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
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
Villano III vs. Rambo, hair vs. mask, AAA 9/24/93
Rambo was such an awesome gimmick as he looked less like Rambo & more like your average mercenary/militant from an 80s action flick. He wasn't much of a worker aside from easy to set-up spots & big bumps, but this was AAA & the style revolves around big spots & bigger bumps. Brawling Villano is my favourite kind of Villano III. I saw him brawl with El Hijo del Santo the other day, which made me wish there was a widely known
Everybody needs to check out this clip of Los Brazos vs. Los Fantasticos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLTOJ7Fa8bA
Such an amazingly great caida of wrestling.
Everything you need to know about lucha, you can learn from watching Los Brazos.
Brazos vs. MS-1/Pirata Morgan/Emilio Charles, Jr. (early 90s, aired WWO)
Brazos vs. Kato Kung Lee/Super Astro/Volador, CMLL 2/8/91
Brazos vs. Atlantis/Mascara Sagrada/Octagon, CMLL 5/17/91
These aren't outstanding matches, in fa
Miguel Perez Jr./Ricky Santana vs Los Head Hunters I y II, CMLL 8/5/94
Here's a match I wasn't too sure about that ended up being pretty damn good. I guess I'm a bit iffy about foreigners working Mexico, but these guys took to it well. It's a beatdown to start with; Los Head Hunters cutting off the face comebacks, before taking it to the outside & working the foreign objects. An older lady complains to the ref while Santana blades at her feet. Awesome. Bloodied & battered, the faces
Atlantis, Cien Caras & Rayo de Jalisco Jr vs Mocho Cota, La Fiera & Sangre Chicana, CMLL '84
This ruled. It was a trios built around punches, heel shtick & cheap shots. Mocho Cota may be one of the great, all-time rudo stooges if this is anything to go by & worked the comedy as effortlessly as he worked the mat against Rocca. The two sides barely locked up once. So entertaining. And the kids swarming the ring at the end was awesome.
Brazo de Oro vs. Sangre Chicana, hair vs. hair, 6/19/92
Jesus Christ this was awesome. The heat was amazing.
Most of us are familiar with Sangre Chicana as the sympathetic babyface who takes one hell of a beating from MS-1 in their '83 bloodbath, selling every blow as sheer brutality... Here he's a veteran rudo, who only has to take a few steps for the heat to start rising. Unbelievable charisma. At one point he starts jawing with a fan and it's so convincing that you can believe those
Pierrotito/Damiancito el Guerrero vs Ultimo Dragoncito/Cicloncito Ramirez, 4/97 TV
This didn't have the beautiful structure of the Mini Classics from '97, but even in an average sort of a match (average meaning "good" or "very good" by comparison), there's a ridiculous amount of talent on show. I've seen a few comments about how Damiancito el Guerrero (now Virus) is one of the great, underrated workers of the last decade or so, but I'm not feeling that in so far as they were all great.
Negro Navarro vs. Solar, 10/12/06
This was from an UD show at Korakuen Hall. Korakuen Hall's not my favourite place for lucha -- some of the early Hamada shows were all right, but lucha is a novelty for Japanese people & that's the way it always comes across. If you wind up talking pro wrestling at a bar or something, older guys will always talk about Mil Mascaras, which is why Mil still gets gigs & is "mobbed" by salarymen on his way to the ring, but lucha itself is a curiosity. He
Pequeno Reyes Del Aire, 1/04/08
Pequeno Damian 666 vs. Mascarita Dorada, 1/11/08
Bam Bam/Pequeno Olimpico/Ultimo Dragoncito vs Pequeno Black Warrior/Pequeno Violencia/Pierrothito, 2/15/08
Mini FdT vs Dorada, Tzuky, Shockercito, 2/24/08
Bam Bam/Tzuky/Mascarita Dorada vs Fire/Pequeno Pierroth/Pequeno Damian, 3/21/08
What I appreciate most about the current crew of minis is how they build a match from the ground up, even if the results are sometimes average. They'll start on the mat be
El Hijo del Santo vs. Negro Casas, mask vs. hair, 9/19/97
I've never liked this match. I was hoping that watching CMLL TV of the Santo vs. Casas brothers feud would reveal exactly what's great about it, but it remains a mystery.
I have no idea what they were trying to do in this match. Portions of the match are kinda like shoot-style -- a junior heavyweight approximation of shoot-style, really, like BattlARTS -- but lucha has no counts for rope breaks or downs, so most of the match is
Mocho Cota vs. Americo Rocca, 1/27/84
Mocho Cota always looked great whenever he showed up on tape as an ancient rudo brawler. This discovery was a chance to see him as a masterful rudo. In Kevin Cook's words, "Cota's Dickensian sinsterness is something to behold; what a crabbed, warped rassler" and indeed Cota has an awesome sneer and Cook a way with words.
