Found Footage Friday: CMLL at the Olympic 5/28/94

Thanks to the great Roy Lucier we got a CMLL HandHeld from 1994!


Magneto/Benny Carranza/Sombra de Plata vs Terror Chicano/Crazy Boy/Renegado Estrada

PAS: Undercard no name lucha is the most watchable kind of anonymous wrestling. I haven't heard of any of these guys and wasn't inspired to deep dive on any of them, but we had some nice armdrag exchanges, a couple of solid C+ dives and a guy in Kiss makeup who took some nice monkey flips. Absolutely nothing to complain about. 

Louie Spicolli/Chavo Guerrero Jr/Mando Guerrero vs Bobby Bradley/Lover Boy/Torn Negro

MD: This was fun but got cut off short, though in a believable way given the build. The primera had a really solid pairing between Mando and Lover Boy where they took it to the mat and Mando didn't eat him up completely as he had a tendency to do. Tornado Negro spent the entire fall goading Chavito, who chased him around the arena, including spurring a big brawl where Mando accidentally took out someone in the crowd. In general, Bradley looked like he belonged, stooging big early and then just killing Chavo between the segunda and tercera with a pile driver and huge chop. If I read the results right, this was Spicoli pulling double duty as Los Mercanarios had led things off and he was game here, showing off some power and flair. It all got cut short after Mando big comeback when Chavo lost his cool again and pulled off Tornado Negro's mask. Mando made sure to get some extra attention post match trading blows with Lover Boy on their knees. It made sense, it probably fit into the overall card, but as a standalone I would have liked a real finishing sequence.

Los Mercenarios vs Los Toritos/Chamaco Rebelde

PAS: Mercenarios are Tim Patterson, Bill Anderson and Louis Spicolli. They had some nice looking bullying offense, one of them won the first fall with a nasty top rope Bret Hart forearm, another one had a great fist drop. The Technicos didn't really hold up their end of the bargain, they were really were ground bound and their punches looked weak. I am into the Mercnarios, and need to track down them against better opposition. 

Piloto Suicida/Jalisco/Hijo de Solitario vs Panico/Super Boy/Capitan Oro

PAS: This was a really fun undercard lucha match with the massive standouts being Super Boy and Suicida who were regular So-Cal dance partners. Super Boy should really have been a big star, but outside of some cool MPRO matches and a random couple of WCW matches he was mostly just an underground king. Super Boy hits a killer fatboy Superfly splash to win the first fall, has a very cool rope running exchange with Suicida in the second, and catches a wild Suicida dive in the third. Everyone else were fine workman like luchadores, but you could really tell Super Boy and Suicida were special 

Los Brazos vs Mocho Cota/Emilio Charles Jr/Bestia Salvaje

PAS: Welcome to the WON Hall of Fame Los Brazos. This was a great example of what these guys brought to the table, especially the incandescent Super Porky. The first fall was this killer rudo team trying and failing to solve the Porky problem, at one point Porky is carrying two rudos in his arm with one on his back, and he ended the fall with a wild falling senton, like a kid jumping back first on his bunk bed, except the bunk bed was three rudos. The fake heart attack is a classic Porky spot, and the rudos got a ton of heat for not stopping their attack even when Porky was getting CPR. I love the Brazos so much and every new match is a little gift

MD: Great showcase Brazos match against one of the best stooge rudo sides of all time in front of an amazingly game crowd. I wouldn't say they leaned into the heat quite as much as they could have but they were roaring for everything the Brazos hit. As much as I love Cota and as great as it is to see him go up against Porky, the standouts were probably Bestia and Oro who were just zooming around the ring. It was just spot after spot all enhanced by the rudos' reactions and the crowd's buzzing. What heat there was came after Cota dropkicked Porky in the chest and they brought out the EMTs, with the rudos attacking them anyway. Porky's sell where he was just stumbling around ringside crashing into chairs was amazingly tasteless in the best way. Eventually, he decided it was time to finish, so he rushed back to the ring and they had their comeback and the finishing sequence, which included a huge Brazo dive. I think there are only a handful of matches with this specific rudo side on tape so one more is a great addition and they couldn't be more perfect opponents for the Brazos.

Vampiro/Ultimo Dragon/Rayo de Jalisco Jr vs Black Magic/Negro Casas/Mano Negra

MD: Fairly good, by the books match, with a lot of Casas vs Dragon, at the height of Dragon's flipping prowess and plenty of Vampiro being Vampiro and Rayo being Rayo, but admittedly to the hot crowd's delight. I'll say this about them. They knew what to do here to get over. Vampiro especially had a sense of what he wanted to do and Smiley was game to help him. None of it looked all that pretty but it overall worked. Rayo, on the other hand, could just bounce about and flail his arms as people bumped around him and the fans would go wild, so what are you going to do? To be fair, he did hit a tope on Mano Negra at the end, but I think I summed up the rest well. No, the appeal here was Casas and Dragon. Sometimes it was a little too smooth, those one counts where they're already on their feet moving to the next thing, but for the most part, their exchanges were lightning fast in the best way, with Dragon defying both basic anatomy and physics in some of his escapes. When the rudos took over in the segunda, I liked how they used the open space around the ring to the fullest, but overall it wasn't super memorable and the comeback was Rayo having enough and deciding to just come in and interfere which had to follow Porky recovering from a heart attack, so maybe they should have thought it through more. The arch on Dragon's German Suplex to finish Casas was beautiful though and Casas was especially engaged and entertaining for all of the post match foolishness.

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New Footage Friday: PATTERSON! VALENTINE! FUJINAMI! SAKAGUCHI! SCORPIO! MERCURY! BLACK MAGIC! VAMPIRO!

Seiji Sakaguchi/Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Pat Patterson/Greg Valentine 1/1/79

MD: Obviously, one element of what we do here on Fridays as we delve into rare and lost footage is see wrestlers that not a lot of footage exists of. It's hard not to compare them against their reps. Sometimes they live up to the rep, sometimes they fall far short, and sometimes they far exceed it. Patterson's rep is amazingly high and he always lives up to it. He was great in the early eighties when he was obviously past his prime. He's fantastic in what bits of him we have in the 70s. You can only imagine were we to stretch back farther. I wouldn't say that's the case with the Ray Stevens footage we have, actually. You can see vague glimpses of the sort of heat he might have gotten once, before his body broke down from his in-ring style and his out-of-ring lifestyle. But with Patterson, there's just so much he brought to the table that everything you add on to the capabilities we see in his post-prime footage is just that, an addition to the greatness.

