Found Footage Friday: HANSEN~! GORDY~! PARK~! FAKE KONNAN~! KENDOS~! MOCHIZUKI AND FRIENDS~!

Terry Gordy vs. Stan Hansen AJPW 6/8/90

MD: We only had around seven minutes of this previously and those seven minutes are pretty much what you'd expect, a super hardnosed finishing stretch between two monsters with gold on the line. I went through every single match we have on tape for 1989 and 1990 All Japan over the last five years or so, and, of course, we keep getting more, both in this format and with handhelds, but it's always enjoyable to push at the conventional wisdom and see how it holds up. I may have mentioned this before, but one of the biggest surprises of 1990 AJPW was how Baba dealt with the loss of Tenryu. This show obviously has Misawa vs Jumbo, right? And yes, there is a push throughout the year to promote Super Generation Army vs Tsuruta-Gun, but that often wasn't the main title scene for the back half of 89. When it came to the Triple Crown and the tag titles, it was foreign hosses up and down, Hansen, Doc, Gordy, Spivey, and even a bit of Bigelow thrown in for good measure. Off to the side you had Land of Giants and Abby and Kimala II, and even Andre. Big dudes. They couldn't present the larger than life force that was Tenryu, so they compensated with more conventional giants on top, all the while giving time for Misawa, Kawada, Kobashi to develop and become more and more credible. It was a giant bandaid and the flip flopping of the Triple Crown is a great example of it.

With the full footage, what we see here is a title match style fight between two absolute monsters. They work it like Jumbo would often work his title matches, on the mat and with holds, but with these two that meant wrenching of necks and grinding of faces, just brutal stuff, power against power, with technique only utilized to open the door for more rough and tumble hurting. It's twenty minutes of the two of them throwing every imaginable strike at one another, just laying it in and meeting each other half way. On some level, every time they dropped down to a hold felt like a momentary mercy, because at least they weren't absolutely smashing each other, but then you saw the hold and just how hard they were struggling against one another to put on the pressure or how to escape and you realize that there's no mercy in a world where there's a title between Hansen and Gordy. It all escalates towards moments of opportunity, Hansen hitting a lariat out of the corner as Gordy goes to the well one too many times, Gordy (who survived that lariat only by rolling out of the ring) ducking another wild flailing arm to sneak in his DDT. Ultimately, Gordy couldn't hit the powerbomb. It was never a case of a simple block though. It was Hansen going up and getting squashed in his attempt at self-preservation, bodies clashing and crashing in unique, visually striking ways. Gordy decided that the only way he could really get an edge on Hansen down the stretch was that corner clothesline, turning his body into a freight train thundering across the ring. Hansen hit that first lariat out of it, and then later on he got an amazing roll up nearfall, and in the end, stopped it just long enough to duck and create distance for a second lariat and the win. This was the sort of program that had to carry the company though, so post match Doc rushed into prevent the celebration and to destroy Hansen. Really an amazing title match now that we have all of it. People should go back for this.

PAS: Holy hell what a war, on first impression this felt on the level of the absolute best Gordy matches ever, and in the same tier as the Hansen All Japan bangers. It felt like these guys were both taking things personally almost from the beginning. There are some really grinding collar and elbow tie ups, and Hansen took Gordy into the corner and popped him hard right on his ear, and from that point on it felt like a series of escalating receipts by each guy, getting uglier and uglier. Every facelock, kneebar, stomp and punch felt like it was getting out of hand. The little stuff was awesome, and the big stuff was huge and incredible. Hansen takes an incredible bump and sell on Gordy's DDT and we get a couple of incredible Hansen lariats. Post match was awesome too as Hansen may be the only person on earth who can look momentarily credible brawling one on two against the Miracle Violence Connection.  This feels like as good as a discovery as we have ever had in this project, an all-time great match in a way which is just completely missing from pro-wrestling these days. Loved every second.

