Found Footage Friday: CENA~! REIGNS~! TAMBA~! TINIEBLAS~! MAGNUM HALL~! MALUMBA~!

Tinieblas Sr. vs. Tamba [Mask vs Hair] WWA 9/19/87

MD: LA was a dead territory. Obviously WWF had success there in the 80s, but in the midst of that, these Olympic Auditorium shows were happening and they're very much a missing piece of wrestling history. There's a lot of talk about what was happening in the 90s, but these were just there underneath the surface the whole time. And while I wish we could hear the crowd a little bit better, you can't deny the trash being thrown in at the end here, and this was overall a wild scene.

Tamba is a pudgy babyfaced guy with no shirt and no mask and he was putting his hair up against Tinieblas' hallowed mask. The commentary indicates that maybe he was being nudged into this by his partner, Super Halcon, and there was a build here where they had gotten some cheating tag wins apparently. There was also an indication that the promoter too had been goaded in and that other promoters wouldn't have put up Tinieblas' mask like this. 

Halcon hangs out on the apron at the start of the match. Tinieblas nails him and Tamba gets Tinieblas from behind and we're off to the races. Tamba's stuff is, shall we say, rough around the edges. He had size and he had size and he had size and that was pretty much what he had. His forearms did not look great, but you sort of bought them given that size and Tinieblas made sure to spin and backpedal on each one on the floor. He used a chair as well. Back in the ring he hit maybe the worst top rope splash I've ever seen, just sort of falling down on Tinieblas' legs but that scored in the primera. The segunda had a couple of Tinieblas comebacks where he beat Tamba around the ring, but that size kept coming into play. Here though he missed a second rope splash after laboriously getting up the ropes, and that allowed Tinieblas to slap on La de a Caballo.

The tercera, then, was all over the place. The video cuts in and out a bit but by the end of it, Tinieblas had hit Tamba with a chair and opened him up (though maybe not a gusher). Tamba manages to come back with not just one low blow, but two, and he pulls at the mask and goozles Tinieblas. When the ref tries to get involved, Tamba tosses him off repeatedly, until he climbs on both Tamba and Tinieblas in the ropes and Tinieblas hefts both Tamba and the ref over. That allows Halcon to come in and interfere and Tamba to steal a three fall. The trash came flying, and they were very, very quick to get on the house mic (lowered from the ceiling) and let everyone know that they were reviewing the tape because of the fouls. I thought they were going to maybe restart the match, but no, they just gave it to Tinieblas and probably avoided a riot in the process, and we were left with the image of Tamba and his giant with a wound right in the middle, getting sheered with expert speed. It was more of an experience than a match but you really get a sense of the time and place.

ER: Oh, Tamba, where have you been all my life? Tamba, with his post-peak fat guy body and jack o lantern smile, 38 but moving like a 55 year old luchador, every fall the fall of a formerly great and still unique wrestler. He has among the worst fat guy splashes you've seen, falling in a controlled way on Tinieblas with no jump at all, like Cathy flopping onto her bed after a long Monday at the office. He wins the primera with a top rope splash that was an insult to the name. He landed somewhere near Tinieblas's legs with the form of a man who fell into a swimming pool while trying to fish something out. He looks like he's never climbed the ropes before and yet he's got this unique aura the entire time. He has great heavyweight punches, heavy blows that came from the side, thrown to the face, head, and chest. His punches are great enough that I know 1982 Tamba was an incredible menace. You can see him as a Super Porky who immediately fell off once the athleticism aged out to size. He got great fat guy color and did a tremendous job of almost starting a riot by taking one of the legendary lucha masks in a 100:1 upset. I don't think the lacking or loose execution held this back because the aura was there. It still felt like a big match even if the outcome was so unlikely and the opponent so washed. Underdogs got nothing to lose and it felt like there was more raw emotion in Tamba's toothless face than I expected. This felt like the right match for the occasion and felt like a look inside a scene. 

Scott Hall vs. Atkie Malumba [Cage] WWC 8/4/90 

MD: One great thing about having covered 1990 Puerto Rico so thoroughly is that we can fit this right in. This was after Hall's face turn and after the Aniversario match and they were using gimmicks to keep the feud going. You can see from the finish here that they left more meat on the bone. To me, this was right around the point where everything clicked for Hall. He could have had a serious babyface run in the back half of 1990 somewhere, but I guess he was in Germany as a heel (I saw some of that recently, a Tony St. Clair/Owen Hart handicap match).