We come in at the 3 minute mark here. First half of the match is Valentine and Patterson getting advantages on Fujinami with Sakaguchi coming in to clean house. Second half, they take out Sakaguchi's leg and demolish it until the DQ finish and the continued demolishing post-match where they alternate bombs aways and elbow drops onto the leg. Valentine and Patterson make a really solid unit, both laser focused. Patterson is able to go from stooging and bumping to absolutely beating the crap out of someone on a dime. He was legitimate and tough while also being entertaining (lots of jawing with the ref or his opponent) and creative. Sakaguchi really used his size well here. Just huge presence which made it mean all the more when he played vulnerable towards the end.

PAS: The more I watch of him, the more Greg Valentine moves up my list of all time favorite wrestlers, what a vicious grinding killing machine he is at his best. Patterson and Valentine make a great team, giving when they need to give and taking all that they can take. Patterson could bring the violence as well, and had a more theatrical bumping style. The finish run where they destroy Sakaguchi's leg was some truly brutalizing stuff, it really looked like the kind of thing which would send Seiji out of the territory for six months. I am not sure how much Patterson and Valentine teamed, but man were they badasses, I could really see them running roughshod on a territory for a year laying out all comers. 

ER: This really gave us the look at an all time team that never actually was. Valentine/Patterson wasn't a team I've ever thought about before, but seeing them together here (and they didn't really team or face each other that many times other than this New Japan tour) and they are a really natural, vicious team. Patterson is just as savage as Valentine, which I wasn't totally expecting. I've seen plenty of Patterson, but he seemed especially mean here, coming off like a bigger bumping Valentine. When the match started I thought it would be Valentine throwing leather while Patterson took the bumps, instead we basically got two Valentines. Patterson did bump big, taking Fujinami's armdrags faster and harder than any junior heavyweight, and hitting back way harder. Patterson was really great at taking offense, loved how he worked under Sakaguchi (like running neck first into a strong chokehold), and I was really into the hell Patterson and Valentine unleashed on Sakaguchi's leg. Patterson's top rope kneedrop looked incredible, and I was really impressed by the go go go pace they all kept up. This felt like more of a modern indy tag structure worked by tough dudes, kind of anachronistic but impressive to see such a fast pace from some bruisers. We get 15+ minutes of tag team wrestling, but the tags from both sides come so quickly that it felt like we got twice as much action as we actually did. Patterson and Valentine also added Dusty to their team a couple of times on this same tour, and the thought of those three killer blonds on the same team makes my head spin. What a great find. 

Vampiro Casanova vs. Black Magic 10/93

MD: A rarity here, a lucha cage match where you can actually tell what's going on. There are basically two things going on here. One, young ladies love Vampiro. Two, Black Magic fills his time fairly well by beating him around the ring and slamming him into the cage. Look, Vampiro garnered a lot of support without a ton of talent. I think he's fairly good at writhing about in his selling here and he bleeds when he's supposed to, but his bumping is stilted and his offense more so. Smiley is a guy who disappoints me as much as not in 90s lucha matches, but overall, this worked. And full credit to Smiley, because he did the heavy lifting. He kept things vicious and compelling. He gave Vampiro hope spots that worked in the cage and then cut them off. The girls were going to pop for literally anything Vampiro managed to do, so that helped matters along. For the most part, they avoided big spots and kept it to Smiley laying things in (which looked really good half the time and less so the other half) and making use of the cage. When they went big, like Vampiro's bump off the top, it didn't go nearly as well. Vampiro should have built to using the cage more in his comeback too. That would have maybe made the finish - which was a little too opportunistic and banana peel for a cage match - probably work a little better. It's lucha, so the end goals could be different. If this was like a supre libre match on the road to a hair match, that'd be one thing, but I don't see any results along those lines. Still, as a stand alone experience, I'd put this in the "almost worked" category, mostly for Smiley. But don't short change the girls in the crowd.

PAS: I thought this was legitimately awesome, huge disconnect between Matt and me on this match. Vampiro isn't any great shakes as a wrestler, but he had a monster superstar presence and wasn't afraid to take a big beating and bleed a bunch, and what more do you need in a cage match. Smiley was really vicious pounding him with hard punches and kicks and grinding Vampiro's face into the cage. When it came time for Vamp to make his comeback, Smiley really flew around the ring bumping for him, he eats an awesome looking released vertical suplex (which may have just been Vampiro losing him on the move but it looked great), and we have a big triumphant Vampiro climb over the top of the cage. This was like the best version of a Bruno WWWF cage match, and it is wild to see Vampiro at his rock star peak. Might be my favorite lucha cage match ever, which is not a giant bar to clear but still says something. 

ER: I'm definitely closer to Phil than Matt on this one, I thought this was great. Lucha cage matches are some of the worst matches in wrestling, and this may be the only one I've seen that is actually better than its on paper potential. Often, lucha cage matches nearly eliminate the most interesting aspects of any luchador involved, but this match enhances both men. Black Magic's strengths are his strikes, Vampiro's strength is getting girls to cheer for him. It's a format that plays to their strengths and that's all you need for a strong match. Smiley is a known tough guy (basically anyone who worked UWF is clearly a tough guy) but you don't usually get to see him in ass kicker mode. Here he really kicks Vampiro's ass around the ring, push kicking his head a couple dozen times and throwing great right hands to bust Vampiro open. Smiley really kicks him around for 10 minutes, with my favorite being a sliding kick from his back right into Vampiro's jaw, looked like something cool Inoki would do. Smiley sells big for Vampiro's comeback, right after scraping Vamp's face across the cage (I might be reading too much into it, as Vamp had already been bleeding at that point, but his comeback had a fun "not the face!" energy to it). This really did feel like Pedro Morales working an MSG cagematch against Blassie, which was not a comparison I was expecting to make going in. The girls screamed as Vampiro tossed Smiley around (loved how Smiley took a teeter totter, flinging himself across the ring), and I don't recall a lucha cage match having a beginning/middle/end as satisfying as this one. 


