Mascara Año 2000, Fuerza Guerrera y Herodes vs. MS-1, El Dandy y Astro de Oro, circa '89
For some reason El Dandy and MS-1 were on the same side here. That didn't last long. Match was pretty much an angle to set up Dandy vs. MS-1 and Mascara Año 2000 vs. Astro de Oro matches. Wouldn't mind seeing that Dandy/MS-1 match if it ever took place.
Satanico, Apolo Dantes y Dr.Wagner Jr vs. The Head Hunters y Emilio Charles Jr., circa '98
This was a lot of fun. Satanico was sporting a ski
Ultraman, Stuka & Kung Fu vs. Herodes, Masakre & El Satanico, Arena Coliseo 80s
This seemed like an exciting match on paper, but it was very much a houseshow match. That wasn't so bad, however, as there were a couple of good laughs. The first half of the match featured a bunch of physical comedy designed to make the rudos look foolish while the second half was a beatdown where the technicos paid for their cheekiness. I love how rudos from this generation could switch from comedy to
La Fiera vs. Babe Face, hair vs. hair, 8/15/86
This was a good match. It didn't really deliver like a great hair match does, but still worth a look.
The first time I watched it I thought the first two falls were a bit innocuous looking. I always get defensive when people say the first two falls in lucha are nothing falls as most of the time I think they work within the rhythm of a lucha libre match, but with these 80s matches the crowds are so poorly mic'ed that it's difficult to get a
El Hijo del Santo vs. El Hijo del Solitario vs. Angel Blanco Jr., Triangular de la Muerte, 3/31/12
There are about three or four handhelds of this available on youtube. The handheld with the best angle is broken down into half a dozen parts. It's also the most complete, from entrances to post match unmasking and celebrations. A couple of the other versions are clipped.
This was fairly typical for a Triangular de la Muerte match. As soon as a three-way match was announced I had an inkli
El Hijo del Santo & Villano IV vs. El Hijo del Solitario & Angel Blanco Jr., Todo X El Todo La Venganza, 3/23/12
This was nowhere near as good as their first match, but as the middle part in the feud it was still pretty good.
The February tag defied a lot of lucha libre conventions, whereas this was more along the lines of a traditional pre-apuestas match. The rudos milled about drawing heat while the technicos bled, then they switched roles. The rudos didn't care so much abou
Virus vs. Guerrero Maya Jr., CMLL World Super Lightweight Championship, 7/6/11
This was a great match. It was almost assuredly the Match of the Year for 2011 and hasn't been topped since.
The early part of the match was a clinic from Virus. There's plenty of matwork where you get a more even contribution from both participants, be it Navarro and Solar, Casas and Panther or even Virus and Valiente, but in terms of carrying a guy this had as much rhythm as any of those match-ups and was
Blue Panther vs. Negro Casas, hair vs hair, CMLL 3/2/12
This was the match that pretty much everyone expected it would be. I won't go into too much detail about it as I assume everyone's seen it by now, but I'll share a few thoughts:
There wasn't any blood and it wasn't a hair match. You're not going to see blood at Arena Mexico, but it's still worth mentioning that it wasn't a hair match. The workers lost their hair but that was about all it had in common with classic lucha. It was a
Angel Blanco Jr./El Hijo del Solitario vs. El Hijo Del Santo/Villano IV, TXT 2/25/12
This was an excellent match and a vintage Santo brawl. I guess the surprising thing about that is that Santo didn't feature prominently. With the focus squarely on El Hijo del Solitario and Villano IV and an excellent performance from Angel Blanco Jr, Santo was left to do his bits. Santo being Santo it was all very crowd pleasing.
The most outstanding thing about the match was the amount of blood. All
Blue Panther vs. Negro Casas, lightning match, CMLL 1/27/12
-- for a lightning match this was extremely good. Ten minutes can either be too short or too long in a lightning match, and many workers struggle to deliver something substantial, but this was as close to a proper match as you'll get with this stip. It wasn't perfect as they couldn't transition into the finish very well and the finish itself was contrived, but what shone through was how good these guys are at keeping things interes
This was a reply that I made, amongst friends, in reply to the Summerslam HBK Vs. Razor ladder match which was posted in the "Match-Of-The-Week" group that I'm apart of on Facebook. I just wanted to re-post it here so that I can save it for later:
"The first thing that really grabs me about this match is that the midcard was fucking over. This is for the Intercontinental Title...but it was obvious that they were both going to keep climbing up the ladder of success. In that regard, the damn
Pierroth vs. Mascara Sagrada, Mexican National Light Heavyweight title, 2/1/91
If ever there was a test of how good Pierroth was during this time frame then this is it. Mascara Sagrada was not... very good... After a while, you accept him as part of the crew and sometimes you're impressed with what a rudo can do with him in trios, but we talking about trios. This was a twenty minute, two out of three falls title match. It wasn't exactly a miracle match, but it could've easily been a disaste
Hoping to keep more up to date with lucha this year.
