On Brand Segunda Caida: El Mosco in WWF

"El Mosco"/Abismo Negro/Histeria vs. Los Cadetes del Espacio (Discovery/Super Nova/Venum) WWF Raw 3/24/97

ER: This was plenty fun, with Abismo Negro looking like the guy of this group who could cross over. He got arguably the biggest reaction of the match when he powerbombed the hell out of Super Nova. Abismo also bumped upside down off the ropes and took a great bump around the ringpost. He did incredible little things that nobody else was doing in these matches, like actually acting like he was trying to stop the tecnicos from flying. He's the guy on the apron leaping futilely after Venum as Venum launches himself with a top rope quebrada to the floor. Venum also could have broken out with American fans. He was really fearless at this point, crazy with his body (like doing a springboard flip to the floor and landing on his feet), his a couple inventive headscissors, got some noise. Histeria was the bumper of the group, really flying hard backwards off moves, looking like a small Buzz Sawyer. He took this huge flying bump through the ropes to the floor, tumbling hard to the entrance ramp, and then ate a big tope con giro from Discovery.

There was only one problem with this match: It didn't actually have El Mosco. The onscreen graphic says El Mosco when the Galaxy Rudos make their way out, but it is Maniaco. Vince even calls him Maniaco, so this was merely a screen graphic error that has then been circulated incorrectly around match lists for 20 years. A fun match, but our search for WWF El Mosco is starting weird.

El Mosco/Abismo Negro/Histeria/Maniaco vs. Discovery/Super Nova/Venum/Ludxor WWF Shotgun   4/5/97

ER: Ah, there he is! And this has to be the frontrunner for best match of the AAA/WWF failed/aborted/misguided showcase of talent. Perhaps most notably, in an 8 man battle between The Space Cadets and the Rudos of the Galaxy, JR calls 6 of the 8 by the correct name (he mixes up Abismo Negro and El Mosco, which is a higher percentage of success than I was expecting). Brian Pillman also wonders if these men were perhaps smuggling strawberries in their butt across the border, but JR at least attempted to learn names and call the action seriously. This felt like the kind of spotfest that could have actually caught on and gotten great reactions in front of WWF audiences, if WWF cared about what kind of reaction it got. This was a breathless spotfest with good pairings, short (6 minutes or so) and to the point, that the crowd was already reacting to by the time it was done. Most of this crowd likely viewed this as Max Moon x4 vs. Max Moon x4, but the wrestlers went for it and I thought succeeded. 

The best pairing was El Mosco and Venum, with Mosco bumping all over for slick ranas and headscissors, then catching a huge Venum dive to the floor. Venum's flying looked really great and the two of them went insanely fast through all of it, and the fans didn't know what to expect from the moment Venum hit a dragon rana. I assume most in attendance had never seen anything like that before. Mosco even took the big belly flop slide on the floor, and slid so far that he flew PAST the padded mats and onto the entrance way. Venum also does nice extra hard bumping, running chest first into the buckles as if he was really trying to show WWF he had done his homework on their top stars. 

Abismo and Discovery were fun as hell, with Discovery hitting a big tope con giro and Abismo later getting clowned by Nova into missing a tope con giro, crashing but first onto the floor (Abismo can later be seen working out his cheeks while walking ringside). Maniaco almost lawndarts himself taking a Jerry bump (that he thankfully does last minute fully rotate on), and wraps himself around the ringpost in an awesome way, splatting on the ring steps on his way down, then eating a huge flying headbutt from Nova after propelling him up the buckles. The Rudos were basing like crazy during this whole thing, pushing the Cadets to a super fast pace, and the Cadets met that pace. Fans were quiet when Maniaco and Nova started, but 5 minutes in they were into it. This was nothing but slick ranas, cool armdrags, big dives, great bumps, big powerbombs, all of it cool. These guys easily could have been a special attraction on house shows, Raw openers, whenever; and it's a shame we never got to see WHO would have been the breakouts from the AAA group, just because none of them were ever given any time to breakout. 

