Found Footage Friday: GARZA~! DRAGON~! BLONDY~! CHICANA~! LOVER~! GUAJARDO

Blue Fish/El Sanguinario/Gato del Ring vs. Hector Garza/Ruben Juarez Jr./Franky CMLL 1992

MD: It's a real testament to the footage we've gotten over the last few months that it's been so long since I chipped away at Roy's Monterrey uploads, but here we are. This is a blurry, staticy undercard match with some local guys (like Blue Fish) and Garza as the star of the future very early into his tenure. And it was fun straightforward lucha trios action.

The rudos controlled as we came in, really laying a beating on Franky. The commentary noted how he was such a flyer that he even flew well when he was taking a back body drop. He flew well into the stands when they tossed him in and followed it up with a chair too. Nice mugging from the rudos, solid stuff. The comeback was spirited like you'd want with Garza looking great to the point where Franky couldn't quite keep up. He would throw a dropkick off the apron to the floor in an attempt to do so though.

Then the tercera had holds broken up with matter-of-fact hard shots. It worked well and built to a big Garza flip dive before Jaurez got the win. My favorite bit in it was Juarez not able to get a monkey flip going and Garza having to leap behind him to flip them both. Pretty novel spot. I like Garza from later in the decade fine even if I think his real strength was as a rudo stooge later on, but there was something dynamic and exciting about him all the way back here. 

Fabuloso Blondy/Rick Patterson/Sangre Chicana vs. Ultimo Dragon/Cesar/Apolo Dantes CMLL 1992

MD: This is one of those ones that we'd probably never really even look at otherwise. It has a big chunk missing due to static in the middle and a Mil Mascaras commercial between the segunda and tercera. But it also has Ultimo Dragon doing maybe the coolest thing I've ever seen him do, rearing back and hitting a Yoshiaki Fujiwara style headbutt onto Rick Patterson. 

That was during the tecnico comeback in the primera. They'd been literally pulling Apolo (listing says their father Alfonso, but I think it's Apolo) apart until the tecnicos rushed in. Blondy was post-hair match but he and Patterson made for two solid big lugs with Chicana to add the flair of violence. Post-static we come right back to Blondy clocking Apolo with a chair and the tercera was a beatdown exacerbated by the fact that Cesar had decided he wasn't going to get along with his brother and Dragon. Instead, after watching for a bit, and right when Dragon was making a comeback, he clocked him allowing the rudos to pin him. Post-match he tossed a chair right in Dragon's face and paraded around the ring. 

ER: I really liked all the tecnicos going after Rick Patterson's meaty hamstring. Cesar ends the primera grabbing him by the chin and throwing two swift kicks, Ultimo sweeps his leg out with one in the segunda, and Patterson is very entertaining selling them. He treats them lethally and it shuts him down every time. When Dantes hit his, Patterson didn't even retaliate, he just got up and limped exaggeratedly back to the apron. It's funny seeing Blondy and Patterson in there with the smaller Cesar and Dragon, and I think Apolo was really good at selling the chokes and clubs of Blondy, getting dragged around on his knees and choked with a cable on the apron. The Cesar turn on Dragon was angry enough (for reasons I do not understand) that I'd love to see a singles match that surely doesn't exist...yet. I wanted to see Dragon work BIG against the big men but that didn't happen. Matt is 100% right about his Fujiwara headbutt, though. I have watched hundreds of Ultimo Dragon matches and I have never seen him rear back and headbutt someone like that. Funny, in classic Dragon style, that this violent piece of offense came one minute in and nothing else he did matched that energy. 

Bronco/Latin Lover/Valente Fernandez vs. Sanguinario/Rene Guajardo Jr/Canadian Butcher CMLL 1992 

MD: Pretty complete match with a few interesting wrinkles. Pairings for the primera were Bronco and Guajardo, Lover and Sanguinario, and Fernandez and Butcher, but we got a lot of Fernandez and Guajardo throughout too. They were pretty perfectly matched up even in look and both were over. Pretty much everyone was over here. Even Butcher (Brett Como/Black Dragon/Ultimate Dragon) was over due to his very unique look (a mullet and a mohawk, but the mohawk was just one patch of hair gelled to stick up two feet like a unicorn horn) and a pretty astonishing 1992 Monterrey Shooting Star Press towards the end of the segunda.

Bronco danced about and Guajardo had some great, great punches, the sort of punches that make you want to ask around and say "Hey, do we know as a community that Rene Guajardo, Jr. had some great punches?" because I don't remember people ever talking about that. A lot of the story here however, was making Lover look good. This was shortly after the gimmick's debut and the match went out of its way to make him look strong. Certainly whenever he was in, women screamed, and there was one point in between caidas where he was getting beaten on the floor that two stepped forward to protect him. He ultimately had the comeback (or at least set it off) and was the last man standing after Bronco wiped out on a brutal missed dive where Butcher just walked away and they pinned Fernandez. It was ultimately three-on-one at that point but he got his share of near-falls before Sanguario finally got the better of roll up reversals. Fernandez still felt like the star of the moment but there was a torch passing element here. 

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Found Footage Friday: BRAZOS~! CASAS~! LOVE MACHINE~ BEYER~! LUBICH~!

Dick Beyer vs. Bronco Lubich NWA Upstate 1962

MD: Just watching them get introduced, I half wondered if this really was Beyer. We couldn't get close enough to see the nose and the frame from a distance seemed a bit off even for the youngest Beyer I would have seen, but no, within the first few seconds, he gets Lubich in a full nelson and repeatedly slams his head in the top rope and that was enough to convince me. I'd continued to be convinced as the match went on. He wrestled with incredible confidence and presence and ingenuity and imagination. That's Dick Beyer.

He was given the Destroyer gimmick this year so this was towards the end of him wrestling unmasked. Lubich was longer in the tooth and may have even been more managerial. They mention a birthday cake at the start (a birthday cake angle in 1962!) and Poffo (presumably Angelo) as allied with Lubich but hard to say exactly what was going on there. If it's documented somewhere I'd love to hear about it. This was all about Beyer having his way with Lubich though, with Bronco finding ways to get some shots in at the margins. For instance, Beyer dropped him into the leg nelson (with quickfire legwhacks) but right on the rope break, Bronco was on him. Or Beyer got him with an airplane spin but when he went for the second, Lubich grabbed the rope and landed on him. Or after a Giant Swing, Lubich rolled out and was able to ambush Beyer and drive his head into the side of the ring.

Lubich was credibly tough but Beyer looked like the best wrestler in the world and kept on him, finally beating him with a rolling bodyscissors sort of deal and a dropkick. Just a great look at Beyer in 62 right before he'd become the Destroyer.

ER: I wonder if there were any Sell The Arm fans in 1962 Buffalo who were upset at the ways Lubich never paid much mind to Dick Beyer standing and stomping and dropping knees onto his arm and shoulder. Some smart guy in Buffalo rolling his eyes after Dick Beyer gets run the length of the ring apron and flies off into the ringpost, because Bronco was in the ring holding up both arms instead of rubbing his shoulder. Maybe that man existed, because if Dick Beyer was moving like this in 1962 Buffalo then I'd believe anything. Beyer was so far ahead of his time and moved like no other American wrestler, so quick and crafty while built like a spark plug, an acrobat with thump. I love the desperate little ways Lubich tries to stop the onslaught, with his only chance briefly shifting his weight by grabbing for the ropes. If he wasn't a manager, it was a great "wrestling like a manager" performance against one of the coolest to do it. 

Los Brazos vs. Jaque Mate/Dusty Wolfe/The Viking Monterrey 1992

MD: I have no idea who the Viking is. I know it's our job to figure this stuff out for you but no idea. Past one fun staggering bump into the corner off a Porky headbutt, we don't really care about him anyway. Dusty Wolfe is doing his best Jimmy Jack Funk impression with a silly mask but we don't really care about him either in this one. We're laser focused on El Brazo and Jaque Mate, because right from the get go, Mate opens Brazo up and never, ever looks back.

Brazo spends a chunk of this out on the floor bleeding buckets. They seem almost reluctant to put the camera on him before he towels off which is something I'm not sure I've ever really seen in lucha from this era. That's how much blood we're talking about. And while Mate's happy to beatdown the other Brazos with his compatriots, he makes sure to come back out to do more damage. At one point he goes for a chairshot and a fan puts a chair up to try to block it. They even play music to try to rouse the Brazos.