ER: It's wild to find out this late in the game that Misawa/Jumbo might not have been the best match at Budokan on 6/8/90. Getting the missing two-thirds of a Triple Crown Title change 35 years later makes me think that All Japan was suppressing the footage of the better match that night so as not to overshadow the then-biggest moment of Misawa's career, because now we know how special Gordy's transitional Triple Crown loss really was. Somehow, we are still finding matches that raise the stock of two different legends. This is one of the greatest Stan Hansen singles match performances of all time, and it might be the actual greatest singles match performance of Terry Gordy's career. The full footage gives us such a captivating fight between two killers, Gordy coming off as a man who has no plans on losing his new title, forcing Hansen into one of his finest ever vulnerable performances. Hansen sells more in this match than any match I've seen, and he is amazing at it; Gordy comes off so mean and so punishing that it gives us the gift of a Stan Hansen match where he's working from underneath for longer stretches than you've seen. What a gift. 

We never got to see all of the matwork in this special affair. That's always the first thing that goes. But Gordy and Hansen work the mat in a way we will never see again, and rarely saw then. This was not two men going for guard passes, this was two huge men shoving each other around on the mat, a constant struggle lock-up turning into fight from their bellies, both men laid out but applying full pressure to the other. Every quick headlock turns into more super heavyweight mat resistance, any attempt to pick up the other man turns into both men falling on top of each other and fighting more from a horizontal position. Te best part of the matwork? Each man punching the other's downed body from their knees, in a way that looked more like a alley mugging gone murder. More matwork should have Terry Gordy punching down from his knees like he's stabbing an intruder. 

Hansen flattens out on a Gordy attempt at a double leg, Gordy pancakes Hansen when Hansen's body goes out from under him blocking a powerbomb, a Gordy DDT spikes Hansen and drops his full weight on Gordy; Gordy can use Hansen's size and aggression against us, and it leads to Hansen more desperate than we ever get to see. How many times have you seen Hansen get slumped in a corner, resting on the bottom buckle to hold himself up. How many times have you seen Hansen absorb an impact and drop to his knees or stomach, fall on his face, fall over the bottom rope. Terry Gordy makes Stan Hansen fight like a desperate man and I can count on one hand the number of men who have effectively done that. Stan Hansen desperately pulls Gordy by the trunks from his knees just to bury his head in Gordy's stomach, behavior you never see Hansen need to ever entertain. Look at the way Stan Hansen scrambles for three different cradling leveraged pins, and how they're three of the best pins in any title match. Hansen was using his off balanced weight and trying to force and keep Gordy's shoulders to the mat in ways he never has to do with anyone else. Terry Gordy was one a higher plane and never flying higher, and we get to see a Stan Hansen who is actually coming up against something dangerous. 

But also? Stan Hansen rocks Terry Gordy's shit on multiple crowd gasping occasions. There might be nothing I love seeing more in pro wrestling than Stan Hansen kicking a downed man with his entire lower leg. Every Hansen kick to the length of any man's body gets the exact same celebratory reaction from me, a Guaranteed Oof. I revere Guaranteed Oofs. Their durability provides consistent comfort in ways we shouldn't take for granted. I would scream the ugliest scream of my life if Stan Hansen had kicked me in the chest or kneed me in the cheekbone the way he did Gordy, and I would be left with neck pain for life with either of his Out of Nowhere/Always There lariats. Any match that has a surprise Hansen western lariat that doesn't lead to the finish, is swung blindly, at eye level, making Budokan jump to its feet, it's a guaranteed great match. 

Stan Hansen doesn't work the lariat into any match for the hell of it. He has plans in store when the lariat works as a mid-match reset, a way to slow his beating and stop a hungry zombie. Terry Gordy loses his Triple Crown - he looked so fucking cool and convincing carrying those three belts, that a Japanese man was holding a large Confederate flag at ringside. How fucking weird is that? - three days after winning it, but he beat Stan Hansen so bad that Hansen had to use a Desperation Lariat. This was one of the greatest matches of the 90s, and of two guys who had eras of great matches. 

It will never be like this again.  

Kendo Star/Kendo/Monarca vs. Principe Island/Konnan/Hombre Bala CMLL 1990?

MD: Another week, another young Park match. These really do help the guy's already stellar case as he's fascinating to watch here. First of all, tho3 ugh, this Konnan el Barbaro, being not the Konnan but instead some tree trunk like big lug, was kind of just there. It was funny towards the start of the segunda where he was jumping up and down to feed all of Kendo and Kendo Star's flourishes but with no life to it. He did take a crazy bump that we barely saw upside down into the chairs during the comeback so good for him there. He also had a pretty swank furry jacket, so that was something. Hombre Bala matched up well with Kendo Star to start, and may have been a central pairing though it was hard to tell.

