Dr. Wagner Jr/Mano Negra vs Super Astro/Ultramán Jr, 10/28/07, Arena Coliseo de Monterrey
This seemed like a good opportunity to see Wagner work.
I mean actually work.
His first exchange with Ultraman was really good. It was pretty much test of strength stuff, but both guys have great grappling stances and there was real strength in the takedowns and the way they tried to hook each other. Niebla couldn't grab an arm and do anything with it, so this wasn't bad, but it was soon appa
Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. Mr. Niebla, 9/3/97 (CMLL World Light Heavyweight Title)
I wasn't sure what to make of this match.
They worked hard on an Arena Coliseo show, and you never want to criticise something like that, but it was pretty much the epitome of the modern style.
Wagner's a guy I really like, but I kept wishing he'd do something special. Niebla couldn't work the match from the ground up and wanted to head straight into the spots. It was up to Wagner to school him in that reg
Satanico vs. Pirata Morgan, hair vs. hair, AAA 11/26/93
Coming into this fight, I didn't expect it to be any good.
Probably figured Satanico and Morgan had been in one hair match too many, and I just wanted to see what they were up to in AAA, but these guys... These guys were workers.
Pirata Morgan was heavier in this match than I'm used to seeing and no longer the amazing bumper of the late 80s to early 90s. The extra weight hindered his mobility, but it didn't really matter sin
I've been watching alot of 80's matches lately and went ahead and made my own personal Top 100. I know some of picks may be weird so feel free to comment on them, or even better, other matches that I haven't seen and you think should be in there. Here it is:
Floyd's Top 100 matches of the 80's
I'd like to add these matches would've made my list but my copies were too clipped to rate. I recommend to check them out too!:
Tiger Mask I Vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi (New Japan - 11/4/82)
Ti
Cicloncito Ramirez, Pequeño Cochisse, Platita & Pequeño Sayama vs. Damiancito el Guerrero, Fierito, Tritoncito & Guerrerito del Futuro
This was a Cibernetico at the end of '97, where the winner earned the right to wrestle in a "regular" tag match.
If you read this blog, then you probably know who won.
Bit of a shame really. There was never any guarantee of seeing the Minis on TV, but this was it for one of the best divisions anywhere in wrestling. There were classics to be
Satanico vs. El Dandy, hair vs. hair, 9/18/92 (59th Anniversary Show)
This was the third time these guys had squared off in as many years and not a match the fans wanted to see.
Satanico and El Dandy were great workers, so there were enough touches to make it enjoyable, but it wasn't as good as their previous matches -- which weren't the greatest to begin with. It was kinda in keeping with Dandy's matches against Bestia Salvaje (9/4) and La Fiera (11/27), two competent rudos with whom
El Hijo del Santo vs. El Averno, 10/22/04 (WWA World Welterweight Championship)
Man, Lucha has lost its charm.
After watching raw, grainy footage of Santo and Espanto Jr, this came across as pretty damn lifeless.
I was kinda hoping that Averno would prove himself to be more than a foil, but he took little or no initiative in the matwork and despite Santo still being pretty slick, this was just a series of spots.
It's all neatly packaged, but I saw better work on the Todos X e
Villano III vs Negro Casas (IWRG 11-1-07)
Another decent sort of a match.
Villano III is in his late 50s and kinda creaks around the ring, but he still looks like he could break a guy in half if he wanted to. Casas has always been good at hiding his age, partly out of vanity (one would assume.) Here he's wrestling a guy who's at least ten years older than him, so he doesn't have to hide it so much, but he kinda wrestles what's in front of him, which I thought was decent of him. The ma
Kahos/El Engendro vs. El Celestial/El Coloso, 10/3/92, UWA
Fun match.
The matwork was pretty simple, and perhaps a bit slow, but I dug the selling points.
Engendro gives a great burlesque performance. The trick to that, of course, is being an asskicker after the comedy spots, which Engendro most certainly is. There's about five or six genuine laughs, which is pretty good for an undercard match. Engendro lords over proceedings, working the refs, crowd and his opponents, but he ex
El Hijo del Santo vs. Negro Casas, 5/17/91, Tijuana (handheld)
Not a great match compared to the matches Santo had against Brazo de Oro and Espanto Jr, or the stuff Casas was doing with El Dandy a year later, but it had the usual awesome atmosphere, with local kids climbing all over the ring and plenty of activity in the audience.
One kid in particular leads a pretty rousing ovation at the end, while the other kids bang on the apron. Once again, the handheld gives you a feel for what a r
Negro Navarro/El Signo/Black Power vs. Silver King/El Texano/El Gran Hamada - 10/17/92, UWA
This wasn't as awesome as it sounds, but it did make me lament that AAA became popular & UWA died out.
(There's perfectly good reasons why that happened, but I'll take vets working a style I like. Even if it's non-drawing Misioneros w/ a bum partner.)
Black Power's a third stringer, but the rest of these guys could work. There's something reassuring about that in this day and age. The phys
Espanto Jr. vs. El Hijo Del Santo (UWA World Welterweight Title Match), 5/14/92
This was such a beautiful Lucha Libre match & made a fool of me thinking Santo wasn't one of the great Lucha mat workers. If more of his UWA work was available, I think we'd get a bigger picture of how good Santo really was.
Again, the single camera at ringside gives this a raw documentary feel, only it's not a glimpse of Santo working Durango. Sure he looks every bit the superhero during the introducti
El Engendro vs. Negro Navarro (NWG Intercontinental Title), 2/15/03
Negro Navarro's one of the only guys I enjoy in wrestling anymore, so if there's any dirt on him I don't want to hear it. I just want to enjoy seeing him do what he does for a living, even if it's in front of a tiny crowd in some gym in Guadalajara.