This was from an episode a couple of years later so Profe kept joking how there was resemblance to Razor Ramon. I thought it was laid out well though. They went back and forth early, Hall's punches vs Malumba's heft, but it opened up when Malumba was able to toss Hall into the cage a couple of times. From there he leaned on him with a couple of hope spots when he tried to escape the cage through the door and Hall stopped him. There was a long nervehold (maybe too long) but it let Hall power up, the fans behind him, and start firing back. Hall finally got to toss Malumba into the cage (they had protected that), and there was a good nearfall for a cage when he dropkicked Malumba and Malumba almost went out the door from it, a finish we'd seen all too often but that I haven't seen teased like that much. Hall finally got the slam (also protected) to a big pop. He sold it well too stumbling backwards after the fact. And the finish had him go up and over but Malumba make it through the door a second before he landed. Maybe they could have shrunk that nerve hold just a little but overall this was a good piece of business and gave them room to go back for one more. 

ER: I've written a lot about Scott Hall, but almost exclusively 1992-1997 Scott Hall, which is when he became a really great worker. I've written a lot about Kimala II as well. He's probably the worst wrestler who Matt and I frequently write about, and I love him. I love both guys, but it never crossed my mind that they had ever wrestled each other. In another country. I didn't even know Scott Hall worked Puerto Rico or how big the cultural impact of Magnum PI on 1990 Puerto Rico was. I've never seen a Razor Ramon vs. Kamala match but now we have a version of that from an alternate dimension where Scott Hall wrestled like green Lex Luger and worked Gallagher Too in Puerto Rico. 

Scott Hall is an okay Lex Luger, and it's fun to see him sell like 96/97 Lex and use the same kind of punch comebacks. It's weird seeing Hall throwing lesser versions of his punch, before he perfected it, but I like how he sells for Kimala. Kimala's strikes never look great but they look correct for a Kimala. I love his shape and his big smooth back makes me think of him as a Punch-Out!! character. More wrestlers should remind me of a different ethnicity King Hippo. Kimala was a completely different opponent than we ever got to see Hall work, and it's good fun seeing Hall selling his back on lifts and throwing heavyweight dropkicks because he's a hunky babyface and not a greasy foreigner. Kimala's splashes always look good and I think he was able to have a 20 year career because he was a fat guy who worked without kneepads who stayed healthy. His deadweight landings look like they would never hold up over a decade long All Japan run, but these two were just built different. 

John Cena vs. Roman Reigns WWE 12/26/17 

MD: I'm not touching the Cena retirement tour but in watching this, I was stricken by how great a Cena retirement match this would have been, albeit 8 years too early. I don't remember the first thing about 2017 WWE. If I looked things up, I could probably piece it all together. Reigns was the Intercontinental champ apparently. This was at MSG, the big holiday show that kids get tickets for over XMas.

And I really liked it. It was Ace vs. Ace and felt like a passing of the guard moment. It has the room to stretch and breathe that you'd want in a house show. Cena leaned into it right in the beginning, going for a long lock up that let the fans chant at him (Let's Go Cena/Cena Sucks). He pushed Reigns into the corner for a clean break and basked in it. There was such a sense of mastery here, of really knowing the value of a moment.  Reigns came back and controlled on a test of strength and then won on a shoulder block.

The match opened up when Cena went for a punch exchange, a traditional strength for him and Reigns clocked him. From there, it became about Reigns having a soft, punch-based advantage on these exchanges, and both men trying to unlock their moves. Instead of hitting things three times, they made getting through each part of the sequence an effort that needed to be built to. The crowd then went nuts when Cena finally hit his dropping belly to back or the five knuckle shuffle or Reigns finally got the Superman punch. There was one finisher kick out. Cena got the AA first and Reigns kicked out. Just that one and Cena wouldn't get it again, though he would cannily come close, hitting the mat as Reigns beat him again on a punch exchange only to lure him in on the pin and roll into a fireman's carry. This time Reigns escaped and hit the spear for the three, though. Just a very clever, very self-aware, very trusting match. Very little excess and because of that, what did happen mattered all the more and felt iconic. 

