Found Footage Friday: ALL APUESTAS

 
Stuka/Latin Lover vs. Valente Fernandez/Sangre Chicana Monterrey 6/92

MD: Lover still had his mask here (He'd lose it a couple of months later in a tag to Sangre Chicana and Sanguinario, and then immediately thereafter would have the below Fernandez singles match. Sheesh). It took me about a fall to figure out what was even going on here, which is blurry old lucha chaos for you. This was a tag where the losers of the fall had to fight each other over the mask. Also we come in mid stream with the rudos beating Lover down until Stuka streaks in from off screen wildly, knocks Fernandez out of the ring and clocks him with a chair. He'd get bloodied thereafter and they'd take the fall with a gnarly mutalock styled double armhold and Lover hitting a sunset flip on Chicana.

Stuka continues on Fernandez between falls, posting him but Fernandez turns the tables on him, tosses him into the seats, and gets some revenge with a chair. He's really good at this, this being standing around a bloody mess in the ring with a chair menancing Lover until Stuka rolls back in so he can absolutely crush him (he then crushes Lover for good measure). Very quick but impactful segunda that should have presented Lover and Stuka with a high, high bar to overcome for the rest of the match.

Weirdly, that's not quite what happened. Lover came into the terera strong, fighting back against Chicana, and Stuka chased Fernandez around. The tercera didn't quite have the drama I would have wanted, but Fernandez eliminated Lover with a great Reinera and then hit a huge dive. Stuka followed up by fouling Fernandez in front of the ref to set up the singles match.

The commentators said that even though they had been partners, now it was time for a fight to the death given the stakes, and that's how Stuka took it certainy, coming in hot, tossing Lover into the stands, hitting him with a chair, and ripping at the mask. Fernandez tried to get involved a little, and that let Lover fight back reversing a toss and sending Stuka flying into the stands in revenge, opening him up. Back in the ring, they went all out for an exciting finishing high-speed finishing stretch, lots of rope-running and nearfalls. Stuka finally missed a flip dive off the top and Lover locked in an armbar with the leg behind the head for the win. Post-match Stuka, who had increasingly lost it as the match went on, really lost it and took a runner, but multiple luchadores brought him back to have his head shaved. I could have used a little more flash in the tercera of the tag but overall this was more than spectacle enough.

Valente Fernandez vs. Latin Lover Monterrey 9/27/92

MD: This is almost completely bullshit but it's so consistent to it that it's ok. Fernandez charges in at the start but Lover fires back. Fernandez escapes around the ring and crotches over on the rope on the way in. He really doesn't look back with the fouls, all the way into the tercera as he controls most of it, with a spattering of rudo ref assistance along the way that cut Lover off after a big quebradora counter in the segunda, for instance.

What made it work was the triple combination of Fernandez being a total jerk (his celebration in the arms of his second (Sanguinario maybe?) after winning the primera with another foul for instance), Lover fighting back with fire whenever he had a chance, and plenty of blood. There were some big tope suicidas in the tercera and while we couldn't really see them due to the camera angle, the blood all over the floor from Lover put them way over the top emotionally. They felt monumental because we were left with the image of guys just laying around in splatterings of red (I'm not 100% convinced it's blood; it might just be the floor, but I'm going to go with it).

In general though, plenty of bullshit. Fernandez bullied the ref into compliance, hit him errounously though little came of it. He took a swipe at Lover's second and then, in a key moment, took out his own with a dive as Lover was able to move. The finish was fairly definitive with Lover just needing a clear enough path to plant Fernandez with an Alabama slam out of the corner. We're in Monterrey in the 90s and we got what we got accordingly. A bit too much BS but you can't say it didn't work.

Solar vs. Flama Azul Arena Naucalpan 1991

MD: This was very much a tale of two matches. The first two caida were a little more subdued and then everything picked up bigtime in the tercera. The setting with big colorful "LUCHAMANIA" banners in the traditional WM font and canned audio that meant we never got a real sense of the crowd didn't help matters.

Flama Azul got an early advantage without really doing anything underhanded or even definitive to get it. They started clean enough and he was just able to lean on Solar, a combination of him being able to keep up with him technically and having a bit more girth. There was some mask ripping and viciousness but for the most part, nothing was boiling over. That meant that the comeback didn't hit too hard, even though Solar had this way of rushing into the quebradoras instead of just waiting for his opponent to get to him. He makes them look more dynamic than anyone else and he was able to grind down with the knee and get a submission out of one.