Eventually, Viking tosses El Brazo back in and he goes wild, crashing across the ring, rubbing his own blood on his fist to use it as a weapon, tearing at Mate's mask and then opening him up on the outside. It's a great Brazos comeback but ends abruptly with a Mate foul that the refs miss and the rudos taking it. Great bloody mayhem here.

ER: What a world. Exhausted on a Friday night, I throw this on and am taken away to another world where somebody's 1992 Monterrey tape survived and we get a perfect color distorted tracking lined masterpiece that may as well have been from another dimension. This is a bloody match even within the annals of bloody lucha matches, with Brazo's entire face and torso covered in blood maybe two minutes in, and a long primera beatdown where Porky and Oro also get busted open. It's an all time bizarre rudo team as Jaque Mate recruits two real American goobers - longtime WWF job guy Dusty/Dale Wolfe and another guy doing a truly great job Bad Brody impression - and they all punch the shit out of Los Brazos. I actually liked The Viking as a poor man's Sylvester Terkay, and I thought Wolfe did a real good job punching and scraping away at Porky. Wolfe's punches to bust Porky open were on point and he kept doing a bunch of cool things to work over a cut, like scraping his boot eyelets across Porky's face. 

But yes, the real show is the brutal beating El Brazo takes at the hands of Mate, and the way the crowd physically rallied behind a man completely covered in blood. Men in white dominant polo shirts are coming to Brazo's aid as he's trying to catch his breath and maintain his balance, and then things get surreal when they start playing music mid-match. With the hazy video and choppy tracking, it feels like another channel is bleeding over into ours. Brazo is bleeding out and suddenly an angelic choir is playing over the top of it and it elevates everything to high art. Porky and Oro were great at taking secondary beatings throughout, knowing their brother was the show but not content with hanging back and out of the way. Porky was still in there taking backdrops and getting worked over by both Americans. The Brazos comeback in the Segunda, with a primera dragged out long enough to build that anticipation, was shockingly brief and even more shockingly ended in a Brazos loss. We never get the full satisfaction of Wolfe or Viking getting busted open, even if we get Porky and Oro throwing headbutts that look like they should open cuts. As we eagerly await these American goons getting squashed in various ways by Porky, Jaque knees Brazo in the balls for an undignified loss, music still playing, his brothers confused. Now we need another 30+ year old Monterrey tape to surface that has Los Brazos' bloody revanche.   

Love Machine/Apolo Dantes/La Fiera vs. Negro Casas/Hijo del Solitario/Stuka Monterrey 

MD: Stuka was a replacement for Black Magic. Everyone else was fine in this one, but this was the Casas vs Love Machine show. Two dynamic, imaginative wrestlers, who knew how to mug and make the most of things. You always see something new with both of them and they were matched up here. We start with Casas beating down Love Machine with a table, including jumping on it repeatedly from the apron with it on top of him. Later on, Love Machine gets some great revenge, taking Casas's head and driving it down into the ground from the apron before chasing him into the crowd. And then towards the end, we get the spot that closes the circle, with Love Machine basically punching the table towards Casas. It's just a joy to watch these guys do their thing. Completely iconic stuff.

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Found Footage Friday: VILLANOS~! UNIVERSO~! PIRATA~! PANTHER~! ESPECTRO~! MANDO~! MARKUS~!

Villano IV/Villano IV/Milo Caballero vs. Universo 2000/Hijo del Gladiador/Babe Face Monterrey 1991

MD: The sort of lucha trios that hits just right for the most part. Villano IV was paired with Babe Face who was happy to stooge all over the place, feigning getting hit by low blows and making faces. Villano V was matched with Universo who was heatseeing (punching the post and getting DDT'd for instance). Both pairings were heated and seemed to have issues. Gladiador and Milo were more or less along for the ride.

Lots of feeding (more than basing) in the primera with an exciting escalation. When the rudos took over there was a nice bit of Villano V grabbing fans' hands on the outside after he took a beating. The comeback moment was just Milo recovering and attacking from behind but the Villanos more than made up for that. V got some great punches in on the floor on Universo while IV doled out justice on Babe Face. They rushed to pinfalls in the tercera but then had the Villanos make an illegal switch despite the fact they were the tecnicos here. The rudos complained but it was too little too late. Fun stuff but it almost would have been served better as a straight tag.

Pirata Morgan/Mascara Sagrada/Kato Kung Lee II vs. Indomito/Blue Panther/Espectro, Jr. Monterrey end 91/early 92

MD: The big appeal to this one was that the rudos had recently turned on Morgan and now he was with the tecnicos. It was straightforward overall with more exchanges than heat even with Morgan's turn but it was all pretty masterful so you don't mind. Primera pairings were Panther/KKL, Indomito/Morgan, Espectro/Sagrada. Lots of Panther matwork. He worked a short arm scissors/gotch lift sequence with you don't see every day in Lucha. At the start ot the second round of exchanges (rope running) he knocked KKL out of the ring immediately before eating an arm drag on his way back in and that was funny for the matter-of-factness of it. Equally funny was watching Morgan work staright tecnico including some flashy things like a Mule Kick out of nowhere. Espectro  and Sagrada didn't go as long but the had the most tricked out stuff overall.

Rudos took the primera with a beautiful Panther northern lights out of nowhere. That led into a fairly simple beatdown, simple because it didn't last long. The second they cycled to Morgan, he started firing back and tecnicos won quickly. Likewise, the third fall was quick, full of crowd pleasing tandem stuff (including an estrella with KKL using a victory roll into the center instead of a 'rana. So fun stuff but I wanted to see Morgan really go on the offense and that wasn't what this one was about.

Mando Guerrero/Centurion Negro/Monarca vs. Corsario Negro/Gran Markus Jr./Azteca de Oro Monterey 1991?

MD: This, on the other hand, was all heat. The issue was between Centurion Negro and Corsario Negro (the latter of which had no mask anymore). Corsario dodged him well enough during the primera (which was full of posturing), even if it meant that his team was at a bit of a disadvantage. In the segunda, they went all in on Centurion's mask, tearing it apart. The commentators were trying to get any glimpse they could, noting definitively that he did not have a mustache. The comeback in the tercera was because they were focusing too much on the mask allowing Mando and Monarca to come in and even the odds.

At that point, Centurion laid a pretty colossal beating on Corsario. The refs wanted to just award it to the tecnicos but they didn't want to stop. Nothing wildly over the top, just stomps and stomps and more stomps but they were pretty brutal ones. Eventually that let the other rudos come in and even the odds and they fairly quickly got a banana peel win. Post-match they had to do everything they could to keep Centurion and Corsario away from each other. If this led to an apuestas match, I would have bought a ticket for it. I think we might have five or six minutes of a JIP match actually. I should look at that.

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Found Footage Friday: ALL APUESTAS

 
Stuka/Latin Lover vs. Valente Fernandez/Sangre Chicana Monterrey 6/92

MD: Lover still had his mask here (He'd lose it a couple of months later in a tag to Sangre Chicana and Sanguinario, and then immediately thereafter would have the below Fernandez singles match. Sheesh). It took me about a fall to figure out what was even going on here, which is blurry old lucha chaos for you. This was a tag where the losers of the fall had to fight each other over the mask. Also we come in mid stream with the rudos beating Lover down until Stuka streaks in from off screen wildly, knocks Fernandez out of the ring and clocks him with a chair. He'd get bloodied thereafter and they'd take the fall with a gnarly mutalock styled double armhold and Lover hitting a sunset flip on Chicana.

Stuka continues on Fernandez between falls, posting him but Fernandez turns the tables on him, tosses him into the seats, and gets some revenge with a chair. He's really good at this, this being standing around a bloody mess in the ring with a chair menancing Lover until Stuka rolls back in so he can absolutely crush him (he then crushes Lover for good measure). Very quick but impactful segunda that should have presented Lover and Stuka with a high, high bar to overcome for the rest of the match.

