Found Footage Friday: SWEETAN~! TAKADA~! VIERNES 13~! CRUZ~! BANDA~! SHARON~! WOLFIE~! ROGERS~!

Bob Sweetan vs Nobuhiko Takada NJPW 4/11/84

MD: This was a fun underdog Takada match that came in around eight minutes. He wasn't fully formed yet. He'd be positioned as a junior even deep into 87 and this was pre-UWF but he was plucky and chippy, combining some of the junior stuff you'd expect from 84 NJPW like the headlock into a twisting drop toe hold and a body press with some kicks and punches and a nice back elbow that hit when I was expecting his spin kick. Sweetan was as solid as could be, every blow a thudding, imposing thing, be it a clubber or an elbow drop or a slam. Late in the match, Takada fought his way out of a pile driver attempt and got the crowd behind him and Sweetan gave him a bit of a comeback right until the fans stopped chanting; then he shut him down quickly and planted him on his head. A weird match up on paper but it worked because Takada got just the right amount for it to stay interesting. 

Babe Sharon/Milo Caballero/Viernes 13 vs Remo Banda/Javier Cruz/Rino Castro CMLL 1989

MD: This takes me, finally, to the end of the first wave of Roy's Monterrey uploads. What a road it's been. More to come as there's a second and maybe even third wave of these uploads. This gives us a first look at Rino Castro and Viernes 13. Castro was a local in the style of Super Porky, just a big tecnico with funny expressions, a finish where he just sits down on his opponent, and the ability to move better than you'd expect in exchanges. Viernes 13 is, yes, working a Jason gimmick, with the hockey mask and a great logo of a bloody axe on his chest. He was pretty clunky at times, not seeming at the right place at the right time, but fed okay at times. The idea that people would just punch his hockey mask and he'd sell it normally and their hand would be ok was a bit weird.

Everyone else looked good though. Babe Sharon was an always-on exotico (who came out with a turban and poofy robe) with a reaction to everything and a bunch of paintbrushing strikes, plush a finishing sequence of just running someone over with weirdly angled shots like an exotico Ultimate Warrior (just with a flip senton to end it). Remo Banda, being Volador Sr./Super Parka, of course, looked great in some of the exchanges, including a flip over armdrag I had to go back and watch three times, not to mention a huge dive on Viernes. Milo and Cruz played their role fine even if nothing stood out. Structure here was straightforward, with exchanges in the primera, a beatdown in the segunda (including a fun double headstand anklelock deal on Cruz to end it) and then cycling through after the comeback. Not a ton of drama here but some entertainment for sure. It's a shame we don't have much more Castro as I'd be curious to see him in other matches.

Wolfie D vs Tommy Rogers MECW 2/13/00

MD: Nice little five minute TV match palette cleanser. Les Thatcher and Dutch Mantell were on commentary.Rogers looked like he could be a solid mid card act in AWF a couple of years prior or XWF a year or two after. They wrestled this clean with a lot of nice looking chain wrestling. Basic stuff done well for the most part. Wolfie took over mid match with the nicest floatover DDT you'll see and then followed it up by immediately cutting off Rogers with another one. Rogers was able to twist back out of the corner for a pin out of nowhere though. Post match, Wolfie finally let the character shine through and cheapshotted Rogers before opening him up with the trash can lid and pedigreeing him on the lid. Presumably this led to a really good live show match but it was a different sort of look at Wolfie than what we normally got at least.

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: LA FAMILIA SCORPIO~! EDDY~! TEXANO~! SILVER KING~! SOLAR II~! LENADOR~!

Scorpio Jr y Sr/Tigre Blanco vs Matematicos I y IV/Angel Azteca (Monterrey 1991)

MD: In looking at all of this footage, you sometimes come across gems like Scorpio Jr. beating Batman down pre-match in the backstage area for no reason and then the commentators monologuing about how sad it'll be if the white tiger were to go extinct. Announcers seem to indicate that this as Matematico IV and not II. He actually looked pretty good int here paired with Scorpio Jr save for a wild but well recovered cazadora out of the ropes into a rowboat to end the segunda. Matematico I lost his mask in 89 so it made things a little bit even. Rudos ambused to start. Tecnicos came back at the start of the segunda. There was an underlying tension between Tigre Blanco and Scorpio Sr but it never went anywhere. I wouldn't say there were clear pairings either, especially a central one. Azteca chased Scorpio Sr around the ring at one point but at the end of the tercera it was Matematico and Scorpio Sr. paired off for the big foul/fake foul spot that the tecnicos got the best of. During the beatdown, Scorpio, Jr. successfully got a dropdown trip, which is always fun to see in the wild. In the comeback, Matematico had a crowd pleasing exchange with Tigre Blanco and Scorpio Sr. Overall, this was pretty standard stuff though. I thought it might go a few places but it never quite got to any of them. La Familia Scorpio had a pretty good act, which is good since I'm about to roll into another match with them.

El Texano/Silver King/Centurion Negro vs Mongol Chino/Scorpio Jr y Sr (Monterrey 1991)

MD: This had more of the heat I was looking for. The rudos ambushed at the start but the tecnicos fired back, including faceplanting Scorpio Sr which led to some color. That just incensed the rudos and they came back strong with an awesome primera beatdown around the ringside area with Centurion Negro hung upsidedown multiple times and Los Cowboys ending up tossed into the chairs. There were no fancy spots here just organic violence. The rudos looked at where the tecnicos were in the ring and figured out how to portray brutality in the moment. Great tecnico comeback at the start of the segunda too with Centurion Negro lifting the rudo ref up onto his shoulders almost in an Atlantida to get him out of the way so that they could charge the ring. That led to all the revenge you'd want, with Silver King lawn darting Scorpio Jr. into the seats and Texano gnawing upon Scorpio Sr's wound. That built to Mongol Chino losing his match and the big spots finally getting unleashed. Crowd-pleasing and blog-pleasing both. The tercera had all the exchanges but they had more oomph to them given that the heat had been ramped up. Silver King and Texano hit all of their big tandem stuff, but it felt like it was built to as opposed to cycled in after a reset. Finish had Centurion Negro and Mongol Chino paired after some Los Cowboys dives and they left me wanting a mask match. Basically everything worked with this one.

Eddy Guerrero/Centurion Negro/Solar II vs Lenador/Javier Cruz/Alarcan (Monterrey 1991)

MD: Pretty straightforward match bolstered by the Cruz vs Guerrero stuff. I had wanted Eddy to be matched with Lenador because Lenador is a great over the top character, but it made sense for Cruz to run him through his paces. While he might have been a tecnico in years prior, Cruz was a great "cruiserweight bully" sort of rudo at this point. I see that he feuded with Apolo Dantes a couple of years later and that makes a lot of sense too. So while Lenador got to make his faces against Centurion Negro and Solar and Alarcan took to the mat with solid stuff, this was mostly Cruz vs Guerrero, first with spirited chain wrestling, and then through a hugely sympathetic beatdown and fiery comeback. Eddy could play the part of the underdog tecnico with a big heart certainly. Finish in the tercera was a huge Guerrero springboard dropkick which I haven't seen in any of the other Monterrey footage as of yet. While we didn't get as much Lenador as i would have liked, this was a good look at young Eddy and a nice notch on the belt of Cruz.

Read more!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more!