Found Footage Friday: RYUMA GO~! BARR~! BRUISE~! HAMADA~! SCORPIOs~! ESTRADA~! ARANDU~! SUPER PUNK~! DIFUNTO~!

Super Punk/Kendo Star/Milo Caballero vs Sultan Gargola/Ulises/Difunto CMLL 1992

MD: I thought this would be uneventful since we only get ten minutes of in, but we come in during the segunda right at the comeback with Difunto's masked ripped to shreds by Super Punk (Luciferno?) and the tecnicos getting some serious justice on the rudos. Super Punk's mask had been ripped as well and between the segunda and tercera they continued to really go at it.This got a little silly with the tercera exchanges (though I ended up kind of wanting to see more Caballero and his unnecessary flipping) before settling down to Punk and Difunto smacking each other in the face again. The finish was great though. In the midst of the brawling, Difunto ended up on one of the refs. Super Punk tried to leap off the top on him and landed on the ref. That let Difunto get in a foul. Pretty creative stuff. Just at a glance, I don't think we get the undercard apuestas match that this hopefully led to. That's a shame. As for the match itself, who doesn't want to watch ten minutes of goofy chaos, right?

Gigante Warrior/Scorpio Jr y Sr vs Solomon Grundy/Gran Hamada/Centurion CMLL 1992

MD: Pretty out there attraction match. I think that Gigante Warrior is Butch Masters who I've spent a bit too much time with in late 90 AJPW. He'd been around a bit by this point and could contribute in a match like this, even if he'd never be your first choice. Scorpio, Sr. always comes off like the world's best possible Rey Mysterio, Sr. opponent in size, shape, and temperment, so take that as you will. Hamada is there to give this a weird WAR feel. Honestly, I almost had the vibe of one of those matches with Porky and Marco Corleone in them, just with less charisma. Hamada, even in 92, still had bursts of explosiveness and some solid strikes. Scorpio, Jr. could match up with anyone on the other side, which says something, I suppose. Centurion didn't exactly impress, however. Grundy was there to get hit by Warrior and splash people in the corner. I'm never not going to have at least some fun with a matchup like this, but your mileage, gentle reader, may vary.

Jerry Estrada/Arandu/Angel Blanco Jr vs Blue Demon Jr/Panterita del Ring/Transformer CMLL 1992

MD: Pretty straightforward match here. Up front, the biggest things to note are how well Estrada and Arandu fit together visually  and that Panterita continued to feel like a big deal locally. Demon did not impress for the most part, but I'm not surprised there. It did surprise me a little how he let Angel Blanco kind of eat him up on the mat (even with simple things) in their initial exchange and had to goad him back for another go around so that they could at least feign evenness before tagging out. Transformer is Super Kendo, I think, and he's got fun gear but didn't stand out a ton otherwise. Estrada's stooging and selling had the announcers proclaim he was out to get the Oscar for Best Actor. Arandu still wasn't afraid to bump out of the ring.

They went around a couple of times in the primera with Demon looking a little better on his second exchange with Angel Blanco. He did have his timing down on the punches on the outside at least. The beatdown in the segunda was solid but probably not long enough in the grand scheme of things and then the comeback and finishing stretch in the tercera was blink and you'd miss it though Demon did hit a tope to set up the finish at least. Nothing egregious but not super interesting either.

Bruise Brothers (Ron and Don Harris) vs Ryuma Go/Jesse Barr Orienal Pro-Wrestling 12/3/92

MD: As best as I can tell, they'd been feuding both in general and over the tag belts and otherwise off and on since July. This was the big blowoff, a Texas deathmatch in a cage, but one that otherwise followed tag rules for the most part, and Ryuma Go's last match in the promotion.