Weirdly, that's not quite what happened. Lover came into the terera strong, fighting back against Chicana, and Stuka chased Fernandez around. The tercera didn't quite have the drama I would have wanted, but Fernandez eliminated Lover with a great Reinera and then hit a huge dive. Stuka followed up by fouling Fernandez in front of the ref to set up the singles match.

The commentators said that even though they had been partners, now it was time for a fight to the death given the stakes, and that's how Stuka took it certainy, coming in hot, tossing Lover into the stands, hitting him with a chair, and ripping at the mask. Fernandez tried to get involved a little, and that let Lover fight back reversing a toss and sending Stuka flying into the stands in revenge, opening him up. Back in the ring, they went all out for an exciting finishing high-speed finishing stretch, lots of rope-running and nearfalls. Stuka finally missed a flip dive off the top and Lover locked in an armbar with the leg behind the head for the win. Post-match Stuka, who had increasingly lost it as the match went on, really lost it and took a runner, but multiple luchadores brought him back to have his head shaved. I could have used a little more flash in the tercera of the tag but overall this was more than spectacle enough.

Valente Fernandez vs. Latin Lover Monterrey 9/27/92

MD: This is almost completely bullshit but it's so consistent to it that it's ok. Fernandez charges in at the start but Lover fires back. Fernandez escapes around the ring and crotches over on the rope on the way in. He really doesn't look back with the fouls, all the way into the tercera as he controls most of it, with a spattering of rudo ref assistance along the way that cut Lover off after a big quebradora counter in the segunda, for instance.

What made it work was the triple combination of Fernandez being a total jerk (his celebration in the arms of his second (Sanguinario maybe?) after winning the primera with another foul for instance), Lover fighting back with fire whenever he had a chance, and plenty of blood. There were some big tope suicidas in the tercera and while we couldn't really see them due to the camera angle, the blood all over the floor from Lover put them way over the top emotionally. They felt monumental because we were left with the image of guys just laying around in splatterings of red (I'm not 100% convinced it's blood; it might just be the floor, but I'm going to go with it).

In general though, plenty of bullshit. Fernandez bullied the ref into compliance, hit him errounously though little came of it. He took a swipe at Lover's second and then, in a key moment, took out his own with a dive as Lover was able to move. The finish was fairly definitive with Lover just needing a clear enough path to plant Fernandez with an Alabama slam out of the corner. We're in Monterrey in the 90s and we got what we got accordingly. A bit too much BS but you can't say it didn't work.

Solar vs. Flama Azul Arena Naucalpan 1991

MD: This was very much a tale of two matches. The first two caida were a little more subdued and then everything picked up bigtime in the tercera. The setting with big colorful "LUCHAMANIA" banners in the traditional WM font and canned audio that meant we never got a real sense of the crowd didn't help matters.

Flama Azul got an early advantage without really doing anything underhanded or even definitive to get it. They started clean enough and he was just able to lean on Solar, a combination of him being able to keep up with him technically and having a bit more girth. There was some mask ripping and viciousness but for the most part, nothing was boiling over. That meant that the comeback didn't hit too hard, even though Solar had this way of rushing into the quebradoras instead of just waiting for his opponent to get to him. He makes them look more dynamic than anyone else and he was able to grind down with the knee and get a submission out of one.

Things opened up in the tercera, first and foremost, Flama Azul's skull as Solar continuously drove it into the post. There was a muddy, mess sense of violence here, a lack of pretty spots as they just crashed into each other grabbing and poking and swiping however they could. Just a real sense of animosity that had been missing from the match so far. Eventually, Solar was able to drive forward with one more backbreaker and put Flama down. This would have been better if we had a better sense of the crowd as, once it really got going, the dissonance between the bright colors and the nasty violence really made things pop.

PAS: So much of my experience with Solar is him doing his touring Maestros stuff with Negro Navarro at the end of his career, seeing him at the beginning of the 90s working Naucalpan in this kind of grimy small arena apuestas match is pretty great. It got more escalatingly ugly and violent as the match went on, especially the parts where Solar was trying to crack open Azul's skull like a walnut. This is some of the earliest Arena Naucalpan footage we have, and I love that it was always like this. Nothing fancy, just blood mixing with spilled beer and two guys rolling around in it. 

ER: So this was an outright classic, right? I'm a Solar fan. We all are. I've been there live and seen him do his front flip into the ring in his early 60s, I fell in love with the maestro matwork the first time I saw him, and yet I don't think I have ever seen Solar in a match like this. This was Solar in a damn fight and Solar as a damn rock star. Have I ever seen Solar get reactions like this before? I don't believe I have. The second the propulsive, motorik guitar groove of whatever his excellent entrance theme hit, Arena Naucalpan went crazy and it continued going crazy for a half hour. This felt like a real important apuestas match before Solar got anywhere close to the ring because the crowd made this match feel like real stakes. I have been to mask matches in Mexico before. The loudest one I was at was El Hijo del Santo vs. Super Parka in 2003, and maybe because it was in an open air bull ring rather than the closed in confines of Naucalpan, but this match was so much louder. Solar was swarmed like Mil Mascaras. "That's the guy who unmasked Dr. O'Borman a million years ago," somebody said, maybe. I loved Solar as an old man. I hardly knew his long superstar peak, but Naucalpan reacts to 1991 Solar like Hijo del Santo in El Toreo and I'm hyped. 

I can't pretend to know anything about Flama Azul, but I love him. I don't think we've ever written about him before. You'd think one of us would have covered him at some point but I couldn't find anything. Flama Azul feels like a Segunda Caida guy. He looks like a real piece of shit. Look at this Scumbag El Dandy. He has the body of a co-worker who gets takeout most days of the week, with messy hair and a perfect mustache. I love how he punches at Solar's face and body, love the violent mask ripping, love the damn referee holding Solar by the mask from the ring so that Flama can punch him in the face, repeatedly. Solar takes great prolonged beating, takes multiple backdrops on a hard mat, and the noise in that arena made it feel like people actually thought Solar was in danger of losing his mask, one of the five greatest masks in lucha history. The beating comes to a head when Solar is run along the apron and bounced into the ringpost and spills into the crowd, reinventing the ringpost bump in the early 90s. 

Solar does no matwork in this match. This is not the time for it. He does nothing you would ever call "smooth" in this fight. No, he fights back and spends the rest of the match wrecking Azul's back with the coolest fully controlled quebradoras I've ever seen. Solar was lifting and spinning Azul like pizza dough, bringing him down on his knee in a way that looked like he was controlling every single part of the landing. He just kept lifting and turning and slamming Azul into his knee, the quebradoras a triumphant tecnico show of strength that only got better the more he did. Solar's tope was incredible, his victory hard fought. Azul continued being a piece of shit after the match, refusing all handshakes and storming off to the rudo's locker room before his first trim. I liked the way he argued with no theatricality. He never looked like he was being a rudo for the benefit of the fans who loved or hated rudos, he felt like he was just an asshole that was trying to renege on a friendly wager, getting upset when he actually has to pay for dinner. 

Extra highlight is our post-match barber. He had no electric clippers but just watch the quick work he makes of Azul's hair with a pair of scissors. He was snapping off clumps of hair with real speed, handing off a huge handful to Solar for him to parade around. This man could scissor shear a sheep in a sheet. 

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Found Footage Friday: RACE~! RUDE ~! SHOCKER~! SANTO~! TWICE THE STEAMBOAT~!

Ricky Steamboat vs. Harley Race WWF 10/26/86

MD: We've got a couple of matches from Richard Land's patreon. Go give him a look. This was extremely house show-y, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes it can be a really great thing. I'd call it broader than usual though, which is saying something for these two in specific. They worked towards a curfew draw and there's some clipping but we get a solid 20 minutes so certainly the brunt of the match. That I can't quite make it narratively come together for me was less about the clipping and more about how back and forth it was and just the way they seemed to be working it.

