Found Footage Friday: HIJO DEL SANTO EARLIEST FOOTAGE~!

Hijo del Santo/Matematico/Blackman vs. Blue Panther/Lobo Rubio/Black Terry 7/24/83

MD: Our earliest footage of Hijo del Santo. This is just 8 minutes, clipped, and we usually don't do clipped matches, but look at the names here. It's not like we have a ton of lucha from this early either. A lot of the focus is on the Lobo Rubio vs Santo pairing and some things do stand out. they would hang on to a limb through escapes and moves much more than I'm used to in lucha (I'm more used to one hold moving into the other). It felt more European in that regard. Some of it was very slick. Santito had these great leap through armdrags too where he sort of jumped past Lobo and whipped him around. Santo already had the flip senton off the top but here he chained it into a forward charge and the set up for the caballo instead of a dive. The footage cuts off with a later fall with Santo doing quite well against everyone all at once until they did catch him and start triple teaming. They certainly didn't let him out there with the gimmick before he was ready. That's my big takeaway here. 

ER: What a find, guaranteed to be the best eight minutes you spent on a match this week. If this is the earliest Hijo del Santo we've seen - and I don't think Matt would lie - then this is a real find. It's not a full match but it gives a very full picture of everything that young incredibly skinny Hijo del Santo could do. This man arrived fully together on sight, kept from the gimmick but advancing quickly. This man was already here, looking like he understood everything already. What stood out first was the honesty in his basics, the advanced level quickness of his exchanges without skipping past the actual contact and transition. He knew how to apply a side headlock, how to do tough scissors escapes, how to fall for leg picks making it look like he's not just moving through a sequence. Just like the Santo you've known every active year of his career, his execution is flawless. His dropdown floated in gorgeously at the tops of Lobo's knees, forcing Lobo's roll rather than relying on Lobo to do the sequence anyway. 

Beyond his command of physically sound basics and speed, he had tricks and ideas. He did a mystifying armdrag that is perhaps the prettiest armdrag I've ever seen, where he floats past Lobo as a magician's misdirection and hooks him as Lobo is turning around to his left. He does it twice. I watched it I don't know how many times. His rolling senton hit just as smooth as any year of Santo you're familiar with, and while your brain expects tope, I liked the quick to the point in ring tope he hit to Lobo's neck. His confidence was unreal. 

The bit at the end, with Santo working both Blue Panther and Black Terry, is the most GIFable thing I've ever seen, on the level with the real primo Super Porky sequences, for different reasons. Every man is On for every single step. They're all the best man of the sequence. Look at Blue Panther set up this wonderful bit where he actually gets tripped by Santo's dropdown while Terry makes it over; Panther is up rubbing his head in confusion as he stumbles perfectly into place to grab Santo before getting armdragged past Terry. Terry takes a bump through the ropes when Panther gets shoved into him, and Panther hangs up in the ropes by the boot when he's dropkicked after. Even Lobo gets involved, kicking Panther's boot free and dropping him off to the floor. We go into Santo's earliest footage and come away learning that Blue Panther was just as fully formed. 

I wish we got more Matematico and Blackman. Matematico had a roll up that gliding up and over Panther's body, hesitating at the top of the steady rollercoaster before tumbling perfectly down the other side. Blackman is at minimum a great North Star for viewers with mask blindness when watching 40 year old lucha footage. Blackman had a nice command of his speed, and the bit at the end where he evades all three rudos was a guy who surely had some good ideas in the footage we don't have. Bask in what we do have.   

Hijo del Santo/Matematico/Blackman vs. Blue Panther/Lobo Rubio/Black Terry 7/31/83

MD: The revancha from the following week. Another minute or two longer than the first clip too. This was shot more from ringside/underneath and we come in (after the tecnicos greet the kids and pose for a photo) with a rudo ambush. Panther and Lobo have a great Hart Attack style dropkick followed by a pendulum back onto the knees. The kids are already chanting Santo and for good reason as he bounds over Lobo in the corner and hits a bunch of armdrags and dropkicks. This is clipped but we get a really nice Matematico vs Black Terry exchange and then all of the tecnicos bounding off the top rope one after the other with body presses until they pin the rudos all at once in a great fall-ender. It's so easy to take Santo for granted since we have year and years of him and plenty of footage, but he was constant motion here, all over the place and they certainly set him up for success with the feeding and basing. It had to be pretty exciting to see him vs Panther for this crowd. Panther had a great roll through landing/escape on a catapult I'd never seen before, though it all built towards Santo's tope. Lightning in a bottle that would shine in the night for years and years to come.