El Mosco vs. Super Nova WWF Raw 3/31/97

ER: This was a pretty good representative for the whole AAA in WWF experiment as a whole: Two guys - who honestly may as well not have been given names - thrown into the ring with no kind of hype, killing themselves to little reaction, while Vince talks to Sunny, and Sunny grinds on Hugo Savinovich during the most dangerous highspot of the match, assuring that nobody calls it. There is also a running thread of powerbombs getting a bigger crowd reaction than any other highspot the AAA luchadors do. It's as if planchas and tornillos confuse them, but a guy getting splatted with a big powerbomb is a universally accepted thud. Vince calls two spots that were supposed to miss (including a big sky twister press from Super Nova) as if they were blown spots, and seemingly nobody in the arena notices when Super Nova hits a crazy tope con giro into El Mosco, while Mosco is *seated* on the entrance ramp. Nova covered a lot of distance, the visual looked incredible...but admittedly, Sunny's black dress *was* impossibly tight.

El Mosco/El Pantera vs. Taka Michinoku/Scott Taylor WWF Shotgun 11/8/97

ER: So the AAA showcase experience was long over, but they brought Mosco back for a one-off, a way to pad their burgeoning LightHeavyweight division before they also lost interest in that a few months later. I don't think I've ever seen this match, and it rules. It starts with Mosco leading Scott Taylor through some cruiser offense that felt very atypical for Taylor. Taylor broke out a headscissors and a big cannonball off the apron, then hit a missile dropkick and landed on his feet like he was Bruce Lee out here with early 90s Brian Pillman hair. Mosco would get to shine a bit later, but early on it was all about leading Taylor through fun and passable lucha sequences. 

The real money was in the Taka/Pantera exchanges, and they cruelly cut who knows how much out of our time with them for commercial purposes. The second Pantera tagged in he hit a gorgeous rolling armdrag on Taka, rolling smoothly right over his back and sending Taka to the floor. Pantera does his dope rolling headscissors to the apron, that sends Taka crashing hard to the floor (a move they'd get to do on PPV a couple months later, which is a crazy PPV singles match we got, in retrospect), and then Pantera just obliterates Taka with a tope, running from the apron and diving past the ringpost. The lunatic even did it through the ring corner where the steps were, the worst of the four corners to try that lunacy. Mosco and Pantera control segment was nice, from the simple things like a picture perfect tandem drop toehold on Taylor, to a cool as hell springboard flipping legdrop from Mosco. The ending is pretty simple, as obviously we know Taka is winning all of these matches, and at a certain point they kinda rush into go home mode and Take just starts dropping Mosco with kicks, a nice brainbuster, and the Michinoku driver. So a simple way to wrap things up, but the whole match was filled with gold, the types of things nobody else was doing on WWF TV at the time. Mosco looked great in all of his WWF appearances, but there was clearly nothing he could have actually done in the ring to get hired. The fact we got a dozen or two Pantera matches in WWF was an actual lucha miracle.

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MLJ: Sin Salida 2010 Part 1

Sin Salida 2010 Part 1

I'm going to tackle the first two matches on the card today. The plan is to make it to the main event, double back to the trios which helped set up Maximo vs Taichi and then finish with 2010 with the hair match. I'll probably double back through the anniversary show (sticking with Garza) at some point.

I've seen very few whole shows in my lucha watching. I've also seen almost nothing when it comes to mini matches, ever, as in "ever," my whole life. I'm sure I've seen a bit of what WWF fed me back in the late 90s but for lucha, nada. I'm sort of curious to see these first two matches in the context of a card, because I don't have a great idea for how one's put together in Mexico, especially a big CMLL show.

For big shows in the states, there are a couple of things I'd expect from the first couple of matches on a card.

1.) The first match is there to get the crowd going, engaged. This is a principle dating back at least thirty years and probably far longer. Wrestlemania I started with Tito Santana vs Buddy Rose for a reason, an admitted reason. Most WWE PPVs over the last two years started with a spot-filled tag team title match for the same reason. Again, I'm not super familiar with minis matches but my instinct is that they're high-velocity affairs and it makes sense to lead off the card with them.