2 Cold Scorpio vs. Joey Mercury PWU 9/15/07

PAS: The actual parts of this match that were wrestling, were pretty cool. They started off with some grappling, including an awesome spot where Scorp breaks a side headlock, by throwing an uppercut right to Mercury's knee. They also did some fun leverage stuff around a knuckle lock. Dan Severn is seconding Mercury for some reason, and the really lay in the interference thick in the middle of the match. Leading to a ref bump and run ins by DDP, Devon Moore and Sandman. These two have another match and I imagine with less mishigas it might be a lot better.

MD: A lot to enjoy here. Mercury just seemed very sure in his skin here. A lot of confidence, a lot of antics. I'm not sure I'd say he came off like a star, but he absolutely came off like a pro wrestler who really understood the power of his actions. Who wouldn't want to have Dan Severn out there as his hired gun/coach? He made the most of it, stalling to get advice, having him choke on the outside, utilizing some submission stuff he might not do otherwise, etc. Scorpio, like always, had the fairly unique ability to make offense that shouldn't work on paper look really good and make complete sense. Living in the late 90s/00s, it was really easy to get sick of finishes like this, but when you don't have to deal with them multiple times a month, you can appreciate them for their merits. It would have been even better if this set up a six man tag the next month.

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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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All Time MOTY List Head to Head 2001: Parka vs. Santo VS. Tijuana Trios

Rey Mysterio Jr./Damian 666/Vampiro vs. Rey Mysterio Sr./Halloween/La Parka Tijuana 10/26/01

PAS: I assume this is a relevos incriebles match with Mexicos Most Wanted on different teams, and dueling Mysterios, but I will admit I am not totally versed in the angles of early 2000s Tijuana lucha. Rey Jr. was post WCW pre-WWE and was in the midst of baggy pants Rey, he still knocked off some cool moves, but kept having to pull up his pants after every move.  I actually enjoyed Vamp and Rey Sr. in this too, they had some energy and Rey Sr. actually based really well for his nephew.

This was mainly focused on Damian 666 vs. La Parka and it was totally awesome stuff. There are fans burning Parka gear in the crowd, and he riles up the crowd right to the precipice of a lucha riot. He throws Damian into the crowd and starts mashing him with a chair right in front of the guy who burned his pennant. He also gets some giant piece of wood and smashes Damian with it and powerbombs him through it. We also get an awesome Rey Jr. vs. Parka section where he pinches him on the cheek like a little baby, before getting ranaed in revenge. Parka is a fucking superstar in this match, and plays the chaos of this match like a master conductor. I really loved the finish too, with Parka burying Damian under a Parka flag and then getting rolled up when he gets too preoccupied with taunting.  I forgot how much I loved Tijuana chaos and this was a great example of it.

ER: This is just a nearly perfect lucha match for me, and really takes me back to seeing live Tijuana lucha cards from this era 15 years ago. We saw some wild stuff (oddly just missing all of these participants, but involving adjacent performers like Nicho and Super Parka) but the brawls never got this wild and the work never felt quite as mean, and the matches I saw didn't have as many highs. Everybody gets and delivers big moments in this match, even Vampiro. Even before the bell sounds Mysterio Sr. shoves his nephew and shows they won't be messing around. Of course this was the La Parka show, but no one man owned this match. Parka in 2001 was so skinny (compared to what we've gotten used to) that I'm going to start spreading misinformation that this was actually an all time great performance from AAA La Parka. You get all the stuff you love out of current La Parka, but against fresh match-ups, like a spry Damian and a having fun free agent Rey.

We've seen Damian as a slow guy with a big belly hitting people with a kendo stick for over a decade now, it's great to see him snapping off fast ranas on Parka, taking a crazy bump into the crowd (followed by getting pelted with chairs from Parka), and it's cool to see how loudly the crowd gets behind him after his beating at the hands of Parka (considering there are some major names in the match, I wasn't expecting Damian to emerge as the hero). Damian paying Parka back for his beating was huge, and the great thing about violent, chair throwing, table launching, drink smashing La Parka is that he always takes back whatever he gives. Parka gets tossed through a table, Damian hits a big senton on the table, Parka gets tossed into the crowd, pelted with chairs, really gives back generously. We never got a ton of Parka/Misterio in WCW, just a handful of tag matches and one singles (which I basically need to seek out tonight), and in AAA they mostly were on the same tecnicos side, so the whole match I was salivating at the chance for a Parka/Rey clash, and it totally delivered. Parka acts like the cocky older brother and shoves Rey back about 6 feet before Rey starts outwitting him with speed. Yep, gonna need those WCW tags tonight, thank you.

Halloween is the lost super worker of the 2000s, never got much of a chance to shine in WCW, emerged post-WCW as a big bumping asskicking heavyweight, and was at the peak of his powers here. He gets mostly paired with Vampiro, which could have been a disaster, but totally makes it work. Vampiro was kept to his nice spinkick and nice full leg extension superkick, Halloween flew fast to the floor off the spinkick, leaned in chin first on the superkick, throws great knife edge chops, and late in the match hits this great jumping kick. Misterio Sr. was a guy who never really got talked up by the people buying lucha tapes, so either this match was a career performance or there is more cool stuff out there to mine. Him shoving his nephew really set the tone for the match. You typically don't get that kind of start to a match when guys are planning on dogging it, and he was always a great presence throughout the match with stiff right hands. Finish was fun with Damian getting to be the unexpected tecnicos hero, after getting buried in all kinds of Parka gear (and it should be noted that before the match, someone was literally BURNING a La Parka pennant in the crowd!) and catching a pose-happy Parka in a roll up.

Hijo del Santo vs. La Parka review

Verdict:

PAS: The Trios match was awesome stuff with an all timer Parka performance, but the Santo match also had an all time Parka performance, and also had classic Santito so it gets the win for me.

ER: This trios was basically everything I love about lucha and an excellent collective performance. I love those lucha trios where not only are the individual parts good, but the whole rises above as well. This was way WAY closer to the Santo/Parka bloodbath that I would have guessed, and there were parts of this trios where I was flipping out and was definitely planning on voting for a new king. Really the only thing that dropped it down for me was the odd moment where Vampiro almost punched Halloween/Misterio's valet in the face (though I liked her overall interference, it's odd that the tecnicos was literally going to punch a woman in the face, when she had just been chopping him in the chest). It's a small moment, but a weird one, and we're still left with a match that easily would have finished in my top 10 for 2001. But, the champ retains.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LA PARK

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MLJ: King Haku, Pegasus Kid, Vampiro vs Black Magic, Mocho Cota, Pierroth Jr.