Really, we're watching this for Park though, and he was paired with Kendo and the two of them meshed perfectly. Kendo was a guy who knew how to be theatrical, knew how to play to the crowd, knew how to come off like a Star, and he knew how to get the most out of a petulant bastard like Park. They were able to rope run and feed for each other and everything else, but they had a great bit where they just got in each other's face, escalating from stares to slaps to pushes to a dropkick from Kendo with Principe Island charging back in only to slump in a fit of unreleased angst. The beatdown was fine, but Principe was outside for a good chunk of it. I did like the double stretch they took the fall with, like a rudo version of la estrella. The comeback came when they were really laying it in on Kendo with a triple team and saw some big bumps like the one from Konnan. Finish was clever, as the refs were tied up with the other four doing some spots in the corner and Principe slipped in a brutal foul on Kendo. It got overturned post match but everything stayed chippy and hot. The Kendo vs Principe Island rivalry was prime for a hair match. Again, he was just so emotive and seething with upstart energy in these matches. It's crazy to think that he had most of the rest of his career as a mask and didn't lose a bit of the charisma.

Masaaki Mochizuki/TARU/Takashi Okamura vs. Masakazu Fukuda/Kamikaze/Hiroyoshi Kotsubo WYF 3/20/1997

SR: This was the first match between these 6 guys. All their matches are great, and this is in Korakuen Hall and feels especially wild because WYF fans hate the karate guys at this stage, so it feels ultra heated.  Match was pretty much the perfect mix of shootstyle and WAR-esque potatoes/scrappiness with that trademark WYF levels of unpolished, dirty fighting. Early goings were really good as WYF guys kept their opponents grounded in scrappy fashion. Even Kotsubo looked really good as he kept taking downs with explosive shooting takedowns, at one point even leading to both guys tumbling outside and brawling on the floor.  Kamikaze is impeccable in these matches, kicking people in the face, hammering a guy with punches and taunting the karatekas further. Fukuda also looked great - just hurling dudes with suplex that looked insanely forceful, and trying to crush peoples face with dropkicks and stomps. Buko Dojo guys started breaking out their kicks later and it's everything you can ask for. There's a pretty great dive sequence, Mochizuki flying at people with kicks, Buko guys breaking up pins and submissions with nasty kicks etc. Even the Kotsubo vs Taru matchup which is really shit on paper ends up being good. WYF was striking gold with  this feud in 1997, and I'm so happy we get the beginning of the feud, really heated and violent from the get go.

MD: As familiar as Sebastian is with this stuff, it's a stretch for me. It's good to stretch though. If this is new to you, here's a cheat sheet. On one side, Taru has the shinier black vest. Okamura has the mullet. And Mochizuki has the white letters on his back. On the other, Kotsubo has the singlet, and Kamikaze has the frosted tips for his hair. That's about all you need along those lines. What I love about this is that it seems to encompass just about every style of pro wrestling except for hiding the object. It's presented, more than anything else, as shoot-style adjacent, with a lot of strikes and struggles for holds, but the fact it's a six-man (and I love tag wrestling in this setting) forces pro wrestling nonsense on it right from the get go; I'm talking controlling in corners and coming in to break up holds or even to join them. You'll have guys rolling around on the mat or throwing kicks and then immediately Mochizuki will be training slaps with Kotsubo or doing dropkick/spin wheel kick spots where they crash into each other. It takes itself seriously and treats everything with weight and respect while still building up to over the top stuff before dragging it back down to more fundamentally sound grappling or sparring. Fukada will toss people around. Things will spill out to the floor. The crowd pops for just about every piece of impact. And it all builds to dives, top rope moves, and bombs. They're able to layer it throughout the match and put weight behind the impacts, underpinning it all with animosity, so it never quite feels like excess no matter how much they squeeze into twenty minutes. 

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Found Footage Friday: EIGEN SIX MAN~! PARK~! BANDA~! ESTRADA~! REYNA~! MIGHTY ATOM~!

