Found Footage Friday: BATTLE OF THE BAM BAMS~! Los Cadetes Del Espacio~! MARTINELLI~! JARQUE~!

Tony Martinelli vs. Gregorio Jarque New Jersey 1959

MD: New Wrestling Films find. Jarque was from Spain and I imagine if he was in there against Tony Oliver in Barcelona around this time, we would have gotten something special but there wasn't a ton to see here. This was a Bill Stern reel entitled "Rasslin' Ref" and the match was pretty much built around the ref getting rolled on top of during pins and then jawing with Martinelli. Solid stuff but nothing spectacular and a pale imitation of what was happening (even the comedy work) in France at this time, obviously, but I liked the consistency of what they were trying to do at least. They had a nice bit of trading mares towards the end until the ref got crushed one last time and just called it a draw.

Terry Gordy vs. Bam Bam Bigelow TWA 1/27/90

MD: This was a third Battle of the Bam Bams that we didn't know was even filmed but here we are. They had a strong sense of just what they had here and made every lock up feel like a clash of the titans. I expect Terry Gordy in 1990 to bump around and create motion a lot more and he did but only when he was charging towards Bam Bam in order to knock him down, just that extra oomph. He worked a little bit bigger than he did elsewhere in the year to signify the titanic struggle for the crowd. Bam Bam met him equally, as he's another guy that you expect to move around a bit more, and I don't just mean the cartwheels. But they kept this grounded for the most part, selling every knockdown as a big deal and working up to the next piece of contact accordingly. Despite this video being almost twenty minutes with very little before or after the match, there were some annoying cuts that made it hard to tell how thing went from Point A to Point B but you definitely got the overall idea. They worked in a chair battle at the end which gave everything a nice crescendo before the inevitable non-finish. 

ER: This is really exciting for me. We finally got the best version we're ever going to get of the Battle of the Bam Bams. 1990 was the only pre-coma year they fought and thus was the best time for them to ever cross paths. The best possible Gordy/Bam Bam match would probably have been either 1993 or 1987, but we know those don't exist and this is the best it's going to get. Also this match was not at all what I expected. I did not expect these two behemoths to go into Philly and work a slow-paced (not in a bad way) minimalist heavyweight clash. It goes on a bit too long but there was weight behind everything they did, and what's wild is it went on so much longer. There was a "20 minutes have elapsed" call at the 12 minute mark of the video meaning the 2-3 cuts to that point meant 8 missing minutes of footage (depending on how much the ring announcer was kayfabing the time call). At 12 minutes in, the match was already feeling a little long, but I love the majesty of the two largest men lumbering through a minimalistic 28 minute match at Temple University, an unlikely great wrestling venue. I love this venue as a Wrestling Venue, with those steep bleachers climbing up so high I don't think we ever saw the top. Both men took some great bumps, spread out well through the long run time. 

I loved Gordy's counters to Bammer's kicks and enziguiris, catching his leg and making him hop around, shoving him off into off balance out of control stumbles. Gordy takes a big back bump through the ropes to the floor and Bam Bam saves his biggest for the end of the match when Gordy head of steams his way through him for a clothesline to the floor. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised that Gordy made more interesting bump choices than Bam Bam but I am. The match peaked when the two giants squared off with chairs. Bam Bam swung a chair around more compellingly than almost any wrestler I've ever seen, in a way I have never seen him do. Bigelow was like an expert sign spinner, decades before that job existed. Bam Bam swung his chair around like a balletic Leatherface, a dangerous visual spectacle of a spot done as well or better than the ECW chair duels that came nearly a decade later. What an awesome showdown at a very good American college. I love these two daring to work a 30 minute clash of the titans, sending larger than life magic to the back row of a wrestling venue I'd never known before but now adore. 

Super Astro/Ultraman Jr./Solar vs. Divulios Negros I + 2/Sergio Romo, Jr. Arena Solidaridad

MD: A handheld match. I'm sure someone knows the dates and whether this one is found or new but it's new to us and it was a lot of fun. Very much what you'd expect from the Space Cadets, but worked well and balanced even better. They did pairings and matwork to start, fed right into rudo clowning (Super Astro with his little jump, etc.) and the tecnicos taking the primera. Pretty solid rudo beatdown in the segunda with Romo hitting from odd angles and a nice triple team submission and corner succession attacks. Plus some working over the mask. They had swagger. The comeback in the tercera came on a missed charge the tecnicos got their revenge, did some more clowning, and they built to the (very solid) dives and Solar tying up a Divulio for the win. Nothing revolutionary but getting to see these guys do their thing one more time is always a joy. 

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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: SOLAR~! IN~! JAPAN~! AZTECA~! JIRAIYA~! DRAGONS~! SKULL REAPER~! URA~! ITO~!

Hiroaki Ura vs. Yusaku Ito Sportiva 2/6/19

MD: Sebastian sent this one on to us. He described Ura as in his black trunks roookie stage but very talented. That tracked. He started out with very basic holds to just try to contain Ito and I had the sense Ito was taking him lightly and letting him sow his wild oats a bit, ready to shut him down when he'd had enough. Ito didn't turn things around early enough though. Instead, Ura was able to pry a leg off and start to do real damage with it. Throughout the match, especially after the tide turned back the other way but even before, I had the sense that Ura was like the dog that caught the car at times; once he got it, he wasn't entirely sure what to do with it. He was going off desperation and instinct and throwing anything he could. It meant that when he shifted away from the leg and to broader offense. It didn't work so well for him. Ito, on the other hand, was entirely deliberate. If he couldn't get a hold, he jammed an elbow down onto Ura's skull once and then took it. He'd block him and turn him right into a hold. The finish is him shutting Ura down with a decisive motion to hit a Michinoku Driver. The damaged leg is a wedge that Ura could use to get back into things though. He also had a potent explosiveness able to zoom across the ring while Ura was stumbling in his selling. When they moved into strike exchanges, it had fighting spirit how I particular like it, with staggering and recoiling, and a struggle to push forth and some really spirited screaming from Ura. This was inevitable, of course, but they did a very good job in not quite making it look so. 

Solar I/Dragon Yuki vs. Azteca/Jiraiya KAGEKI 7/13/13

MD: This had been thought lost but it's just been out there where no one knew to look for it. I think it was on the Azteca 20th anniversary show. Here, you have Solar in his most exhibition-y, touring mode, but somehow more so. He's so over the top here with poses and flexing and pandering to the crowd that it's almost transcendent. Especially because he backs it up. It's in one fall so the structure is kind of loose, in as you get exchanges early with a lot of motion and everyone getting to pair with everyone else, things building to some relatively big dives including a huge Yuki flipping senton off the second rope to a grounded Azteca on the floor, and then the matwork which actually gets some room to breathe, with the pairing of Solar and Jiraiya particularly great. It was a little weird to go into the matwork after the dives but what I was watching was so enjoyable I didn't mind too much. It both gave rationale for no one to break things up as Azteca and Yuki were still recovering and also sort of felt like a tercera where teams trade submissions once they were there to save their partners. In a lot of ways, this was Solar at the very height of his old man powers, completely confident in his own skin almost to the point of bombastic parody. But he still went hard to celebrate Azteca.

Solar I/Azteca vs. Azul Dragon/Skull Reaper A-ji KAGEKI 7/14/13

MD: I was a little worried this was going to be more of the same but it really wasn't. Dragon and Reaper came in full rudo, ambushing to start and using their second to cheat to take back over when the opportunity arose. It meant that there was a lot more heat. The previous match was celebratory but in a good way, certainly structured like a real match. This didn't have anything quite as tricked out but there was a lot more animosity to draw upon. When Solar and Azteca fought their way back, there was some of that posing and pandering (but in the best way, of course), but the rudos kept it from going overboard by keeping the pressure on. That's not to say it wasn't without levity. The commentators (and Azteca) watching it back got a real kick out of Skull Reaper nonchalantly taking out the ref to break up a pin. It all built to Solar quebradors as you'd imagine followed by a simultaneous Solar submission and Azteca splash. Fun stuff but I did miss the matwork of the other match.

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Found Footage Friday: ANGEL BLANCO~! HOMBRE BALA~! BABE FACE~! CENTURION NEGRO~! SOLAR~! MR. TERROR~! SIGNO~! KAHOZ~!

Angel Blanco Jr./Babe Face/Hombre Bala vs. Milo Caballero/Monarka/Centurion Negro CMLL 1991

MD: Pretty straightforward trios with a very fun ending. The rudo side wasn't flashy but they were solid, with Angel Blanco stooging, Bala bumping, and Babe Face, being heftier than one would generally think of him, throwing nasty headbutts and swipes more so than taking offense in any sort of fun way. We've seen Milo and Babe Face match up before and they were still more than willing to take each other's shots. Centurion and Bala probably had the best exchange in the primera, though everyone looked pretty good on the second set when they picked up the pace. There was chaos at the end of the primera and the start of the segunda with things breaking down.

The beatdown was ok, nothing too exciting, but the comeback was hot and the finishing stretch hotter. They really worked over Centurion's mask to start the tercera and right when they almost had it off, the tecnicos fired back big. This lead to revenge mask ripping on Angel Blanco and a great spot down the stretch where Centurion Negro and Angel Blanco switched masks. That played into the finish as the rudos fell to miscommunication and confusion, allowing the tecnicos to hit synchronized sunset flips for the win. Pretty professional and polished stuff all around until the big comeback and wild finish. 