ER: We should be making a bigger deal about this right? We should be shouting about these two matches from the rooftops. It's Hijo del Santo, it's Blue Panther, it's Terry, it's glimpses of guys like Matematico and Blackman, it's just constant gorgeous sweeping lucha action. This match is just as special as the previous week's, as this one is in the middle of the most amazing arena, a bullfight arena that stretches to the heavens and doesn't even seem to have spaces for proper aisles and rows. The higher you see the grandstand stretch to the sky the less sense it makes. It feels like reckless construction, thousands of people stacked on top of each other defying physics row by row. It's the same kind of wonder as when I saw National Geographic photos of favelas on a hillside, stacked impossibly on top of each other, no roads or paths or support network visible, just colors. The lucha action itself is beautiful, impossibly smooth, but I can't stop looking at these thousands of people piled on top op each other, how impossible the lines and angles look. It looks like how they draw a large crowd in comic books, like during that storyline arc where The Thing gets involved in pro wrestling. It's just stacks of people. They aren't real, but these people are, and they're ALL chanting for Santo. 

Because, Santo was ready on arrival and everyone in this impossibly shaped building knew it. We've all played with Coach's Sons in childhood sports and we're all inclined to dislike them, but Santito was the rare coach's son who was clearly a megastar. His tope is filmed from the crowd, making it look like Santo disappears deep into the crowd. I wish I knew where he landed, but it's probably even better that we don't know. El Hijo del Santo recently finished #22 on the GWE project, and seeing how he looked in his earliest footage...how silly is that? My entire life as a lucha fan, we've been subliminally underselling the perfection that is Santo. It's writers getting MVP fatigue for Bonds and Jordan, you just see nothing but high end work from the same guy and eventually you just want to vote for Charles Barkley or Jeff Kent. I love Samoa Joe, but I was also there for his earliest matches representing UPW. We know the wrestler he grew into and the great heights he reached, but here's footage that show Santo reaching those heights from go, under the brightest lights...and I'm just not sure you can reasonably compare the two. 

Celestial/Stuka vs. Carlos Plata/Gran Markus Jr. Arena Coliseo Monterrey 1989

MD: Apparently we have very little footage of Plata. This starts with kids surrounding the tecnicos and a guy in a dog costume handing out candy. Commentary loves this for the "seed must be sown in children today and harvested tomorrow in adults." It's funny as they talk about wrestling being more sanitized for national consumption and then at the blow of the whistle the rudos immediately ambush the tecnicos. I could watch Markus pick up guys by their mask/tights and drop them on their face over and over. You really don't see that often but he's just a brick wall in there. The finish of the primera was just Markus holding Stuka in a surfboard while Plata kicked him over and over. Mercy rule win for the rudos.

Segunda did have the tecnicos come back with Markus basing for some fun stuff. Plata kept things more back and forth. He was good at sneaking shots in and had a way of throwing his body around interestingly on bumps. Nice finish with Celestial stretching himself up backwards for a victory roll and Stuka doing a back handspring headbutt. Tercera had Plata using this pretty great choke drop off the ropes right into a choke. Things broke down pretty chaotically, with Stuka fouling his way back into the ring to mount a comeback and then Markus trying to interfere from the outside after he got eliminated. Even with two refs that just led to distraction which backfired on his team much to the children's delight. 

ER: A great rudo showcase, a great look at Markus and our (my?) first look at Plata. Plata is such a good base and expert at setting up tecnico offense, that he makes Celestial look like Atlantis in the first two falls, while the bad 3rd fall finish makes him look like Celestial. Markus works dominant stooge and plays to Stuka's bumping shtick while taking big bumps of his own. Markus and Plata worked what felt like 80% of the match in control while working like they were on their heels. Stuka I liked more when he was bumping for Markus's strikes, but Markus knew how to take their tecnico offense so well that he made them look like mountain movers at times. Markus and Plata are such great bullies, Markus kicking Celestial in the ribs while he was held in a submission, or my favorite, Markus lifting Stuka by his singlet and repeatedly throwing him face first into the mat. Markus is doing a Taue reverse nodowa otoshi, only using stretch fabrics. No less vicious. The peak is when Markus and Stuka have a showdown punch exchange that is truly great, both reeling in ways that nobody can real now, Stuka dropping into the middle rope after a shot straight to the chin. Beautiful work.  

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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.

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Between Heaven and Hell Black Terry Fell In The Deep Crimson Dew

Black Terry vs. Matematico vs. Ultraman vs. Kahoz vs. Cuchillo vs. Astro Boy Jr.vs. Brazo de Plata Jr. vs. Daisuke Haonaka vs. Hijo del Fantasma vs. Toshiya Matsuzaki Toryuman- GREAT 5/3/06

PAS: Ridiculously fun match which was a total train wreck but in a really entertaining way. You got to see a bunch of old luchadores who never see the light of day. Black Terry had an awesome punch exchange with Ultraman. For an ex-high flyer Ultraman has really turned into Jose Luis Castillo in his old age. Cuchillo and Kahoz are guys I haven’t seen in years, and they looked like guys I hadn’t seen in years. Kahoz especially looked shitastic, as he was completely unable to bump over the top on his first attempt, so he has to run to the other side of the ring to bump to the floor Also that actually looked like the real Matematico who must be 70. Total blast.