The match is a throwback to when wrestling was about holds. They work their way in and out of holds, trying to catch each other out. There's not a lot of "fight", so to sp
Floyd's Rewatching Ratings (Your Mileage May Vary)
Last updated: 2:00 AM - 7/7/08
1980:
1. Rimi (Jaguar) Yokota Vs. Chino Sato (All-Japan Women - 1/4/80) - [****]
2. Jackie Sato Vs. Tommy Aoyama (All-Japan Women - 1/4/80) - [***3/4]
3. Dynamite Kid Vs. Tatsumi Fujinami (New Japan - 2/15/80) - [****]
4. Bruno Sammartino Vs. Larry Zbyszko (WWF - 3/24/80) - [***1/2]
5. Ken Patera Vs. Pat Patterson (WWF - 4/21/80 MSG) - [***1/4]
6. Jumbo Tsuruta Vs. Dick Slater (All Japan - CC
For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, the Guest Booker DVD series is an idea from KayfabeCommentaries.com where a famous wrestling booker is given the task of booking a promotion or territory form a particular point in time with the idea that things didn’t go exactly as they did in real life and this is their chance to show us what they would have done were they the booker at the time. The first DVD featured Kevin Sullivan booking the WWF from the beginning of 1984 but without Hulk Hogan
El Hijo del Santo vs. Psicosis, AAA 5/3/95
There was some talk over at the surviving Smarkschoice board about whether this is any good. MJH mentioned that "at other times (especially the matwork and the finish) some of the execution is just really, really poor" and that "for a full singles match, Psicosis and Santo were having a bad night together." I thought this couldn't be right, but after a dozen sendspace attempts, I gotta admit -- stock's going down.
Whenever people used to doubt
El Hijo del Santo vs. Espanto Jr, mask vs. mask, 8/31/86
This is a classic Monterrey bloodbath, but the best thing about it is seeing Santo as a young luchador. There wasn't any semblance of a traveling act yet. It was like the match unlocked a period in Santo's early career where he didn't have fixed ideas about working; where he was still searching for the best way to bump and sell & make face comebacks. The Santo roadshow is a great roadshow. Many times I've thought, "Here we go -- s
Pirata Morgan/Gran Markus/Ulises vs. Popitekus/Atlantis/El Dandy, 05/28/89
Wow, this wasn't good... I was surprised since 1989 El Dandy, Atlantis & Pirata Morgan is what hooked me on lucha in the first place. It was almost technicos v technicos, complete with matwork. When it comes to lucha matwork, I'm as big a sucker as the next guy, but this was... middling.
Javier Cruz v. Jerry Estrada, hair vs. hair, 10/20/89
For the life of me, I can't figure out what other people see i
Here's a reference list for people looking for somewhere to start w/ lucha. It's not a definitive list, but ought to get you hooked.
1. Atlantis vs Blue Panther, 8/9/91
2. El Dandy vs Negro Casas, 7/3/92
3. Angel Azteca vs. El Dandy, 6/1/90
4. El Satanico/El Dandy/Emilio Charles Jr. vs. Atlantis/Javier Cruz/Angel Azteca, 5/13/90
5. Los Infernales (MS-1, Satanico & Pirata Morgan) vs. Los Brazos, 11/22/91
6. Bracito De Oro/Cicloncito Ramirez/Mascarita Magica vs Damiancito El Gu
Gran Apache vs. Oscar Sevilla, 3/19/00
Gran Apache is a favourite of a lot of people these days, which doesn't surprise me as he's over 40 & all the best guys in Mexico seem to be over 40. I tried getting into the whole Apache family saga. It seems like a pretty cool angle (apart from the baby being scared out of its wits), the only problem is that Billy Boy sucks.
Apache, however, is quite the worker. So I sought out a technico who might not suck as much, and here you have it --
El Brazo vs. Rambo, hair vs. hair, CMLL 3/22/96
Thought I'd compare this to Rambo's earlier fight in AAA.
CMLL hair matches always feel like more of a fight than AAA matches. More punching, ramming each other's heads into the ringpost, the mat... Just more scrappy in general. Yet they're far more narrow in scope, even with a double bladejob like this one. Even though they're more solid than AAA hair or mask matches, they lack that big time feel. The structure is largely the same -- tw
Floyd’s Rant for Wrestlemania XXIV
1. NO-DQ BELFAST BRAWL: J.B.L. Vs. Fit Finlay (w/ Hornwoggle) - I haven’t kept up with WWE in a while so bear with me, but I think the story goes like this: Midget Hornswoggle was discovered to be Vince McMahon’s illegitimate son. So of course Vince McMahon showed his affection by beating the shit out of him as much as possible. Then JBL, using his A.P.A. detective skills, dropped the bomb that Hornswoggle is really Finlay’s son! JBL also went dwarf to
Trio Fantasia v. Thundercats, masks vs. masks, 12/8/91
Trio Fantasia are Super Muñeco, Super Raton & Super Pinocho. Thundercats are actually Leono, Tigro and Panthro. Complete costumes and everything. THIS IS A FUCKING GREAT BRAWL. One of the best Monterrey brawls I've ever seen, and definitely one of the best lucha matches of the 90s. I had no idea this was a mask match when I started watching it. I was expecting comedy, maybe a bit of flying. This was amazing. They beat the fuck out o