1993-10-01 @ Arena México
King Haku, Pegasus Kid, Vampiro vs Black Magic, Mocho Cota, Pierroth Jr.

This was probably the most high profile of the Cota return tour trios. It was the top trios match in the 93 Anniversary show (the 60th for CMLL), which, though Meltzer reported it as disappointing at the time, had this match, Casas vs Fiera, and Mano Negra vs Atlantis in apuestas matches on top, both of which I think I've looked at before. It was up against an AAA show with the Vulcano/Huichol/Misterioso apuestas match which I ALSO think I've looked at before. Worth noting is Meltzer commenting that people found the Fiera vs Casas match disappointing because it was all brawling with no dives. Ah 1993 lucha fandom.

Story here was that Pierroth had just turned on Vampiro a week or two before. Also Cota had jumped not long before this, apparently, screwing up the payoff of a Latin Lover hair match over in AAA. This is just two falls with Sangre Chicana interfering with a foul on Haku on the outside, which, unfortunately, didn't lead to an awesome Chicana vs Haku singles match, but instead to Rayo Jr's return from AAA (looking kind of fat with a tie on).

What we have is just awesome though. Occasionally people would make broad statements such as "If you don't like X, then we'll never agree on wrestling." Something like that. They're generally silly, but look, if you don't like Mocho Cota bouncing off of Haku, then I don't know what to tell you. It's amazing. I love 93 babyface Haku in Mexico. He was just such a force, and as good as Negro Casas was as a foil for him, I think Cota might have even been better.

That's just gold, and the match is full of stuff like that, coupled with everyone beating the crap out of Vampiro, which is absolutely the best use of 1993 Vampiro. I think he may actually be just a little bit underrated in that role, to be honest. There's something lanky and awkward about him, but it generally worked in context. The end to the initial beatdown, with Benoit and Haku just having enough and rushing in, felt like one of the better frustrated tecnico brawling comebacks I've seen in ages too. It makes sense given who was involved.

This was a feel good, palette cleanser with a huge amount of entertainment value and a big return right before the two apuestas matches. Haku vs Cota was the greatest match up that we never knew we wanted.

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MLJ: Recent Uploads: Chavo Guerrero, Eddy Guerrero, El Dandy vs Mongolian Mauler, Fuerza Guerrera, Vampiro

1991-05-10 @ Arena Coliseo
Chavo Guerrero, Eddy Guerrero, El Dandy vs Mongolian Mauler, Fuerza Guerrera, Vampiro

We're going to have a brief detour from all things productive for this one. decadas80s90s2000 on youtube is a lovely human being, a double-threat who posts both fancams from Elite shows and older lucha on a regular basis. His nomenclature strategies can be occasionally misleading however. This one popped up on February 23, with the title of "EDDIE GUERRERO,EL DANDY VS FUERZA GUERRERA,VAMPIRO CANADIENSE." I figured that I could tolerate some Vampiro for the sake of a 23 year old Eddy, Dandy, and Fuerza. Not mentioned in there was Chavo Guerrero, but I've been enjoying him quite a bit in the nwaclassics.com footage, and he was probably better to watch in 91 than a relatively green Eddy.

Also not mentioned, however, was the Mongolian Mauler, which was quite the oversight. I kind of love fish out of water monster lucha appearances. Sometimes, it works out really well, like with Kamala or Haku. Or it can be at least functional like Solomon Grundy, a foil for a particularly talented tecnico or rudo to play off of. A Killer Kowalski graduate running with the Geeto/Bepo Mongol gimmick and black contact lenses and prone to eating the turnbuckles, the Mongolian Mauler was a totally different beast. He had a cup of coffee in 1994 WCW, including a Main Event match of Sting, Dustin, and Pillman vs Regal, Austin, and the Mauler, which I really need to see at some point. He was actually all over the place. SMW, Reslo, WING, CWA. It's a weird career for someone I hadn't heard of. I think his ring work is best summed up with this gif I made from a squash over Brian Armstrong in WCW:

Still, it shouldn't have been an issue in a match with Dandy and Fuerza, right? Fuerza could direct traffic and Dandy could sell and it'd be fine? They could work around Mauler like we've seen with so many other such wrestlers. Not so much. The problem was two fold. First and foremost, having the Guerreros in there made things problematic in a way that you wouldn't expect. While I imagine Chavo could work a trios match without breaking a sweat, having Mauler in there to play off of meant that he decided to break from convention and work things how he wanted. That meant getting tossed over the top rope a few times so that he could do a skin the cat spot as the match ground to a halt as the others weren't sure whether they should come in the ring or not, that sort of thing.

The second issue was that this was a storyline driven match. This was the road to Vampiro's face turn, which involved miscommunication and a post-match beatdown by the rudos. Having Mauler in there as a prop for the miscommunication spots was less than ideal, especially when they were relying on Vampiro to make it all work in the first place. There were good things in the match: Fuerza/Dandy exchanges were as good as you'd expect; it was nice to see Chavo and Eddy interact, including them saving one another at times; and Vampiro, despite what I just said, is the sort of guy you're always better off seeing in story-driven matches as opposed to more technique-based ones, but I think it was, all in all, an example of just what happens when the delicate formula of lucha libre trios matches get distrupted. They only make it LOOK easy most of the time.

By the way, according to the Match Finder, Vampiro had two singles matches in 91: one vs the Mauler, one vs Nitron. Don't you wish you could see those? I sure do.

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MLJ: Recent Uploads: Love Machine, Último Dragón, Vampiro vs Black Magic, Negro Casas, Pirata Morgan

1992-09-18 @ Arena México
Love Machine, Último Dragón, Vampiro vs Black Magic, Negro Casas, Pirata Morgan

I really meant to get back to Sombra and I will soon but Dataintcash has been uploading so I wanted to give some of these a look. There's another Robin Hood match up and an Estrada vs Fiera match which I'm going to give my vaunted colleagues a few more days to get to before I look at, but it sounds great on paper. This, though, took me by surprise. I'll watch any Negro Casas match that comes down the pipeline, but I didn't really have high hopes for this one. I was wrong.

