Jump to content
Pro Wrestling Only

[1992-05-16-FMW/UWA/WWA] El Hijo del Santo & Atsushi Onita & Tarzan Goto vs Negro Casas & Horace Boulder & Tim Patterson


Loss

Recommended Posts

  • 1 month later...

I think I need some time to process this before I can really describe it. So much awesome mix of styles, such an amazing crowd and such tremendous work not only from Santo and Casas, but really everyone in the match that I'm not sure I have the words for it at the moment. But it was spectacular. When I saw the less-talked-about match the day before prior to this, my expectations for this were a bit lowered. I was thinking people probably just like this for the novelty. But there is something more to this. Like the match the day before, Santo and Casas are working on a different plane from everyone else. But they do a much better job here than there of blending the styles. Where the 5/15 match felt a little disjointed and choppy, this doesn't have that feeling at all. One of those once-in-a-lifetime matches where even if one tried, the dynamic couldn't really be recaptured.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

After sitting on this a little while, I think the best way to describe this is wrestling taking place above a shark tank. Santo and Casas are doing the wrestling. Only instead of sharks surrounding the ring, it's FMW wrestlers brawling around the ring.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was there live. At the time, it was a pretty "different" match, and wild in that sense. Watching it now... it's pretty much a clusterfuck. Negro and Santo are fab, but it's pretty much doing their own thing, while the FWM guys are doing their own thing... and it not really adding up as much more than a spectacle. On a spectacle level, it strikes me as well short of Bret-Piper.

 

I should be pimping this as one of the best matches I've ever seen live. I can't... it wasn't. Choshu-Hash at G1 in 1996 isn't one of the 10 best matches that I've seen live, but it sits in my mind as far above this. That was #71 on your 1996 list.

 

I know you love Negro and Santo. I did as well. But it would be a bit like calling the Wargames ****1/2 if it was just Barry and Austin being great in it. Negro and Santo were great. The other four were just doing standard garbage. I can get putting "great garbage" like Kudo-Combat high: it doesn't really float my boat, but I understand people getting more out of the drama of the match than I do. With this, it was just standard garbage. Not really even the drama and intensity of that first Tenryu-Onita tag match in 1994. :/

 

John

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

A second viewing and I think I'm a little more grounded in reality than I was before, but I'm still a big fan of the match. While yes, Santo and Casas are so far ahead of everyone else in the match, Santo and Casas are also the stars of the match and it's built around them. I will say Onita is effective when he's allowed to let his charisma shine through, and both Santo and Casas are so much bigger than him as personalities here that what you're left with is an Onita without star quality, which is ... yeah. Ultimately, the FMW stuff leaves a lot to be desired, but I still like this for the novelty of Santo and Casas wrestling while surrounded by FMW guys. ****1/2? Not just probably not, but definitely not. But it's something that will still likely flirt with my top 100 for the year.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Wow. I legit loved this. The crowd is nuts. Sure it suffers from some of the cluster-fuck complaints mentioned, and a couple of the FMW guys are more than a bit outclassed, but I'm on the side of the fence that finds all of that adding to the charm of the match. I mean Holy Fuck this is among the exact reasons why I find a project like this appealing. I get to catch a rare match that I can't even believe ever took place and that is something entirely unique and fantastic.

 

Dear PWG, please book Steen, Super Dragon, LA ParK & Negro Casas v. Generico, Blue Panther, Dick Togo & Necro so that I can get to see something at least slightly resembling this. Oh, and set a race quota of a minimum 50% Mexican attendance (I'll get in) so that we can get some smart fans out of Reseda and get some more true fans in there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 10 months later...

Match that I would like to see a television version of. It was hard for a single camera to catch all that was going on outside the ring. It's a wild scene with the FMW guys outside but as the camera is focused on that I'm thinking what's going on in the ring with Casas/Santo. Great crowd though and it's awesome to see them go crazy every move Santo does on Casas. They were eating it up big time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 7 months later...

I was there live.

Man do I hate you :) I'd love to be part of a crowd like this just once, as it was super hot right from the start.

 

The first fall and early minutes here were amazing, and if they continued like that for three falls this might've been amazing. But they didn't. The early going saw Onita piledrive Boulder near the back of the arena, Santo and Casas doing what they do together, Santo delivering huge dives and all of it at a ridiculous pace. Final two falls had more nutty stuff that would be tough for any handheld to capture, but it just didn't hold up to the start. Still a really exciting match to watch. Santo's dive on Patterson and then rolling through with a plancha outside on Casas was just out of this world.

 

****

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

I just watched this on Youtube today. Santo is so over it's ridiculous. Gotta love the overpacked arena with fans on the stairs.

 

FMW is my favourite weird company. If I ever dig back into wrestling I should do a thread for them along the lines of the Puerto Rico one. Youtube seems pretty heavy on their stuff so it's probably possible.

 

This is a trainwreck, but it's the best kind. Just so much crazy bullshit that could only happen in pro wrestling. Crowd brawling almost needs the audience to be into it for it to work, and here they are into the show so you get that feeling of "crazy people running around" and lots of chaos which adds to everything. I don't watch much lucha at all so watching Casas take a couple pretty crazy bumps probably has more effect for me than it would for some since his stuff is really fresh for me. That spot early in the match where he gets dropkicked in the ass to get knocked off the top rope and Santo follows with a dive just seconds later is really great.

 

On one hand yeah it might have been neat to see the lucha guys work the FMW guys more but on the other hand... do I really need to see 7 minutes of Santo wasted on Horace Boulder? Probably not, so the way they work the match is probably for the best. The third fall fizzles out a little, but overall this was a lot of fun.

