El Hijo del Santo v Espanto Jr. (Arena Coliseo Monterrey 10/4/88)
--Newly discovered on a Monterrey Classics DVD by Alfredo Esparza (the guy who runs the SlamBamJam video website), and thanks to Tim Cooke over at WrestlingKO I didn't have to pay for the DVD and wait a million years for it to arrive. Megaupload's a wonderful thing, and guess what? SO WAS THIS. I didn't know what to expect going in, I mean their '86 match is full of Espanto looking like one of the top rudos to ever walk the damn Earth, chewing Santo's forehead and spitting out blood and everything a scum-sucking viciously maniacal murderous bastardcase, but I had no idea what he'd do here because these two have a lot of mat work under their belt to go along with that. Turns out I got a little mix of both. It doesn't have the blood or emotion that the mask vs. mask match has, but it rocks every ocean under the SUN just the same. First fall is practically all on the mat, and Santo runs through his usual stuff, but Santo's usual is THE phenomenal stuff and I never get tired of his back-rolling cart-wheeling hammer-locking armbar thing or his criss-cross feet-on-face twisty manoeuvre. Crowd went pretty nuts for that latter thing, I don't remember seeing that as well received as it was here, and he does it again and they give just as loud a reception. There was a pretty large basis that Espanto couldn't get one on Santo no matter how hard he tried. He could pull out anything he's capable off; Santo's always there with an armdrag or something to separate the two so Santo could run through more of his graceful offense. ADORED the teased tension, there's only so much a tecnico and rudo (or, in a lot of cases, a double tecnico or double rudo) can do on the mat before they get into a small shoving contest. I was dying the entire match to see Espanto's snap-mares because in the '86 match they wee the most beautiful fucking thing I've ever seen in my life, and I literally (not really) wanted to pop a champagne bottle when he pulled out a few to get Santo down. Santo sold them great, obviously, and I'd usually think that the seller is the guy making the snap mare look like a million bucks, but I've seen Santo sell other guy's snap mares and it's just not as good as the unadulterated brilliance that is ESPANTO'S SNAP MARES. Yeah, they have to be caps locked they're so good. I loved how Espanto got wiser and wiser to Santo's moves too, like, the third time Santo went for the twisty feet-on-cheek thing he dropped him to the floor. Santo's selling was pretty fucking great as well, he took a gawwwgeous shoulder bump into the turnbuckle where he sprung off of it in a way that made it look as if he was shot out of a cannon. Espanto's selling was even son of a bitching BETTER; I've never seen anyone sell a monkey flip by somersaulting before and that has to be Awesome Espanto Thing 1b (1a being his SNAP MARES). I'm having trouble remembering what happened *exactly* in what fall, but Santo won the first and Espanto won the second. Third fall was THE IMMENSE. Goes somewhere around ten minutes, and they get everything you want in this kind of lucha match. Espanto dives on him like a human torpedo motherfucker after a lot of teases that Santo may get one in, and there's a huge mass of Mexican flesh (I mean the crowd, btw) surrounding them to get the up close and personal view. Santo's exhaustion selling is a real thing of wonder, I don't know too many that can get back in control after a thing like that and still look like he might be the more beaten of the two. He kicks Espanto's legs while Espanto's running, and he's flopping his arms and dangling there like he was as lucky as anyone ever to pull that off. Santo's turn to dive (and even THAT looked as if it would have been a million times different than had he done it earlier- though it's probably becoming a legit fatigue thing by this point) and instead off surrounding the wrestlers, we get children on the apron and in the fuckin' RING. In a WWE event it'd probably be, "idiots, get the fuck outta there," but in the 1980s on a handheld camera in Meh-hee-ko, it's a dawg-gonned thing of beauty. I swear to GOD Espanto was going to get counted out, and I'm not going to lie, that would've been a hell of a disappointing ending. The referee probably held the count a little so it wouldn't be a botched ending, but the drama of him being counted was insane, and he's RUDO. Near-falls after that are pretty spectacular, even if it doesn't last long. But four minutes of spectacular near-falls are four fuckin' minutes of spectacular fuckin' near-falls. There was this one kid in the middle-top of the screen that I swear jumped three feet in the air whenever Espanto kicked out. Espanto goes into submission territory and I was surprised he got the clean win. Well, not exactly clean since he was yanking the ropes a fair bit, but I was surprised to see him win period. I'm not exactly sure this is as good as the '86 mask v mask match, but I'd likely stick that one around my 20 best matches ever, and that's a HARD batch to top. Nevertheless though, this was fucking excellent and it feels as good as any match of 1988. ZILLION STARS.