Harry Monte/Farmer Spatts vs. Billy Curtis/Cowboy Clatt NWA Hollywood 5/23/53

MD: This was a midget's match that goes about 25 minute. It was announced at the start as "the miniature mastodons of the mat, the mighty midgets." These guys all had gimmicks upon gimmicks. On one side was Farmer Georgie Spots from Hogwash, Arkansas, and "The Mighty Atom" Mr. Harry Monte. The other side had Cowboy "Pee Wee" Paul Clatt and Hollywood Billy Curtis. And of course, the Kansas Whirlwind, Olympic Champion (1932) Pete Mehringer was the ref. This was a little bit a tale of two matches. When Clatt and Spatts were in there, there was more comedy. Spatts was barefoot, for instance, and that came into play with stomps. There were bits where they ended up on top of the ref or accidentally on his back giving him a chinlock. While not exclusive, when Monte was in there, it did feel a little different. He was the champion apparently and seemed pretty skilled. Look, I'm never going to say no to an old midgets match. 

A lot of the time the comedy hits and they show a ton of commitment. I've seen a lot. This looked different than most. I'd almost explain it like with this analogy: when Monte was in there, more so than any US midget match I've ever seen, it felt like a minis match relative to the lucha of the day. That is to say, it was faster, sprintier, sprawlier. When it was Monte and Curtis in there, it had a wild energy of them going for holds and advantages. It lacked the precise technique of shootstyle, maybe, but had the same feel of jockeying for openings. There were moments of levity but in practice they were presented with more dignity than you'd expect, especially given the slew of gimmick names that started the match. Even the post-match interviews were more like what you'd expect from any of the other names of the time, talking about issues with the ref and recovering from injury and vying for the title. I like comedy spots as much as the next guy but much like some of the women's matches from this era show us a potentially different path, this did as well. There's some alternate reality out there where guys like these paved the way for a division even snappier and more exciting than junior heavyweights. 

Kenta Kobashi/Mitsuo Momota/Rusher Kimura vs. Haruka Eigen/Isamu Teranishi/Motoshi Okuma AJPW 10/20/89

MD: All of the Eigen/Okuma stuff is fun but it's especially fun when Rusher's in there. You end up seeing this dynamic so many times that you cherish the familiar and appreciate the variation. This had both being a six man with Teranishi hanging out with the shitheels. I've seen Teranishi on the other side as someone who would put Eigen in his place, but it was nice to see him as part of the problem, not part of the solution. And of course, you have Kobashi, one who's ever closer to finding himself, on the other side. That said, there was plenty of familiar here. It started with Eigen shaking Teranishi and Kobashi's hand but refusing to shake Rusher's. Then when Rusher took offense, he pushed him. They locked up, immediately got in the ropes, and Eigen slapped him before taking him back to his corner and getting out of there. Being an AJPW six-man, there was the usual cycling. You'd rarely see a guy get tagged in before everyone else on his side had their turn. 

The pairings were more situational than hierarchical. Rusher eventually tagged out but Okuma could take back over at a moment's notice with a headbutt. There was plenty of headbutt fun in general, whether it be Eigen running someone in to Okuma's head or all the bad guys recoiling in fear as Rusher's indomitable head overcame them. My favorite bit was when they kept laying them on until Okuma finally got him from behind and knocked him down and did a little dance in victory. Eigen's crew were very good at pulling things back into their corner and they even pulled out the triple clubber at times. When Kobashi got in there, he came in hot and got to do a bunch of things before Teranishi got to smack him down enjoyably. Teranishi is a guy who just hits a little harder despite his relative spot on the card. Eigen got to hit the spit spot shots on Kobashi and never got comeuppance along those lines, though Kobashi did toss him off the top and then set the stage for Rusher to come in and mow him down for the win. This is just some of the most watchable wrestling imaginable, guys who were credible and dangerous and could go but that were just having fun out there with themselves, each other, the crowd, us thirty-five years later.