There were definitely some themes throughout: groin shots, Race's head, Steamboat hitting multiple knee drops or elbow drops in quick succession, both men trying suplexes or slams but having the other land on them, Race having a lot of cheapshot cut offs or reversals. They went back to these repeatedly. I'm not sure I could necessarily pull a narrative together out of it. Race was beaten down in his WWF run, but I think I might prefer him this way. I noticed it in 90 Puerto Rico too, how much I appreciated his savvy and timing and framing of things and how so much of what frustrates me about 70s or early 80s Race (especially in Japan) is just less present. It doesn't mean he didn't bump: he took a face first bump off the apron to the floor, but there's maybe less of a drive to big action too often and too early and instead a focus elsewhere. As for Steamboat, when he hit those repeated knee drops, the fans went absolutely nuts even past the point the ref pulled him off. He had a sequence whhere he climb the actual ropes to hit a fist drop and then went up for a splash off the top and despite them continuing to mention the curfew time, they had me for a minute that his momentum was unstoppable and that was going to be the finish (Race got his knees up). So yeah, maybe it didn't come together and maybe, given what they were going for and the setting, and just how good these two were at this point of their career, maybe it didn't have to.

ER: Remember when we didn't have a single Harley Race match on our DVDVR 80s WWF set? We didn't have any Terry Funk or Moondogs or hardly any Andre matches either so it says more about the process than any Race exclusion. It was the first set and the match selection process got air tight by the Other Japan Men. But it is a microcosm of many things that point to how little Race's WWF run is typically discussed when discussing his career. What is the highest regarded Race WWF singles match? That never got discussed as much during any assessment of his work. It's no surprise to anyone reading this that I love the final years of great wrestlers. Harley Race is a guy who always seemed old and his WWF run started when he actually was getting old. An old used up sack of shit 43 year old. Harley Race is my peer. I feel spiritually connected now to 1986 Harley Race's incredible bumping, leveled on the spiritual plane. Equals. Sore joints, delicate back, waking up with a surprise sciatic jolt down your leg, fucking 43 years old. 

My body has seen less abuse than former NWA World Champion Harley Race's body. He's a man you couldn't fathom in modern wrestling. This kind of man doesn't exist in the world today, and certainly doesn't exist in current professional wrestling. I like the Butcher as much as anyone but that's a guy who goes in on a brewery with his boys; Harley Race is the guy who would Tasmanian devil his way through that brewery. None of us have ever been involved in violent road incidents as pastime. Harley Race is an anachronism. A man sitting shotgun in a Seville pulling his 5th Bud off the ring one night is the same 43 year old scary uncle who was taking pratfalls like a barroom Buster Keaton a couple hours earlier. I cannot honestly fucking imagine living life as Harley Race. I can imagine being Cody Rhodes or Jey Uso pretty easily. But I can't picture what being Harley Race in the 70s was like. 

I think Harley Race is a beautiful wrestler. Let me know if this makes sense, but I think I love the way Harley Race bumps so much because he bumps the way Andre would have bumped if he was half the size. Harley Race hides this athleticism in plain sight the same way Andre would, by moving stiffly and falling differently than anyone else's physics. Don't let anyone ever tell you that Harley Race was old and washed during his WWF run. This was a house show main event. A large house in Maple Leaf Gardens in a main event going to a draw. Maybe people subconsciously don't view Race's WWF run because they were viewing him as a relic from the midwest making towns era and not a guy who worked in the TV era. I don't know. Harley Race was a relic by the late 80s, but his appeal as a relic was his entire appeal. He was never not a throwback to people because he was too real to be fake. This is a house show main event that contains no less than eight violent or unique Race falls, putting on a show for people who will never have any way to visually revisit the ballet again. 

Now we revisit, and we get to see Race in 86 was as good as Race in 74. I couldn't believe the way he moved. He's a large man making Ricky Steamboat's offense and pull look authentic, falling hard and getting up quick, falling onto his ass, being flipped onto his ass, beating up those knees in ways that make me now squint in pain at my spiritual peer. I don't know how much money I would have to be paid to face plant off the apron to the floor the way Race dementedly does here, but it's probably more than what Race made that night. What the hell were you doing man? Race could have very easily not done that and still sent fans home knowing they had seen Harley Race put on a show. Can you imagine seeing your dad fall this way? God. The energy this 43 year old peer has is something I don't think he was ever given proper credit for. Race as a go go go forebear of Kurt Angle is overblown. He looks like a guy who shouldn't be able to do the things he does, and that's a cool trait. If you somehow saw a man in your day to day business that looked like Harley Race, you'd know he was a tough son of a bitch. But you'd never in a million years think he'd be able to work for 25 complicatedly athletic minutes and build a rousing full match reaction for a draw. I was blown away at how he got up for everything and how hard he landed for even simple bumps. This is a man who only knew how to fucking go out there and perform in main events. Harley Race couldn't exist today. 

Ricky Steamboat vs. Rick Rude WCW 6/25/92

MD: This was far more conventional than the Race match despite being billed as no disqualification (mainly to cover Madusa shenanigans in the finish). It was almost comfortably so. Steamboat took over early with a perfectly timed and place punch to Rude's gut (well, abs) as he left it open. Theatrically perfect. He lost the offense by going for the climb up headlock takeover one too many times and ending up in a belly to back. Rude then worked over his back with various holds, Steamboat fought out, sold the back just enough to allow Rude to take back over with a cheapshot and then they repeated it.

It's formulaic but the formula balances when you have wrestlers who can make it work. It's time-tested and proven true and it worked great with this crowd. Steamboat's selling (not just in the moment but as he fought just to move despite the pain he was in) put it over the top. Rude finally went for a sleeper instead of something afflicting the back and Steamboat was able to come back more thoroughly. He nailed a teeter totter-ed tombstone but Madusa distracted the ref. He had her up for a press slam but Rude hit him with a chop block. Rude tried to hit the Rude Awakening but Steamboat reversed it and hit one of his own only for Madusa to put Rude's foot on the rope. When Rude finally got to hit it, Madusa pushed Steamboat's foot OFF the rope in a nice parallel moment for the finish. Again, none of this probably came as a surprise to anyone reading, but it all a great bit of business. Straight down the middle, smart, engaging, and well executed but not post-modern in the least. The Race/Steamboat match felt like abstract art compared to this.

ER: This was fantastic. I know WCW shows drew like shit in this era but fuck man the people watching the picture perfect way Rick Rude moved around Ricky Steamboat's pose holding karate timing. This was super athletic and hard worked, paced out great, and didn't waste a single action. There's so much waste in modern wrestling. You can tell when guys don't care about a kick to the stomach or gloss over a set up to get to the big conclusion. It's obvious, but you get mired in it when most guys do it. It's the style of the times. But seeing the boys do it, seeing Rude at the peak of his Pro Wrestling Being, and treating each Steamboat chop and punch in a way that moves his body theatrically yet appropriately. Every headlock and cravat and abdominal stretch and boxed ears and shoulderblock was treated like an important detail, and it's that reverence for every detail that made these Missouri Meatheads stay loud the entire time. I love how Rude's body gets shoved sideways by Steamboat's chops, how he lurches in place taking his punches. Nobody moves like Rude even though some have badly tried. Do you know how much godawful Dolph Ziggler/Kofi Kingston matches I watched that were all the worst versions of Rude/Steamboat? It doesn't matter how much they ape the match, it was weightless. Weightless, and nothing uniquely goofy like Rude flopping his arm while getting his head bounced off the top buckle, a man wrestling a big match for a small but intensely invested crowd. And the HEAT Madusa got and how ANGRY they sounded when her distraction meant Rude kicking out of the excellently battled over tombstone? Her hair looked perfect and her Barbie Party Dazzle dress couldn't have looked better. When she shoves Steamboat's foot off the bottom rope without the ref noticing? Bobby Heenan couldn't have done it better. 

El Hijo del Santo vs. Shocker Monterrey 10/21/01

MD: Turn of the 00s Shocker is a guy who I get but that I don't necessarily get the praise at the time for. He won a DVDVR 500 in 2002. Good punches. Lots of swagger. He's good, but that good? Everyone gets into lucha at different times. I push up against the conventional wisdom of the 90s and early 00s a lot because I got into it around 2012. That absolutely frames the way I look at Casas and it probably does Shocker as well. I first saw him during the RUSH feud and I might like that gnarled bastard more than this guy to a degree. It also means I jump at chances to see new matches from this period though. And this one gave me a lot to look at.

