2019 Ongoing MOTY List: San Juan Pantitlan Brawl

44. Romano Garcia/Rocky Santana/Hijo del Fishman vs. Wotan/Fly Star/Toxin BELLO 9/14

ER: Gimme some young bleeders and some crazy old men and just let them go to war baby! This was wall to wall chaos, more chairshots than I could count, too many ugly spills. Santana and Garcia are both in their 60s, and Santana has that awesome old man luchador hunch. Neither is closed to washed, and I'm in love with the amount of punishment they can take and dish out. Fishman ups the crazy to keep up with his AARP discount eligible partners, and he's the one who really takes things into the fans. Fishman and Wotan take this to the people, loved the cool spear early in the match into a regular family (4 year old curled up sleeping directly behind them), and right before the finish we get the spot of the match when Fishman hits a running death valley driver into a set of chairs. Wotan gets a hard trash bucket bounced off his head a few times, and I love how the fans allegiances change as the match goes on. At first they are loud and proud for Wotan, but as the match goes on they clearly get behind Rocky, and how could they not!? Everyone takes gnarly chairshots off the head, and there was a running game of seeing who could could take a harder shot to the chest, with plenty of contenders. Wotan blistered Garcia with a double handed chop, Fishman leveled an elbow directly into Wotan's sternum, and the crowd was responding to every stiff strike. Peak crazy hits when Rocky and Wotan started flying at each other like territorial bighorn rams, and seeing Rocky Santana clonking coconuts midair in his mid 60s means I haven't been going out of my way enough to write about old man Rocky Santana matches (although a lot of Rocky/Romano match links I click end up being just 3 minute clips). The moment of Rocky going from violent headbutt offense into classic lucha exchanges (the first of the match) was a genuinely beautiful thing. I loved that late match exchange between Rocky and Toxin, showing that an old bleeding man can still do graceful sequences. Oh, and then eat a suplex into the turnbuckles. This kicked ass.

PAS: Wotan must have really hated his grandfather, because any time he is in the ring with a senior citizen he is unleashing hell. This isn't as good as the Wotan vs. Black Terry match (although maybe 20 matches in the history of wrestling are), but is still a heck of a grizzly brawl. There was some sort of broken concrete in the ring which made even the simplest bumps look super painful. There was way too much head trauma, I mean Garcia and Santana are already at the age where the average person forgets where their keys are, add in all of those chair and bucket shots and they will be drooling in their pudding in a couple more. There was a couple of modern wrestling moments which looked off, random Toxin Canadian destroyer and a tower of doom spot which took forever to set up and looked bad, but when they kept it simple and violent, it was simple and violent.


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST