1988 MATCH OF THE YEAR????

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.

MORE SPLITTIN'

El Dandy/Dr. Wagner Jr/Silver King/Bestia Salvaje v Super Parka/Antifaz/El Felino/Mr. Niebla (Arena Coliseo Monterrey 23/7/00)
--Kinda odd since I'm sure when it exactly started, or what the rules were, but I'll be damned if it wasn't a fun match with great moments. My favourite might be Parka throwing a referee into a tope to harm Salvaje (IIRC) and then pulling him in the ring and raising him arms. Bit out there, but funny regardless. Other great moment is Parka setting Wagner in the corner and doing a dance with his back turned only for Wagner to be mocking him with his own jingle behind him and greeting him with a knife edge near the neck. El Felino had a great little sequence in there too.

El Dandy/Silver King/Arandu v La Parka/Silver Star/El Hijo del Santo (Arena Coliseo Monterrey 22/8/00)
--Really annoyed this was JIP'ed, because what was there seemed to be good enough to do well on my list.* Some of the chop exchanges with interferences and stuff reminded me of an All Japan tag. They looked to build all of that into a good pinfall frenzy near the end, especially in the third fall. Each guy brought something different too. La Parka was the guy who would dominate the opposing team and dance around, Santito would pull out the moves no one else could do, and El Dandy took a mean kick in the arse from Antifaz post match. Likely sets up their match next month. Not even sure it WAS Antifaz, but I'll throw a dart out a window.

*= Referring to my top 100 matches of the 2000-2009 list, which I gave up after one week. Laughing smiley.

El Hijo del Santo x Dos

El Hijo del Santo/Eddy Guerrero v Perro Aguayo/Leon Chino (WWA ?/?/90)
--Santo is seriously a contender for my best worker EVER. The crowd kinda, wasn;t as interested as they probably should have been (they weren;t dead at all, but, kinda, not too loud), and Santo saw that and just went totally relentless on Perro. He grabbed a chair from the crowd and whacked his head with, and stole an audience member's drink and threw it right in his face. Never knew Perro actually had a decent amount of mat skill either, all I hear is how he's such a wild brawler. Definitely worth a watch.

El Hijo del Santo/Super Astro/Kendo v Negro Casas/Blue Panther/Fuerza Guerrera (UWF 4/6/90)
--I heard this was the first of Hamada's UWF and holy shit if that's true this could NOT have been any better. Nothing serious in terms of rudo v technico, but it was six guys having a shitload of fun. Crowd ate up every second, there were cheers going for like evry guy. Real awesome mat work, Negro's chop/slaps are a thing of beauty, and Santo makes having the best timing ever look easy. It being handheld quality probably stops it from being a good introduction to Lucha, but it's real, real great. In short, this the Lucha Libre version of ECW Barely Legal's 3-on-3 w/Sasuke, Hamada, TAKA, etc.

Touch My Mask And You're A Dead Man

El Hijo del Santo v Espanto Jr. (Arena Coliseo Monterrey 31/8/86)
--Mother of God where do I begin? I'll guess I can start with the fact that Espanto looked like one of the best pure heels there ever was. He was constantly throwing around Santo like he was a sack of crap, trying to really spit in the face of the legacy he and his father would have (it was mask v mask, ftr). First fall was basically FULL of that, best part was Espanto knocking Santo out of the ring, and giving him literally zero seconds to get a breather, doesn't seem like much, but the way he was going about it was as about as awesome as it gets. He seemed to want to get the match over with real quickly too, w/ the first fall ending in no more thn three minutes. After Santo had lost the 1st fall, he went outside the ring after Espanto continued attacking him, and he acted like "what kind of monster is this??? Can I beat him???" Kids came up to console him and everything, he was a REAL superhero to them. Second fall was really about Santo getting the score evened up (and revenge), and it only lasted about as long as the first. Third fall was fucking IMMENSE, full of mask-ripping, blood flying everywhere, both guys ramming each other into the ring poles, planchas, you name it. Espanto was biting away at Santo's head at one point for like a straight minute and it looked like he was spitting out the blood. The chairshots he gave were brutal too, and it wasn't those fold-out chairs, it was those ones like they'd use in a school, and they blew up Santo's head hugely. The whole thing was just about two guys who didn't respect or like each other trying to save their masks in total violence. Must-see.