And you're not going to much better than a 30 minute Monterrey find against Santo. This was actually a kind of weird visual experience because there was confetti in the ring. Usually not an issue, but combined with the VQ, every far shot ended up looking overly pixelated because of it. Not a huge deal overall. This had time to breathe which meant they treated it almost like a title match, spending most of the primera on the mat. This was not smooth entries and exits and reversals though. It was gritty and uncooperative, snatching at limbs and rolling around. Even the stuff that should have been slick, like both men, legs locked, moving into a headstand to trade blows, didn't quite work. Not working was fine though because it just meant Santo landed on top of him and punched away.

After eating a big back body drop to the floor, a tope, and then Santo's finishing run off the top and with the clutch, Shocker took over in the segunda. He hit all the marks with gusto like you'd expect, a low blow, lifting Santo up at a two count, tossing him into the stands, doing a handspring into a pose. Santo was always trying to fight back, like the hero he was, but Shocker kept on top of him accordingly.

Everything came together in the tercera just how you'd want. Shocker tossed Santo back into the crowd, but he turned a whip into the post around, opening Shocker up. From there, he zoned in on the face (something the commentary said the women had previously begged Santo not to do). Shocker cut him off and they went back and forth til the end. That included a great battle over another Caballo Santo's corner tope, before we got an imaginative ref bump while Santo was in the tree of woe with Shocker misaiming the dropkick, another foul while the ref was down, a face-saving pin for Shocker and ultimately the DQ win for Santo. Everything was working exactly as it should have down the stretch with what came before it providing all of it gravitas. This actually helped bridge some of the gap with Shocker for me. Yes, he was in there against Santo but he did everything right, had lots of imagination, and covered it all with that patina of swagger and style. I'm not sure that makes him the best in the world, but I can see how certain people with certain preferences might have thought that around that time.

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Found Footage Friday: SANTO~! PARK~! MIL~! GARZA~! DAMIAN~! AGUILA~! CEREBRO~! FELINO~! SILVER KING~! FUERZA~!

IWRG Retro 28 IWRG Retro 3/8/2001

Halieen/Ryo Saito vs. Siky Ozama/Bestia Rubia

MD: Undercard lucha made fun more for the visuals of Halieen and Bestia Rubia clashing than anything else. Halieen is a little green man gimmick, like nothing I've ever seen, just really leaning into the notion, including some sort of weird Power Rangers collar. Bestia Rubia has a wolfman mask, but it'd be as if Bowie did Thriller instead of Jackson and turned into a Wolfman at the end, or if they made the Ron Perlman Beauty and the Beast ten years earlier and it was the people making Buck Rogers that did. They need to make more masks like these.

Saito and Ozama are fine and do simple straightforward stuff well enough. Saito has fire. Ozama's a bit of a jerk. But you spend the whole match waiting for the wolfman and the alien to get back in there and see lucha sequences you've seen a thousand times, but never from a wolfman and an alien. Pretty solid finishing stretch (this was 1 fall and went around 16 minutes) with the teams trading falls and trying for Last Rites style pin attempts. This was more of a novelty than anything else but you can't imagine these guys didn't get over just on their looks alone.

Hijo del Santo/Dr. Cerebro/Felino vs. Silver King/Fuerza Guerrera/Cirujano

MD: Star-studded, talent-packed trios here. Rudos ambush to start. At some point, Cerebro really gets opened up. I wouldn't say any rudo particularly stands out here. Fuerza's going to sneak in low blows as you will. Cirujano brings a bit more heft. Silver King looked sharp even post-prime (he had a very smooth figure-four in the primera, for instance). Things picked up in the segunda as Santo ran right through Fuerza for an initial comeback. I loved Cerebro's selling here as he was fumbling about punch drunk even in the midst of the comeback. The tecnicos got swept under again and Santo had to mount a second comeback before Felino was able to hit a moonsault on Silver King to set up Santo's big tope off the top and the caballo on Fuerza.

The tercera was short gave us a little bit of the pairings we had missed in the primera but was primarily cycling through until the big finish. Santo hit an absolutely mammoth tope suicida onto Silver King, just a head-crashing, head-crushing impact. It was so good that they reshowed it in super slow motion so that the action missed the finish (Cerebro getting a submission on Cirujano). I don't usually say that something's worth just seeing for the dive, and this has other things going for it too, of course, but people should see the dive.

Hijo del Santo/Mil Mascaras/LA Park vs. Hector Garza/Damian 666/Mr. Aguila Monterrey 2/3/07

MD: Very odd one on paper. Perros del Mal vs. three of the biggest stars ever, in 07 Monterrey. It's a night show and you can see their breath. Park's in blue. Mascaras has a matching bengal body suit and mask. We come in at the start of the segunda after what seems to have been a Perros beatdown. Garza immediately crashes and burns in the corner allowing Santo to pull his pants down and send him to the floor. Chaos ensues. Park is the guy to watch here, hitting a jumping body slam off the apron onto Damien, putting him through a table. Then he hits a suplex on Aguila on the floor splitting a plastic table. Finally he hits a huge dive through the ropes. Meanwhile, Mascaras hits a couple of ginger atomic drops and things and Santo more or less does his "vs the world" routine against everyone. The finish of the fall is Damien creating motion for Mascaras and ending up in an abdominal stretch.

The tercera starts with almost seven minutes of shtick, and it's Hector Garza shtick, and LA Park shtick, and your mileage is going to vary on this, but for me, it goes real far. It all hit. Garza gets funnier and funnier as the decade goes on but even in 07, he had a lot of the act down. They run a minute or two of Park trying to pull his tights down and Damien saving him until Garza accidentally kicks Damien and Damien pulls Garza's tights down and it's unapologetically hilarious. Then they get the ref in on the act with him doing dual spots with Park and the commentary say he looks like "a crazy panda from Chapultepec" and for a spotlight match like this, it absolutely works. Things broke down pretty quickly after that with Mascaras pinning Aguila and Park clowning Damien before Garza, a cooler lid in hand, chose to attack Park instead of Santo. Santo got it from him and threatened but Park turned around and thought Santo had gotten him and attacked Santo who was quickly pinned before Park laid down for Garza as well. It was a little silly, but Garza was the perfect guy to be in the middle of all this and I'm sure it set up something great (or didn't, because Monterrey). What a show. 

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New Footage Friday: NECRO! MONSTA! SANTO! PERRO! NAVARRO!

Perro Aguayo vs. El Hijo Del Santo Monterey 1990?

MD: Basically 10 minutes of perfect lucha libre followed up by another five of enjoyable bullshit. This is JIP but it's joined with Perro slamming Santo onto a table that he has leaning from the apron to the floor. Twice. If you're going to come in onto any moment, that's pretty much ideal. That basically ties off the primera. The segunda has a little bit of beatdown, Santo dodging a senton with perfect timing, launching a bunch of comeback dropkicks, moving out of the way so that Perro hits his second, and hitting two perfect topes, one out of the ring and one off the top before finishing him off with the caballo. Entirely iconic and super heated. Tercera goes to the floor with some revenge chairshots and a lot of bleeding from Perro before we get a perfect ref bump and a foul that scores Perro a win that got overturned. Post match Perro goes for the mask, with Stuka making the save and they make the best challenges possible, Perro with blood dripping down his face and Santo with his mask ripped. It would have been nice to have the first few minutes but what we ended up with was plenty of the absolute best doing what they did best.

PAS: This was pretty short as we miss the opening section, but what we got was frantic violent stuff. Perro is one of the great intense brawlers, and Santo is an iconic brawling babyface. Loved the pair of dives to finish up the second fall, Santo's tope is always amazing and sends Perro into the chairs. Perro bleeds, they exchange big shots. It felt more like a set up for an iconic match, the TV angle for the big blowoff, but it was a hell of a set up. 

ER: Even with who knows how much of the Primera cut, we still get 10 minutes of two legends doing the things you'd want them to do. These two are a great lucha yin yang, as Aguayo is so good at punching Santo around the ring, and Santo is one of my absolute favorites at staggering and falling all over ringside. Santo always brings a tumbler's artistry to getting his ass kicked, taking punches and tumbling backwards on dirty floors with legs flying up, getting tossed into a skidding down a table, always a second away from a quick comeback. I love Santo brawling comebacks, as he hits his gorgeous floating dropkicks to knock Aguayo to the floor, then hits that perfect tope to send Perro flying into chairs, and then sets up the in ring rope with incredible speed. I've watched so many different excellent Santo matches from years spanning four decades, and he's a guy like Negro Casas who I'm so used to the old awesome version that I always get surprised by certain movements from the young awesome version. I had to skip back several times just to gawk at how slick Santo looked while getting to the top tope before nailing that in ring tope. I couldn't get enough. Perro misses his own tope, crashes to the floor and gets a chair jammed into his neck by Santo, and again, this is 10 minutes of all the things you want to see. We don't have the full match, but oh well, you know you're going to want to watch early 90s Santo vs. Perro. 

