El Dandy vs. Satanico, hair vs. hair, 12/6/91

For some reason these two never had a great match together.

Take this match for example -- almost every hold is a clever piece of work and the attention to detail is amazing, yet somehow it doesn't add up. Hold for hold it's a virtuoso performance, but in the big picture only half satisfying. I suppose the reason for that is the scale. It's quite a minor match; not what you'd expect from a hair match. And the scenario was one sided.

If you follow it from Satanico's standpoint, it's a cleverly constructed revenge match, but it left Dandy in the cold. While Satanico was arguing with the commissioner over the appointed ref, Dandy had no choice but to go through his warm-ups. This had an immediate pay-off, and a ballistic reaction from Satanico, who swore his shoulder was up, but from that point on there was too much heat between Satanico and the ref. The heat should be between the wrestlers, mano a mano... Here the ref was constantly breaking up holds and putting his hands on Satanico; understandable if it was a title match, but hair matches have caused some of the bloodiest brawls in lucha libre history.

Satanico was masterful at purposefully avoiding any pitfalls, and the slap he gave himself when Dandy was too near the ropes showed how much he wanted to win, but Dandy was a passenger in all this. My favourite moment was the maniacal grin Satanico gave the ref when he had to raise Lopez' hand in victory at the end of the second fall, but I couldn't figure out the third fall for the life of me. I'm used to the momentum carrying over into the next fall, until there's an opening and the beaten guy strings together a comeback, but it never happened.

The impression I was left with was that after a hot start, Dandy was completely outwrestled for the remainder of the match. In kayfabe terms, his showing was a bit of a dud. You had two great workers doing a lot of great stuff together, but a lopsided contest. In a three fall structure, it's sometimes tricky to work straight fall victories, but these guys are two of the greats. Dandy wanted to beat Satanico, of that I'm certain, but why his comeback was cut off at the knees, I don't know.

To some extent CMLL must've felt this needed some extra spice with the ref angle, or perhaps it's a case of matches being better when one worker is greater than the other, but not all Classic Lucha is classic, even if the work is infinitely smarter than we see today. Either that or my expectations are far too high.