There was a lot going on here but most of it really worked for me. Bruise Brothers were more apt to break the rules and double team while the faces tended to wait for tags though there were a lot of transitions based around the partner having enough and intervening. The Texas Deathmatch rules allowed for any number of big impressive bombs from Ron and Don (assisted powerbomb, double suplex, Slaughter Cannon with a double axe-handle, top rope power slam, etc.) which would lead to the three count and then the drama of whether Go, or for a huge chunk of the match, Barr (who took the broader heat), would be able to beat the count. Mostly everything else would lead to a somehow still dramatic two count.

The Harris Brothers were good at imposing themselves and solid at clubbering even if they were never quite as wild as you'd want. Maybe they made up for it with the big power moves. Early on the cage was the equalizer for Go and Barr (that and Go's headbutts and Barr's fire) but between it and the Deathmatch rules, it never became quite the force I would have wanted. It wasn't a huge part of the beatdown on Barr for instance, just there as part of the connective tissue at times. That's not to say the beatdown and the instances of just barely making the count after some big bomb wasn't compelling, because it was (gushing blood or no; here it was no). I thought it was so well done that my biggest criticism of the match is that he recovered way too soon after the hot tag to set up the finishing stretch (wherein they did this neat belly to back/high angle side slam combo). It also ended on an Octopus Hold, and I get the idea that surrender is probably valid in a Texas Deathmatch but you want to see the count come into play at the end, just like you do the cage; that said, it was really novel to see it used as it was, to ramp up the drama during a face-in-peril segment of a tag match. I can't think of many other tag team Texas Deathmatches and I can say pretty safely that as a proof of concept, there's more there to mine.

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QEPD Super Porky

Brazo de Plata/Brazo de Oro/El Brazo vs. Solomon Grundy/Chavo Guerrero/Popitekus CMLL 4/8/90

ER: It doesn't get more portly than this in lucha, and this match was filled with a ton of belly busting. The big draw here is Porky/Grundy and it delivers in every way you'd want it to. In a match with no dives we still wind up with a ton of big boy gold. Outside of a few nice armdrags we don't really get any Popitekus (but with his gorgeous hair he looks like the fattest possible Ramone), but we get a lot of Porky picking on Grundy, building to a huge sumo war between them to end the tercera. Grundy dwarfs Porky but Porky throws harder fists, throws an uppercut into Grundy's neckbeard, and then bumps him to the floor with a belly bump. There are a LOT of belly bumps in this match, and they're all great. 

I love Grundy's slow bumps to the floor, feels and looks like a glacier falling into the Antarctic. He falls to the floor, Porky hits a lariat off the apron (felt like it was supposed to be a plancha but Grundy moved), and then Porky splatted him with his running belly bounce. Later Grundy takes the absolute slowest Harley Race bump, and I love it. The match is filled with entertaining misdirection, a lot of Porky accidentally hitting splashes and avalanches on his bros and then blaming them for it. Porky even shoves Grundy backwards onto his brothers! There are some classic moments, like Porky being knocked from the apron onto Oro's shoulders, who dumps him butt first onto a front row fan! I also loved the big build to Grundy hitting an avalanche on all three Brazos, with Porky doing a hilarious bump where he runs most of the way across the ring before just taking a normal back bump. The final sumo showdown between Porky and Grundy was fantastic, with Brazo shoving a ref in between them to get Los Brazos DQd, the ref getting a full stretcher job post-match to sell the Porky/Grundy loose meat sandwich. This match might have the most belly bumps I have ever seen, so of course it comes with the highest possible recommendation. 

MD: Great build here as they really milked a potential Porky vs Grundy encounter all the way to the tecera, with a couple of false starts along the way. The first was best as they teased it only to have the other Brazos rush in, kicking off the transitional beatdown. It wasn't just all Porky either as Grundy showed some decent physical charisma in his bumping and in building the anticipation. And of course, yes, he'd eat Porky's clothesline to knock him out, catch Porky's clothesline off the apron and get crushed against the barricade for good measure. The funniest bit of this one was when Porky ended up in some guy's lap in the first row. That shows protecting people with control of your body right there. This ended with one of the most satisfying bits of ref flattening you'll encounter. It was hardly definitive but I doubt anyone cared about that given the effort they made to stretcher him out.