It was one of the craziest lucha brawls I've ever seen. It didn't have the sort of brutal fury you get from the 80s rudos vs rudos wars, but it was just constant action, with all of the rudos playing their roles so well, and all of the tecnicos as endlessly spirited and fiery, even as a framing device, which I'm not sure I've ever seen before. Usually, when the rudos are beating on one tecnico, it's because they've managed to neutralize the others. Here, it was often two on one because one of the other tecnicos was chasing the third rudo around the ring. Crazy stuff with a lot of visceral hatred.

Morgan immediately felt like the best possible Vampiro opponent here. All Vamp really needed to do was bleed and sell and occasionally dive across the ring at whatever rudo last wronged him, using his height to make that visually striking. It didn't often go so well for him, save for one big revenge spot where he got to suplex Black Magic outside of the ring. Morgan was just awesome at bullying him and bleeding him, with all three rudos constantly cutting him off. There's a hair match between Morgan and Vampiro and I actually want to watch that now; it's nothing I've ever really thought of seeking out before.

I think this was shortly after Magic's turn and he and Barr got the very most out of that, with Barr first frustrated and then increasingly furious and deranged in his attacks. Casas was glorious, both as the rudo getting chased around the ring the most and as the guy taking the most sheer enjoyment from the beating they were giving out. He was always in the right place at the right time to help with a cut off or push someone off the ropes or get in an extra shot for good measure, and he made Dragon look like a million bucks by bumping for his kicks. I value old Casas just as much as young Casas, but I'll also freely admit that physically, he could do things well above and beyond when he was younger. He never had to, but they almost always add something unique and special to a match.

This was one of those vaguely unsatisfying two fall matches with the rudos controlling most, the tecnicos getting a comeback win in the middle, and then the rudos getting disqualified in the end. Of that sort, you either have the desperation DQ foul because the tecnicos are too much or when the rudos get DQ'd because they're just beating on the tecnicos too much. Both build heat for another match, but I kind of like the latter since it allows for more face saving on the rudo side. That's what we had here. I'd suggest watching this just for the breathless energy of it and Morgan and Casas playing their roles so well. This was really the way to manage Vampiro at this stage.

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Lucha Underground Episode 39: UltimaLucha - Part II Review

Tomk joins us again for the season (and hopefully not the series) finale.

ER: I hadn't thought about who would be replacing Vampire since he'd be wrestling tonight, but my heart dropped when I saw Schiavello sitting there. He's a guy who I think can be decent but gets too blustery, wrapped up in shoehorning his awful catchphrases, and never builds to anything because from the beginning bell he's already screaming at 10. He comes off like a horrible Hawk Harrelson type.
TKG: This was first time listening to English language commentary and yikes, I’m sticking with Hugo. I did eventually re-watch the show with Hugo commentary and they should just really have Hugo comment the shows and then use some sort of translation bot for the English version. Hugo did an exceptional job calling Mundo v Alberto which was a real old school match and plays to him being knowledgeable about that type of match and match strategies. He really got over the Alberto blindness and how that would allow Mundo to do stick and run offense and meant that Alberto had to work more close range stuff, did a bit on how the potential of a tweaked leg would effect Alberto’s work and another bit on how a weakened arm might effect Mundo’s strategy. I don’t know if this reflected any of the actual in ring work but it made the details of work seem important, like you should pay attention to nuance that may not actually be there. Also Hugo understood the whole old school psychology of face spanking heel girl. Matt Striker called that spot like a guy raised on ECW. Hugo understood the Dusty trope where spanking a woman is understood as being an appeal to audience not to engage in domestic violence. Even if a woman slaps a man multiple times, a true man should never strike a woman…a “gentleman” knows to spank her instead. Hugo tearfully pointed to Dusty in the sky and said that Alberto spanked Melina like a “caballero”. 

1. Johnny Mundo vs. Alberto El Patron 

 
ER: I really liked most of this match, but the ending was a pretty loud fart noise. I don't think anybody wanted the return of Melina, and he's never able to hit The End of the World very well. He always lands really hard on his hip while his shoulder sort of grazes his opponent. So Melina with a weak belt shot combined with finishing on the least impactful move of the match, made for a pretty sour note. Still the first 90% of this was really good, with both guys taking turns getting tossed into railings and tables, Mundo tightening up his punches more than normal, AeP trying to rip Mundo's arm off, AeP getting dirt thrown in his eyes, tons of fun stuff. After the horrible finish we at least get more of Mundo getting tossed violently through things, with a nasty spill through chairs and then the payback revenge shot through a window. Melina was terrible throughout as Mundo bumps through chairs and she screams "No! Nooooooooo!" through tears, as if Mundo hadn't just been taking nasty bumps like that over the previous 20 minutes. Then we get that played out wrestling spot of a man spanking a naughty misbehaving woman, and Striker ups the ick factor with "I'm gonna rewind THAT on my DVR I can't TELL you how many times!" Yeesh. Coulda cleaned that one up in post.

PAS: I thought the handful of dirt as Mr. Fuji's salt was pretty great. I thought all of the wrestling exchanges in this were pretty good, feels like the kind of thing which would steal a WWE PPV if they were given some time. I didn't care for Mundo as a face in this fed but he has been pretty strong as a heel. Thought it was weird for Patron to immediately get his comeuppance after losing, felt like that could have been saved for a hypothetical next season. Also not sure why Mundo is squirting blood like that right before your garbage match. 

TKG: I really dug this. I’m so used to current generation of workers only knowing how to do heel runs from face WWFSNME style, that really cool seeing these guys do more of a Memphis thing which less about face giving chase and more about face standing off semi amused but wanting to get things started. The whole use of blindness to set up heel run and the slow recovery from that blindness, also felt super Mempho. I think I accepted flimsy chain being sold as death as being Memphisy too. I have positive feelings about Melina as being useful. I’ve seen Melina enough times live where she seemed to have real sense of when match had crowd and when was losing crowd that she knew when to lay back and when to egg on fans. I’ve also seen her Puerto Rican role as second to Davey Richards where she was kind of an Albano style manager who did both the mic work and the actual emoting for worker who couldn’t do either. That said, Mundo isn’t a Wild Samoan or Davey Richards, he needs a more Grand Wizard/JJ Dillon type second and not sure if Melina is up to that.

