mexico it would be sacrilege but, if he had lost his mask beforehand as Luchawiki claims (something I doubt), it wouldn’t be the first time Kato begged the fans of Panama to “pardon” him from losing his mask.

Kato Kung Lee, el camina cuerdas (the rope-walker), has a bit of a mysterious background. We are all well aware of his escapades in Mexico, as one part of the trios Los Fantásticos, but not much more seems to be known of him, especially in his heydays in Panama. Perhaps the most internationally known Panamanian-born wrestler isn’t even listed on the Hall of Fame board, let alone given any further detailing.

From the bits and bobs I can cobble together, Lee debuted alongside the other greats Panama had to offer in 1965 as the tecnico El Valiente where he would go on to lose his mask (twice - with the first loss being “pardoned”) to his maestro Chamaco Castro and rebrand himself as Johnny el Valiente and, a little later, as the remasked Rayo de Oro. I think there’s room for people to argue that KKL has had a bit of an “ode” (nudge-nudge-wink-wink) to other fighters along his career. One might argue his mask is all too similar to something blurring the lines of el Baron and Kendo (who’d go on to take the KKL name much later, ironically) but the name “Rayo de Oro” is a little too on the nose. So much so newspapers in the 1970s would also tend to confuse him with the legendary Guatemalan Rayo Chapin:

Even if his name wasn’t quite to the level of Chapin, KKL was always determined to be a star and take his name around the world. Despite Panama’s flourishing local scene, and it being a great training ground for the stars of tomorrow to hone their craft (whether from South America, Mexico or even Canada (Mad Dog Vachon!), the hospitality never quite seemed to be reciprocated. You had the odd wrestler such as El Enterrador and Joe Panther travelling through Africa and Europe but nothing “historic” in the same way Panama’s role was for laying the foundations for the UWA in Mexico (which I’d now argue would never exist without Panama).

One of the most important promoters during Panama’s golden age, Sammy de la Guardia, lamented that it was never due to skill that Panamanians stayed within the confines of Panama. Rather, it was too expensive and too risky. There was no government funding, as Mexico had, those wrestlers who travelled did so on their own money (or the sponsorship of their promoter). With little offer for reimbursement or being able to see a local return on investment in building up a name, promoters seemed more interested in keeping their stars home.

Thus KKL would risk everything when he set out to stake his claim in foreign land before the end of the 1960s taking with him Los Hermanos Muerte 1 y 2 to Guatemala and Mexico. The latter duo would go on to great success in Guatemala and KKL would see success in both Mexico and Japan - a name many recognise to this day. Again, the most famous of all Panamanian born wrestlers.

Still, and much the same for most of these stars from Panama, KKL had a quiet send off, far from the luxuries those stars in Mexico would enjoy. He’d pass away the owner of a BBQ joint. The referee for this match, the most famous in Panama, Carlos Linares, would pass away as a flip flop manufacturer. The stalwart of Panama’s rudos, Sergio Galvez, to this day works in a little bakery opposite his local theatre. The passion was there and as much as wrestlers and promoters pass Panamanian wrestling off as their “pasatiempo y nada mas” (pass time and nothing more), there’s a little sadness that a country so poignant for lucha libre as a whole, didn’t get to enjoy the boom it more than helped usher in.

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Espectáculos Promociones Panama: Kendo! Tahur!

Kendo vs El Tahur 5/30/87

MD: Graham will have a better sense of the details, but this felt like a titles match to me, seconds and all, but I see no sign of titles. It was worked more or less how you’d expect something like that to be worked, though. They led off with holds, with Tahur’s stuff simple and solid, satisfyingly so. Kendo was a lot lighter and looser but here it worked. That might have come down to a confidence that smoothed things over or just how well Tahur was selling it (much more than Kendo was selling Tahur’s far grinder holds, actually). Tahur had enough and escalated into bombs, and they were big ones, a thudding press up pancake, an outright over the shoulder rocket launcher facebuster through a power bomb motion, and a huge back body drop, before picking up the submission.