2.) These aren't the matches that are supposed to steal the show. They should be energetic and for a certain breed of fans I'm sure that's what's most engaging. I have a feeling, however, that they're not supposed to contain some of the more key themes that'll be in the later matches. There'll be less build and payoff, less heat to the beatdowns, less complexity to comebacks.They'll get a little less time and maybe won't even have the big dives that'll come later in the night.

Now, these are just assumptions. I honestly don't know, and there's never been any assurance of CMLL being logical about this.

Taped 2010-06-06
Bam Bam & Shockercito vs Demus 3:16 & Pierrothito


So, minis. Bam Bam is just an inch shorter than me, so there you go. I would probably be a mini. I feel a connection already. He was the Mini-Estrella champ. Shockercito is 500% guapo which is pretty funny. Pierrothito is the NWA Light Heavyweight Champ which is a belt they had cycled down to the minis a year before. Demus used to be mini Damian. He's got a pretty good look.

This was what I expected. It had about ten minutes and it was almost all quick action with most of the normal elements of a match compressed (shrunk down even). Now and again you'll see a match structured in two falls with a shine, beatdown (ending the first), extension of the beatdown and then the comeback foiled in some horrific way. This was what happend here.

The early exchanges were really just "an early exchange." One or two interactions and then out of the ring and back to the other pairing. What they did was smooth and athletic though. The rudos took the primera with a wheelbarrow into a facebreaker. onto Bam Bam and then this really cool reverse powerslam/rolling neckbreaker submission combo by Demus onto Shockercito.

The segunda started with the continuation of the beatdown (including a giant swing/dropkick combo) followed by the comeback that consisted of comedy miscommunication by the rudos mainly. This all set up the finish which was Shockercito and Pierrothito ending up on the apron with Pierrothito flat on his back. Shockercito charged forth but got monkeyflipped. He was supposed to end up in a powerbomb position by Demus on the floor but it didn't quite work out and looked nasty. Back in the ring Demus and Bam Bam had a roll up fest with the rudo getting the better of it for the win.

This was quick but fun. I really need to dip my foot deeper into the mini waters.

Taped 2010-06-06
Metro, Rush, Stuka Jr. vs Histeria, Maniaco, Monsther


This was my first look at Monsther. He fit right into Los Invasores, far more so than some other guys in the stable. Chucky is so in your face and over the top as a mascot too. He was all over the match and you can hardly blame them for it. Stuka was the captain for the tecnicos and pretty much the only guy over in a good way. There were signs with the Porra Tecnico and everything. Rush had a surprising amount of boos for so early in his career. I hadn't realized they had turned on him so quickly.

I thought Rush looked good here. It's the earliest I've seen him and my plan is to spend more time with him in 2011 after I finish this show. He was definitely Rush, down to beating the crap out of Chucky in a way that put sympathy on the mascot and elicited boos from the crowd. Monsther was pretty funny as Stuka tried to rope run with him and just got goozled for his trouble. The tecnicos took the primera after Stuka did his reverse course leap out of the ring, leaving Rush and Metro to take out the remaining rudos (including Metro doing this really great backcompression submission over his knee.)

Rudos took over in the segunda, in part because the tecnicos were spending too long going after Chucky. It wasn't anything special. Histeria got Stuka from the outside in on a rope running sequence. The finish was a little goofy as I swear he got pinned twice and Monsther splashed his legs instead of something that made more sense, but it was ultimately harmless. Anyway, and this could be an indication of the spot on the card, the comeback in the tercera was almost immediate with Stuka moving out of the way of a charging Chucky, some humorous rudo miscommunication, and Stuka's dive bomb.

This was short and sweet, with a bit of flubbing here and there. Metro looked good. Monsther fit in well and Chucky was certainly energetic and happy to take a lot of abuse. It was pretty much what it was supposed to be. I thought it was most interesting how quickly Stuka started his comeback in the tercera and that they managed to clear the ring without dives (since they were saving those for later in the night, I guess).