2. Pentagon Jr. vs. Vampiro 

ER: Vampire looks exactly like the fat bald bloated zombie on the boat, from the opening scene of Zombi 2. I assume that just shows Vampiro's loyalty and dedication to being on the El Rey network. I thought this was awesome, blew away all expectations for it. I'm not going to get into the Master reveal because really I don't care, because the match itself delivered for me in ways I wasn't expecting. This was a nasty violent W*ing brawl and Vampiro as immobile gorehound worked great opposite the vicious Pentagon. All the garbage spots built nicely, the spills into tacks and light tube remains were nasty, Pentagon punching Vampiro in the side of his bloody head was a helluva visual, and Pentagon did other neat things like just ignore Vamp's punches that whiffed. Pentagon gushing blood through his torn mask was crazy (maybe not as crazy as Striker ranking Vamp ahead of Terry Funk in terms of brawling. His comparison to Abdullah was at least physically accurate), and then the flaming table spot with Vamp on fire for way too long while the extinguisher guy was way out of position, just a nutso appropriate finish.

PAS: Pretty shocked that they would go full IWA KOTDM on TV like this, I like Vampiro theoretically but I have never enjoyed him in ring, and the fact he is willing to take this level of beating after multiple neck surgeries is pretty nutty. I would have liked to see this be the only brawl on this show, but if you are going to take it to the next level this is how you do it. Add Vampiro to Cage, Mack and Hernandez to guys who had career performances on this show

TKG: I don’t understand people’s confusion or surprise about the finish. I think I texted Phil several weeks earlier predicting that Vampiro was Pentagon Jr’s master, it seemed obvious to me. I’ve watched a lot of Kevin Sullivan/Raven/Who is higher power wrestling angles, this is how those end. I’ve watched plenty of Golan-Globus action movies, this is how those end. My wife watches the Steven Moffatt Dr Who episodes, this is how those end. It seemed obvious that they were doing the master makes student bring the monster back out of the domesticated master in order to beat the master at his most monstrous. I’ve always thought of Vampiro as second rate Chris Champion and whole angle probably makes a lot more sense if you think of it as Yoshi Kwan forcing student to transform Kwan back into Sinn. Champion also has time travel experience which would maybe add more depth to child is the father of the man stuff. Vampiro coming out looking that bloated also screamed “this match is setting up Vampiro with Penagon Jr v Vampiro’s evil twin Pogo the Clown with The Altar Boy in a no-rope Caribbean spider-web tag-match on some California XPW tribute indy”, so of course they were coming out as partners.

3. Aerostar vs. Fenix vs. Big Ryck vs. Jack Evans vs. King Cuerno vs. Bengala vs. Sexy Star

ER: Plenty of fun spots in this one, and I didn't have to flip out over Sexy Star winning. I really would have bet on her winning this thing. She looked predictably terrible here, but she wasn't in tons so it wasn't much of an issue. But that does highlight the main problem of the match, which was almost immediately they went to 5 people disappearing all at once, while two people work in the ring. That means at some times you had people selling on the floor for 5+ consecutive minutes, which is just ludicrous. I know a lot of it won't be captured on camera, but at least brawl around the floor. So there was a lot of stupidity wrapped around having 7 people crammed into something essentially worked as a singles match. But a lot of the spots worked and overall that's what counts. Evans took a couple of bumps to the floor, Aerostar hit his enormous cliff dive splash onto everybody, Cuerno just annihilated Bengala with his tope, Ryck crushes Sexy Star with a urunage (not long after taking one of the uglier and improbable ranas from her), and yeah this delivered about what I was expecting. They could have had more false finishes but they decided early that they were mostly gonna have 5 people selling around the ring and less dramatic saves, but whatever.

PAS: Some big spots here but didn't flow as well as some of their better multi man matches, I think 7 guys is just too many, and Sexy Star is the poops. Also Fenix, Aeorstar and Bengala all fill the same role in a match like this,there is a certain number of spots for your face high flyer and having three of them in the same match makes it hard for any one of them to stand out.

TKG: I guess this was fine Xdivision/WWA cruiserweight multi-person clusterfuck. I think it was hurt by them working little guys v Andre structure with Big Ryck instead of working any face/heel structure. And for the most part you had heel King Cuerno matched up with heel Evans, face Bengala matched w face Sexy Star, and face Aerostar matched with face Fenix. It felt like it weakened everyone’s character.

4. Texano vs. Blue Demon Jr. (No DQ) 

ER: "Everything you've ever known about lucha libre comes from this guy", Matt Striker, when talking about Blue Demon. Yeesh, what fucking lucha do you watch, Striker? Well, at least all of this was kept short. This had some pretty weak weapons shots considering what we saw earlier in the night. Nothing in this was memorable or interesting. 

PAS: Blue Demon is the wrong guy for this role, Santo would have been awesome as a the delusional lucha legend who refuses to believe his time is past, Universo 2000 would have worked, or hell use a Villano. Demon just can't deliver anything in the ring, and can't pull off this match. Still I do like Chavo and the idea of lucha families joining, just wish it was Chavo uniting with Brazo De Oro.

TKG: So I guess if I want to say the first match was Memphis tribute, second W*NG tribute, third WWA tribute, then this was an attempt to do an Antonio Peña AAA one. Maybe that’s the genius of Peña, it’s not so easy to do a watchable “overbooked immobile old guy v semi mobile roided out youngster with a couple of hungry local indy guys doing interference & bumps” match. Or maybe it’s just that Blue Demon sucks. Weren’t the guys from Lucha Libre USA involved in this thing? They used Tinieblas Jr as a fun chickenshit heel. Tinieblas Jr would’ve also been perfect in this role and I imagine would not cost much.