Solar/Astrerico/Megatron vs. El Signo/Mr Terror/Azteca de Oro CMLL 1991

MD: Going through this footage is really lucha comfort food for me. The structures had stabilized from a few years earlier so things build to an actual finish and not just the celebratory and comedy-laden tercera you'd often get in 80s lucha. I'm not sure if that's regional or time-based here. It means we get very standard trios: two sets of exchanges in the primera leading to things breaking down, some chaos and then a rudo beatdown in the segunda, and a comeback and finishing stretch in the tercera. Exactly how these things play out has variation, as does the centerpiece, but it's time-tested, tried and true, and familiar. There's a comforting ritual to it which is why the crowds came back again and again and why I can watch match after match of it even if sometimes it's hard to write about en masse.

Here, the centerpiece was the battle between Solar I and Signo, and that was a nice change. Solar came off as a complete star, drawing eyes to him, unquestionably at the center of the match. It started with him trying to draw Signo in by patting him on the cheek patronizingly. It ended (after the rudos stole a win on a banana peel) with Solar calling him out for a mask vs hair match, waving money that had been thrown his way in Signo's face. In the primera, they delayed their exchange, as Signo only teased coming in from the get go. Megatron and Terror and Asterico and Azteca were fine, though I'll admit having a hard time telling the tecnicos apart given the VQ and that Mr. Terror in the second match in a row doesn't live up to his name (though I loved how he sold Solar's quebradoras in the comeback).

Solar and Signo were really good together, nice heated matwork that boiled over into throwing hands. I liked Azteca's use of his size and past Terror seeming a bit off once or twice, everyone did their part, but Solar and Signo really stood out as being "bigger" than the match and leveraged that as a strength; it made things seem all the more important when either were in and let you believe in a comeback that was just Solar walking over to break up a hold because he had enough. Like with so much lucha, the frustrating thing is simply not having an apuestas match between the two coming out of this. 

Solar/Milo Caballero/Chuy Escobero vs. Zeus/Kahoz/Mr Terror CMLL 1991

MD: This is billed as Asterisco (including in the on screen graphic) but it's Chuy. It gets a lot of time but the last five+ minutes are all post match interviews based around the finish. As always, I beeline to Mr. Terror to see if there's anything there to go along with the black mask and amazing name and there's not much. They traded partners during the multiple exchanges of the primera and he only looked worth watching basing for Chuy. He did that pretty well though. His big move in the segunda was a series of clotheslines which felt very out of place. Ah well. Solar and Kahoz were fun when they were in there and Caballero looked solid. Chuy had the most energy, especially crashing up against Zeus.

Once things broke down at the end of the primera, they broke down for most of the rest of the match. Kahoz was a guy who'd try some interesting and different things, like eating a cross body from Escobero while running across the ring to tease a dive or the great spot where he'd chucked out of the ring between Zeus' legs (which were on the apron) and ends up running into the post on the outside with him on his shoulders. His deal where he runs into the turnbuckles wasn't as good. What was great was the tecnicos continuously moving the turnbuckle pad so the heels ate steel. Very funny bit. The finish was equally funny as Solar's mask got messed with and he was so angry he started hitting quebradoras on everyone, including Chuy and a ref, which led to the rudos taking the win and all of the tecnicos asking about Solar's big mistake (he apologized for his blind fury). Disjointed but fun overall even if Mr. Terror just isn't living up to his name. Chuy was an improvement over Asterisco, who's fine but doesn't have Chuy's energy.

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Espectáculos Promociones Panama: Solar! Antorcha! Galvez! JOE Panther!

Solar/Antorcha vs. Sergio Galvez/Joe Panther

MD: This was a very complete match, one that really stands on its own outside of any project, and one that feels like home for anyone familiar with classic lucha trios structure, albeit with a few wrinkles. Galvez was as wild as ever, the kind of guy who would stall and beg off but then will run up and knee you like it's nothing and that will even dash into an incoming chairshot to try to get under it and tackle you. Just a rudo's rudo. Panther was a game partner, looking unassuming as could be, like Panther just happened to be his last name, but he'd also bite you in the eye at a moment's notice. Maybe most importantly, they were up for taking all of Antorcha (black mask with a torch on it) and Solar's tecnico offense:  tricked out armdrags, dropkicks back into the corner or out of the ring, and these awesome labored piece-by-piece quebradoras.

This started with a rudo ambush prevented by Antorcha, leading to a quick tecnico fall. The exchanges that followed were enjoyable, including Galvez crashing again and again into his own partner as Solar ran circles around him. Solar flew a little too close to the sun with a celebratory back headspring after knocking Panther out and Galvez ambushed him, starting the beatdown. This was chaotic, with Galvez beating Solar around ringside, and lasted all the way through the segunda and into the tercera. The moment of comeback itself was as much about Antorcha recovering enough to turn it from 2 on 1 to 2 on 2, but the revenge that followed was enjoyable. These matches tend to be indoor track stadiums, giving loads of room to brawl all over the outside. Here it led to the image of Solar swinging a chair all over the place. While the quick primera might have felt a little out of place to contemporaneous matches in Mexico, the fact they settled in, even after the heat and carnage, into some fun mat exchanges and tandem spots is one of those eternal old lucha quirks.

Of course, this being Panama, they weren’t afraid to lean hard into the heat at the end, with Galvez and Panther switching a chain (or something along those lines) between one another and taking out first Antorcha and then, as he was searching the wrong rudo, Solar as well. But being Panama, it didn’t end there either. The last image we have of the match is the tecnicos fighting back after their loss and the wrestlers pairing off for swinging chair battles.  

GB: In some ways, this was the best possible entry point into this project. It’s very much a Mexican trios formula with the odd trope or two to give us a little glance into what Panama brings to the table. Also, while we have a familiar name in Solar, it’s a role for him in something we’re not quite accustomed to.

This would be Solar’s second visit to Panama and was in July 1986 (though I’m a little iffy on the year). Despite his youthful age, he had been mostly successful in his prior visit, taking local legend Chamaco Castro’s hair in 1979. However, if rumors are to be believed, he would also go on to lose his mask at some point during this stopover. If true, this would make him one of quite a few Mexican luchadores that would lose in an apuesta despite never doing so until much later in their home country (I know Sandokán claimed to have taken Fishman and one of the Villanos amongst others by this point). Regardless, this time, Solar was treated as a big deal. Not as an invader for the local hero to conquer but a foreign idol for attending locals to cross off their bucket list of must see stars.

Perhaps none better to play foil to Solar, then, was Sergio Gálvez. Having debuted in April 1972 as a tecnico under the mask/character of Penado 14, he was given an ultimatum, seemingly much to his chagrin, by promoter Sammy De La Guardia that he would be “Sergio Gálvez”, a rudo, “tómalo o tómalo” (take it or leave it). This would come as Sergio’s best career advice as he adapted to the role like a natural. Source upon source, memory upon memory, remembers Sergio most fondly as “el rudo del rudos” (or, more affectionately to the term than we’re used to, “the most badass of all badasses”). From what I’ve read (and pictures I’ve seen), Gálvez was a bloodthirsty psychopath not unwilling to maim and destroy his opponents with anything on hand.

We get a little taste of it in this match, but this is more a stooging, almost chickenshit Gálvez than the one I had grown accustomed to reading about. Though, I get it. This would be the catalyst to the Gálvez/Solar feud - a tag match that introduced the “best of” Solar to the crowd and whetted the appetite for more. A week after this tag was a “super libre sinárbitro” (no rules, no referee) singles match that I’m sure dialled the violence up. Here’s hoping that drops at some point.

As for the match, it’s more Solar playing dress-up in the “What Would Santo Do?” role. What I mean by that is this is Solar almost beyond what we really know him for. We have a mask match or two, but nothing quite with him playing so far from underneath as this endearing crowd favourite unafraid of getting his mask ripped and taking the fight to his enemy.  Gone are his graceful holds and intricate matwork. Here, Solar is the traveling hero técnico that, quite literally a week later, kissed babies and took care of the sick at the local hospital. Yet, all the while, he was ready to smash a head or two in with a chair after provocation. I was left a little underwhelmed by him in the hair match vs Gálvez but he was more than on point here.

Speaking of the rudos, Panther and Gálvez were long-time partners by now so everything was probably old hat for them. However, the quickness in setting up the opening comedy spots was quite surreal in how flawlessly it was executed. Just beautifully done and made Solar immediately look like a big deal. I’d prefer to avoid going into detail about the match intricacies as I think Matt handles that much better than I could, but I do want to also highlight how the cut offs and beatdowns were meticulously cunning and brutal. There really was a sense that this could have happened in El Toreo or Arena Mexico to much the same effect as it had on the fans here. If you’re a fan of Los Infernales, then you’re most likely going to be a fan of Panther/Gálvez. As the match rolled on, they really did look like the duo some would say terrorized Panama in the 80s and 90s.

The project on an almost daily basis continues to surprise me with novelty finds but I’m probably too far from hoping that there’s a lost Pirata Morgan vs Sergio Gálvez bloodbath hidden in the doldrums of TVC Deportes’ archives. No matter, we have plenty more Gálvez to comb through and a little more Solar to cover. We’ve been blessed enough.

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Found Footage Friday: SOLAR IN PANAMA~! GALVEZ~! FUJINAMI~! CANEK~! WOLFIE~! DUNN~!