TKG: Black Terry looked to be guy holding this entire thing together working fun sections with Hijo del Fantasma, Matematico, and Ultraman and one of the Japanese kids. Gran Cuchillo comes out and stretchers the other Japanese kid just smacking him around with the butt of his gun, suplexing him on the ramp and then dropping elbows. Cuchillo hitting opponents with the butt of a pistol may expose the business more than Tiger Jeet Singh hitting opponents with butt of sword. But Cuchillo is way more fun. Cuchillo and Kahoz are really too old to pull off their miscommunication heel double team stuff. But fuck all that other shit: BLACK TERRY~!!!

Black Terry, Cerebro Negro, Dr. Cerebro VS Trauma I, Trauma II, Zatura IWRG 6/4/09-FUN

TKG:I dug this a lot although I don’t know how good it actually was. I left this thinking these two teams match up really well and have a really good match in them, this has hints of it but isn’t it. That’s the same feeling I have leaving every Jumbo v Billy Robinson or Backlund v Adonis. I may have ridiculously high standards. It’s kind of ridiculous to say I liked this match for its sloppiness. I don’t know if Trauma I legit busted his arm up or if he was just selling over the three falls. Don’t know if Trauma II legit fucked up Cerebro Negro’s neck or if that was a match element. Either way the match was constantly broken up by medical staff checking on guys pulling them out of the action and eventually letting them back in, while the rest of the luchadors had to continue to work ignoring the downed guys and medical staff. I’m assuming that this was all guys getting legit tweaked but I really enjoyed the weird pacing and general dynamic (of guys getting pulled out and reinserted) that it created. Not a dynamic that I think they’ll ever be able to recreate. I imagine if they rematch these teams, the rematch will be smoother and not sure if that’s necessarily for the better. Anyway the real shocker of this match was how good both Cerebro Negro and Zatura looked; and how well they matched up opposite each other. Cerebro Negro was a guy who I enjoyed a bunch in 08 as kind of the best of the “flashy innovative offense” IWRG rudos. But he’s really underwhelmed in the Terry/Cerebros v Dinastia Navarro stuff. And well Zatura is a guy who always struck me as being nothing but insane out-of-control dives. But here the two match up shockingly well and felt like working spotty highflyer lit a fire under Cerebro Negro. I get the sense that people are starting to get a better sense of what they can do with Trauma I and really liked both all the Terry work on Trauma I’s arm and how Terry set up and sold all the Trauma I comebacks. The Trauma II v Dr Cerebro interactions were really the least version of that match up and shockingly the most uninteresting part of the match.

PAS: I don't think anyone would look at this match up on paper and think that Zatura and Cerebro Negro would come out looking the best. Their long mat section was very cool, I especially loved all of the countering based around Zatura's arm. Zatura also broke out a great looking dive, and Negro was probably the top brawler during the brawl section. There is a moment where Trauma II is on his stomach and Cerebro Negro is just unloading with right hands, it really looked like a guy violently finishing someone in MMA. There is such a great mix of trios right now in IWRG, now that it looks like the Trauma's turned on Zatura, I hope we get Negro Navarro back soon, because Dinastia De La Muerte v. Officiales, Juvi/Fuerza/Pirata or Zatura/Chico Che/Freelance all could be incredible

Black Terry/Cerebro Negro/Dr. Cerebro vs. Barba Roja/Hijo de Pirata Morgan/Pirata Morgan Jr. IWRG 8/27/09-FUN

TKG: The Piratas really felt out of their league here. First fall has Dr Cerebro matched up opposite Jr, ,Black Terry matched up opposite Barba Roja and Cerebro Negro opposite Hijo. Black Terry strained his arm on an armdrag had a doctor check it out and then had Barba Roja work over his arm. Terry is really good at the wounded tough warrior stuff and that may have been the best first fall interaction. The other Piratas looked completely lost working technical mat based offense. Second fall was rope running move fall where everyone switched up partners and third fall was all about the big moves where member of team runs in to prevent the fall. Piratas were way more comfortable in those settings. The second fall where they were most comfortable was short, and the third fall felt kind of mechanical.

PAS: Black Terry cuts a post match promo basically saying “It is good for young guys like that to get experience against wrestlers like us.” The match really felt worked like that, with Cerebros being polished professionals, carrying some green rookies through a match. There was individual moments of competence from the Piratas, but this match was 90% Cerebros

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE BLACK TERRY

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