ER: 2017 was not my favorite John Cena year. It felt fully post-peak Cena at the time and scanning his television and PPV year now doesn't make me want to rewatch any of it. My favorite Cena match of the year had been a TV match against Jason Jordan, which feels like such a 2017 thing to say while also not sounding like it ever happened. I think I'd believe anything you told me about 2017 because none of it feels real, the timeline fake. It feels forever ago, not 8 years ago. Eight years ago, Jason Jordan was a Rising Star that I liked and wrote about, and Roman Reigns was a guy I thought might have been the best wrestler in the world. I went out of my way to watch and write about as many Roman Reigns/Braun Strowman TV, PPV, and house show matches existed - and there were a lot - and loved them all. In 2026, the idea of watching one Roman Reigns vs. Braun Strowman match would never cross my mind, and if suggested to me it would make me wrinkle up my nose in decline. 2017 feels like an implanted memory I only learn about from my own supposed writings and observations that I find in various notebooks that the RPG slowly reveals to me. 2017 was when you could go to a house show and see Enzo Amore vs. Kalisto but nobody saw it because it wasn't real. 

Roman Reigns was one of the best in the world in 2017 and was the best wrestler in WWE, and now they are a promotion I do not watch in part because I got tired of the new main event talk and walk style popularized by Roman Reigns. Eight years doesn't feel long, but it was a long time ago. This style isn't the main style in the fed that these two were the aces for, so this match - a great version of that style - feels like something much further back in time. It also greatly benefits from its handheld feel, shot on pro cam in the middle of the real crowd noise, like a concert recording from the taper's pit, but a taper who had a four man team and had been traveling to shows for several years. On TV everything is mic'd different, but in the middle of MSG you got to hear how much people hated Cena and wanted to cheer Roman...which made it so much better that we got to hear Cena winning them over the entire match. By the end of this, Roman's offense is being met with silence, like they didn't want to see Cena lose, and every time Cena made a comeback the crowd got louder with their support. 

Cena had one of his typical sloppy execution matches and some stuff looked hokier when played to the back rows of MSG. That big long lean over the apron while waiting for Roman's dropkick, the way his punches look so much worse than Roman's (until they start getting better when MSG is moved to cheer for him!?) are things that Cena is able to overcome stylistically, because the sloppy execution is baked into his style, and because the most important thing is his timing. Knowing when to bump, knowing when to take a beat, knowing which punch to get knocked down by. His timing was on the top of his game this whole match and it's knowing and perfecting that rhythm that had the entire building on his side within 15 minutes. 

It doesn't not matter in the grand scheme of things that his punches look loopy and cartoon-y, because he is so much better at taking Roman's punches and knowing how to bump and sell for each individual punch. I loved an early spot where he missed a turnbuckle charge and turned around into a nice Roman uppercut that sent Cena pirouetting into the mat, and there was this ongoing story where the punch exchanges never felt like they ended where Cena/Roman planned on ending them, but they ended where the punch quality and crowd reaction dictated they would end. This never felt like a match that they laid out and then worked exactly how they laid it out, it felt like something worked with room to grow into whatever the crowd wanted it to be. When Cena's tornado DDT maybe 7 minutes in got a big nearfall reaction, it's like that moment gave people a reason to believe in Cena, thus ROOT for Cena, and the dynamic change was huge. That's when this became something that felt a bit bigger and different than your usual send 'em home happy house show main. 

This was technically for the Intercontinental Title, but that seems laughably quaint. IF someone cared about that title before the match started, the title became an unimportant part of the match midway, if not sooner. This never felt like an IC Title match and by the end it only felt like a main event epic, a crowd worked to perfection, and moments timed for maximum impact. Neither man was able to hit their spots clean. Within a couple years, the WWE main event style was just finisher kickout spam, and this match got by with only one big surprise kickout (Roman kickout out of the AA, and to a lesser extent Cena kicking out of the Superman punch) because they wisely kept being unable to hit their various finishes. Finisher kickout is a lazy kind of surprise, but crafting a big main event build around stopped attempts and alternate means of attaining victory before looping back to one big finisher changed everything. Neither could put the other away because neither could connect with the big one. 