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MLJ: 2010: A Garza Odyssey 17: Convergence

Taped 2010-05-16 @Arena México
El Alebrije, Histeria, Maniaco vs Brazo de Plata, Héctor Garza, Toscano

Porky, Héctor, Toscano vs Alebrije, Histeria...

Embedding isn't working well on this one, unfortunately.

So, this is where it all comes together as if I knew what I was doing from the beginning. I really didn't. Garza had been straddling the line for a better part of a month now. He'd been having dissension with two sets of tecnicos, really, with Fantasma and Mascara on the one side (and he walked out on them costing them the trios title) and Porky and Toscano on the other, and of course had won the Gran Alternativa with a rudo, despite claiming that he still wasn't. Meanwhile, Los Invasores had invaded, most of them being previous AAA wrestlers.

All of that set the stage for this match which was the first time on TV that Garza teamed with Porky and Toscano since walking out on his other partners and since winning the Gran Alternativa the week before. It was also the first time he was paired up against the Invasores. Unsurprisingly things came to a head, though maybe in potentially ambiguous ways.

Like usual for matches of this project, this was the Garza show, with him stooging and hamming and emoting and everything else, while the Invasores got to show their dominance, Porky was able to be Porky and Toscano was able to fight against huge odds and show righteous fury towards Garza. As the culmination of a turn, it was anti-climactic but some of that was due to the sheer length of said turn. My gut says that they hadn't really worked out the whole Invasores thing when they began it.

This was my first look at Maniaco and he didn't really stand out as being much different from Histeria, but his mask was awesome, with a fully on bat in the middle of it, with eyes and fangs and everything. Over the top and it fit in perfectly with his stablemates. By the way, they had a bunch of little promos/videos with the invaders around this time, usually with Psicosis II doing the talking. They were all set in some sort of backstage factory type lot and involved them destroying things to high effect. They definitely played up on the wild elements they brought to the table.

The story of the match was Garza doing everything humanly possible to avoid tagging in and his partners getting more and more frustrated with him. Porky started the match by charging Alebrije on the ramp, which was pretty great, but then the rudos used their numerical advantage to take over. Even Kemonito looked like he was going to kill Garza as he kept pulling his hand back in or faking a leg injury. It was a distraction like that which let Cuije nail the poor little monkey guy from behind and knock him off the apron. Immediately thereafter, Cuije let himself be used as a projectile bomb onto Porky and the rudos pinned him. They followed that up with a brutal double armdrag into an Alebrije Power Bomb on Toscano, who then ate a Maniaco senton bomb as well to end the primera.

Then things got pretty perilous. First, Garza "accidentally" stands on Kemonito for about twenty seconds. Then, the rudos pulled out this insane spiked metal bat, the sort of thing you never see in CMLL during this era, and they spent about three minutes menacing Garza with it. They made a big deal out of this before Garza finally escaped untouched and started selling the leg again on the outside as Toscano pushed him. They went back in, did a reset and some decent sequence with Toscano before once again making a big deal about Garza coming in, this time, forced by his partners, against Alebrije. Even at this point Porky was trying to rouse the crowd to encourage Garza. Or mockingly encourage him. And I suppose to either their credit or their lack of credit, there was some animosity there. Garza played his character, trying to avoid conflict, going for the time out , but Alebrije kept pushing, and Garza fought back. While the bat sequence was cute, there wasn't any real drama here, except for whether or not Garza wasn't just a rudo now, but with the invaders.

We've seen dozens of great heel turns in tag matches where the turner avoids tags and contact until the last second. That didn't happen here. Garza just came off as so amazingly irritating that everyone wanted to hit him. That would have been well and good if he wasn't to be revealed at a press conference a few days later as one of the leaders of the faction. It made the back half of this match, once he started to get physical, seem weird. The tercera ended with Garza knocking Toscano off the top so the rudos could pin him and then just laying down so they could pin him, but we'd seen behavior like that out of him over the few weeks before. He seemed like he had turned up the passive aggressiveness but not like this was a big stop on the "turn" roadmap. Still, watching him stand on Kemonito (especially after how pissed the monkey was at him earlier in the match) was pretty damn entertaining, so the match had that going for it.

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