The match starts out with some conventional, US-style matwork, which leads to all sorts of impossible to answer questions about
So, after heaping all that praise on minis from 10 years ago, I was encouraged to check out the current crew of CMLL minis:
Pequeño Black Warrior, Pequeño Damian 666, Pierrothito vs Atomo, Mascarita Dorada, Tzuki, 12/14/07
Pequeño Black Warrior, Pequeño Damian 666, Pequeno Halloween vs Atomo, Mascarita Dorada, Tzuki, 12/21/07
Bam Bam/Fantasy/Mascarita Dorada vs Pequeno Damian 666/Pequeno Halloween/Mr. Aguilita, 12/25/07
Going into this, I tried to keep in mind that:
1. Nothing
If you're wondering what happened to 4, the link is dead.
#5 Octagoncito vs Mini Abismo Negro, AAA 6/5/98
This was a typical AAA match. A bunch of flashy moves, a lot of moving around the ring & outside area, never settling into anything I can get a handle on. The seconds were too involved.
#6 Mascarita Sagrada Jr. & La Parkita vs Mini Karis La Momia & Espectrito I, AAA 10/96
I liked this match. The rudos pick on the technicos, the technicos fight back through min
El Dandy vs. Bestia Salvaje, 9/4/92 (CMLL World Middleweight title)
I was sorry to read about the recent death of Bestia Salvaje. Sorry for his friends and family, sorry for the man himself.. A guy like him deserves to get old & tell a bunch of lucha stories. And I'm sure he had a bunch to tell, as he was a lucha libre "professionale" in every sense of the word.
In many ways, he was the last of his kind. A thick-set rudo, who could lay in the forearms and was plenty stiff when he n
Cicloncito Ramirez vs Damiancito El Guerrero, CMLL 1/7/97
Another great match. Best three match stretch I've had in ages.
This was a beautiful display of lucha libre. Maybe not as exciting as the first two matches, but definitely one for the afficionardos. Everyone's got their own ideas about what great lucha is, I suppose, but we're all searching for it. When I first saw Atlantis/Blue Panther, I wanted to see more of the same. Problem is, great lucha is hard to find. So when you find
Bracito De Oro/Cicloncito Ramirez/Mascarita Magica vs Damiancito El Guerrero/El Fierito/Pierrothito, CMLL 10/3/97
This was incredible.
A lot of people have a difficult time getting into lucha & trios make it harder. Hell, I had to watch this twice to realise it was an incredible match. The thing about trios is that you really have to watch a shitload of them to understand how they work. Trios have a loose structure. There's a few basic forms, but almost everything can be varied, wh
I've barely seen any minis & was ridiculously out of the loop when DVDVR ran their Mini Mini Tourney, so now it's only right that I enter the world of minis...
Mascarita Sagrada vs Espectrito I, AAA 3/12/94
So this is the world of minis? Fantastic introduction, if you ask me. I was hooked from the beginning.
There was talk about this match not aging well & whether Mascarita Sagrada was all that great, but I cut him some slack since he's an actual mini & a great tech
Halcón Negro vs Olimpico, mask vs. mask, 10/30/98
Halcón Negro was a short, chubby guy with big hair and an awesome mask (see lucha wiki), who'd wipe out members of the crowd with his bumping & sell punch drunk off a Solar armdrag. Really solid in that short, chubby guy kind of way, which basically means he's awesome. He first caught my attention in boss undercard matches like Karloff Lagarde, Jr./Gladiador/Halcon Negro vs. Ringo Mendoza/Mascara Magica/Solar (5/97 TV) and then he had th
Blue Panther/Mistico/Volador Jr. vs. Black Warrior/El Averno/El Mephisto, 10/20/06
This was very much in the new style, but the pace was good & it had Blue Panther in it, so the exchanges were better than usual. At this point, I'll take a short match with good rhythm. I watched some longer matches from Arena Mexico recently & they were amazingly shitty. This ain't a style that can go longer than 15 minutes.
Anyway, the Mistico/Black Warrior feud was actually quite good, even w
1997 CMLL was stacked full of lucha libre professionales, and since I've been digging the simplest of trios, I thought it was time to rewatch the ciberneticos from early that year.
Dr. Wagner Jr./El Hijo Del Santo/El Texano/La Fiera/Mascara Magica/Mr. Niebla/Shocker vs Black Warrior/El Dandy/Felino/Mano Negra/Negro Casas/Scorpio Jr./Silver King, 3/28/97 &
Atlantis/Brazo De Oro/El Dandy/Mascara Magica/La Fiera/Negro Casas/Shocker/Ultimo Dragon vs Black Warrior/Dr. Wagner Jr./El Hij
Silver King v. Apolo Dantes, 6/23/95
This is a really good title match between two of the better workers in CMLL at the time. It might not please everyone, since it's kinda small in scope & doesn't bring the drama so necessary to our enjoyment of professional wrestling, but it's well worked & a good example of how you can work in stuff you've picked up from all over the place while still keeping a lucha form. Silver King has always done stuff you don't usually see from a guy his siz
I guess over the next few years, people will start talking about the best matches of the decade. My goal is to find 20 lucha matches that I like. Maybe not the greatest matches, but matches that I like.
So far, I've got Atlantis/Villano, both Santo/Panther Monterrey matches, Santo/Perro 8/04, Misioneros vs. Space Cadets, the Negro Navarro/Solar tags & maybe El Dandy/Negro Navarro.
That leaves about a dozen matches.
La Parka vs Ultimo Guerrero (CMLL Light Heavyweight Title), 0