 

It may not be great technical wrestling but that sense of "nowhere else will you see something like this" is still really neat. This is the kind of thing ECW always wanted to do, though to be honest I have a hard time naming an ECW brawl that was as weirdly enjoyable as this.

 

I just had to see Onita and Santo on the same team because it was too bizarre to pass on seeing at least once in my life.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Onita and Goto TOGETHER?? This IS weird.

 

With all the FMW guys I guess I should have expected as much, but I was not expecting this to start with an ECW Arena-style brawl. Meanwhile Casas and Santo are doing their own thing in the ring, a lot of the same spots as the night before but executed smoother in front of a psychotic crowd and with chaotic shit happening all around them. The crowd is obviously nuts for Santo but Goto and Onita get big pops for about every move they do as well. I think this actually could have improved by sticking one of the Americans on the technico side and letting Onita and Goto go at each other, but that's a minor quibble for an amazing spectacle that feels ahead of its time, and does a better job blending wrestling and brawling than just about anything ECW ever did. Not a complaint but an observation: I found it curious that Santo, the super mega star of the match, ate a pinfall but didn't score a victory of his own, letting both partners get the spotlight at the finishes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
  • 1 year later...
  • 1 month later...

Despite the weirdness this did work out really well. The fans were wild for Santo. His interactions with Casas were typically golden. They didn't exactly work with the others so much as work around them as they brawled amongst themselves. There were a few awkward moments, yet this was mainly exciting and fun.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 11 months later...

I'd be a fool if I said this wasn't unique, but it might have been more digestible if it had been more conventional: Santo vs. Casas in a lucha singles and Onita/Goto vs. Boulder/Patterson in an FMW-style tag. It was certainly a novelty seeing Goto and Onita as teammates, though, and I wonder if that was acknowledged when they went back to Japan.

 

Outside of a few spots, there wasn't much interaction between the luchadores and the FMW guys, which I thought was the whole point of a bout like this. Santo had one nice double dive on Boulder inside and Casas outside that was the spot of the match, but other than that, this could have been the separate matches which I suggested above and not lost a thing.

 

It was nice to see Hogan's nephew and Patterson, whom I remember as just another WWF jobber. The interesting thing is, Patterson looks more like Hogan than Horace does here.

 

I guess Horace eating a piledriver on the floor and coming back to the match in a few moments as if nothing happened shouldn't bother me, since stuff like that happens in "garbage" promotions all the time. But for whatever reason, it still does. Call me too logical for my own good, I guess.

 

Was this held in the same arena as the card the previous day, or did they go to a do a different part of the LA area for this one?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

Goodness me there is a lot to love here. Some would say having two matches going on would be a detriment but I am a true fan of pro wrestling and enjoy staggering inconsistencies. Everything Casas and Santo do is beautiful. Everything they do is right. Now that, but the opposite for your FMW boys, no complaints though. Onita and Horace “My Dude” Boulder go all around town slinging chairs at each other, hoping to get that sexy, sexy plasma to come out of the other’s face. First fall is likely the peak but they definitely didn’t disappoint in the proceedings. If anything it feels like Santo and Casas have more of a spotlight. Without the FMW boys causing a ruckus in Row Q though you don’t get the scale of the first fall. Horace just starts yelling “STOP IT! STOP IT!” on the apron before the third fall when zilch is happening. Wrestling only gives, never takes. Santo busts out the headscissors and it has been a minute since I watched Santo so holy cow is that move still the damnedest thing you will see.

Sure, the match loads itself heavily on novelty and a hot crowd but I’ll be damned if the radically different approaches to wrestling within the same match didn’t enhance my enjoyment. I don’t always want wrestling to be super approachable, I want it to hit you from a couple of angles. The match feels built for someone like me with a short attention span where every moment something different is drawing your attention from a lovely armdrag to Tim Patterson’s gangly body flailing about. That’s the pro wrestling I need more of.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Santo Jr. & Casas are tearing it up in the ring & the FMW guys are wild on the outside of the ring. There is wrestling madness happening in every direction here...in the ring, off the top rope, in the bleachers, at ringside with chairs etc. 15 minutes of chaos. The pacing was set for a 2/3 falls match too so, it's at a break neck speed. I wouldn't rate this as a classic but, would say it is required viewing of some sort. The energy & intensity are so high for 1992 that's it's crazy to see. A great match.

 

Its one I wanted to see for some time now...not as Bosch's 'Garden of Earthly Delights' as I thought it would be but, I had a lot of fun.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

I remember having watched this in the mid 2000's and just re-watched this recently and I loved this even more so now. The venue seems like a New Jersey venue JAPW would run 25 years later and the chaotic atmosphere also carries the feel a JAPW headlined by a Homicide vs. Teddy Hart match would. Utter chaos. The teams are straight out of Genichiro Tenryu WAR card with Santo and Casas working their butts off and the FMW crew just hurtling chairs and punching each other in the face in front of a riled up sea of fans. Totally loved this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...
  • GSR changed the title to [1992-05-16-FMW/UWA/WWA] El Hijo del Santo & Atsushi Onita & Tarzan Goto vs Negro Casas & Horace Boulder & Tim Patterson
  • 1 year later...

This was completely insane.  Santo and Casas ripping it up in the ring while the other 4 brawled around the arena and occasionally came back in.  As far as pure spectacle goes, this is up there for me.  Can't say it is great, but definitely memorable.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...