The reaction for Cena ducking a Superman punch, sloppily drop toe holding Roman into the STFU, was huge, a crowd chanting CENA SUCKS minutes before suddenly fighting with him, so much so that the pop when Roman lands his first Superman punch actually sounded more like shock than excitement. It got so Roman's offense was being met with silence. He wasn't being booed, but suddenly people were icing him out like they didn't want to actually see Cena lose. When Cena actually hits the AA (or moments where the 5 knuckle is stopped and then hit again later as more of a sudden surprise) the camera can no longer handle the decibels of the crowd and starts to distort. The finish was fantastic, with Cena leaping off the middle buckle for a legdrop but being hit with a sitout powerbomb for a good nearfall, leaping into a great punch exchange. This was the best punch exchange of the match, the one that felt like a gift to the crowd rather than one planned to go a specific length. It was a Boo/Yay exchange with people now booing Roman and cheering every punch a staggering Cena would throw, like they were the ones actually willing the men on instead of having a lengthy punch exchange foisted upon them. Cena deftly went down like a shot for Roman's best punch of the match, and it felt like it wasn't where Cena was "supposed" to go down, it just felt like he went down for the punch that felt (and looked) right. When Cena rolled through the pin and fought to deadlift Roman to his feet, clean and jerking him to his shoulders, it looked like the most triumphant Cena win and that's what everyone wanted to see. It was also the perfect way to set up Roman's win, Cena burning through all his reserves just to give everyone a look at Vintage Cena, doing it for the fans and forgetting he was in there with the new ace. 

I don't think the match happens like this if it was on TV or PPV, and I don't think it feels this good without the camera capturing the real crowd sound. This was a match that became more powerful because of its status as a house show main event (a house show in their main venue, but a house show nonetheless) and they seem to have completely forgotten that aspect of the show. Picturing this match done with their classically bad scripted commentary and all of the zoomed in reaction shaky cam and ugly LED displays just makes me nauseous. This was the right match for the right time presented in the best way. 

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Found Footage Friday: SANTO VS CASAS~! DEATON~! KABUKI~! TINIEBLAS~! WAGNER~! ABBY~! TAUE~! SMOTHERS~!

Hijo del Santo/Tinieblas Jr. vs. Negro Casas/Dr. Wagner Jr. WWO

MD: This is almost certainly Found and not New and there are a couple of probably new videos on the channel but I wanted to watch Santo vs Casas so that's what we're watching. This was 2/3 falls and went closer to 15 as there was a pre-taped interview with Tinieblas after the primera. That's the only Alushe appearance in case you're wondering. The main pairings were Wagner and Tinieblas and Casas and Santo. You would have gotten a much higher floor if things were reversed but a lower ceiling. That meant we got just a bit of plodding Tinieblas matwork and then a lot of Santo vs Casas and some ginger Tinieblas rope running and then more Santo vs Casas. Those exchanges were workmanlike and smooth, nothing out of the norm but the norm is very good and I appreciated them all the more for the contrast. When things broke down for the finish, Tinieblas was trying his best (and he did with the comeback in the tercera too) and he hit an absolutely massive splash off the top (and later a big dive).

The beatdown in the segunda was launched by a Casas foul as the ref was distracted and was solid, with mask pulling building pressure up for Santo to do his thing on the comeback. I liked how in the double leg rollback on Tinieblas to get him to tap, Casas was also flexing the wrist down. There's almost nothing better in wrestling than a heated Santo comeback, and it led a fun finishing stretch where Tinieblas had Casas in a hold, Wagner was working Tinieblas' mask, and Santo was (most efficiently) working Wagner's, all at once. Actual finish was Casas bumping himself into the ropes and falling on his face, with Santo slipping on the caballo lighting-fast. Beautiful stuff. This probably isn't top half for Santo vs Casas matches but just fun for them is pretty great for anyone else.

Abdullah the Butcher/Joel Deaton vs. Great Kabuki/Akira Taue AJPW 10/20/89

MD: As much as we love Taue around here, he was a bit of a late starter relative to his peers. You don't really see what he might become until later into 1990 when he was teaming with Jumbo against the superheavyweight foreigners and even then, you see it more with the feud with Kawada in early 91. Back here in 89, as I've noted before, it would have been far easier to bet on Shunji Takano as the next giant Japanese star. Even Tenryu and Hansen weren't able to pull that fire out of him; quite the opposite. He came out looking more timid when facing them, not less.

Deaton, on the other hand, was a pretty ideal opponent for him and this was probably the best I've ever seen him look in 89. He had size and presence and energy but came off like a poor man's Hansen for the most part. There was still value to that lower down the card or in main event six-mans and he matched up perfectly here with Taue, giving him someone worthwhile that he could still lean on. Kabuki might have taken over on offense, but Taue stood tall, hanging on to a hold through a chinbreaker or cutting him off when he attempted to make it to Abdullah. Whenever Abdullah did get in, however, he shut things down quickly. Even when Taue tried to interfere to help Kabuki, Abby, while not breaking the hold, blocked Taue's shot and took him out with a throat chop. He was able to get a few shots in on him towards the end, but all it took was one missed dropkick for Abby to be able to drop the elbow and end it. I'd call this a good missing link on Taue's road to what he'd become though.