5. Mil Muertes vs. Prince Puma

ER: Awesome match, easily the best non-gimmick singles match in the promotion's history. If they end up never coming back for a second season they will have at least gone out with a bang. Both guys brought out the big guns and hit some pretty spectacular stuff. Puma was nuts in this, taking so many of Muertes' things right on the side of his face, crashing spectacularly on the missed dive into a chairshot, blasting through rows of chairs, but then also hitting all sorts of quirky kicks from impossible angles, and at one point managing to deadlift Muertes up into a big suplex. A real pull out all stops performance from Puma. Muertes leaned face first into everything, hit a couple wicked powerslams, delivered one of the best spears you'll see, really played off Puma nicely. This was just a real high end main event that really did feel like a big deal. Great way to go out on Season 1. 

PAS: Yeah this was what you would hope a clash of the titans main event would be. Both guys were kept super strong and Puma dies in this match, if he was going to lose his belt he was going to go down hard. I am not sure about Puma throwing suplexes when he is working monsters, but that deadlift was nutty strength so I bought it. Muertes might be top five wrestler for 2015, would hope Mesias will do something cool in AAA if we don't get a season 2 this year.

TKG: LuchaUndergound has kind of quietly found a way to make their title matches feel like a big deal. They’re not “lucha title” matches, these are matches filled with outside brawling. It’s also a fed where every match has outside brawling, so they can’t do the easy WWF move of having irish whip into steps be a way to make title match feel more important than undercard. But they manage to make the title match feel like it’s a different thing than rest of card. This is a card where lots of matches were about the violence, Alberto trying to get revenge and hurt/humiliate Mundo, the “cero Miedo” match was about the violence. The title match wasn’t personal, felt like it was about winning the title. Match with three sections. You had early floor brawling section with the idea that Muertes is more dominant on the floor and then the in ring section where Puma is the more dominant, and the post table spot section where Muertes better able to hold his own in ring. I liked all three sections and the face/heel as well as big/ little stuff that they were able to pull off in all of them. Also liked how the sections were connected/flowed together. Often with matches with clear sections you can make up fake falls in your head, ie “this is mat section, this is where mat section now over, this is the section where they’re working a body part and now that’s stopped”. That wasn’t the case here, really some of the cooler stuff in the match was the way they transitioning from one section to the next. I really liked the big table spot being used as a NOAH dome show title match apron spot instead of as a finish. I don’t think ever seen that done before. It’s a match I’ve now watched several times and enjoyed a little bit more each time. And while yes it is a real satisfying match for a promotion to end with, this was a wrestling supercard that really felt like it built up a bunch of strong faces to challenge new heel title holder. Muertes has to give Puma a rematch, has to give Drago a title shot, Fenix has the one win over him and the gift of the Gods, Alberto is done with Mundo, and of course what happens when the Mil Muertes the king of death meets the man with zero fear. It was a satisfying ending and teased a neat new season.

ER: Final video package was really good, although earlier Dario unlocked Matanza so casually that I'm wondering what suddenly made him rush and scramble away. I love the little coda it gave to all the major players. 

TKG: I loved Fenix driving off in his Pontiac Firebird. Immediately wanted buy the whole set of non-existent Lucha Underground Matchbox toys and then to take son to local hobby store and ask him if he wants to work with me on the non-existent” Drago Dragster” or the non-existent “Mil Muertes Hearse” Kustom Model Car Kits. Or more likely buy the hobby kits first, get frustrated with glue and tiny parts and then buy the matchbox ones to make up for it.


PAS: I liked the finishing video package too, although I think the entire Matanza, Dragon Azteca, Black Lotus stuff is super dumb. Cueto is a fun enough actor to mitigate it a bit, but the whole thing is super corny, Black Lotus is sub-porn acting level and the angle makes no sense if you think about it for more then a second.

COMPLETE LUCHA UNDERGROUND REVIEWS - WE COMPLETED A PROJECT!

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MLJ: Enter: King Haku 1: King Haku, Pierroth Jr., Vampiro vs Dr. Wagner Jr., Emilio Charles Jr., Negro Casas

1993-08-22 @ Arena Coliseo
King Haku, Pierroth Jr., Vampiro vs Dr. Wagner Jr., Emilio Charles Jr., Negro Casas

Back to 2010 next week, but I need to break things up now and again or I go a little nuts. I've got a few things I'm going for here. First, I need to watch scattered amounts of Negro Casas in the early 90s because of something I'm going to do with OJ later on. I'm behind on that. Second, I really want to see some Haku in Mexico. Yes, I've more than learned to love lucha for the sake of lucha but I like seeing some wrestlers I'm familiar with in this setting as well. I'd say that seeing some prime Vampiro would be important too, just for historical value, but it's really not. Seeing Wagner, Jr. under 30 was kind of interesting though.

So this was a pretty weird match. It was two falls, and two fall matches can do weird things structurally. This one had a long showcase primera, where everyone pretty much got to wrestle everyone else, where the action kept flowing, and where the tecnicos got to look great. Then, between the falls, there was a beatdown on Vampiro on the outside, a pretty vicious one at that. You'd think the segunda would be a numbers-game beatdown on the remaining tecnicos, but it never really picked up that way. It was, instead, about them beating the odds (and the rudos) in a pretty convincing fashion until Casas made a desperation foul on Haku to end things.

I'm not 100% sure how to write this up, because I have about 10 gifs I want to post but I'm not sure I really want to go into too much depth on the action. I think I'm going to talk about it a bit more and then just post away. In general, the storytelling broke down both at the beginning and the end. In the beginning, it's because they gave away some match ups too early. For instance, Wagner was dodging Pierroth and that could have made for an interesting start to the match but after a bit of stalling they went right to it. Wagner was already good at letting things breathe, even if he, in the rudo role, didn't really get to show much of his charisma. Pierroth was pretty fiery though. I liked Haku's matwork stuff a lot. You forget that he could do stuff like this. It wasn't high end or anything, but it was simple and straightforward and effective, the sort of stuff you could see him doing in Montreal in the mid-80s against Martel or Bockwinkel. Neither Charles nor Vampiro showed me much. The crowd seemed split for Vampiro, with the girls cheering for him and others booing. He had some energetic rope running exchanges but nothing memorable. Charles was fine but just didn't get to do enough. He was definitely the third guy on his side. In some ways, I like (and miss) primeras like this. Right now, in CMLL, they'll run long falls, usually terceras, but they are more structured, with quick cut offs and switches, and a lot of tecnico vs the world sequences, and I like structure, but how wide open this was can be really enjoyable sometimes. Yes, they didn't keep a clean throughline of story but they also didn't lose things completely.