ER: I knew how much I really truly loved wrestling when I consciously noticed how much I love old man All Japan matches. I love them. I've always loved them. I loved the first old man match I ever saw, a concept I had never heard of before but understood and fell in love with instantly. I was a teenager buying All Japan tapes in the mail within my first two months On The Internet because Mitsuharu Misawa was #3 on the PWI 500 that year behind Steve Austin and Goldberg, and I owned Steve Austin and Goldberg shirts that I purchased from Millers Outpost, but had never heard of Mitsuharu Misawa. Or Kenta Kobashi, who was just a couple spots behind Misawa. I clearly needed to see All Japan Pro Wrestling, without actually knowing how to see it or what specific matches to seek. But I found someone selling AJPW Comm Tapes - whatever those were - and sent them an honest to damn god money order for them. I went to the post office to get a money order to buy Acclaimed Japanese Wrestling over the internet. The first All Japan tape had clips of old men spitting at the crowd while people covered themselves with newspapers, and then all of those old men headbutting each other. This was not the wrestling that I expected, but I was so surprised by All Japan old men that I loved all of them, and there has not been a time since that my love for them stopped growing. 

I call them old men, but they seemed a lot older when I was a teenager. Now I am the same age as Haruka Eigen in this match, and only a few years younger than Rusher Kimura and Motoshi Okuma. These are much younger versions of the old men that I saw, but the Old Man All Japan match is a style as much as it is a literal description of a match. This was men, peers of mine now, working a match in the style of Old Tough Men and it just always looks like a 4 star match to me. The pace goes quick, there's never any kind of slow down in the action, the pairings cycle through constantly (outside of an extended beatdown of Kimura, when you think the entire match might be building around cutting him off from his team, as many of these matches went), and you have the cool element of a 22 year old Kenta Kobashi who was nowhere near who he would be in just a few years. 

As these things tend to, it all just broke down into old men headbutting each other harder than you or I could handle. Okuma has been a real revelation for me over the last couple years, here at the end of his career and never cooler. He brings the headbutt thunder to Rusher and doesn't let up, headbutting him from the apron and then running back to his corner to tag in so that he can continue headbutting Legally. Everybody headbutts in this match. Eigen comes in to sneak attack guys with headbutts and keep momentum on his team's side, Okuma headbutts any time he gets the chance, Teranishi and Momota throw headbutts of their own to keep with the spirit, and eventually everyone gets silent when Okuma headbutts Kobashi right in the nose and mouth. Momota as a fired up babyface is beautiful, tagging in and going nuts on the heels with open hand chops. "You want to headbutt my fucking friends? You want to hit people? I'll fucking hit people. I'll hit all of you!" Eigen bends Kobashi back over the ropes and hammers away at his chest, setting up his own spit spot before the spit spot existed. Men headbutt each other in the back of the head, Okuma runs harder into clotheslines than he runs his own head into other skulls, and Haruka Eigen might be the greatest shit stirrer in wrestling. Another low card old man classic. 

Remo Banda/Rudy Reyna/Mano Negra vs Principe Island/Meztizo/Jerry Estrada CMLL 1989/1990

MD: The opening interview mentions Christmas just happening and there's some mention of 1990 so I wonder if this was just in January maybe? Again, there are some great guys in here. This is Park pre-Park teaming with Jerry Estrada in all of his glory against Super Parka/Volador pre-those things, exotico-turned-tecnico Reyna (who remains awesome in all of this footage) and they get a ton of time to have a very complete match. My biggest complaint is that it was just a little unfocused, but it was a lot of great things that maybe never came together; there was still plenty to like. For instance, the opening pairing (and posturing beforehand) was Remo Banda vs Estrada, which made a lot of sense given they had similar teased out hair and style. They worked well together. The other pairings were good, though I would have rather seen Reyna and Principe matched up. Mano Negra was just sort of there and I don't have a good sense of Meztizo even after watching this. 

The second round of pairings gave us Principe vs. Remo Banda which is a rematch from Panama and just like there, they came off like sparring partners who trained so hard against each other they could to an extra gear with wilder stuff. Even just for a minute or two it was great to see them do their thing against each other again. Likewise, the bit we got of Estrada vs Reyna was very good and full of motion and shtick. The segunda started with some really wonderful, imaginative work where Remo Banda fought off all the rudos, full of a bunch of clever spots you don't see all that often. The beatdown, once we got there, was gnarly stuff, with Principe dragging Remo Banda around the ring or stepping on his hair and pulling his arms up, and Estrada just beating Reyna around ringside with great punches. That made it all the better when Reyna started to come back with the best punches that you'll see this week. It devolved into chaos, leading to Estrada exiting the ring with one of his insane signature bumps and the tecnicos finishing off the remaining rudos. This didn't become a bloody war but as fairly conventional matches go, it had a lot of what I usually look for.