Black Terry/El Hijo Del Pirata Morgan/Skyde vs. Negro Navarro/Trauma 1/Trauma 2 Arena Neza 1/1/12
-- This was ok. I read some criticism of the Terry/Trauma II matwork but it was nowhere near as frustrating as it can be. Navarro vs. Skyde was a nice change of pace but they could've done more. The best parts were the Terry/Navarro exchanges. Ever since those clips of Terry and Navarro fighting each other cut to Metallica's Unforgiven
Black Terry/Negro Navarro vs. Trauma I/Trauma II, LUCHA POP 8/27/11
This was a fairly typical match between these workers. It was bare bones in terms of layout and structure; Navarro dominated, Terry played second fiddle, and yet it was still pretty good. When Black Terry Jr's videos first started appearing it was Trauma II who showed the most potential among Dinastía Navarro, but for the past year or so Trauma I has been beastly. I don't know if he's overtaken Trauma II, but it sure looks
Blue Panther vs. Super Astro, Mexican National Middleweight Championship, AAA 10/9/92
I've always thought this match was a disappointment and still do. The matwork in the first caida is nothing special and actually pretty weak by lucha title match standards. When you consider that it's a Blue Panther title match it's even more frustrating. Worse still is the second caida. I'm sure we've all made concessions for a weak caida in the past, but a soft fall is not what you'd expect from an oft-c
Virus vs. Stuka Jr., Arena Coliseo de Guadalajara, 8/30/11
Wow, after crying out for CMLL to give Virus more time to work they finally went and did it. Thank you, CMLL.
This was a wonderfully old-school match. The matwork was short and not much more than a feeling out process, but the rope exchanges and transitions were classic lucha and the slower, more deliberate pace had a strong resonance with me. The match didn't have a big arc, but in this particular case the simplity of the mat
La Fiera v. Jerry Estrada, chain match, Monterrey, early 90s
This is the first time I can remember seeing a chain match in lucha. I've got to say it's one of the better borrowed gimmicks I've seen in Mexican wrestling. The thing I liked about this most was how random the match-up was. One of the great things about lucha is that when you think of a chain match in Monterrey, there's probably a hundred different match-ups it would suit, but you look at the billing -- Jerry Estrada and La Fiera
Blue Panther vs. Negro Casas, CMLL 4/24/11
Neither of these guys rank among my favourite lucha libre vets but this was an excellent mano a mano bout. I think it's fair to say that mano a mano bouts don't have the grandest of traditions in lucha libre. Historically, they remind me of studio matches from the territories system where the purpose was to further an angle or tease an arena match. For the most part, they were an excuse for both guys to spill a little blood before a wager match whi
On Sunday, December 18th, 2011 World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) held their "Tables, Ladders & Chairs" (TLC) Pay-Per-View (PPV). At the conclusion of that evening, at the 11 o'clock hour, both C.M. Punk & Daniel Bryan were the respective World Champions in the largest professional wrestling promotion in the world.
I could not care less.
Today, Monday the 19th, that does not seem to be the popular opinion while browsing various wrestling related websites and message forums. So
I'm thirty years old and I have a crush on AJ Lee. I now use an avatar of her on both DVDVR and here. I have no shame!
WWE Survivor Series was entertaining. No complaints. RAW the following night, however, not so much. Which this time of the year that is not usually a problem as I can just change the TV over to Monday Night Football. However that was the Patriots at home against the Chiefs, so it was a shit-kicking.
As a whole, this is as least interested in professional wrestl
Villano III vs. Rambo, mask vs. mask, 10/25/87
This was awesome. I don't know how much of it exists on tape since it was a Cronicas y leyendas de la lucha libre hatchet job that I watched, but I presume it's the whole thing since it's a handheld shot from ringside. Whatever the case, it was every bit as bloody and violent as the pictures suggest:
And everything you'd expect from a Rambo vs. Villano mask match. In fact, having watched their later hair matches it's pretty much th
WWE, to me, is in the biggest slump that I can remember for as long as I have been watching. There are so many things that irk me about the current product, that I struggle to even watch the free shows anymore. I missed RAW last week. Usually, if I miss a show, it leads to me downloading it afterward to check it out. Instead, I just read a recap and felt that that was good enough. I have not watched Smackdown in a couple of weeks, despite liking some things about it (RE: Mark Henry) recently. Wh
El Canek vs. Don Corleone, UWA World Heavyweight Championship, 2/14/82
This was okay, but I was expecting something different. I guess I was anticipating some sort of non-existent Ray Mendoza mat game from Canek, but it was pretty much your run-of-the-mill Canek match from this era. Canek was a guy who could do a lot of things athletically, but he was a bit of a boring prick really. The highlight here was Don Corelone, who had a great build for pro-wrestling and moved really beautifully. He
The last couple of weeks here on PWO, we have seen several threads talking about who was the best at working in various decades. This, in turn, led to me having a conversation in person with one of my friends about it. That conversation then spawned into a lot of listing names and trying to back-up each selection with examples of why they were great. We were better at eliminating names than being able to defend them and bump them up, for one reason or another. It probably had a lot to do with ou