Solar vs. Sergio Galvez Panama

MD: The first two caidas of this were just ok but the tercera was pretty great. I liked Galvez in general. Sometimes, he'd have a stomp that felt a bit too light, but he was really a good cross-section between scuzzy and bestial. Moreover, he started on the forehead by jumping Solar before the match and never stopped. Honestly, it was such focused mask and wound work that it caused some big problems for Solar later in the match. When his comeback finally arrived, he had to manage keeping his mask on to the point that he couldn't have nearly the fire you'd want. Thankfully, by the start of the tercera, he recovered and battered Galvez around ringside.They really went deep on that one, a ton of submissions and nearfalls and back and forth action. At times, Solar was just yanking Galvez by his shirt into a surfboard. At one point, when Galvez had him in a crab (which he had used to win the primera), Solar patted him on the back to make him think the ref was calling it off, that old trick. Between that and some beard pulls sometimes the match felt like it lived up to the stakes more than others. Solar won both falls with big spinning quebradoras where the ref did just call it, so that was a little weird, but the fans were totally behind it. The segunda definitely felt off here, but they more than made up for it down the stretch.  

Tatsumi Fujinami vs. El Canek 4/23/81

MD: I wasn't too sure about this on paper. Juniors Fujinami vs the World in the late 70s or start of the 80s is almost universally good but Canek tends not to be the most inspired opponent in general. In specific, on this night, however, he had quite the chip on the shoulder. It seemed to stem from the pop Fujinami got as he came out to the Japanese Social Distortion sounding live band that our resident expert (https://forums.prowrestlingonly.com/forum/1538-puroresu-history/) thinks was there for Tiger Mask's debut. He tossed his flowers down right at that pop and attacked him right at the bell.

He dominated for most of the match too, even if Fujinami had some awesome comebacks. Early on he dropkicked him right in the face but couldn't follow with a diver. Later on, he repeated it and did get that dive, which itself followed a crazy face first plancha from Canek. Like I said though, this was mostly Canek, just leaning on Fujinami inside and outside of the ring the whole way through as if he really had something to prove. Whenever Fujinami started to come back, he'd just throw his whole body at him: a neckbreaker drop, a front dropkick off the apron, that huge dive. Eventually, Fujinami got absolutely fed up and started on the mask, pulling him around the ring and into the turnbuckle with it. The ref took umbrage and got punched by Fujinami for his trouble. Post match, they kept going at it and if this was Mexico it'd all have led to mask vs hair challenges. Instead they'd have a UWA match in Juarez about a week later, but that I don't think we have. Surprisingly great Canek performance here and good fire from Fujinami at the end.

Wolfie D vs. Steven Dunn (Weapons Match) MCW 12/19/98

MD: We get a solid six minutes of action before things break down here. If I'm not mistaken Wolfie was with Ashley Hudson and Flash Flanagan as the Black Sheep. Dunn was half of the Vols, of course. He gets to the big plastic trash can of weapons first and unloads on Wolfie with a chair and a bat and a crutch, so we get blood immediately. From there, they go back and forth pretty steadily with Wolfie choking Dunn with whatever he can get his hands on and both guys coming back pretty evenly without interesting transitions. That's because it all was leading to a big one, with Dunn lifting a 2 x 4 between Wolfie's legs. He ends up tied in the ropes and is about to get chair shotted into oblivion when Hudson comes out with his boomerang (since he's Australian) and the two Black Sheep completely destroy the ref, a second ref (by tossing the trash can at him) and Dunn until Sawyer makes the save. Pretty good, heated, piece of business to set up some big matches to come. They gave away just enough but not too much given the escalation to come.

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Found Footage Friday: BABY MISAWA~! ONITA~! SATO~! INOUE~! TENTA~! KABUKI~! JIVE TONES~! CADETES~! MISIONEROS~!

Mitsuharu Misawa/Atsushi Onita vs. Mighty Inoue/Akio Sato AJPW 12/08/82

MD: This is, I think, the earliest Misawa match on record that was identified in a handheld cache from a couple of years back and that's now online due to our new friend in Japan. We have some Goto vs early Kawada matches that we'll hopefully take a look at in the next couple of weeks too. A lot of this was putting Misawa through his paces with the basic spots you'd expect from someone in the system at his age. There was one point where he seemed a little lost on a whip and there were some things he did, like a big backflip off the top that you couldn't quite attach to the wrestler he'd someday be. In general, it was a good showing for his experience level, generally competent. Onita had that electricity that made you think that 82 Randy Savage vs 82 Atushi Onita would be the most interesting match in the world. He drew the eye with everything he did because it stood out so much to everyone around him. And it's not like Sato and Inoue were slouches. These two had as good a finishing combo as you'd see in 82, with Inoue's fireman's carry gutbuster, two flipping sentons, and Sato's wind up hook kick. 

ER: This was mostly simple juniors stuff, a lot of armdrags, some grounded headlocks, and some movements that seem destined only to ruin knees. You see Onita leaping off the top rope to the floor and landing on his feet, just to back off Inoue, and you think about how his knees were pure bone dust less than two years later. Inoue and Sato work over Misawa's knee (Sato had a really nasty grapevine kneedrop that did not prevent Misawa from backflipping off the top rope late in the match) and has a cool backbreaker. Misawa gets to show some spunk with a hard back suplex that gets paid back shortly after. I loved how the match built to a wild Inoue/Onita exchange, with Inoue hitting his high cross block and then FLYINF over the top to the floor after missing the immediate follow up, giving Onita the opening to fly into him with a great tope. The Misawa/Inoue stuff was nice and spirited, with Misawa missing a cool leaping crossbody off the top and getting his insides rearranged with a gutbuster and two fat flipping sentons. Misawa was only 20 years old here, but you could really see how high his floor was just from his young boy work. 

The Jive Tones (Pez Whatley/Tiger Conway Jr.) vs. John Tenta/Great Kabuki AJPW 9/2/89

MD: Jive Tones were generally supporting Abdullah (who was building up to his big, heavily promoted singles match with Baba) on this tour. We get them in some six mans but it's nice to see a straight tag match with them doing their thing. Tenta was winding down on his way to the WWF, having not been utilized all that much in 89. Kabuki, of course, would jump between lower card matches like this and being a second or third guy in Jumbo vs. Tenryu main event trios matches. Maybe that's why it was so enjoyable to see him goof and stooge about with Conway and Whatley here. There was a beautiful exchange where Conway escaped a headlock by dancing this way and that and Kabuki answered by mocking his little dance. The crowd was definitely into the act, popping for each bit of oscillation or jiving that Conway or Whatley pulled out. You never quite got the sense that they were going to win, between the hierarchy of it all and Tenta's sheer size, but they definitely irritated their opponents along the way. That made the post match dancing and strutting around the ring of Tenta and Kabuki all the sweeter after their victory.

ER: Matt really has a strong grasp on the kind of matches that will lure me into writing late on a Friday night. I didn't know the Jive Tones worked an All Japan tour, let alone in a featured tag match, so I was going to be here for this. You see, it's the way Conway shimmies Whatley's white jacket down his arms and shoulders, really taking his time, wiggling his partner free. He will continue wiggling his way through the match, but building to some surprising stiffness and a cool story. I would have enjoyed this if they had kept the early match vibes, like Kabuki barreling out of control doing rope running with Conway, leading to him eating an armdrag and dropkick, or how Tenta swung super low on a clothesline and then caught Whatley's high crossbody, only to go down in a heap from Conway's Thesz press. 

I thought this would settle down pretty quickly into Tenta and Kabuki dominating, and the fun twist in the match comes when Conway gets manhandled into the wrong corner. This is clearly where he was about to take a long beating, and instead, wins a punch out with Kabuki that turns into a nice heat segment on Kabuki, even giving us a Conway butt butt off the ropes. One of Tenta's best traits as a wrestler is how good he is at looking Actually Mad in the ring. He has great body language and is good at selling, but he's so good here at looking genuinely pissed off at Whatley's antics, coming off like someone who was upset that the Jive Tones weren't treating Professional Wrestling with enough Respect. It's so cool seeing such a big dude get knocked around by Conway and Whatley, and my favorite part of the match was this excellent last second pinfall save by Conway, flying into frame with a stage dive that Charles Peterson should have captured in black and white. Kabuki barely gets the win with an inside cradle as Tenta is getting smashed into the ringpost on the floor. Negative points to the cameraman for not giving us more of Tenta and Kabuki's celebratory in-ring strutting. 

Solar/Súper Astro/Ultraman vs. Black Terry/El Signo/Negro Navarro Primer Festival De Lucha Libre Regia 3/21/10

PAS: Always cool to see a new match from Navarro and Terry when they were in their mid 50s and smack in their prime. Terry was the greatest brawler in the world in 2010, but this was more of a Navarro vs. Solar style llave exhibition, which was fun but not revelatory. Everyone kind of hit their beats here, pretty heavily matched up, so we didn't see much of Navarro or Solar doing their things with the other guys in the match. We did get a nice Super Astro tope and some flips from him, and I liked how they teased the traditional Solar vs. Navarro double pin finish, only to switch it up and have Solar win by submission. 