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Espectáculos Promociones Panama: The Best Panama Match Yet? Parka! Sandokan! Celestial! Emperador! Idolo! Cirujano! Blood! Chaos!

Sandokan/Celestial/Emperador vs. Principe Island/Cirujano de la Muerte/Idolo

MD: Sometimes I'm cautious on these, because I'm just one voice, but in talking this one over with Graham, my initial thought was that this could have easily landed in the top 20 of the best of the 80s DVDVR Lucha set (you know, if anyone had voted on that). And that's probably too conservative. It's really, really good. If you guys have been on the fence on watching these, well, obviously we think it's all been a worthwhile exercise, but this is especially one to watch. This is a classic, no doubt about it.

Structurally, it's as straightforward as can be until the end. Exchanges, tecnico advantage, rudo beatdown, big comeback, finish. But it hits on all of the marks. Sandokan is such an ace and such a star. It's unquestionable here and he really overachieves even compared to what we've seen him in so far and my personal expectations for him. He's not just a slugger with a couple of big spots (though he IS a slugger with a couple of big spots), but he's on for the entire match. He kicks out multiple variations on armdrags and handsprings and one-against-two bits that I wasn't expecting at all. Everything looks smooth. Most things feel competitive. Even when he's obviously getting some assistance from the rudos, it still looks like he's switching his positioning about and working for it. During the primera exchanges everyone looked good except for maybe Idolo. His stuff was just a bit looser and he barely even eseemed to try in his first one with Emperador. He's supposed to be even a bigger star than Sandokan but we just haven't seen it in the footage yet. Meanwhile, Principe (being LA Park, of course) was flying all over the place and Cirujano was basing big for Celestial and others. Everything built to a raucious stretch of tecnico advantage including a huge wheelbarrow suplex by Sandokan.

The beatdown followed in the segunda, with Idolo getting an advantage in the ropes. They paired off with each rudo using different styles of offense. Idolo had big pro wrestling flourishes, slamming a head into the turnbuckle or leaping feet first onto shoulders in the corner. Cirujano just clubbere down and leaned on people. And Principe was a whirlwind of violence, much of which we miss as he was demolishing Sandokan on the ground. They closed this out with some stretches and a missile dropkick by Principe.

In between falls, Principe clobbered Sandokan with a chair and started to inhale his blood to spit it up into the air, which is about the most glorious and horrific rudo stylings imaginable. To say that Park understood this stuff from a relatively young age would be an understatement. He dove fully into getting as much visceral and visual heat as he possibly could. The match had started with trash strewn everywhere and it made for the perfect setting for this mauling.

Which, of course, led to a spirited comeback, Sandokan firing back and really working for it on the floor, with the crowd ebbing and flowing around him in excitement. We couldn't see everything but we could feel it all, and what we saw (with it seeming like Sandokan was clocking Principe with a shoe) was all great. Just when it seemed like the rudos were going to get their bloody comeuppance, Cirujano and Idolo snatched away Emperador and Celestial's masks and they had to scurry to the back, leaving an momentarily ascendant Sandokan to fight alone, to get the start of a visual submission on Principe, but to ultimately get swept under, absolutely clobbered by what looked to be a plastic drink holder. While I wish we could have more easily followed the action on the floor, if only because Park had a tendency to do outrageous things and take wild bumps, this had absolutely everything I would want from a match like this. The Principe Island vs Sandokan feud is such a lost classic.

GB: I honestly think Matt is underplaying just how great this match is. When he shot the idea to me that this could potentially make the top 20 of the DVDVR 80s Lucha set I said he was underrating things. This is easily the best match we’ve had so far and definitely something to go out of your way to see. An absolute whirlwind of a performance between Sandokan and Parka, who is a fresh 22 years old here. Over on the GWE Discord, this match actually prompted a little discussion that La Parka might actually need to be investigated further as a top 20 GWE case because he has all of these little pockets of matches throughout his career where he really looks like an all-timer. From this, in mid 1988, to the Villano IV match last year, we have 34 years of Parka being an absolute beast of an asskicker (though, albeit, he’s more the acrobatic chickenshit getting his ass steamrolled in Panama but you get the gist!).