JR: I don’t know if this is a personal failing or an issue with the narrative overall but I feel like far fewer words have been written about rudo Brazo de Plata, so I’m glad we can touch on it here. I think it’s instructive for how gifted a performer Porky truly was. He has great timing and great cut offs and when he does his normal spots minus the flourishes that made them so well loved otherwise, they stand out as tremendously impactful. He is a performer that can use his body in so many ways, or rather, can use his body in one way but change enough about it to make it feel so different. As he rushes forward, with good but rarely seen punches and headbutts and body checks, Super Porky feels inevitable.

Of course, as the match goes on, specifically in the third fall, we get to see the rudo comedy that one would expect from Porky, where he is essentially the incompetent henchman deployed by his slightly more competent brothers. Nothing here is exclamatory per say, or groundbreaking, but at the same time there is value in being able to play the hits and do so without any major faults. This match is fine, more of a Brazos exhibition than anything to talk about on behalf of their opponents, but at the same time it is nice to see Porky show off different shades and viewpoints rather than the standard fare we talk about most often.

Brazo De Plata/Negro Casas/TAKA Michinoku vs. El Hijo Del Gladiador/Gran Markus Jr./Satanico CMLL 5/30/97

MD: Fun trios. This was sort of a sweet spot where Porky was still imposing, to the point where he was, of course, funny, but could make someone like Hijo de Gladiador beg off when he was taking liberties. Within a decade, that would be over and he'd be there just for laughs. Great laughs, certainly, but here he could serve more roles within a match. He could also make like Shawn Michaels posing in the ropes while his partners were in the ring, so it was a balance. And when it was time for him to come in, the fans buzzed in a way that they didn't for Casas or Satanico, for instance. The end of the primera was fun stuff with Casas hitting one big DDT only to get jammed on the second, setting up Porky to come in and accidentally knock him onto Markus only to teeter him back to a sitting and pinning position and then squashing Hijo de Gladiador on a sunset flip attempt. They got the pin while shaking hands like gentlemen. Not much else to say here except for that TAKA (more Taka here than TAKA) was paired well with Satanico both in the primera and in the closing exchange. Satanico was pretty giving against him and looked as great as always; his big interaction with Porky was slapping him in the corner only to get crushed by a series of headbutts out of it as the crowd popped big. The final tecnico comeback was picture perfect Porky use too, as Hijo del Gladiador was trapped behind him in the corner so every time he got whacked by Satanico and Markus he was crushing HdG. Not only does that never get old, but here it was effective and pro wrestling believable in switching the momentum for that final time.

ER: Wow. I actually had no idea a match existed that had Satanico tearing it up on the mat against Taka Michinoku (I trust we do NOT have their singles match a couple weeks after this?), and it's only one of several very fun things happening here. Porky is really treated as the biggest name in the match, and he worked the match as someone who relished the role. This was always building to a big Porky/Markus chubby boys showdown, but all the pairings here worked really well. Gladiador and Casas gave us some quick exchanges before Satanico and Taka came in and outquicked them, and I loved all the rudos scrambling away from Porky whenever he came in. Gladiador hit a questionable strike on Casas and Porky runs in and just plasters him into the corner. We get a lot of classic Porky comedy mixed in with actual strong ringwork, so we get him bumping his butt into Gladiador's face when getting punched in the corner, but we also get an amazing sequence where Satanico starts punching and slapping Porky over and over in the corner. and I'm expecting Porky to start his crying routine. Instead, he had enough and charges out of the corner with a half dozen wicked headbutts that backs Satanico all the way across the ring. Porky hits a big dive into Markus (Markus had landed two very stiff punches earlier during Irish whip exchanges and I couldn't wait for Porky to flatten him) and Taka finishes things with his nice missile dropkick to Satanico's chest, then plants Satanico with the Michinoku Driver. Loved the vibe throughout this whole match, great mix of classic lucha and comedy and stiff strikes. 