ER: One of the joys of handheld All Japan wrestling is getting to hear two guys having some kind of conversation about Joel Deaton. Perhaps one fan asking who the tall American guy was and the another fan saying "Deaton" several times. I thought Joel Deaton looked great in this match. Deaton's All Japan run was real fortuitous, coming at the end of a long run as a Crockett territory job guy as one half of the Thunderfoots, and then suddenly getting a 5 year mostly full time run as an All Japan mid card gaijin. And  Joel Deaton, for a guy we've barely written about here, seems like a guy we should be seeking out and writing about more. I thought Deaton was much less a Stan Hansen clone and much more someone who Dustin Rhodes would be within a few years. It might sound hyperbolic to say that Joel Deaton was 1993 Dustin Rhodes - I've barely watched and written about Deaton - but watch him in this match and tell me otherwise. 

He's a big guy, standing over Taue before Taue was more lumbering, and he works quick. He's great at setting up offense and has a lot of cool offense of his own. But his bumping and set ups are the highlight: How he runs at Kabuki with a low cutting missed back elbow and clothesline before running even faster throat first into a Kabuki thrust. Kabuki's throat thrusts are one of my favorite wrestling strikes ever and Deaton leans into every one of them and whips his full head of hair back in ways that HHH could never sell. He takes a backdrop as high as Dustin, and if you thought he ran into Kabuki's hand earlier you should see how recklessly fast he runs into a thrust kick in the finishing stretch. Deaton ran into Kabuki's foot so fast and so painfully that it made me want to go through every single handheld Deaton match we have. I'm a Deaton Guy now. 

I watch much less early Taue than I do later Taue but he seemed like a different cool version of Taue already here. I loved when Deaton tried to jawbreaker his way out of a Taue chinlock but Taue just held on. I'm not sure I've ever seen that before and Taue has the lumbering smothering to pull it off. The way he locks in his standing sleeper after and quickly leans back into and over Deaton looked great, forcing his physics onto Deaton. Deaton really looks like he gets under Taue's skin when he rocks him with a huge knife edge while Taue is waiting on the apron, and Taue gets in two hard overhand chops to Deaton's neck before the ref can drag him out of the ring. Deaton is really like a hybrid Taue/Dustin, which is an incredible compliment, but damn when Deaton grabbed a slick ankle pick to keep Taue in the corner while tagging out, and later in the match Taue grabbed one of his own to do the same, I was in love with these two really tall guys taking advantage of the other's long legs. 

I thought everybody looked great, really. This show was taped for TV (and famously had three title changes on it) and these guys worked snug and stiff like they were on a big TV show and not just a Nagoya gymnasium. Kabuki's strikes are like if Great Muta's strikes actually looked good, and him assaulting Abby while Abby was trying to step through the ropes was a highlight of a match filled with them. Also, Abdullah hits his full body shoulderblocks so hard that I can feel them through the handheld from the back row of this gym. He runs over Kabuki so hard it was like every participant - outside of Abby - was fighting to see who could take the most brain-jarring back bump. I don't know if I like any wrestling more than I like All Japan handhelds. I'm not convinced there is such a thing as a bad All Japan handheld match. When we find them we need to destroy them, like Dead tapers shutting down circulation of a show where Jerry nodded off. 

Tracy Smothers vs. Rowdy Red MWA 1996

MD: Best as I can tell, this was a Hair vs. Reputation match where Smothers put his reputation up against Red's hair with a fifteen minute time limit. He had a second who went back to the locker room after the entrance though we'd see him at the end. I can't tell you a single thing about Red contextually, but he played the fired up local babyface pretty well here. Early on Smothers oscillated between going for a quick roll up and stalling, all building to Red getting a near fall on him with a small package of his own.