Those firmly in his camp will protest that he’s more than just the “dancing skeleton” most mainstream fans know him as. I agree. However, there’s an element to that which makes Parka’s case ever the more compelling. He’s one of the very few wrestlers that can blend comedic wrestling and psychopathic brawling without the one smudging the other. In fact, he might just be the all-time greatest at it. Case in point, he sees his ass on a big tumble to the floor about 9 minutes in here. Fans swarm around him, he’s disoriented and lost so he plays into the moment. He hobbles to the wrong corner, where Sandokan is lying in wait like a shark smelling blood. He gestures his arms into the air with a groaned “dammit!” before a fan has to escort him back to the right side. This all goes on in the background of the match while Idolo and Celestial are trading moves in the ring. One of the biggest legends in Panamanian history, and a 22-year old Parka is stealing the audience’s gaze away from him. Unreal. It was this “IT factor” that helped Parka change a nothing 2-week stay in Panama to a 2-month major programme.

Looking at the history, the Parka in Panama matches are seemingly all across the board so it makes things a little difficult to recap and piece together (I’ll get to a potential stopgap later). It’s also promoted by Junior Mina’s Arena Panamá Mexico so there isn’t much out there.  However, what is crystal clear is that this is Parka’s debut match in Panama and we’re blessed to have gotten it as it kicked off one of the best feuds we’ve never heard of.

From interviews and matching up cards, Parka lost his mask to Sandokan a week before Father’s Day in 1988 at the Neco. That squares up with the 11th June date listed on the (very much incomplete) Sandokan Luchawiki profile. The next week, however, forces me to realise I had the Galvez/Solar feud down to the wrong year. Solar was in Panama in 1986 but feuding with Castro. The Galvez feud kicked off on the 17th of June 1988, the Friday after Parka lost his mask. Interestingly, Solar returned to Panama on the 17th in a tag at Neco opposite the team of Sergio Galvez and Blue Panther. The relation to the Park? Well, the Park/Sandokan feud would intertwine with the Galvez/Solar feud at this point with the tecnicos (Solar/Sandokan) having to stave off the violence of hell’s rudos (Galvez/Parka), a violence that Solar lamented would be him “encountering death”.

Despite losing it, Parka would still don his mask to interviews as a protest to the decision. He also carried with him a tape of the ending to the mask match in which he claims a conspiracy took place. It was all jingoistic bias on the part of the referee, who he says made a calculated, perhaps premeditated, “mistake” to allow Sandokan to win. Much protesting and epithets to Sandokan’s race later, Parka would remove his mask as he was doing so graciously as a “gentleman” that respected the traditions of lucha libre (and not because he agreed with the loss). Sandokan, Parka espoused, had tapped to his hold. All of Panama could see it, and their ruptured hostility was proof enough. The whole of Arena Panama could see it, except the one man that needed to most - Carlos Linares, the referee.

I’m unsure how much time had passed before the title matches against Super Parka and Sandokan but Parka now was scalped. I haven’t seen flyers nor articles to corroborate, but it appears that Super Parka took La Parka’s hair at some point in Panama. Weirdly, La Parka was billed as the older brother of Super Parka (his legitimate uncle). It’s one of the weirder tropes of Panama where names/gimmicks are sacred above logic, and once one gimmick has been debuted everything must follow suit. Much like Gemelos Infernales (Hell’s Twins) being a trio.

To my strained eyes, it appears that Parka’s hair is a smidge more grown out in the title match against Sandokan than it is against Super Parka. Again, this I’ll get to later. By this point, Super Parka is a tecnico, and can be seen as Sandokan’s second in some of the encounters. For Parka, he would be seconded by El Idolo and Nacho Vega in the mask match (the latter known to us already as Mascara Negra) and Exterminador as well as Emperador in others. The latter would be the one to demask Super Parka in Panama a few weeks earlier. Another quirk of Panama would tie in with the Parkas - that being how forgiving fans were of wrestlers. In the Emperador feud, Super Parka was the clear heat-seaker. So much so he was once physically attacked by fans on his way to the ring during the build to the Emperador mask match. This led to the lucha commission forcing action and having the national guard accompany wrestlers to the ring at each show. Yet, here, against Parka, Super Parka was the tecnico. The crowd favourite. A Mexican proudly waving the flag of Panama, claiming them as gracious hosts. In reality, a “turn” only took a handshake after the loss of their mask or hair. An acceptance that they weren’t the better wrestler that day and a thanking of the fans for coming out in support of the fight. A mask/hair loss was Panama’s reset button. That’s all Super Parka needed as his get out of jail (hospital) free card to curry favour with the locals. Note La Parka’s antagonisms and vitriol when he loses his mask against Sandokan. It directly flew in the face of what was expected of him. He was an out of control brat and he played that up perfectly. Ricardo Pitti would label La Parka as “volatile” and “excessively energetic”. The absolute perfect foil to the fiery babyface Sandokan.