Negro Navarro vs. Apolo Estrada Monterey 1991?

MD: I loved the front half of this. A little bit of BS from the outside and a little bit from the ref but most of it was Navarro showing off on the mat and then Navarro showing off with a beating. Great strikes used to high effect and just the amazing personality that we're used to from his later career. He's a top ten talent in being able to express himself in the ring and here he just has this easy, laconic way of laying in a knee or working a wound that's unmistakably him. The violence, punches or kicks or headbutts, seem both effortless and brutal all at the same time. It could be the footage quality but Estrada came off like a sort of scummy tecnico. When he did get a chance to fire back, it was with a low blow and quality revenge shots. It was a bit scattered though, not as concentrated as a big moment of transition might have been. The tercera built well, with Navarro staying in it due to outside interference until Estrada had some help of his own. That moment, more than the comeback, felt like a big swing of comeuppance and was pretty satisfying in a way a BS-laden finish generally isn't. Ultimately, this was a great opportunity to see Navarro do his thing in his prime in a singles setting.

PAS: Man this was awesome to watch, the first prime age Navarro where he looked as good as he looked in his fifties and sixties. He lays a super nasty beating on Estrada, throwing these little knuckle punches to his forehead busting up his brows, big knees to the face, and a great series of combos to the body and head. He also would throw in a submission or two which felt like an expansion of the beating, then a real show of skills. Estrada was fine here, he had a very Chicky Starr look for a babyface but he bled a bunch and his comebacks were fine. Finish was a bit Monterrey, but that is kind of baked in when you see the arena you are in.

ER: This was great, prime Navarro working slightly different than I've ever seen him work, with a cool strikes and stooging style. Early on we get one of those great Navarro moments when Estrada takes him down with a single leg, but Navarro quickly grapevines Estrada's leg and twists him. From there, Navarro basically works this whole thing as Flair, even throwing his punches similarly to Flair. The more I watched this the more I kept thinking of Flair coming through Monterrey in the early 90s and having this same match with Estrada, and this is the first time I've seen Negro Flairravo. I loved his short punches, Satanico-like right hands to the edge of the jaw, cool body shots, kicks to Estrada's leg, and tons of moments where he sets up cheating from his second. Estrada bled a bunch and made tecnico appeals, while Navarro would do rudo stuff like take a shot to the leg, pretend it hit his balls, but abandon it immediately when the ref wasn't biting. I was laughing all through the interference from the floor, and I'm too much of a lucha novice to recognize Navarro's second. But I loved him yanking Estrada out of a submission he was applying, then yanking his leg off the ropes over and over while Estrada kept breaking a hold. It paid off great with Navarro eating one KO shot from Estrada's second to set up a (in theory) Bombs Away. Watch this match while picturing Navarro as Flair, and I'm confident you'll love it as much as I did. 

 Necro Butcher vs. Monsta Mack GHW 10/20/06

PAS: This is a super sexy on-paper match up, two of the great 20th century indy crowbars wailing away on each other, and it totally delivers on that promise, even exceeds it. Both guys spend the entire match just escalating the force of the shots. Necro opens up with his classic straight right to the jaw and Mack fires right back, these are two guys who utterly refuse to stand down. Necro also takes a Necro in the mid-2000s level bump, as Mack hits a running powerslam right on the concrete, he also eats some gross thrown chairs which land legs first into his eye. Match ends with a bar fight, as they both throw increasingly psychotic shots at each other, until Monsta springs off the chair with a nutcase headbutt which looks like it dimmed Necro''s running lights. Mack just kind of pins him, and for a apparently blown finish, it is exactly what you want from these two guys. Awesome shit, loved every second of it. 

MD: Intimate, personable few-frills violence. Necro sets the tone immediately with punches up and down Mack's body. You can see flesh crater in the wake, a high-low assault that lets everyone know what they'll be getting, not like they had any real doubt. It never stops from there. Necro is resilient and unyielding but Mack's a monster and when ferocity is this close to equal, size is going to win out. The ambience helps make this, with a fan asking the ref about the rules at one point, with suggestions for violence from the crowd that pales to what they're actually going to do, with the camera man complaining about trying to get back over the rail when they head back to the ring; it's like a found-footage version of a bum fight, except for one of the bums is a 300 pound killing machine. There wasn't a lot of narrative here except for that. There was a moment of transition where Mack went to the top because he couldn't otherwise put Necro away and misses, but that just leads to the bar fight finish with two chairs, two men sitting and meeting one another with no filters and no remorse, and hubris like you'd never see elsewhere in wrestling.

ER: Any time any new vintage Necro is unearthed, obviously it needs to be discussed. There were few wrestlers in the world I loved more in 2006 than Necro Butcher. Experiencing the fun and violence and chaos of a live Necro Butcher match was the kind of thing I wished every wrestling fan got to experience. I saw him three separate times, including a few years after this match, in a San Francisco night club against big fat King Dabada (in a match that has never been released beyond a few highlights, so maybe that one will show up here someday. It was two big sweaty men brawling around a snug nightclub, falling onto fans, going up into the balcony, and I ran around the building following them everywhere. Who would love running around following Necro's Tasmanian devil crash. He and Mack beat the shit out of each other from first punch, and this whole match was filled with close fists to the jaw. The crowd brawling was as hard and reckless as you'd want, and Mack kept hitting Necro with expertly thrown chairs. Necro is usually the guy with the best chair throwing range in wrestling, and I liked how Mack kept beating him to that punch. Necro took some classic Necro hard spills on the floor including a brutal powerslam, and they built to a climactic punch off. I usually hate those sit and punch sequences, but I can't really argue with one that ends the match with a seeming knockout headbutt/punch combo. They punch each other one at a time, and then build to left-right combos, and then throw in headbutts. Mack laughs to himself before lunging in with a headbutt straight to Necro's jaw/orbital bone, then decks him right out of his folding chair. 

JR: If you believe in the idea of home turf advantage in pro wrestling, Necro’s home turf would be any building that looks like it previously held a now defunct indoor mini golf course. I have no expectations for this other than Phil sending it to me and saying it’s better than you expect it to be, which is incredible because I would expect this to be life altering. It’s a rare Necro match that features the vaguest hint of a feeling out process (and some trash talk) but it quickly shifts into exactly what you’d want from both of these people: wild looping punches that connect full force and a complete disregard for their own well being and the well being of others.

While there are some great Necro performances in companies that had actual cameras, there is always a wonderful quality when you find a Necro match like this. He feels like a cryptid, this monstrosity that should be caught on camera and if he noticed someone filming, it’s unclear what would transpire but it would probably be horrible for all involved.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t write about Mack being absurdly, preposterously reckless in his own right; throwing open chairs at Necro (with a fan sitting in the bleachers like 8 inches from where the chair lands), flailing and falling on top of people in the crowd. Through the first five minutes of this, each transition is essentially built around one person or the other doing something that pissed the other off a little too much. It’s a wrestling match with a few tiny fights breaking out for good measure.

While the match loses steam a little bit heading into the bar fight section, and the finish feels as though they were going for a surprise tko type thing that didn’t land as effectively as it would’ve if they had played it more straight, I don’t think anyone is watching this because of the narrative escalation or whatever. It’s exactly what someone would expect from these two 15 years ago.

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Lucha Worth Watching: Nuevos Dinamitas! A Mask Match! More Wotan!