MD: This felt like these guys playing the classics, especially with the initial exchanges, but they're classics for a reason and even though we shouldn't have been surprised by it, because we have Solar vs Navarro even a number of years later, it's absolutely impressive on paper. It was a lot of fun seeing Super Astro use Signo's sheer size as an absolutely literal base to use to bound around the ring. Navarro and Solar had a lot of time and they used it to the fullest with one interesting tricked out hold after the next, holds that almost no one else in the world could make plausible but them. Things opened up a little on the second or third set of exchanges and that let Black Terry unleash some of the shots you'd expect out of him from this time and it gave things some variety, but they snapped back to old form shortly thereafter. Past the action itself, my favorite bit of this was the audio of someone explaining to their kid who each tecnico was based on the color of their gear. It was matter-of-fact and wholesome, spreading the love of these guys across generations.

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Chilanga Mask Love Letters

Hello, I'm Siobhan Gear. I cohost the Wrestling Is Gross podcast with my friend Bucky Barnett, which both Eric and Phil have guested on multiple times. I'd love to get the box set of Segunda Caida contributors on the show-- truly, I can't wait to Skype TomK through a payphone. I love pro wrestling and good pro wrestling criticism, first reading Death Valley Driver just over seventeen years ago (in the unlikely event that any of you have forgotten that time is an awful bitch). It's an honor to write for Segunda Caida.


Chilanga Mask has largely gone dormant after Dhani Ledesma started promoting under the Lucha Memes name but its anniversary shows have kept the energy alive with some truly brutal main events and apuestas. This year gave us two shows and three enticing matches that keep up the running rivalries over the last four-five years, so I thought that a look back at some of them was much deserved.


Black Terry vs. Makabre vs. Mr. Maldito vs. The Platino vs. Solar vs. Trauma I vs. Trauma II Chilanga Mask 4/23/17

SG: Billed as a ruleta de la muerte but worked as a reverse cibernético where the last two left fight it out for their hair/mask. This is a really perfect example of an indie lucha match lineup giving you all that you could want: old legends slumming it, fat guys, scummy guys, two sets of brothers, and the guys you least know stealing the show. And most of these guys fit in multiple categories! Action starts before we even hit the ring with Makabre jumping Trauma II from behind the curtain and then we’re off to the races as all seven participants loosely pair off and start hitting stiff chops and chair shots. Trauma I threatens to carve up sweet old Solar with a broken beer bottle before the maestro fends him off with some adorable granny-ass chairshots. There’s nowhere in the world where crowd brawling comes off better than Coliseo Coacalco so everything stays hot early. 

Solar & Terry are the first two who save themselves after the match progresses to staying in the ring because yeah, they’re really old, leading into an extended stretch of Maldito/Platino (aka the phenomenally named “Las Torres Gemelas de la Maldad”, the Twin Towers of Evil) and the Traumas working a tag match with Makabre in to stir shit and look like he has scurvy. Great almost-nearfall with T2 saving T1 after a true Vadersault by Mr. Maldito only for Platino to punish T2 & Makabre with a wild tope con giro and Maldito to pick up the crushed scraps of Trauma I and save himself. Los Torres have spent almost all of their career in Baja feds which is, off of the basis of this match, indefensible on the part of DF promoters. Enough time passes for T1 to recover and get a lo negro del negro on the buzzarding Platino to not seem egregious but only just enough. Trauma II has begun to pour like a fountain as we get down to the nitty gritty. Platino gets a big fat miss on a dive to the dirt that should have ripped a nipple off and it’s all downhill for him from there, though he does valiantly fight out of two negro del negros before a few brutal kicks to the mush and a headscissors armbar put him down. No shame in losing your mask after this performance.

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New Footage Friday: FUJIWARA! KIMURA! FUJINAMI! MAEDA! NAVARRO! SOLAR! KATO! DIABLO!

Tatsumi Fujinami/Kengo Kimura/Shiro Koshinaka vs. Akira Maeda/Nobuhiko Takada/Yoshiaki Fujiwara NJPW 3/1/86 - GREAT

MD: The handheld nature of this one let us really hear the crowd, and they were super into this. The makeup of these wrestlers and this feud meant that there was so much anticipation for almost every exchange; just a constant feeling out process that got the fans ready for the payoff of the actual contact each and every time, which almost never disappointed. Whenever one of the NJ guys would switch in, the fans switch the chant for them like clockwork. The first minute or two was really fun as Fujiwara controlled the center of the ring and drew people in however he could (including a slap punch in the corner) and then just dominated on the mat. Lots of brutal kicks from the other two UWF guys and a healthy amount of Koshinaka getting tossed around. Towards the end, the NJ team figured out they could hold an advantage with some teamwork but it broke down pretty quickly into a chaotic and violent scene.

PAS: New Japan versus UWF maybe the greatest in ring feud in wrestling history, and it is a real mitzvah to get another installation. Unsurprisingly I loved Fujiwara in this, swaggering badass who is so slick in the way he counters attacks by all three New Japan guys. Fujiwara and Fujinami tragically never had a singles match during this period, but they were incredible dance partners, and had some very cool exchanges here. Maeda really ramps up the violence in the end of the match pinning Fujinami against the ropes and winging kicks, including a headkick which felled him like an oak tree. Love Akira starting the 10 count with the rent, felt like the kind of taunt Alan Iverson might do. Finish was a wild breakdown and the crowd was going bonkers. Great stuff, super glad it showed up. 

Solar/Stuka Jr./El Gallo vs. Negro Navarro/Barbaro Cavernario/Rafaga CMLL GDL 12/1813

MD: It's been a while since I watched any 2013 lucha even though that was probably the height of my writing about it here and this was a mix of comfort food overlaid with maestros. The Rafaga vs Gallo pairing wasn't much (and good on Solar for clapping for them from the apron; nice guy) and Cavernario and Stuka went all out with their primera pairing but for less than a minute. The primera then was therefore all about the five minutes we got of Solar vs Navarro, which had all of the charm and skill you'd want out of these two in this setting. About half the time, it shifted to a close-up, high quality camera shot which really let you see what was going on. My favorite bit was early on when Solar hooked Navarro's arm with his legs and took him over into a cross arm breaker and Navarro responded by waving his hand in a "Yeah, that was so-so, I guess" sort of manner. Cavernario wasn't in much here but whenever he was he brought a ton of energy and motion. He let Solar catch him head-on to set up the finish and post-match everyone posed together. Hopefully we get more like this soon.

ER: This was really fun, and I loved some of our HD camera angles that we got. I always love seeing Solar and Navarro play their hits live, as they never play them exactly the same. Most of the highlights of this were Solar/Navarro, and while I wish we had gotten actual significant Stuka/Navarro and Barbaro/Solar interaction, I loved all of our maestros. Solar broke out a few tricks that are super impressive for a guy in his late 50s, and I thought he was excellent at playing into Navarro's subs. Like Matt, my favorite moment came when Solar totally caught Negro, flipped him halfway across the ring with a leg drag, and Navarro sat there on his butt, doing a 50-50 ehhhhhh shaky hand. I love the way they tangle their legs, and each knows the right amount of pressure to apply to not slip out of holds and made them look strong. Stuka and Barbara looked really exciting when they were in. Barbaro came off hyper and fun (and skinny!), and Stuka's rana, handspring headscissors on the floor to Rafaga, and his match finishing torpedo splash all looked great. I love nearly every Navarro/Solar match I see, but I think I like this format more. It gives the two maestros natural breaks while keeping the match centered around their work. We get some entertaining sideshows, and seeing brief flashes of them working with their younger new partners, then they come back to escalate their own personal 30+ year battle. 

PAS: Solar vs. Navarro is something we have in numerous variations, but it is cool to see a 2013 version pop up with both guys in their 50s not in their 60s. There is still some athleticism in their exchanges, not just pure skill, grab an arm, grab a leg spin counter, reverse. They always have a new wrinkle or two in their game, although here this really felt like a them doing their thing for a different audience. Everyone else in this match was fine, and Stuka Jr. has one of the great top rope splashes of all time, but this was getting to watch two Jazz greats noodle away and that is a pleasure.

Shigeo Kato vs. Diablo Mumejuku Pro 2/5/17

SR: By god, is Segunda Caida the Shigeo Kato superfan blog now?! Diablo is a guy who is also around for a really long time, he was a +20 year veteran in this match. This was the best Diablo match I’ve seen, as it is a bloody brawl, which was worked exactly like how a bloody brawl should be worked. Kato was a part time wrestler at this point and for a guy who was a skinny ratboy in his heyday, he seemed to have no muscle mass at all here, but he could still go like a wrestler. Really loved how he just stomped on Diablos face during the opening brawling portion. Then an exposed turnbuckle comes into play and Kato is soon bleeding all over the place. Katos selling was a millions bucks here as he looked to be hanging on by a thread (maybe he was also legit blown up) . I’m not going to pretend Diablo was brilliant, but he knew exactly what to do, punch the cut and waffle Kato with a chair out of nowhere. There’s an actually great Figure 4 Leglock spot and the ending felt appropriately murderous. Not gonna see these guys are superworkers, but I respect them for producing a match like this even with little athletic ability. Proof that structure is everything.

MD: Nice focused brawl. I have no idea who these guys are. Kato took it to Diablo early, working the mask. I loved the ref bump where Diablo caught Kato's kick and spun it into the ref's groin. High comedy there. After that, he landed a low blow on Kato and pulled the corner guard off and just unloaded on Kato. Once he got him upon with his chain, the woundwork was incredibly on point. He got a lot of value rubbing his head against the top rope, more than you'd think, but it felt pretty nasty. I liked Kato's hope spot where he went to the top and shouted woo just to get thrown off. He finally took over by taking out Diablo's leg, though they went away from it before long and Kato shouted out "Brainbuster!" like he was pointing into the stands for a home run and then couldn't hit it. A for bloody effort though. Lost focus towards the end but some great woundwork and it didn't wear out its welcome.