JR: I must confess that I haven’t watched a ton of this 90s lucha since the pandemic, and returning to it here is like putting on an old pair of comfortable shoes. Seeing prime Casas and Satanico and remembering the things they did every night was so gratifying. It made me love wrestling for a moment.

But Porky! A revelation every time. People talk about Tajiri being a silent film star with his body language, but I see Porky do sequences here, with a stylized hip attack and a rope running sequence and I can’t help but think of Charlie Chaplin films, in which he is toeing the line between genius and accident. Porky does that here; getting kicked in the gut, but the momentum causes his ass to hit someone in the face, or flattening his own partner so hard that he bounces back up into a cover of his own.

Really, this is sort of the platonic use of porky in a match like this. Casas does the heavy lifting and holds everything together long enough for Taka to shine and change the pace and for Porky to have a few huge moments, including a tremendous plancha. This isn’t what I’d call an all time Porky match or anything, but I think it’s the blueprint of one.

Brazo De Plata/Brazo De Oro/Brazo Cibernetico vs. Villano 3/4/5 Acapulco 11/20/04

PAS: I think I have probably called 15 different lucha cage matches "the only good lucha cage match", but I am doing it again. Here is the only good lucha cage match and it is great one. You can put together any combination of wrestling's Hatfields and McCoys and they are going to try to murder each other, and this was an awesome combo. Nothing funny about Porky here, he was looking to put Villanos in the ground, and there was some big chop and punch exchanges and a fair amount of spilt blood. I liked the finish with V5 and Oro left in the cage only for V3 to break a bottle through the cage on Oro's head so his brother could escape. I am not sure how we didn't review this match when it arrived on the internet, but it is another chapter in this endless family feud. 

MD: Nothing is bad in a bubble. Lucha cage matches tend to be bad because they're a bunch of singles guys stuck together, a few of them maybe with programs or build, but with the primary goal of escaping in the midst of the chaos so that they're not one of the last two in there. Team vs team cage matches probably work better because there's much more hesitation for wrestlers to just scramble out at the first opportunity; to be doing so would be to leave their partners in danger. More so, there's generally a more visceral feud as was the case here. Finally, you have to factor in how hard it is for Porky to get up and out of the cage by this point, so they really had to do some damage to the Villanos to allow for that. Put that all together and you had a recipe for a good lucha cage match. 

I loved how this was filmed. You weren't going to see all the action but then that was impossible given the sight constraints and the size of some of the wrestlers and how thoroughly they were intent on beating and bloodying one another. Instead, it almost felt like you were on one of those rail rides at an amusement park, except for instead of the figurative horrors of It's a Small World, you were able to look left or right and see the real horror of a bloody Porky getting battered in the corner or Platino scrapping hard in a fist fight. It was less on the big memorable spots and more on the steady violence then, at least until the ring started to clear a bit. Thankfully, it all led to the most memorable moment of all, when Villano III smashed a beer bottle into the cage as Oro was trying to climb out, shattering it against the cage and sending glass right into Oro's face. Brilliant, unsafe spot, that was only lessened a little by the fact the Brazos weren't immediately on top of him to get vengeance.

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New Footage Friday: POWER TWINS EXPLODE! MASCARITA! FLAIR! OLE! GRUNDY'S EXPLODE! VAMP! CHICANA!

 Ric Flair vs. Ole Anderson NWA 10/17/81

MD: I've never heard anyone talk about this one, so it's new enough for our purposes. We don't have nearly enough 80-81 babyface Flair for my liking, so every bit helps. There's a different energy to him than in later years, or the same energy but channeled differently. It's a strap match where they spend the first chunk with Ole trying to grind on holds (maybe because this followed what was likely a chop-heavy Wahoo vs Piper match) and then later escalate to the win attempts and using the strap as the weapon. The crowd and the later match violence make the earlier parts ok even if they're not what you immediately want. They flub it once and Ole touches all corners and that gives the fans some confusion but everyone recovers and the run-in finish still feels pretty satisfying. 