El Cuatrero/Forastero/Sanson v. Blue Panther Jr./The Panther/Pegasso CMLL 11/8

ER: Man I am loving Nuevo Dinamitas! This is a quick but action packed 2 falls finish. Una caida is standard but with some notable moments from Dinamitas, with their cheapshotting and great pratfall apron bumps; segunda kicks into high gear, with Dinamitas doing one of their huge press slams, Cuatrero and Forastero bumping big into the crowd (with Forastero booting a fan in the face on his way over), all the tecnicos hit massive dives, and later we get the Dinamitas hitting badass dives of their own. I love how the Dinamitas bump around, the way they do classic lucha bumps like the backwards one through the ropes to the floor, or how they take ranas, or how they throw big overhand chops and cut low on clotheslines. It's a classic style done by guys in their mid 20s, making it look great. I'm thinking Cuatrero is clearly the best at this point, but as with the Oficiales several years ago I look forward to monitoring them to see who makes gains.

Delta v. Galactar MDA 11/26

ER: Man did this stink. It was really, really bad. But I think this qualifies as "worth watching", because I hated it, but saw that it had popped up on a few year end top 10 lists. I can't see any explanation for how this would end up in a top 10 of any given month, let alone year, but if you have a spare 40 minutes you'd like to spend watching a match you may hate, then you should watch this. Delta - who you know from being the 5th or 6th best man in a CMLL trios match - versus Galactar - a man whose post-mask career you won't bother following. Spoiler alert. We get a quick primera and quick segunda, with Delta starting the segunda with his amusing rope flip headscissors to the floor, and after that he shows that either he can't properly do another move without stumbling the rest of the match, or that Galactar can be awkwardly out of position for nearly every move. Man Galactar was bad. He was good at taunting the crowd. That's important. Otherwise we would have two guys doing moves in a vacuum, as Delta sure wasn't acknowledging the crowd much. Galactar would at least hit a move and soak in the boos or adulation. It was everything else he stunk at. It seems like he blew up pretty early, and would just be so damn lazy on so many moves. Watch him Irish whip Delta, and by Irish whip I mean he kind of pats Delta's lower back and Delta runs across the ring on his own. This happens at least 4 times. We get a few big dives, always almost completely missing. Galactar hits an insane moonsault to the floor, and mostly hits a moonsault to the floor. His head somewhat grazes Delta. Delta hits a bullet tope and falls mostly short. Galactar has a much easier bump falling back into the seats. 

We get a few moments of them holding each other for balance up top, nobody even pretending they were opponents, just helping each other maintain footing so they could perform another move that would get another 2 count, BUT then give strength to the person taking the move, enough strength that they can stand up and do their own move right back! I mean, not RIGHT back, because they have to lie motionless on the mat in between all of these 2.9zzzz. There must have been 10 total minutes of "lying on mat" time. So they overly sell these moves by lying motionless for so long in between moves...and then they stand up and don't sell at all! It's an interesting, and horrible, approach. Moves mean nothing as they become entirely too predictable, way too quick. There is no drama as you know each close nearfall will just result in the guy who barely kicked out and lied in an exhausted heap, stand up and do a move of his own. For about 20 straight minutes. We get a false finish, and you all can guess that the first move of the restart is what was going to get the win, even though the move looked no more or less devastating than any other moves that got 2 counts the rest of the match, only this one came after a 3 minute break where nobody was taking moves. This was a really shitty match. It was 35 minutes long. 35 minutes of shit.

Wotan v. Impulso WMC 2/11/17

PAS: My quest to find the second great Wotan match continues. This was overall pretty enjoyable, although it had some of the same garbage match elements which made Wotan v. As Charo a chore. Early on in the match Wotan hits this crazy twisting tope which sends both guys into the 6th row, totally out of control and awesome looking, they also have this cool section near the end where they just throw big shots , chops and headbutts on the floor which was pretty violent. Still this had a bunch of stuff with lightubes, some cool and some awkward looking, a spot with a spiked pineapple which looked dumb and the finish which had Wotan light a table on fire, which goes out by the time he hits a top rope move. Wotan definitely has a set of skills but it may take a Black Terry level guy to shepherd it together.

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All Time MOTY List HEAD to HEAD 2001: Honda/Inoue v. Hashimoto/Yasuda V. El Hijo Del Santo v. La Parka

El Hijo Del Santo v. La Parka Monterey 12/23/01

PAS: Obviously the truly harrowing amount of blood is going to lead off any review of this match, Santo looks like someone who got shot in the forehead with a nail gun, the blood pools underneath the mask, puddles all over the ring, and stains La Parkas alternate white jersey so badly he looks like he jumped off a high dive into a pool full of cherry Kool Aid. It has to be right up there with the bloodiest matches I have ever seen (excluding death match stuff where guys cut each other with glass shards and shit.) It would be well worth watching even if it was just a geek show, but there is a classic violent and awesome lucha brawl underneath all of that plasma. I am not sure what the rudo y technico dynamics of this match were, Santo dominates early (taking the MS1 role in this structure) and beats Parka all around the ring before beating him easily in the first fall. Parka gets the big momentum shift spot, as he sidesteps an in ring tope, and takes over, destroying Santo and unleashing the crimson tide. Parka is awesome as a guy on top, he is great at working a guy over on a ringpost, at one point he is smashing the back of Santo's head into the post, and does a bunch of other spots around it, including taking a big bump into it. Once Santo fires back we have a really dramatic finishing run, including some huge bumps by Parka, and some great dives by Santo including a ringpost tope which must send Parka 20 feet into the entry way. Finish has some regrettable Monterey ref horseshit (I remember buying Monterey tapes from Alfredo back in the day, and shitty ref nonsense would ruin 75% of these great on-paper matchups), but it wasn't so bad that it took away from the greatness that came before it.

ER: Oh man I love this match so much. In March 2002 my friends Jason, Devin, Brian and I drove down south to LA in Jason's RV for a weekend of indy wrestling shows. We saw Rev Pro at a Boys and Girls Club, Millenium Pro at a Jewish Community Center (where after his match Adam Pearce did a promo that killed the crowd, breathing hard and saying he was "blown up like the Twin Towers"), and a beyond fun lucha show at Franks and Sons flea market where Super Boy landed on me doing a chair breaking dive, and a La Parka/Shocker main event (before the show Devin pointed at a man in a mint polo shirt and Jordache jeans and said "Check out the fat dork in the La Parka mask........oh wait I think that's La Parka"). We would drive the rig around to all the wrestling shows, and in the downtime we would watch wrestling in the RV and play Nintendo 64. At the flea market I bought a few lucha tapes (and now that I think about it, Alfredo was probably the one I talked to and bought lucha from in person...), two different shows with Santo/Cerebro matches, and this La Parka/Santo Super Libre match, which said BLOODY on the printed out tape label. Getting to Franks and Sons a couple hours before a show is deadly because suddenly aside from lucha tapes we found ourselves lugging obscure trading cards and Brujeria t-shirts as well. Later that night, we all watched this match on the RV and couldn't really believe it.

First off, I have no explanation for the ending. I can't explain it and don't understand it, but I also don't care. One man pinning another wouldn't have made this match any better. This was about two men ripping each others scalps off and still managing to execute the most beautiful lucha libre. This is the bloodiest match I've ever seen, and even knowing that going back into it, I forgot how bloody it was. The primera has both men looking like specters, in their ghostly white and silver. 10 minutes later they would be dark red. But this isn't just men biting at heads, as the match would have worked wonderfully with no blood at all. You'd still get the great brawling, the incredible dives, Santo's beautiful combination of grace and violence; that we get an absurd amount of plasma just makes it legendary. You get all of Santo's great push kicks, his bullet topes (his big comeback one past the ringpost that sends Parka flying out of camera view is an all time lucha highlight reel spot), and you get Parka beating him bloody around Monterrey. The way Parka takes control by dodging a dive and just slamming Santo down to the mat on his way down was vicious....until you see all of the more sadistic things he does after. Both men get introduced to several chairs in the building, Parka beats him with a beer bucket , Parka flies into the third row off a tope, and it's all just spellbinding. Jason hasn't had that RV for a decade or more, and we've been on wrestling trips before and after that one, but that trip always stands out in my brain; and a big part of those memories was watching this match with some great friends in an RV, parked at a Wal Mart.

Z1 Tag Review

Verdict:

PAS: I am going to have to go with the lucha match. I love the Z1 tag, but this was such a spectacle, in addition to the great work that it beats it out.

ER: Big fan of that Z1/NOAH tag, but this match beats the pants off it. New champ.