PAS: I thought this was cool shit, a couple of guys who have been around for a long time, beating on each other like veterans do. All of the stuff with Diablo and the chain was sick, there was some real thump on those punches, and his opening a cut punches with the fist would have made Harley Race proud. Kato had good fire as a bleeding old guy coming back with vim and vigor, and really took it to Diablo in the early going. I want to see all the variations of this feud, really feels like something a territory could work around the horn for months.

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New Footage Friday: REY JR.! JUVENTUD! FINLAY! CASAS! SOLAR! PARKA! ATLANTIS! DANNY BOY!

Rey Misterio Jr/Solar/Volador vs. Fuerza Guerrera/Juventud Guerrera/La Parka AAA 10/30/93 - GREAT

MD: What a moment in time this was. Everyone knew what they had in each other here. The vets knew what they had in Rey and Juvi. So much of this match was set up around highlighting them or using them as foils. There are a ton of examples: Parka catching Rey and marching across the ring with him, then Volador catching Juvi. The replay of the leap up 'rana off the top from Rey to Juvi. Fuerza slapping Juvi than being proud when they had him hit the splash across the ring to win the segunda. Obviously, Volador getting down so Rey could jump off his back with his dive onto a Juvi that just ate floor. Rey was the most dynamic entity in the world, with Juvi a game partner who already had working the crowd down. Everyone else more than kept up too. Parka was a rudo but got the chants right from the start. Solar and Fuerza had a great exchange to start the match. The spot where Fuerza hiptossed Volador off the apron and into a perfectly catching Park on the floor was probably the spot of the match and maybe one of the spots of the year. It had a little too much set up but the impact was great. And the character work was just so crisp. Everyone was well-defined, and there was a mini novella within the match between Fuerza and Juvi (With Parka coming out to comfort Fuerza, despite him being in the wrong, and to get them back into it). It's amazing how much they fit into such a short period of time.

PAS: Our boy Roy Lucier is unearthing Lucha TV which hadn't been out there before and found an early Rey Jr. match and a super early Juventud match. That is an all-time great pair and it is so fun to watch them dance their dance. In addition we get Fuerza at peak Fuerza shtick, some cool Solar mat work, a couple of nifty Volador spots and dancing La Parka. I especially loved the Fuerza and Juvi interaction, it has always been one of my favorite parings, the physical comedy between the two is always so great and Fuerza is an all time pantomimer. We got a couple of big time cool spots and just a ton of enjoyable lucha.

ER: This is the kind of match you know you're going to watch the moment you see the lineup. Obviously you are going to watch a match with these six guys, no matter what year it took place. This is one of those lineups where you have no way of knowing which one of them will deliver the hottest performance of the match, just a constant battle of cool wrestlers. Volador was my favorite guy here, but it's a tough choice. I love how tight he throws monkey flips and headscissors, not leaving any kind of space, making it really look like he's the one controlling his opponents' momentum. His monkey flip on Fuerza was textbook, and he played around with a couple of Super Calo like rolling headscissors that look as impressive in 2020 as they did in '93. I really dug him taking a wild Fuerza hiptoss off the apron into Parka, his match climax tope was world class, and his back boost alley oop that tossed Rey into a killer plancha to the floor on Juvy was so damn good. La Parka is a tremendous base for everyone, a guy who could take complicated ranas as good as anyone. Fuerza is a total jerk who might have had the greatest ball kicks in all of Mexico (Satanico would be his primary competition), and he really split Volador's uprights here. Fuerza is such a good mask actor, and it's cool to see he had such in-ring chemistry with Juvy from this early on. I love them as a team and seeing as this is among the earliest matches I've seen with Juventud, it's cool to know that was a thing they had from go. This might not have gotten to the peaks it could have (considering the names involved), but there is zero chance anyone could watch this and have a bad time.

Atlantis/Shocker/Silver King vs. Dr. Wagner Jr./Emilio Charles Jr./Negro Casas CMLL 12/29/95

MD: Just good lucha libre. The rudos were out wearing holiday crowns, one of which Shocker stole in the initial melee. They got the beatdown done in the primera, after some initial tecnico advantage and stalling. Talent level was through the roof here and it was almost all action once the segunda kicked in. The combo of Charles and Casas were made to stooge for tecnicos and Wagner based well (especially for Silver King). An underlying story here was Casas vs Shocker (setting up two singles matches in January), with Casas playing coward, especially whenever he got knocked out of the ring. He was always quick to run away and avoid a dive possibility. He also slowed down the tecnicos' comeback momentum by diving across the ring and out of the fray. The payoff here, wasn't a dive but instead the two of them being in the ring for the final moment where Shocker got the best of him. That was set up not by dives but by a chaotic series of wrestlers being pulled out of the ring to prevent the possibility of them, but it was still unique and exciting. The very best part of the match was the end of the segunda, most especially the sheer velocity that Casas soared into La Reinera. Those two Shocker vs Casas matches (1/19 and 1/26) are the only two singles matches between the two of them in the Match Finder, the second being a Welterweight title match. If they're not already out there, I hope they show up.

PAS: This was quality by the numbers lucha, full of guys who are amazingly talented. Casas and Shocker is a fun match up, and I really want to see those singles matches Matt mentioned. I loved how fast Shocker put him in an Atlantida (which is weird with Atlantis right there) and their back and forths were done with such speed and precision. Shocker is part of that lost generation of late 90s luchadors who never lived up to their potential (Black Warrior, Niebla, Lizmark Jr.) but at his best he was electric to watch, and being matched up with a GOAT like Casas is going to be something. I liked the minor key stuff between Wagner and King too, those guys have been working each other since they were toddlers and you can really tell. Nothing that will be remembered a week later, but man was the day by day quality of this stuff incredible.

ER: Just like that AAA 1993 tag up above, this is a match that I'm going to want to watch just seeing the on paper lineup. I love Wagner and Silver King on opposite sides, I've always loved Negro Casas and Shocker matching up in trios, and I love Emilio Charles stooging around Arena Mexico. Wagner had a bunch of funny walk shtick to sell Silver King kicks, Casas and Shocker had the quick sequences I wanted, and I love Charles' opportunistic rudo. This is the kind of high floor match that comes from having nothing but pros in there. Watching these guys all do their thing while not taking a ton of risks is really fun, because you're dealing with some all timer charisma. Negro Casas moves with such snap, watching him throw a hard kick or take a big flipping bump is so precise and so clean, it really makes Shocker look like a star. It's cool seeing Shocker as the smallest guy in a trios. he looked like Shockercito looks now, and moves as quick as him. This was obviously going to be a win, a classic lucha trios to warm the evening.


Fit Finlay vs. Danny Boy Collins ASW 6/1/12 - EPIC

PAS: The Finlay indy run was such a treat, and it is awesome that another match from that run has popped up (Finlay vs. Dave Taylor in an Irish Street Fight is the coolest looking on paper missing match). This was high end Finlay, and worked pretty interestingly. Collins was working a lot like mid 2000s Finlay, landing cheap shots on the break, using the ring as a weapon, working really stiff. Of course Finlay working as a traditional Finlay opponent is pretty perfect and of course delivered as nasty as he got it. Parts of this felt like Regal vs. Finlay which is about as big a compliment as I can give a match.

MD: This one was a bit of a mindtrip. I can see why you'd have Finlay be the face during this run, and obviously the kids were very familiar and into him in that role as shown by the way they celebrated with him at the end, but this was not what I expected on paper, especially for a nostalgia show of sorts. They called upon Collins to play the bad guy and he did with enthusiasm. I thought they could have been a bit more consistent with the rules; it felt a little like lucha on when the ref made Finlay break things relative to Collins, but that was a minor issue in the grand scheme. The best part of Finlay as a face, of course, is that he works just as mean as he would as a heel, and when it was his turn to give back, he was just as stiff as you'd like.

ER: Collins has been showing up fairly frequently on our New Footage Fridays, which makes sense as he's a guy who essentially wrestles like Fit Finlay. This was practically Finlay vs. Finlay, which is the exact kind of match that will be written about by us. This whole thing was a clinic on hard loud bumps and perfect execution on moves that have been kind of washed over. After seeing Collins and Finlay each throw a couple of gorgeous snapmares, the kind where you have a firm grip around your opponent's neck and jaw and give them a throw while you're leading with their head, you realize just how perfunctory most snapmares are in modern wrestling. The snapmare is treated as an afterthought, a thing to do to get from point A to point B, except point B is typically a lousy thigh slap. Here they treat the snapmare as an actual piece of offense, the way it should when you're throwing a man by the neck, and the follow up cravats and chinlocks were highlights on their own. I love how hard they would lean into Irish whips, the loud PONG when Finlay bumped into the ringpost, and Collin's dropping a knee to Finlay's temple that looked so good that I thought "damn Finlay should steal that kneedrop". Finlay's standing Bombs Away is a treat, and it's a constant joy running throughout a match where you can tell they are treating each piece of offense as important. Finlay is going to sell a short uppercut to his bridge as well as he is going to sell being thrown face first onto a table, and when you treat your offense with this kind of respect it just makes everything come off as important. This was a real gem from a months long tour that saw several Finlay gems. And it might be time for us to break Danny Boy Collins reviews away from NFF and into a regular series.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE FIT FINLAY

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LA PARK

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Mas Niebla, Segunda Parte

Mr. Niebla/Solar/Oriental vs. Zumbido/Arkangel de la Muerte/Ultimo Guerrero CMLL Japan 8/15/99

ER: CMLL Japan is some of the most consistently fun and excellent stuff out there. CMLL late 90s/early 00s workers were so talented that they could head to Japan in the middle of the week to break off a couple shows filled with 20 minute Michinoku Pro matches as if that was an easy style to work within. There were too many great moments to count, a bunch of chain spots and constant action with a swiftly rotating set of partners. Zumbido was a real standout, and Arkangel clearly tried to work up to the crazy level of Zumbido (and Arkangel always excels at these Japan trios) by taking the bump of the match when he redefines the Cassandro ringpost bump and takes some fast forward flipping nonsense right past it. Later he hits a big dive, just a guy really peaking a performance. Zumbido moves with such grace and has that Tony Hawk hangtime, love him getting upended, vaulted over the top to the floor, and sprawling backwards out through the ropes. Solar/Zumbido is a fun smooth legend vs. smooth punk battle, and we got some wild armdrags and confident basing throughout. These CMLL Japan trios are always all killer no filler, guys working a real go go style to get big pops. This was as great as expected.