He kept on Kendo in the segunda, and you kept waiting for a big comeback moment (the heartblood of all lucha) that never really came. It was more of a gradual reversal of holds until both men were on solid footing once again and Kendo was able to do all of his shtick, bounding, dancing, keeping Tahur off balance and ultimately rolling him up. I would have liked something more primal but the crowd was into this. The tercera had Tahur take back over after a lure-in handshake and the two of them cycle into a finishing stretch with dropkicks and submission attempts and ultimately the dives, with Kendo’s going fine and Tahur absolutely wiping out on the hard, hard concrete to bring this to a close. Tahur may have lacked an over the top charisma, but he sold and emoted well, was credible on the mat, had bombs, including one or two that was before his time, and wasn’t afraid to kill himself on the finish.

GB: We’re a couple weeks later now and, completely coincidentally, 36 years to the date since this match took place.

Quick confession, I got things wrong in the Barón post that this was the culmination of the feud between Kendo and el Tahur. I hadn’t found anything detailing otherwise until I came across a post from luchador Kuman Chu that this feud spanned out the year. However, Matt definitely got things right in his assumption that this is a title match. Tahur is walking in as the champion and we get a brief moment as the referee holds up the title as more eye grabbing things happen around him. Bad blood had definitely begun heating up in the feud between Kendo and El Tahur but this match was designed to delay that feud a little bit. Whet the appetite of the fans, as you will. Much like the Bunny/Barón match, this match was signed in front of the lucha commission, a rare occurrence for a title match at this point and something that hadn’t happened in quite a number of years. As such, that signing came with extremely strict parameters in terms of offence. Matt had wished things were more primal, and I concur, but this match was designed as its opposite. Both competitors had agreed to wrestle a straight, technical match where the only offence allowed were forearms and instep kicks.

Even though this match might have built better with things less restrictive, you still get the sense of escalation in how Tahur has to escape to his well of punches and stomps when things aren’t going his way. For instance, the tercera opens up with Tahur kicking out Kendo’s knee and walloping him with a punch as he reels in shock. I had wished the referee had played up the rules slightly more to get over this fact but that’s not a qualm we can really lay on Kendo/Tahur. As for the finish, I’m not sure how this match ends but it appears to be from a feigned injury that Tahur suffers on the last dive before the video cuts out. It’s a cheap finish, of course, but it did play into the booking leading up to this.

After arriving in Panama, Kendo had shaken off the idea of betting his mask against el Tahur but he had no choice if he wanted to win Tahur’s championship. The last time out, in 1979, Tahur had taken Kendo’s Campeon de las Americas title and, so, Kendo was looking for revenge. Tahur laid out an ultimatum. If Kendo lost, Tahur would get his mask match. If Kendo won, Tahur would give up a title match to the foreigner. This led to a violent, bloody contest in San Miguelito where Tahur would ultimately lose - not for lack of trying on his manager’s behalf, though: 

The no-finish to our match gave Don Medina a way out to book both stipulations and propel the feud a good few more months, much to the fans content. Seven months later on the 11th of December 1987, Kendo would go on to unmask el Tahur as Rodolfo Linares Escartin, 19 years a luchador.

Tahur, as a kid, would sneak into the gyms and peep through the windows to watch the most famous luchadores of the time training. After being caught one night, he boldly claimed that “one day, you’ll see me in that ring!”. He was right, of course. While not quite reaching the heights of Chamaco Castro or the violence of Sergio Gálvez, el Tahur would go on to have quite an illustrious career as a rudo, spanning multiple decades.

In 1968 working for the promotion El Herrante de Colombia, El Tahur began his career as “La Rata”, donning a black mask with the image of a rat stitched into its right side. For whatever reason, he wasn’t happy with his look and quickly changed out to the gambler gimmick he would come to be known for. The rat now replaced by three playing cards offering stark contrast in colour to the still black mask Tahur fashioned. He now looked the part of a badass and it helped jumpstart his career.

El Tahur would go on to take a few masks and hairs over the years, most notably to us that of Kato Kung Lee in 1980. As difficult as it is to believe, it was said that the match lasted a few hours to reach its culmination but, groggy from exhaustion, El Tahur came out on top.

Interestingly, while he had faced many Mexicans in his time, and even became a great friend to Negro Casas (who had even taken Tahur to Mexico and paid for his arm surgery), we never got to see Tahur outside his homeland.

Sadly, el Tahur passed on the 10th of May 2012, still fondly remembered by promoters, fellow wrestlers and fans.

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