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MLJ: LA Park vs Rush [7/31/2016]

7/31/2016 @ Arena Coliseo Monterrey (MDA)
LA Park vs Rush [supre libre]

This is how to start a morning. I don't think I liked this quite as much as the Elite spectacle, but it was more of a complete match (which in this case might actually be a drawback). The first six or seven minutes was just as good as the previous one, too, probably even better, with Rush having about four minutes of pure heat and then Park mounting a beautiful comeback. The huge highlights here were the tosses into the crowd (initial and then revenge; nothing in wrestling makes me happier than symmetrical revenge spots), the comeback spot itself with the giant cooler and Rush being a cocky asshole and paying for it, and maybe best of all, Rush in the crowd, after being tossed there, looking around, dazed and hurt, and wondering where the hell Park had gone (spoiler: Park had gone to get heavy, dangerous objects to hit Rush with).

The early brawling and one-sided beating was so great, with such personality and a larger than life, visceral feel that you can't help but compare it to the best brawls you've ever seen, be it Park vs Wagner or the Chicana classics from the 80s. That's almost a shame in 2016, because the system is just rigged against something being as good. This would have been better as a 2/3 fall match. It would have allowed for more distinct act breaks and almost forced that initial beatdown to be longer. They fit a lot into a few minutes but this would have been better if it was double the length with some sort of fall in the middle. The comeback would have been better punctuated with a fall as well. Instead, they seemed to make the conscious decision (after revenge weight belt shots by Park) to head back into the ring, to stop everything, play to the crowd, and then reset to charging at one another as they went towards a finish. There were similar self-aware elements of this in the Elite match as well, but there, they didn't halt the match so much as played along with the ref stoppage attempts and chaos of the scene. There they were masterfully conducting the crowd and raising anticipation for when they'd defy the authorities and charge at each other once again. Here it really stopped the flow of the match, and disrupted the feeling of hatred without good reason except for that this is just how things are done in this day and age.

So yeah, you can't help but compare it to what came before, especially the Elite match. I don't think this ever had that crazy, out of control feel. The strings holding up the match were just too thoroughly evident. There was more of a sense of calling spots and sticking to a plan. That worked great when they were brawling on the outside but not nearly as well when they made it back into the ring. For instance, Rush didn't even blink after Park apparently hurt his leg on a dive. He had a momentary advantage that you could chalk up to the limping, but he didn't look at it, didn't target it, didn't deviate at all from what they would have done if Park hadn't started to limp. In some matches, that wouldn't be a big deal, but if you came in expecting something as reactionary and organic as the Elite match (like I did, because that was so much of the draw of this rematch), that wasted opportunity was distracting. I didn't need three minutes of legwork, just a bit of mocking and a few dickish kicks to the leg, something like that, which Rush is so good at, generally. Park, if he was hurt, took Rush's dive like a champ, though. If he wasn't hurt, then his selling, which was great throughout anyway, certainly fooled me.

But anyway, watch this. It's gripping stuff. I'm just not sure it lived up to the level of expectation they set previously. They have amazing chemistry though, and thankfully, they're matched up four more times in multiman or tag matches in the next 30 days.

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2016 Ongoing MOTY List: Casas vs. Hechicero

1. Negro Casas v. Rey Hechicero Monterrey 4/24

PAS: This year I have watched a bunch of really fun on paper lucha matches that have been slightly disappointing, this however totally lived up to it's promise. The matwork opening up this match was sublime, Casas doesn't do a ton of matwork normally, but man is his stuff beautiful here, finding sensible awesome looking counters to all of the flashy stuff Hechicero was pulling off. I loved that rolling cradle hamstring stretch Hechicero pulled off, and adored how Casas's hamstring tightened up in the third fall costing him the match. This was a really great match, and they left some stuff on the table for a possible rematch. This is that lucha libre I love.

ER: This whole match was lucha heaven. Wrestling heaven? Possibly. This is my favorite mat work of the year, and I say that as someone who is fully in love with all of the things Gulak and Yehi are doing. This had the grace of the best lucha matwork, combined with some genuinely painful looking work, with all sorts of twists and sequences so neat that they could only be done by masters. They throw out plenty of neat counters, never get cute, always feels like two guys trying to slowly wreck joints. At one point Hechicero is working for a bow and arrow and Casas breaks free and kind of lifts out of Hechicero's clutches like Nosferatu rising from his crypt and all in one motion he twists while never letting go of Hechicero's ankle, and suddenly he's got a wrenching ankle submission. Both men were joined together throughout almost all of this matwork, like they were a one line drawing, with them moving in these weird rolling patterns. It was hypnotic. I could have watched for hours. 

Casas locked in one of the stiffer sharpshooters I've seen, locking in those legs and every time Hechicero would lunge for the ropes it would send Casas stumbling and bending Rey's back even more. Also loved the way Casas slowwwwwly yanked Hechicero's arms behind his back, the camera right in Hechicero's face with Casas over his shoulder, slowwwwwly pulling back like he was getting it right to the point of shoulder dislocation. The tercera was when they got on their feet, and then they wowed me in entirely different ways. Hechicero does some of his greatest strength spots, doing the one arm lift with the fun wrinkle of Casas trying to roll through it (something we just saw in Hechicero vs. Cerebro) and here Hechicero somehow blocks Casas's momentum before tossing him up and over. At one point they fight on the apron and man, I don't know if I've seen better apron fighting. It reminded me of Dundee/Koko in their scaffold match of two guys finding cool ways to work on a slender surface. 

This was a tight, extremely well executed match. The spots were gorgeous, but they weren't just getting up and moving to the next spot. They found fresh ways to tie things together, keeping things joined with Casas elbow blasts and Hechicero flat footed kicks to Casas's forehead. There's neat memory stuff like Casas screaming to the crowd for a clothesline only to turn around as Hechicero is kicking his clothesline arm. It's a masterclass. A Great match.


2016 MOTY MASTER LIST

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SLL's All-Request Friday Night...on a Tuesday

Super Muneco, Robocop, & Gran Houdini vs. Los Thundercats (Monterrey, Late 1980's)
Requested by Tim Evans

Fuck Sting. We've got Robocop.

Primera caida is mostly mat-based. After only knowing them for their bloody apuestas match with Trio Fantasia for so long, it's pretty cool seeing more of the technical side of Los Thundercats here. Tygra starts off with Gran Houdini. Houdini should be escaping from a lot of complex submissions. He doesn't, but he doesn't really get put into any in the first place, so I'm not sure I can blame him for that. Whatever. That's not what you're here for. This is what you're here for: Panthro and Robocop are up next, and man, you haven't lived until you've seen Robocop go to the mat. Seriously, he's actually pretty slick, I liked his nifty armdrag takedown, and he'd probably be the star of the match even if he wasn't fucking Robocop, but the fact that he's Robocop just makes it all the sweeter. Then Muneco and Lion-O square off, and now things gets wild. Honestly, Muneco is kind of a bastard. Everyone else seemed like they wanted a nice clean fight, and here he comes lolling his head around as he does and starting shit with people. Lion-O with the mask ripping. What would Jaga say? Still, this mean streak seems to work out for the Thundercats, as they take the first fall. Presumably, in the second fall, they tried to find a drug dealer to make into Monterrey Robocop 2 and sic on our hero, but the technicos evened the score pretty quickly, so no dice.

And oh, holy shit, this third fall. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the Robocop match falls down in it's third part. Muneco immediately starts fouling all three Thundercats in full view of the ref, and apparently, even in the 80's, the Monterrey officiating staff was composed entirely of match-ruining assholes, because this guy just lets it go for some reason. He gestures like he's thinking about giving the match to the Thundercats at one point, and he holds his arms out a lot as if to say, "Come on, Super Muneco, cut it out! You know I hate having to actually do my job!" For his part, Robocop does have the decency to be disgusted by his partner's behavior, and then there's a bit of decent brawling, but then it just turns into an orderly match again, and I really don't care about that. I want to see Robocop throw Super Muneco through a bunch of windows while reading him his Miranda rights.

In conclusion, despite the match having kind of a lame finish, Monterrey Robocop is awesome, and the perfect companion to Robert Cop.

NEXT TIME: A non-Meiko, non-Kana modern joshi match that doesn't suck? The gods must be crazy!

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