Mask vs. Mask: Mr. Niebla vs. Mr. Niebla CMLL 8/20/99

ER: Phil wrote this match up the night of Niebla's passing, and before he brought it up to me that day I had no memory of a Niebla vs. Niebla feud. I was a big Mr. Mexico fan, had no memory of him ever working as fake Niebla. This must have happened during that period where I knew lucha existed but had yet to start recording it weekly on Galavision, but it couldn't have happened that much earlier. The match is only 8 minutes and una caida, but it's fun while it lasts. Dr. Wagner spouts a lot of BS before the bell and they jump OG Niebla, but Niebla comes back and goes for a dive...that leads to him backsplashing the floor and sliding into the front row like he was Chris Hamrick. And from there we go right to the home stretch, right into the nearfalls, but even with the short build within the match itself I was into them, having now watched several weeks of the fake Niebla being a preening dick, strutting around and taking cheapshots. The nearfalls were good, like a tight victory roll cradle from Niebla, and we got a nice Niebla moonsault before missing another. The pinfalls were good and the chaos of having two twins (albeit one with a much tighter physique) really added to the fun confusion of the finishing stretch for me, the match ending with the impostor Niebla getting locked in Nieblina, and amusingly staying trapped in it for a minute after the loss. Earlier in the match Alfonso Morales had brought up Alfred Hitchcock, no doubt playing upon the fears of every man in so many Hitchcock films: Niebla an impersonated and wronged man, an impostor doing misdeeds in his name, the evil of himself made flesh while those in the cheap seats can't always tell the two sides apart. And then I saw all those familiar front row Arena Mexico faces that aren't there anymore: The old rudo fan with the bell, the old man who looks like a cartoon mouse, the bald man whose workouts are focused entirely on his chest, the older woman with an underbite who frequently admonishes rudos (and was sporting a nice green dress on the occasion of this apuestas match), and then I got sad.

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Negro Navarro's Bloodsport 10/27/18

ER: So, Negro Navarro ran a show inside an octagon, for reasons I personally do not know. But I've never seen lucha take place in an octagon. I've seen plenty of lucha cage matches (which are mostly dreadful) and plenty of Octagon (which I couldn't say is completely dreadful) but never lucha in an octagon. This feels worth writing about (even though it is almost certainly going to be dreadful). The show was not actually called Bloodsport, but it probably had some kind of name like Arena Lopez Collision Course! so we'll instead go with Bloodsport.

Explosivo/Murcielago vs. Dankar/Fuerza Ballenata

ER: Well, yep, it's certainly weird. The first part of the match is normal, as it's mostly in the center of the cage and has the guys pairing off doing the kind of lucha exchanges that you'd expect. There's more mat stuff, more arm drags, more standing work around arm twists and blocking hip tosses. It's weird because the partners are just standing inside the cage off to the edge, waiting for their turn. It doesn't turn into a full tornado match until halfway through, and then it gets amusing as we get rope running exchanges with no ropes. So guys are bouncing off the cage, or just working more clever start/stop spots, rolling away to get distance before running back to do quicker lucha spots. I have next to no clue who any of the guys are. I think I have one of them figured out - the stout rudo has "Fuerza Ballenata" across his back, which would seem to be a strong indicator that he is Fuerza Ballenata...but he also has the Batman logo on his shirt. Murcielago = Bat. It's as if these guys weren't even thinking about the white men who would be writing up this show at a later date. There are no sure things. The guy in gold (Explosivo?) took some nice bumps into the cage, Ballenata threw a couple decent low dropkicks and bumped big off a dropkick to his own knee, and one match in we're definitely already feeling confined by the octagon.

Baronessa/Lolita vs. Chika Tormenta/Ludark Shaitan

ER: Also having to guess who is who here. I was hoping one of them would have a Nabokov shirt on or something and then we could move from there. But I'm gonna pretend Tormenta is the blond bully, and this was pretty fun. As in the first match, I think the one on one portions are strong but things get messy once it breaks down into a tornado tag. We need the partners standing awkwardly in their respective corners. I cannot wait for the trios on this card as you'll just have bulky guys lurking around the edges of this very large octagon. I liked the standing exchanges, and Lolita-or-Baronessa had some nice arm work, a few cool ways to work into an armdrag, nice back elbow and she also takes a nice face first bump into the cage. Tormenta has a really impactful dropkick and nice big boot and a cool inverted Samoan drop, and Tormenta/Ludark work a backcracker/chestbreaker combo that doesn't come off forced and looks good. Ludark takes a suplex at a nice high angle and throws a nice butterfly suplex of her own. This was fun.

Demus 3:16/Pasion Cristal vs. Angel Del Amor/Jessy Ventura

ER: This octagon is really proving to be quite a hindrance, as so far all three matches would have been much better inside a normal ring. I am now regretting watching this entire show, and not just the intriguing main event (which was the only reason I even found out about this show). But also, the matches have gone on entirely too long. 18 minute una caida matches in a limiting environment feel eternal, and every match so far has been allotted way too much time. More than anything, this made me want to see a Demus/Jessy singles. I believe this is my first time seeing Ventura (and Jessy Ventura is a GREAT exotico name) and I came away impressed. She has great dramatic exotico chops and slaps, really laces in with stomps and kicks, cut out the knees on a cool backdrop, and seems like someone who would be great within an actual ring. Her brawling with Demus was a real highlight of this, as was her putting the boots to Cristal, as was her 0.8 Zeuxis level hair. Demus didn't go fully enraged honey badger, but it was telling that 15 (!) minutes into this when the octagon door got opened and the combatants started spilling out I thought "oh this might actually be picking up!" This was not bad, the exoticos and Demus looked good (though all seemed completely thrown by not be able to time rope running, and there was a weird botch where Cristal just kind of fell off a cage after taking awhile to get up there), but at least they brought some unique elements to a restricting environment: crowd brawling, and brawling on top of the octagon. And it should be noted that while the octagon is a problem so far, the real problem may be the continued insistence on working traditional lucha style within the octagon. If the matches had all been worked more appropriately to their confines and focused far more on shorter matches structured around matwork, this could have been killer.

Heddi Karaoui/Zumbi vs. Francois/Pierre Montanez

ER: This definitely felt like the most wholly realized version of the show's gimmick so far. Francois and Montanez come off much more like MMA guys in a lucha environment whereas everyone else on the show have been lucha guys uncomfortably doing lucha in an MMA cage. This match seemed to get the vision right. It was kept to 8 minutes and was almost entirely a tornado tag with guys pairing off working submissions concurrently, with some fun moments of pro wrestling thrown in. It felt exhibition-y, but in a mean aggressive way. The transitions made up for lack of real struggle with what looked like some actual pain, which is good! Karaoui and one of the MMA guys trade armbars and Zumbi is watching from a distance and is really great at getting involved, with my favorite moment being Zumbi running in and breaking up a sub with a hard dropkick. The chaos on this was cool as it looked like 4 guys doing gym sparring so there always looked like danger, with the fun added element of a partner trying to rush over when things got dangerous. Two moments showed that these guys knew how to come up with neat ways to utilize the octagon setting more than anyone else on the card (so far): Early on Karaoui threw an MMA guy into the cage and hit him with a great belly to belly as the guy was recoiling from the cage; and for the finish Zumbi locked in a triangle but was picked up and swung into the cage a few times before sinking in the triangle for the stoppage. I liked Zumbi's energy in this, throwing strikes and mixing up subs, and Karaoui worked some tough looking holds with both MMA guys. If the whole show was like this, I would be recommending this show.

Ricky Marvin/Estudiante Jr./Hijo Del Solar vs. Trauma I/Trauma II/Hijo del Fishman

ER: We're getting a little warmer, but this concept is still dead in the water. The ring ropes can provide such visual distance and now it's just every single person involved in the match standing inside the octagon, off to the side. Someone will lock on a nice submission, but teammates are literally standing a few feet away against the cage, so nothing has time to breathe. Traumas both at least understand that the way to make this work is to just work stiff, so they mostly avoid the prior "just try and work bad lucha without any of the ropes that make it work" and just beat down Hijo del Solar. A lot of this is them cutting off the octagon and stiffing Solar Jr. . Marvin shows good spunk but all of his spectacular spot potential is taken away by the cage, so he does a really nice dropkick and a less successful crossbody off the top. I really liked the Traumas here, but this is a tough style to work with, and they were more successful than most. They really started throwing hard shots (T1 bullied Solar Jr. through the cage door and dragged him back in) and T2 was using the cage to work takedowns, but everyone being so close means there is no drama for submissions.

