MLJ: Hijo Del Santo vs Blue Panther 5: El Hijo del Santo/Rey Misterio, Jr./La Parka/Octagon vs. Blue Panther/Fuerza Guerrera/Psicosis/Pentagon

1995-06-18
El Hijo del Santo/Rey Misterio, Jr./La Parka/Octagon vs. Blue Panther/Fuerza Guerrera/Psicosis/Pentagon
Triplemania III-B

The breadth of footage I've been dealing with here is a little strange to me. The sense I get is that almost everything I've been watching, AAA-wise, has been from some super show. I don't know if that's just because I've been focused so narrowly on Panther vs Santo or not. I've taken a look at a few other lists and I don't see that I've missed a lot of stuff. I just don't see TV readily available and I don't know if no one taped it or what. I find that unlikely since AAA was so heavily featured in the WON at the time. Maybe they just didn't give matches the time on AAA TV that they do in what I'm more used to? Or maybe it's just Mexico and this footage isn't available? Or maybe it is but only to tape traders even in 2014. I'm sure most of you reading this know more about this than I do. It's just weird to me. It's like trying to watch WCW in 1994 and only having Flair vs Steamboat from Spring Stampede and War Games from Fall Brawl available to you. Obviously that's an extreme comparison but it's the feeling I get sometimes. Given the talent of the luchadores involved in all of these matches, you have to think there was good stuff almost every week. How could Fuerza Guerrera not have been completely and utterly awesome at weekly TV matches in 1995, you know? The great thing about a paragraph like that is that either I'm accurate and people are nodding their head along with me, or everyone calls me an idiot, BUT by doing so, it's revealed to me that there's actually tons and tons of footage I didn't know about that I get to watch someday. It's win-win.

Anyway, on to the match. This had a couple of different additions that changed things up, most notably the inclusion of La Parka. I'd never seen him so young and lithe and agile, and he added so much just by his presence. There are masked luchadores with a lot of charisma, be it Wagner, Jr., or Niebla, or Fuerza, but La Parka is just in his own class. Guys like Rey, Jr. seem to dance on air and make wrestling seem so beautiful and effortless, but Parka dances on hearts the same way, sometimes quite literally dancing. Tossing him into this now-familiar mix of talent was like lighting a spark in a dynomite factory. He's a great foil for all of the rudos, especially because he WAS younger and more agile than I was used to and thus extremely versatile within the scope of the match. Pentagon seemed like a new addition at first, but a bit of research told me that this version of the character was just Espanto, Jr. repackaged as the Storm Shadow to Octagon's Snake Eyes. Still, since a lot of the narrative of this match was around building to the two of them matching up, it did add a new twist.

Really, when you start to see a few of these in a row a lot of it becomes about the individual match-ups and the differences. Past Parka, the biggest difference was that there was a large sense of chaos to the match that the previous ones didn't have. Those were all a little more focused when the rudos were on top. This was a bit more all over the place, which had its pros and its cons. The tecnicos won most of the initial match-ups in the primera and took the fall. After more matchups, the rudos finally took over when they isolated Rey in a corner, which made sense even if it wasn't particularly clever. Then, in the tercera, in the midst of the chaos, Santo made a pretty low-key "duck a clothesline" transition into a nicely fiery comeback by his side, with it all ending with a huge dive by Psicosis and a couple of flash pins by the tecnicos. All fine, if a bit pedestran stuff structure wise.

Plenty of fun match ups though. Blue Panther and Rey got to tussle in the primera, with Panther being both a great base for Rey and full of awesome cut-offs. Parka pretty much faced down everyone, spinning around like a maniac as Psicosis and Fuerza got to be emotive and freak out. Then in the segunda, he and Psicosis had a pretty outlandish suplex fest with one another that actually worked quite well in the context of the match. I like Psicosis more and more each match I see him in. He was extremely versatile here. Rey ate some huge offense, including another power bomb/rocket launcher thing, but some of his work, especially with Pentagon just felt a bit too collaborative. I love how Fuerza can from trying to convince the refs he got fouled on a backbreaker (which makes no sense) to doing a huge power bomb in a matter of moments.

The chaos of the beatdown and comeback was full of fun moments. There were fouls all over the place, including to take the second fall. Much of the tecera was them beating on Santo, especially with a chair (which immediately made things feel different). He garnered a ton of sympathy, which was good because his opening work with Psicosis was weirdly sluggish. Between Santo selling and all the faults, the fans were becoming irate, so they more than ate up the fiery comeback. Rey showed a ton of passion there, and Santo came from off the side of the screen with the chair in a revenge spot. There was a bit of Octagon getting his hands on Pentagon in the comeback but just a tease of it, really. Psicosis, again with the versatility, hit a massive dive to take himself and Parka out of the match and then Rey and Santo hit a couple of flying roll ups to take the match.

You really can't go wrong with these matches, even if this wasn't quite up to the level of the last couple that I saw. I said it before but I could watch these all day.