As for the title in question, Parka is the current title holder of the UWA Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship and Panama’s Middleweight Championship (the title he brings to the ring). The UWA title was never officially recognised by the UWA but it was seen as a title of significant value in Guatemala (given legitimacy by local legend Astro de Oro being the first challenger and then first to capture the title in 1987). Parka beat Astro de Oro for the title on July 24th 1988. A month after Sandokan took La Parka’s mask. As mentioned, Parka was fully expected to be a Guatemala staple at this point, having finished off his short visit to Panama. However, he got over so quickly as a heel that he found himself oscillating between fighting Sandokan in Panama and Astro de Oro in Guatemala - the two biggest legends of South America at the time.

It’s here that I can potentially offer a little bit of a quickfix to the gaps in our Parka in Panama programme. Select Mexican wrestlers would travel around South America honing their craft and finding themselves in quite familiar programmes wherever they went (notably so with Parka). Thus, I’m going to outline the feud with Astro de Oro in Guatemala. What lines up lines up, what differs differs but it’s all hopefully, at worst, a look into very young Parka’s start and, at best, a glimpse into the bigger picture of the feud in Panama.

The feud began with Parka coming into Guatemala as the cocky upstart, bludgeoning an unexpecting Astro de Oro and Arriero de San Juan into pieces in his debut on the 10th of July 1988. He was accompanied by Verdugo, who had a massive chip on his shoulder after his then teammate, Arriero, turned tecnico on him. Despite the heat between Arriero and Verdugo, it was Parka that took things a step beyond by cutting up Astro and leaving him a bloody mess on the mat. Parka’s win, and performance, had him splashed across national newspapers. As quickly as he got over in Panama, Parka was a massive exclamation point in Guatemala now. He had, thus, quickly earned himself a title shot against Astro de Oro (which would play out after a bloody mano a mano “wager” shortly after the tag debut). This wager was a relatively stakeless match (in other words no titles or masks on the line) but was about betting their pride, a “put up or shut up” if you will. Astro de Oro had never been defeated in this match and, yet, Parka beat him. This, in theory, plays sister to the Sandokan/Parka singles Matt has already covered with the only caveat being the roles are reversed (Sandokan absolutely destroys Parka and not the other way around).

As the record books show, Astro de Oro lost their title match. Again making Parka the first luchador to do so. Much the same in Panama with Sandokan, the pride of Guatemala had been made a fool by the punk, La Parka. Parka, greedy for more, offered an all-in with Astro. If Astro ever wanted to see the title again, he would have to bet his mask (and permanent retirement) against it. Astro, who already had his tail between his legs seeing no other choice, agreed. While Parka dropped his mask to Sandokan before the title match, I believe the stipulation for the Sandokan/Parka title match was of a similar nature.

In opposite to Panama (though to the sentiments of the DQs), the referee in the mask match here was firmly in Parka’s back pocket. Parka blindsided Astro in the corridors of the arena on his way to the ring, incessantly beating him with a chain until he burst open with blood. As Astro attempted to make his comeback by grabbing the chain from Parka, referee César Rivas confiscated the weapon. While Rivas was distracted, Parka faked a foul which had disqualified Astro, leaving him a fall behind. The fight would continue, as both men bathed in blood by this point. Parka tried multiple times to escape but he, and his mask, would fall to a merciless, rope-aided piledriver by Astro - much like he would to a merciless rope-aided electric chair from Sandokan. Adolfo Tapia Ibarra, the Island prince, the assassin, the skeleton of death, had lost his mask but he had found himself. And so the whirlwind of violence we’ve come to love was unleashed.

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