Negro Navarro/Mascara Ano 2000/Scorpio Jr. vs. Solar/Mano Negra/Canek

ER: We made it! We made it to the end of this cursed show that I was tricked into watching by Siobhan. And this match and the prior were the ones that excited me enough to fall for the obvious trick. But man this match was a bummer. These guys are old, and I love old man matches, but these guys were old old. And what's annoying, is that we were one guy away from having a legitimately 60-and-up match. Scorpio Jr. is 52 (and moves as if he was the 5th oldest in the match) and fucks up everything. However, the mean age of the participants is 61, so make no mistake this match is still filled with old as fuck luchadors. Mascara is easily the most feisty, taking far and away the most bumps on the clearly hard as hell mat. But Mascara took rolling armdrags and was the only one keeping the rhythm tight when the match broke into classic comedy routines. This whole show had been clunky shootstyle and clunky lucha, and it's like Mascara noticed that and fell back on an old routine, an established stand up falling back on greatest hits from their first special. The rudos all accidentally chop each other when tecnicos move, and they work in a genuine funny moment when Mano Negra (masked) is holding Scorpio Jr.'s arms behind his back, and Mascara sneaks in behind Negra aiming to kick him, and Negra turns around as Mascara comically holds back on his kick so as not to kick Scorpio. Navarro repeats the bit. It's a funny bit done by old pros, in the middle of a lucha octagon. But this was rough. Canek is the elder statesman of this group, and while he looks cosmetically in impressive shape for a 67 year old, he moves slower than maybe any wrestler I've seen. He came off slower than late career Andre or Baba. He could barely lift his arm to throw a couple lariats and couldn't hit with any ounce of force, and his best armdrag was him holding out his arm to his side and falling to the mat, as Mascara held the arm and rolled through it like he was being tossed by a legend. Canek was kind of sad here, but weirdly inspiring as he still looked resplendent as fuck in his luminescent deep orange tights. Canek slammed Andre. I'm cool with him throwing bad lariats several years into AARP eligibility. Solar also looked slick as hell; his gray, black, and dashes of red ensemble made him look like an asskicking NES, and as you can imagine we did get moments of he and Navarro doing their thing. Not as many as you'd think (Navarro disappeared entirely for large portions of this), though Solar's climb up victory roll was a cool as hell move for a guy in his 60s to pull off. This was not good, but had some moments of inspired surreality, and made me like Mascara Ano Dos Mil somehow even more than I already do.

This was a show with some genuine, weird on paper appeal to it. But no match on this card benefitted in any way from that damned octagon, and here we are at the end of the show when we wind up saying aloud, "literally every one of these matches would have been better in an actual ring." I am dedicated to viewing weird things people tell me to view. But goddamn, people. Appreciate my efforts, please.

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New Footage Friday: Paul Diamond, Liger, TNT, Hashimoto, Claudio, Navarro, Solar, Quack

Negro Navarro/Claudio Castagnoli/Mr. Ferrari vs. Mike Quackenbush/Solar/Kendo LLM 3/9/09

ER: This is something I've heard about for a decade, but have never seen, and now I have! And it is just what I hoped it was. It has a super satisfying build and the pairings I hoped to see, thought everyone was good at ramping up the intensity of the match. Just some maestro lucha straight outta Delaware, a state I think about less than at least 40 other states. At minimum I wanted some exciting Navarro/Quackenbush in spades, and we got a nice bounty of them; the whole match starts with them and far more time is devoted to them together than anyone else in the match, which is what I wanted. The pairing is playful but can turn painful in a blink. Navarro was looking spry as hell and it was great seeing him whip Quack's legs in a predicament and then clap his hands and break, like a magician doing a trick for you, and then repeating it to see if you can figure it out. Quack is a perfect dance partner for Navarro as he has a bottomless bucket of ideas and can execute them at any moment, and it was cool seeing them both executed and blocked. I loved a moment where Navarro was on his back, Quack grabbed his hand and immediately did a handspring off Navarro's chest, dragging the arm with him and setting into position; not long after Quack went to grab Quack's hand and Navarro immediately dropped it, dropping Quack in the process. There exchanges were what trippy lucha matwork dreams are made of. We didn't get to the Navarro/Solar section until 3/4 of the way through the match, really building to the longest running feud, and their short time together was pretty amazing. It's a match-up we've all seen many times but they appear to be doing their thing in double time, and I mean these are guys in their early 50s and we know that, but I don't think I've ever seen someone in their 50s move like this. The others in the match are nice complements: Ferrari is a husky boy who resembles no kind of sleek Ferrari that I've seen, but I liked what he and Kendo pulled off together; I thought Claudio was somewhat out of place - his strength is his work as a base and there weren't really fliers here - but there were rewarding moments with him; I loved a Navarro moment right at the end, going back to the theme of Navarro as Lucha Magician, where he comes in only to boot Solar in the balls, and then disappears by bumping backwards through the ropes to the floor, like he threw a flash bomb after a ball kick. Why do I suddenly want to see Navarro vs. Jarek 1-20?

MD: Big thanks to Rah for reuploading this after other things went down. We get two falls out of three here and while a lot of the narrative is sort of the sloppy indy affair you'd expect, that's not why you're here. This is about seeing Navarro work with an empty canvas and with a wholly receptive opponent. Quackenbush must of had the time of his life getting stretched. He was smaller and very flexible and totally willing to let Navarro bend him in any number of shapes. That his own stuff looked so good is a testament to both of them too. There were a few moments that looked just a little too cooperative (or involved excessive waiting) but in general, everything was way more fluid than you'd think. That's not a slight on Quack either. It's just that the stuff they were trying was so tricked out. The rest was ok. Claudio was deep into shtick at this point, flexing at every point. He worked a bit with Solar and it was ok with lots of armdrags, but really didn't have nearly as much time to breathe. Kendo and Ferrari were fine rounding things out. We had the segunda and tercera here and we probably missed a bit more with the others not having the primera. The rudo beat down towards the end gave me just a taste of the other thing I wanted here, Claudio and Navarro working together. Navarro's a ham too (though the world's most astute, dangerous ham) and you figure the two of them could have really done some fun stuff. We get a hint at it but no more. Watch this for Navarro and Quack, which felt twice as long as it actually went but in the best way.

PAS: Tomk and I went to this show live in 2009 (long road report which really pissed off a bunch of Chikara die hards here) and outside of a random bit of this showing up on a weird streaming site later that year and disappearing (that might be what Rah got his hands on) I hadn't seen any footage of this show. Really cool to revisit this a decade later. From reading our live review it looks like we actually get most of the first fall, and the third fall but miss the segunda. Some of the narrative issues Matt have had might be because of that. I loved Navarro schooling Quack, and we get almost 10 minutes of those guys rolling, sometimes Navarro's catch and release mat work bugged, here it worked great. He was showing this indy punk that he could tap him any time he wanted, so he would lock him up and let him out, just to lock him up again. In that second fall we don't see here, Quack gets the tap, which really helps the story. The taste of Solar vs. Navarro was incredible, just adderall fast which was nuts for so many old guys. Too bad Navarro pissed off Quack, as he would have been an awesome semi-regular in Chikara like Skayde or Saint, still not knowing what happened between them, I am always siding with Navarro.

Jushin Thunder Liger vs. Paul Diamond NJPW 7/18/93

MD: I wasn't entirely sure what to expect out of 93 Paul Diamond here, but he delivered. He could have been the third guy in a Kroffat/Furnas trio. He had some great junior acrobatics, including a cartwheel out of a monkey flip, traded holds well with Liger (though there wasn't a lot of chain wrestling though what they did was ok), and had great offense (this deep German, a slide through the legs from the outside in to a Northern Lights, what looked like a Casas seated dive off the apron, and a gourdbuster, plus this great kick in the corner), and mostly everything was smooth. For all the limb targeting they did, it could have used a bit more focused selling, but this was an overachiever of a back and forth juniors match.

PAS: This was a Diamond showcase match, and he really looks like a guy who could have had a Benoit/Guerrero/Malenko like run in the New Japan juniors division. He had some big time offense for this time period, his Northern Lights suplex looked great and his Casas senton off the apron got great height and distance. Liger is an all time master at working with a guys strengths, so maybe you need to see Diamond's Kido singles on the same tour to really get a sense of his potential, but this was a weirdo match up which totally delivered.

ER: The Paul Diamond showcase we've all been waiting for! Phil is right that Liger is great at showcasing any guy's strengths, a guy who will always have an interesting match with a young lion, a guy I saw try to do things with Blue Demon, a guy who is going to make a singles match work. And Diamond is a guy with cool stuff! More cool stuff than I realized! He kind of came off like a junior heavyweight Jerry Flynn. I dug how the crowd reacted to him cartwheeling out of Liger's monkey flip, liked the matwork as he's a guy I've never seen work the mat this long, hit two really nice lefty lariats, a cool hooking kick in the corner, a guy I've seen plenty of but felt like I was seeing something really different from him here. There were a couple awkward moments but overall this was a blast, and jeez does Liger take 2" of Diamond's height with his match ending Liger Bomb. He practically dropped Diamond vertically, and we're obviously happy that this exists. 

Shinya Hashimoto/Akira Nogami vs. Brad Armstrong/TNT NJPW 7/18/93

MD: I also had my doubts about this one (it fit into our weird match ups for the week), but I thought it really held up. Vega as TNT can be great or goofy depending on how deeply he leans into the shtick and who he's up against. Here it's perfect though, because Hashimoto's the perfect intersection of toughness and charisma. After a bit of anticipation by having Armstrong star the match against Hash, TNT comes in and it's great. They ran a couple of sequences of TNT controlling with cheapshots and martial arts punctuating with both guys missing spin wheel kicks and TNT doing his karate chop pose at the end. Finally though, Hash hits one and follows it up by mocking the pose with a middle finger payoff. Great stuff. About one third of the way in, Brad starts to work heel which is surreal but really enjoyable, with them primarily working over Nogami. It's a little nervehold-centric but with some good hope spots (including a headbutt flurry) built in. The hot tag's good, with another wrinkle of Brad and TNT cheating to take back over on Hash (including Brad's always awesome Russian Leg Sweep) before Hash comes back for the win. Good, measured stuff, making the most of the tag structure, including utilizing break ups instead of kick-outs. Post match, TNT and Hash clown around with the pose and middle finger again.

PAS: I really loved the opening section with Hashimoto and TNT, it was more Stan Lane martial arts then normal Hashimoto stand offs, but I thought it worked really well and I loved Hash doing the TNT pose and flipping him off. Still this was a Hashimoto match where Hashimoto is almost an afterthought. Most of this match was Nogami being worked over by TNT and Brad and Nogami isn't really a compelling face in peril, and TNT and Armstrong aren't doing many interesting things in control. It picks up a bit at the Hashimoto hot tag, but that doesn't last long before the finish. Fun oddball matchup, but I want more Hash.

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LKAC Night 14/ New Footage Friday: Ki, Murat, Solar, Heavy Metal, Jumbo, Robinson

Billy Robinson vs. Jumbo Tsuruta AJPW 3/21/82

MD:I promise we'll get back to the weird stuff soon with the 1981-1982 footage. There's another Robley match that Eric's been sitting on, for instance. I just feel like we have a moral responsibility to take our medicine on these matches. If we have something that feels canonical that no one in our extended community's ever seen before, we have to get it out there.

On this one, it helps that Billy Robinson's amazing. Yes, we have a lot of footage of him between 75 and 85, even it it feels like we're missing all of the AWA main events that I wish we had, but watching him be a wizard in the ring is always special. You can't look away from him here. The way he brings a limb around to create a momentary point of leverage to escape a hold is pure magic. He does things that make so much sense, like bringing his hands together to force just enough space to pepper in elbow shot. Just the footwork in widening his base to force Jumbo off balance is stuff that no one else does. He does all this while continuing to succumb to Jumbo's persistence. It means that while he stays in a hold forever, it's never at all boring. When he takes over, he puts the same effort and creativity into his holds. You know this is heading towards a draw but it's still fun how it gets there, with meaningful hold trading down the stretch and Jumbo making everything feel big and important and the crowd coming along for the ride.

Maybe this was us taking our medicine, but I, for one, feel healthier for it.

PAS: I am a real low voter on 70s/early 80s Jumbo. He just doesn't have a ton of spark to me, still he is technically excellent and you put him in with an elite opponent and the match is going to be great. Billy Robinson definitely counts as an elite opponent, and this was a real treat to watch, despite being a 30 minute draw which is always tough. I dug how a huge part of the opening section of the match was contested grappling on their feet. You normally think of grappling as a mat based thing, but here both guys were doing some great Greco pummeling, as well as grabbing holds and counters while keeping their vertical base. Robinson is awesome at using leverage and level changes to bring drama to a match. He was also rocking a great early 80s mustache which made him look like Dan Severn's dad. We get to the big bomb section and both guys have great looking bombs. I love Robinson's delayed neckbreakers and Jumbo has a beautiful butterfly suplex. It really felt like a draw was coming from the first minute, and it could have used a spit shine at the end to make people believe the near falls. Still this was a great excavation a chance to see two all timers with plenty of time to do their thing.

Solar vs. Canelo Casas UWF 1/19/92

ER: Man, 21 year old Heavy Metal looked like 1992 Johnny Depp had sex with 1992 Tawny Kitaen and they birthed a fully formed adult luchador. And this was awesome, very fast paced and very feisty. Solar comes off super powerful and Casas comes off nice and slippery. There were so many fun mat scrambles, so many fun simple spots worked around an arm (at one point Solar picked Casas off the mat by his left arm and chucked him across the ring with what looked like a half judo half lucha toss). This was no Solar exhibition, it was Solar scrambling to lock in subs on Casas who kept slipping out in fun ways and frustrating him. This whole thing is go go go and while there is good Heavy Metal out there this footage really paints him as someone who should have been a lucha legend. We get a lot of great Solar show off moments but I love how Casas never just lied still during submissions, always struggled to get out of them even if it lead to him getting caught in something else right away. Solar takes a big fast bump to the floor and gets hit with a big Casas plancha and staggers all around ringside into tables. The ending is a little abrupt with a couple Solar backbreakers and a belly belly that Casas appears to kick out of, but this felt like a 15 minute sprint which was more breathless than I expected it to be. Nothing but fun here.

PAS: Solar is a stone cold mat legend, where most of the footage we have is when he is in his 50s and 60s. While I love watching Solar and Navarro rip it up in Maestros matches, it is super cool to see him work that style closer to his athletic prime. Casas never reached his potential (don't do heroin kids) but you could see the potential here, while a little jumpy he was right there with Solar hold for hold, using his speed to press the action and shake Solar a bit. I really liked that contrast of styles, with Casas more jackrabbity and Solar more deliberate, it was really cool to see that work itself out in the context of a match on the mat. The standup stuff was a little more pedestrian, I liked Casas's dive fine, but it was pretty basic, and the three count felt tossed off. They basically did an awesome first fall, and kind of jumped to a finish. Would have loved to see this in Mexico where the second and third falls would be their own thing.

MD: I'm glad this turned up. It's just pure, distilled lucha fun, like you often get in Japan in this era. Sort of an abridged "good parts" version of a title match. Now, I'd argue that you lose something without more of the build, but the good parts are still good parts. They stay on the mat for most of it, with some rope-running interspersed. I'd argue that it's probably a good match to show to someone to introduce them to the style or as a bridge to more traditional title matches. There's a chunk of this with Solar letting Heavy Metal put him into stuff, and I do think he shows his youth and that not everything is entirely smooth, but it's all believable and effective. Still, this is somehow the epitome of lucha matwork, where they leave realism at the door for the sake of aesthetics, creating a new, entirely immersive reality where tying up a limb or adding in an extra twist or just one more rotation creates a superior overall effect. It's a journey to a mirage and it's the most beautiful wrestling there can possibly be.

Low-Ki vs. Murat Bosporus 2007?

ER: Bosporus is a Turkish wrestler who showed up on a NOAH tour or two, and worked some names we like (Chris Hero, Trik Davis, I assume others) on American indies in the mid 2000s, and seemingly pops up at random in Japan and Europe. I seem to remember TomK being into him. He's the same height as Low-Ki but probably 80 lb. bigger, just a Turkish spark plug (if there's a brand of Turkish spark plugs and he never did advertising for them while wearing a spark plug cone hat, then I'm not sure this is a world I want to be a part of any longer). He's basically an even stockier Sugiura. The match is pretty clipped up so it's hard to get a feel for ebbs and flows, but it's clipped to 6 minutes of all action, so we can at least see that they did a lot of fun stuff. This is Ki taking a humble loss in Murat's home country, so we get a lot of Murat, big belly to belly suplex and German suplex, some real explosive standing elbows, a nice lariat, and really plants an awesome frog splash. Ki didn't work unprofessionally stiff, but he still hit a double stomp to the chest after blocking a sunset flip, and hit some flat out baseball bat to chest kicks, hard uppercuts, a nice low kick, but goes down pretty easy. Couldn't get too invested in this one, even if a lot of stuff looked good, as - likely due to the clipping - we never really got to create much drama.

PAS: I really dug this as an opportunity to watch Ki as a traveling heel. It isn't a role we see a ton of anymore, but Ki is pretty great as a guy putting over a local legend. I loved his dropkick, smirk, eat and opposing dropkick spot, and his offense works well as a pure heel. That double stomp and those wheel kicks are mean stuff when punishing a hometown hero. I remember liking Murat during his random US Indy and Japan appearances, and he was neat here, great crowd pleasing wind ups on his uppercuts, and his big suplexes really looked great, he had that big hip power you see from legit amateurs, Ki isn't leaping over on that belly to belly he is getting thrown. I would have liked to see this in full, but I imagine this is what exists, and it is a treat.

MD: The clipping is definitely in an issue here, especially early as you can't really get a handle on the initial back and forth. Once we get more defined control, it's a little better. Murat has a sort of abandon to his stuff. When he did take over, I liked the way he was throwing himself into everything with a Jim Duggan-esque enthusiasm. Ki adapted to the audience just as much as he had to, setting up a comeback spot with an extended over-the-top thumbs down for instance. The clipping means we miss the set up to the finish, which is always a little frustrating. Do we have more Murat in Turkey? I could go for a few more matches of him as local babyface against mid-00 indy foreign invaders. 

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