The heat was a lot of fun with Smothers really bullying Red. He took over by using the ref as a wedge in the corner to sneak in some shots and everything he did looked great. The best of it was maybe this jumping hook kick he did after some of his really nice jabs. When Red got hope spots with punches of his own, it didn't matter how they looked because of how Smothers was selling them. As they got close to the time limit, Smothers couldn't put him away, even after Red missed a legdrop off the top. Eventually, after two mule kick low blows by Red, Smothers' pal came out only to get accidentally clocked by Smothers, leading to a crowd-pleasing roll up win at the last second. Smothers, of course, proclaimed he'd never be coming back on the mic after the match. This probably had something of a low ceiling but it crashed into it at full speed.

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MLJ: Villano III Interlude I: Black Warrior, Satánico, Villano III vs Felino, Negro Casas, Tinieblas Jr.

1998-07-28 @ Arena Coliseo
Black Warrior, Satánico, Villano III vs Felino, Negro Casas, Tinieblas Jr.

There are certain luchadores that I still feel I don't have a great handle on. Topping this list is Villano III. There was a lot of recent talk about him for the WON HOF ballot and he's supposed to be one of the all time greats. We don't have a lot of him in his prime though, just bits and pieces, as he spent a lot of his career in the UWA. I think we do have more than enough of him to get the sense of just how great he was, though. I just have to do the legwork, interspering his matches in the midst of whatever else I'm focusing on.

Like any wrestler, I'm not familiar with, I'm going to start in a wrong but familiar place, when he was already deep into his 40s and against opponents I feel very comfortable watching. Satanico and Negro Casas are two of my favorite wrestlers and, in my mind, two of the best wrestlers ever. This is a match with the two of them, and more than that, between the two of them, during Casas' late 90s tecnico run. The central program here was Casas vs Villano III, but I see no sign that it ever led to a singles match. It was a great showing for pretty much everyone but Tinieblas, though (and he, at least, played his role and was a good foil for the others), and a very strong match.

It started with a rudo swarm. The tecnicos tried to create distance and fight back but didn't have a chance against the rudos' ability to work together. Black Warrior held Negro Casas and V3 tossed Felino's head into his brother's gut. After that, they separated, with Villano destroying Casas using the side of the ring and down the rampway, finishing it up with a DDT on the floor. Meanwhile, Satanico was guiding Black Warrior around the ring to demolish the other two tecnicos. Warrior was constant motion and fluidity, darting around the ring during the beatdown. He finished Felino off with the nudo as Satanico patiently held Tinieblas until the time was right for he and Warrior to lock on a double submission, which made sense given Tinieblas' size. Satanico was excellent at knowing exactly how long to wait. No one was ever better at directing mayhem than him.

The beatdown continued on into the segunda. Tinieblas tried to help Casas but got booted in his head for his ineffectual trouble:

Villano was focused and heated and Casas is as good as garnering sympathy during a beatdown as anyone. He was really reveling in his role as tecnico and the crowd loved to be behind him. Here he ate a legdrop over the ropes by Villano and then an axehandle while draped over the apron by Black Warrior:

Villano dragged Casas around the ring and started on his leg on the floor. The ref argued, buying Casas a moment and the mandate of heaven shifted. It's one of those symbolic elements of lucha. If the tecnico who is the focal point of the match is able to start to fight back, his partners will as well. Here Casas started back impassionately, and his partners followed suit. This ended with Villano retreating and a reset into the ring. Felino and Black Warrior were matched up so well. I'll have to try to track down more of them from this era. Here, Felino caught him off a springboard rana and dove forward with a powerbomb in a really spectacular spot to take the segunda for his team:

They reset again in the tercera, with Villano trying to beg off and Casas having no part of it. Casas basked a bit too long after hitting a tilt-a-whirl slam and Villano started to chop back. Even at this relatively late stage of his career, he was gritty, effectively cruel, and had great timing. That's obvious. I love how Casas shut him down though, with a few leg kicks, a stomp on the foot, and his spinning back kick. The stomp on the foot was what made it:

From there, they went towards the last round of exchanges, with Satanico using Tinieblas as prop to be clowned off of and more quick sequence between Felino and Black Warrior. The finish was great too. Tinieblas hit a plancha on Satanico (who caught it admirably), leaving Felino and Casas with Warrior and Villano. The tecnicos reversed a double whip (after Casas charged headlong into his brother to dampen the first rudo attempt), and then hit tandem Casitas, the rudos' heads crashing into each other mid move:

Even though it was past his prime, I thought Villano III showed a lot here, given that he was the focal point of the match. I hate that there was apparently no singles match this led to though, but I already have a slightly better sense of him moving forward. Good match, worth watching.

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