The best interaction of the match was Casas vs Haku, because Casas wasn't afraid to bounce off of him and eat all of his stuff and cower in utter fear. You'll see it in the gifs, but he just got completely killed, flying across the ring after a chop, eating an insane power bomb to end the primera and an even more insane choke slam later on, and my god, the foot choke! It's probably the best I've ever seen and Casas was so good in both taking and trying to fight back to prevent it. Haku had press slams and this crazy loose powerbomb where he almost pressed him. At one point (though I didn't capture it), he even caught Casas off the top with a press. He just looked like an absolute beast here.

The destruction of Vampire was well done too. I'm sure that went somewhere later. It was mostly Charles but Wagner got in on the act too. They took out the arm and then posted him heinously, and whenever he started to get up, while the action was going on in the ring, they'd just keep on him. It's just a shame that it never really led to a rudo advantage of any length. By the end of the match, Haku was just hitting bombs and the numbers game was there mainly to just break up the pins. It was really meandering by that point. Sure, the rudos didn't completely lose their heat between the destruction of Vampiro and the DQ finish (to avoid a German which I swear would have been the nastiest German ever), but this could have been far less one sided, especially after the power play began and still gotten the point across.

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Pirata Morgan, Killing So His Power Grows

Pirata Morgan, Satanico, & MS-1 vs. La Fiera, El Faraon, & El Egipcio EMLL 3/29/1985 - EPIC

Damn, that was violent. I've had the chance to see Pirata in a bunch of different settings thanks to this project, but at the end of the day, he's still a guy at his best working out-of-control lucha brawls, and this here was an out-of-control lucha brawl. He starts right out by punching El Egipcio in the face when he tries to get in the ring. Egipcio returns the favor, and their brawling is sort of the big hook throughout this match (unsurprising, as they were building to a hair match between the two). I've seen a handful of Egipcio matches now, but this is the first time he's actually stood out to me. And yeah, that's probably because he was booked so prominently in the match, but when you're throwing hands with Pirata and look like you're actually in his league, I'm inclined to think you're doing something right. They pave a nice little path of destruction through the post-apocalyptic wasteland that is any good Infernales brawl, including some great brawling around the ring where Pirata wins the award for most violent apron bumping now and forever, actually breaking the wooden barricades surrounding the ring. Satanico and the recently deceased MS-1 lend some very able support. Satanico in particular almost stole the match from Pirata and Egipcio. Phil said he looked like the abusive husband in a Lifetime made-for-TV movie, and I'm hard-pressed to disagree. Fiera and Faraon maybe perform below expectations insofar as they don't stand out the way they usually do, but you'll be too busy in awe of the Infernales' brutality to notice. Although you will notice at the end of the match when Fiera uncorks a "Hector Garza under-rotating on a shooting star press to the floor"-level horrifying botched dive. He comes off of the top rope with essentially a completely vertical upside-down bodypress to Satanico, except he lands just short of the target and Martinetes himself on the floor. Ouch. Surprisingly, for a brawl this intense, there actually wasn't any blood, but I don't suspect you'll find too many bloodless brawls better than this one.

Pirata Morgan, Antifaz del Norte, & Charly Manson vs. Sangre Chicana, Alebrije, & Vampiro Canadiense Monterrey 5/21/2006 - GREAT

This is a big step up from the last Monterrey match I reviewed for this. There are still some annoying heel ref shenanigans, but he eats a Sangre Chicana armdrag really nicely, so I can't really complain too much. Also, there's no Hator in sight, and everyone looks really game here, even a load like Vampiro. This is a garbage brawl, and like most lucha garbage brawls, it feels less violent than it does when they leave the foreign objects alone, especially after the match above. But it's still on the higher end of your lucha garbage brawls, with Alebrije in particular looking like a star here. He eats and bumps for everything really well, including getting his head taken off with a nasty clothesline from Pirata, and taking some nutty bumps on the wooden ramp to the ring. And there's plenty of fun abuse of Cujie as well, with Pirata putting the little guy in a Romero special, before he's used as a projectile by Alebrije to get his revenge later. I thought Antifaz looked really good here as well. His foreign object shots all had some nice pop to them. This wasn't a standout Chicana performance, but I don't think I've ever seen a match where he looked bad, and this is no exception. If nothing else, he clotheslined a wooden board into Antifaz's face. That was pretty cool. I'm a little iffy on the finish, but I admire the gusto with which Pirata faked his getting fouled, especially after the ref didn't believe him right away and he started to sell more frantically.

Pirata Morgan, Emilio Charles Jr., & Astro de Oro vs. Rayo de Jalisco Jr., Mascara Ano 2000, & Cien Caras EMLL 1989 - FUN

This was a one-fall tournament match, but it's a four-team tourney, so they still get 10+ minutes and I can review it, just with lowered expectations. It's also apparently a parejas increibles tournament, as Rayo is not getting along with the Dinamitas, and Astro de Oro is not getting along with Pirata and Emilio. I am not familiar with this Astro de Oro character, so I checked out luchawiki to see what his deal was.

"Greatest Guatemala superstar. Tecnico, who teamed with Rayo Lazer, Skeletor, Starman (Guatemala), Silverman, Arriero de San Juan. Astro de Oro received 50 Quetzales in his first match.

His best match was versus Mascara Ano 2000 in June of 1989, and his worst was against Dr. Wagner Jr.. Astro de Oro's favorite wrestler is Ric Flair.

In his other life, Astro de Oro is an educator. Astro de Oro also claims to be a very successful amateur wrestler before entering lucha libre.

Greatest Guatemala superstar"

Well that clears that up. I don't know when exactly in 1989 this match was in relation to his career best match against Mascara Ano 2000, but I don't remember any especially great exchanges between the two. Overall, the greatest Guatemala superstar didn't make me forget Super Astro or Brazo de Oro, but he was harmless. Pirata and Rayo were the best guys on their respective teams, and their work against each other was plenty fun and fired up. Emilio looked good, but you'll see much better from him, and the Dinamitas were solid but unspectacular. Still, Rayo doing his comedic evasive twirl face-first into Pirata's fist with nobody else fucking anything up will at least earn this FUN status. In conclusion, greatest Guatemala superstar.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE PIRATA MORGAN

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