PAS: I always enjoy when Ole works an arm, he has a really workmanlike sadism to him, like a cruel prison guard in a movie.  He doesn't really care this is a strap match, he is going to tear up the arm and there isn't much anyone can do to stop him. Babyface Flair has a real kinetic energy too him, and his fired up comeback is like something you would expect from Eddie Guerrero. The strapping near the end was nasty stuff and I like how both guys got more desperate. This was a really good match, a chance to see Flair against a rare opponent and see how he adjusts to a different type of match. 

Vampiro Casanova/Sangre Chicana vs. Solomon Grundy/Aaron Grundy 92

MD: Hey, if we count Flair and Ole as cousins, this is a family feud week on NFF. This was a parejas match where the losing team had to then fight in an apuestas match. Aaron is Mike Shaw and he starts out hugging Vampiro before going full rudo on him. Chicana bumped and stooged for Grundy well enough but he was definitely the least featured guy in this one. I liked Shaw's vertical big splash foul as it felt like a very appropriate lucha finisher. They built well to Grundy vs Grundy though there's never a lot to these post-tag apuesta matches. This was fun but not as fun as a straight tag between these guys would have been.

PAS: You want to see more Sangre Chicana in the mix when you look at the on paper match up, and we got a whole heck of a lot of Vampiro. I enjoyed the Grundy's use of their fat, and I agree the splash foul was great stuff. Still this underwhelmed for a big stips match, and the final showdown was much more about the outside interference than two fat guys in overalls hitting each other. 

ER: I actually thought this was a great Vampiro performance, which isn't really a sentence that I find myself typing that often. Vampiro bumped all around the ring and ringside for Aaron Grundy's fatness, and when it was time to fire back he threw actual good punches and then shook his fist out after! It is wrestling fact that any wrestler who shakes out their fist after a punch - regardless of quality of punch - is automatically a Good Wrestler. There are zero examples countering this. You shake out your fist after a punch, you are good. Similarly, if you are a heel and point to your head after doing basically anything, you are automatically a Good Wrestler. This whole thing is chaos, as the Grundy's are attacking each other and Vampiro is attacking Chicana, loved when Aaron hit Solomon on the apron with a chair and then turned right around and hit Vampiro. This is a man with a strategy! The chaos was fun even though it made for a bad traditional match, I loved how the big splashes looked and loved the constantly shifting allegiances. Also, looking at Shaw, and it's unfathomable that Vince didn't get excited seeing him as an overalls wearing hillbilly. That is a wrestler look Vince adores, and it's so weird he opted to turn him into Bastion Booger, with gear that just cannot be explained by anyone. Shaw looked cool with the shaved head and beard, but apparently Vince saw him with the shaved head and thought "You know? Ditch the beard. Also, the eyebrows."

Konnan/Mascarita Sagrada/Wendi Richter/Power Twin 1 vs. Mario Savoldi/Espectrito/Madusa/Power Twin 2 IWAS 7/93

MD: Absolute blast. There was so much going on here, so many spots, so much riffing and goofing, with Ted Petty (unmasked) being a grade A stooge. You could hear a ton of chatter here, and some of that was Konnan directing traffic, but a lot of it ended up sounding like a Popeye cartoon or Army of Darkness or whatever, with Madusa muttering at everyone and just all sorts of foolishness. Power Twins explode was not something I knew I wanted to see but they really leaned into it. This was all over the place, from some really good mini action to Madusa just ambling around the ring with no one letting her do anything, and it fell apart multiple times, but it was so wildly entertaining that it was exactly what we needed during this insane week.