Things opened up in the tercera, first and foremost, Flama Azul's skull as Solar continuously drove it into the post. There was a muddy, mess sense of violence here, a lack of pretty spots as they just crashed into each other grabbing and poking and swiping however they could. Just a real sense of animosity that had been missing from the match so far. Eventually, Solar was able to drive forward with one more backbreaker and put Flama down. This would have been better if we had a better sense of the crowd as, once it really got going, the dissonance between the bright colors and the nasty violence really made things pop.

PAS: So much of my experience with Solar is him doing his touring Maestros stuff with Negro Navarro at the end of his career, seeing him at the beginning of the 90s working Naucalpan in this kind of grimy small arena apuestas match is pretty great. It got more escalatingly ugly and violent as the match went on, especially the parts where Solar was trying to crack open Azul's skull like a walnut. This is some of the earliest Arena Naucalpan footage we have, and I love that it was always like this. Nothing fancy, just blood mixing with spilled beer and two guys rolling around in it. 

ER: So this was an outright classic, right? I'm a Solar fan. We all are. I've been there live and seen him do his front flip into the ring in his early 60s, I fell in love with the maestro matwork the first time I saw him, and yet I don't think I have ever seen Solar in a match like this. This was Solar in a damn fight and Solar as a damn rock star. Have I ever seen Solar get reactions like this before? I don't believe I have. The second the propulsive, motorik guitar groove of whatever his excellent entrance theme hit, Arena Naucalpan went crazy and it continued going crazy for a half hour. This felt like a real important apuestas match before Solar got anywhere close to the ring because the crowd made this match feel like real stakes. I have been to mask matches in Mexico before. The loudest one I was at was El Hijo del Santo vs. Super Parka in 2003, and maybe because it was in an open air bull ring rather than the closed in confines of Naucalpan, but this match was so much louder. Solar was swarmed like Mil Mascaras. "That's the guy who unmasked Dr. O'Borman a million years ago," somebody said, maybe. I loved Solar as an old man. I hardly knew his long superstar peak, but Naucalpan reacts to 1991 Solar like Hijo del Santo in El Toreo and I'm hyped. 

I can't pretend to know anything about Flama Azul, but I love him. I don't think we've ever written about him before. You'd think one of us would have covered him at some point but I couldn't find anything. Flama Azul feels like a Segunda Caida guy. He looks like a real piece of shit. Look at this Scumbag El Dandy. He has the body of a co-worker who gets takeout most days of the week, with messy hair and a perfect mustache. I love how he punches at Solar's face and body, love the violent mask ripping, love the damn referee holding Solar by the mask from the ring so that Flama can punch him in the face, repeatedly. Solar takes great prolonged beating, takes multiple backdrops on a hard mat, and the noise in that arena made it feel like people actually thought Solar was in danger of losing his mask, one of the five greatest masks in lucha history. The beating comes to a head when Solar is run along the apron and bounced into the ringpost and spills into the crowd, reinventing the ringpost bump in the early 90s. 

Solar does no matwork in this match. This is not the time for it. He does nothing you would ever call "smooth" in this fight. No, he fights back and spends the rest of the match wrecking Azul's back with the coolest fully controlled quebradoras I've ever seen. Solar was lifting and spinning Azul like pizza dough, bringing him down on his knee in a way that looked like he was controlling every single part of the landing. He just kept lifting and turning and slamming Azul into his knee, the quebradoras a triumphant tecnico show of strength that only got better the more he did. Solar's tope was incredible, his victory hard fought. Azul continued being a piece of shit after the match, refusing all handshakes and storming off to the rudo's locker room before his first trim. I liked the way he argued with no theatricality. He never looked like he was being a rudo for the benefit of the fans who loved or hated rudos, he felt like he was just an asshole that was trying to renege on a friendly wager, getting upset when he actually has to pay for dinner. 

Extra highlight is our post-match barber. He had no electric clippers but just watch the quick work he makes of Azul's hair with a pair of scissors. He was snapping off clumps of hair with real speed, handing off a huge handful to Solar for him to parade around. This man could scissor shear a sheep in a sheet.