Lucha. That's It.

Negro Navarro v El Engendro (NWG 2/16/03)
--Man I could see people who don't like lucha very much thinking nothing of this. First of all, it's almost entirely mat work, like, 99 decimal point %. Second, it's a little take-turn-ish, but if you're going to go your turn/my turn, I'd much rather it be used while exchanges some really sweet looking holds instead of 50 second periods of beat down, which none of this was. The ref was terrible with slow counts, too, but that's something even a lucha diehard would pick at. This is one fall for the Intercontinental Title and Navarro's the challenger, but he still manages to come across as the maestro of the two. Engendro held his own really, really well and they worked tremendous with the idea that "there's a hold for every counter and a counter for every hold," but Navarro would seem much less trouble when Enegndro had him working from the bottom. Some of the submissions were sublime; there just can't be a name for the cross-legged things Navarro pulls out here. I actually paused it to try to figure out which way who's leg was going where at times. One of the submissions had Navarro tie up Engendro's leg with his own and then pull his up upwards so they were both above the mat (terrible explanation but it was awesome). Looked hard as hell to hold and that was confirmed when Navarro himself had to drop him because he couldn't keep the weight up. There sure as shit aren't names for the counters whipped out. During another leglock thingy they both wind up sitting up and sort of trying to grasp each others hands while still having their legs all bundled. This was an ideal chess game, and you got the sense Engendro had to stay on the mat because Navarro had a counter for everything anyway and would have more freedom to wrench him when upright, but Navarro's clearly got him outclassed, so he pops up with lariats and stuff. THAT left him more open to attacks and got wrangle up in Navarro's rolling keylock move thing. He was the pawn getting destroyed by the knight either way, I guess. Really good match in a quiet year for lucha.

Negro Casas v Perro Aguayo Jr. (CMLL 9/25/04)
--Perro's cocky and attacks Negro and pulls his head up for the pin in the first fall, which becomes his stupid mistake when Negro flash-pins him with la magistral a minute later. Only one more fall after that, but it's mostly Perro booting Negro here and there. He uses the block thing that's a step in modern day CMLL, and sits Negro down in the stands, etc. Bunch of nothing, really.

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.

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.