PAS: This was a bunch of fun, really the perfect kind of touring match to bring to a place like the Philippines. I am really surprised that these kind of AAA mixed matches never caught on in the US, great way to fill a card and multi man matches are a great way to hide limited workers. I think Power Twin vs. Power Twin was my favorite part, as they had almost a Brazos interaction with each other with both guys alternating as the aggrieved Super Porky. I thought the heels playing catch with Mascarita was fun, and the payoff of Espectrito being too heavy to lift was great. Fun Petty performance too, it is strange he ended up only getting to big leagues late in his career, he was such a talented performer.  

ER: I agree with Phil, the AAA man/woman/mini/exotico match was one of my favorite match formats in lucha, and always played great in front of non-lucha crowds (I always remember the great version of that match that happened in Hustle). This one is a bizarre and cool twist on that format as it replaces the exotico on each side a freaking POWER TWIN! Adding a large adult twins to either side of a multiman just automatically makes a match recommendable. One unheralded great thing about the Power Twins was that not only did they wear matching singlets and have the same shaped body (I've never understood that, do they eat they exact same meals and do the exact same exercises and walk the same number of steps? How are twins this old still this identical?) but they are also balding in the EXACT same way and that rules. It's easy to like a match where it looks like everyone is having a fun time together, and these people were clearly loving performing in front of this crowd. The fans ate up all the Sagrada/Espectrito exchanges, and they brought a lot of unique shtick that really impressed me. What impressed me was the fact that it seemed like everyone in the match was wholly involved in the shtick, they were all working the bit. Often you get one guy who is good at it (and here that was Ted Petty and stunningly Madusa) and the others work a straight match and let that guy work his shtick. But we had some great group effort on bits here, and that's where the match excelled. I loved Madusa's chatter, she was so good at setting up cheating or setting up Petty to do something fun. Ted Petty worked this match like a more pratfall comedy version of The Sheik, and well, obviously that was going to be great. My favorite thing was when he ran into the ring to attack a Power Twin, and then immediately after paused, wondering if he had attacked the correct Twin,. Honestly the main thing this was missing - and would have been legendary - is if the Power Twins had switched teams at some point and then did a "we're upset because nobody noticed" bit. 

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MLJ: Mocho Cota in 1993 I: Eddy Guerrero/El Satanico/Mocho Cota vs Lizmark/Latin Lover/Solomon Grundy

Taped 8/27/93 @ Gimnasio Olímpico Juan de la Barrera, Ciudad de México, Distrito Federal
Eddy Guerrero/El Satanico/Mocho Cota vs Lizmark/Latin Lover/Solomon Grundy

I started watching lucha through the DVDVR 80s set. It was very much a run before you can walk scenario where I fell right into really incredible matches without the background to wholly understand what I was watching. I'm still working on that now in some ways, as you can see with my stumblings three times a week here. I came to really appreciate a number of luchadores right from the get go though. Two of those were El Satanico and Mocho Cota.

With Satanico, we have a lot more easily available footage in a number of different settings and against more opponents. We have more payoff apuestas matches and everything from trios wars to insane skits. He's absolutely one of my favorites though, incredibly versatile and really owning his character and truly the baddest of the bad. Cota, we have less of, and I don't think he was as well regarded. He had a stint in jail in the early 90s and upon his release in 1993, he really didn't fit into the workrate paradigm (as OJ points out here). I think a lot of us have come a far way as wrestling fans in being able to appreciate performing and character and the more theatrical elements of wrestling as opposed to just workrate, and Cota, especially at this stage of his career, fits into that mold so much better. That's not to say he doesn't pick up the pace when need be, but he could move the crowd with his antics and he's hugely entertaining. Those tend to be traits that I value in 2015 more than how nice someone's execution is or how quick they move. When I saw these matches listed, they seemed to be leading to a Satanico vs Lizmark singles match, so I thought i'd hit two of them and then go with that, but by the end of the watching I knew I wanted to spend the time with a third Cota and Satanico trios instead.