Looky what I found

Wrote these MONTHS ago and dug them up from a thread on a forum. Expect more wow-I-forgot-I-wrote-this-I'll-blog-it posts as well.

El Hijo del Santo/Solomon Grondy/Rayo de Jalisco Jr v Perro Aguayo/Mascara Ano 2000/Cien Caras (EMLL 9/9/90)
--This was just overly *too much* fun in the best way possible. Went for like twenty minutes I think and had me hooked the entire time with not a single second boring, not one second. It kind of opened my eyes to a couple thing too, like Perro being a damn entertaining guy to watch. Right when the bell was rung he had already gone straight for Santo and Santo was paying him back the whole match almost ignoring his partners and just singling him out to full-force rip him apart. I always thought Perro was a Bruiser Brody-type who was awkward with selling and barely moved, but he was pretty nimble and bumped well. Going to have to watch some of his simgles stuff. Another guy I thought was impressive was Grondy, he's fat, like, fatter than Mark Henry fat, but he was doing all he could to squash the rudo team and make the crowd cheer. He even did this neat little dropkick to send Ano 2000 to the outside and then faked a jump over the ropes. It had bezerk crazy stuff like that consistantly, hell the second fall ended in a total referee-ignoring all-over-the-place brawl with trumpet music in the damn background. Cien Caras had his mask taken off by Jalisco too which caused him to have his face covered by a black clothe and scamper out of the arena. This is the sort of "why I watch Lucha Libre" match.

El Hijo del Santo/Eddy Guerrero/El Satanico v El Brazo/Brazo de Oro/Brazo de Plata (EMLL 16/9/90)
--Brazo de Plata (I think t was him) was awesome in this here. If he wasn't jumping on Santo with his fat glutes he was doing dive presses to try to kill El Satanico. Everyone else was great, too, but he was on fire. Loved it when all three Brazos grabbed Santo in a mocking manner to pose for the video camera and then tried to take his mask off. Santo's like Liger, man he'll kick the crap out of you for trying to his mask off, then he'll dive out onto you because he fucking can. Eddy was already good in 1990 and he was doing a really good job at playing the young guy trying to make a name and stay competitive with everyone else. Felt like every wrestler had some role to play for the match and it couldn't have been much better.

El Hijo del Santo v Brazo de Oro (UWA 13/1/91)
--Yay this holds up. The first and second falls aren't anything "classic" or anything but watching Santo beat Oro bloody with the ring post after losing the first fall is an awesome way to spent a few minutes. In the first fall Oro was great at making Santo look vulnerable and almost pathetic, and in the second it was pretty much swapped around with Santito bursting into a different gear and kncoking Oro senseless. Third fall is probably what you'd expect from mask vs. hair match, switching it to "classic" levels of awesome, full with all the near falls, planchas and dives you could hope for in a match like this. Oro's no 180-pounder like Santo, either, when he dives he takes his whole gut with him and really lays into you. No fancy mat work in this one, just two pro wrestlers beating each other bad and making you forgot they're only 5'7" apiece. One of the best matches of 1991 imo.

Negro Casas v El Hijo del Santo (UWA 3/1/91)
--"Perfectly in sync" is an understatement for how good these two are together, they make everything they do look so effortless without any screw-ups or botches, they're bordering on Flair/Steamboat levels. Some the things Santo would do looks impossible for a human being to pull off, and doing it with such flow and connectivity with his other moves, it blows your freaking mind. Pretty different match from some of their others, this was almost all submission-based work with near-fall stuff near the end. No Negro being a cheat and trying to mock Santo, no Santo trying to rip out Negro's hair. They just wanted to be the better man and wrestler and beat the other cleanly. Negro getting the clean win was unexpected for me, too.