I have no context here. There's actually one earlier Cota match I see online (Villano III/Solar/L. Lover v. J. Estrada/M. Cota/Cobarde II from 8/6/93) but I just don't have time to hit it as well, even though it probably plays into the Cota/Lover fueding. I wanted to start with this one insetad because it had Satanico and it had a relatively young Eddy Guerrero who I just haven't seen much of in Mexico. Granted, the other one had Villano III and Solar so that might have been fun too and I'm sure I'll watch it eventually. I'm not sure I've ever seen Lover outside of a Royal Rumble appearance and Grundy is some massive guy from the states who is there to basically be a grumpy massive babyface in overalls. A prop.

My first takeaway is how much I love AAA entrances during this period. Everyone had an elaborate entrance with their own themed ring girl. Cota had this amazing robe and a hat that kept falling over as he came out to the Imperial March. It segued right into Panama for Eddy and his gringos locos gear (or at least that's what I think it was) was equally amazing. then, of course, Satanico comes out with fire and brimstone and it's all completely of its time but entirely remarkable. We don't get to see the tecnicos come out unfortunately.

Often times these days in CMLL we get a primera that starts hot with the rudos engaging in a beat down but rarely does it feel as visceral as it did here. There's something flashier now, less violent. There are more moves and less brutality. There's plenty of the latter here. One of the few moves was Cota chucking Lover around with a fireman's carry. The rest was mainly him beating him around the ringside area. They managed obscured fouls and using Grundy literally as that prop, tossing Lover into him. Eddy held his own in this but he mainly had Grundy to beat on so nothing was too compelling. They took the caida with a Cota crab and a Satanico standing submission that I should know the name of, the one that's abdominal stretch-y.

I think Cota shined in the beatdown, through his focus and intensity and willingness to interact with the crowd. He spent a lot of the early segunda just choking the life out of Lover or punching him into oblivion as they cut back to shots of Satanico and Eddy clubbering Grundy on the outside or of Eddy hitting Grundy with endless face pokes. Eventually, though, Grundy's girth was just too much and he reversed a whip into the corner, crushing Satanico (who cried foul immediately). The comeback was a little weird, especially for Cota, who sort of just ambled around the ring beating on Lover still even as his partners were getting routed. They were casually waiting their turn until it was Lover's time to take over. I get what they were doing but it didn't quite work. What did work was Cota dashing out of the ring as his partners were defeated, running through the crowd in order to avoid Lover and a chair. It was amazingly craven and hugely entertaining and frankly, the sort of sentiment I appreciate way more than a lot of really smoothly hit back and forth arm drag spots.

Eventually Lover did get Cota in the ring and he slammed him down hard. Cota rolled right out though. He was stumbling around the ring only to get kicked in the face between the ropes in a fit of perfect timing. What followed was an exasperated laugh at the temerity of it all. I don't know if he wasn't expecting it and thought it was hilarious or was just playing a defiant heel but it was a fun character moment.

The brunt of the tercera was Eddy getting to show off but maybe taking a bit too much offense considering the finish. I thought his body language in trying to wrangle Grundy was very good. At one point, though, he was up on his shoulders, and Grundy dropped back and it was brutal. I thought he recovered a little too soon from that. It was an ebb and flow after that. Satanico and Cota destroyed Lover but Grundy came back with big headbutts. The rudos turned the tide again and used Grundy as a weapon against Lizmark, which was followed by Eddy dropkicking him out (Grundy took a surprisingly good bump). Lover rushed in, making his biggest comeback of the match, really taking the fight to Cota, but ultimately getting tricked up in a victory roll counter for three. One springboard dropkick by Eddy onto Grundy and the rudos picked up the win.

Post match, Lover kept trying to go after Cota, who made a hasty retreat to the stage where, after pulling Satanico up, he did one of the most amazing taunts you'll see this week. Ultimately, this had a ton of good stuff, but was way too disjointed. After one match, I think Cota absolutely still had it. It was just that what he had wasn't what a lot of the hardcore fanbase was looking for in 1993. I think his performance here holds up really well in a more post-workrate 2015 though.

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