El Hijo del Santo vs. Felino, CMLL 7/25/97

This was a revancha for Santo's title loss to Felino on July 4th; a match that ended with one of the great screwjob finishes of all time. If you've never seen that bout, I highly recommend it. It's one of the best lucha matches of the 90s and the finish is pure Casas.

This revancha didn't offer much in the way of revenge, and I should've known by the number of times they showed Casas at ringside that they were just furthering the angle, but a few things stood out:

The first was how natural an actor Casas was. The camera kept looking for him in this bout. I have no idea whether Casas knew that the camera was on him, but he looked so legitimately concerned for his brother that it really did con me into thinking that this was a serious bout with serious consequences. I don't know how worthy professional wrestling is as a form of acting, but I will say that Casas had amazing range as a performer.

Santo, on the other hand, didn't have quite as much range. This was a poor rudo performance from my perspective. The Santo heel turn is deservedly famous, as it was a surprisingly shrewd piece of booking that drew back the crowds to Arena Mexico, but I'd have to say that Santo's part was mostly carried by the charisma of his opponents and the reality of seeing him on the same side as a cretin like Bestia Salvaje. Santo did a few things to "act" rudo here. He jumped Felino before the bell, roughed up him slightly and paused between normal Santo moves to convey some sort of disconnect with the crowd, but he never really had the convictions of a rudo, and that's why it was so easy to turn him technico after the feud had run dry. Santo, in truth, never wanted to be a rudo, which is something he claimed in interviews but couldn't project in the ring. Perhaps that's expecting too much, but there was a revancha match for a guy who was screwed out of his title. Most rudos would be baying for blood; Felino's first and then his brother's. In fairness to Santo, he'd begun ripping Felino's mask when Casas ran into the ring to cause a DQ, but the earlier work was neither aggressive enough from Santo nor sold well enough by Felino. If Santo's dislike for Negro Casas was so consuming that it forced him to turn rudo, then it ought to have been incessant at this point. He might not have felt it in his gut earlier, but had he played this role better, I think he would have sunk further into "rudoism" with this match.

On the flipside, Santo's dives were awesome in this. They were the same dives that Santo always does, but it never ceases to amaze me how outstanding they are each time. These days, workers are constantly diving. They might as well be diving through hoops in a three ring circus. Take one look at it and your first reaction is: "what the fuck are they doing?" It's astounding how much mileage Santo got out of his dives when you take one look at modern matches and never want to see the workers again. OK, that's not true. There's a few guys who do dives which are worth watching again, but none of them are mainevent workers like Santo was. So, how did he do it? It's not really a matter of execution; there's guys doing far more difficult dives these days and executing them perfectly. It helps that he held off on them until late in the match, instead of jumping the gun. It also helps that he was a proper wrestler and not some guy who had no business being in the ring; but I think the reason is that they were simple moves albeit incredibly well executed. No matter how many new ideas people try to come up, there hasn't been a dive yet that beats a well executed tope. I hate springboard moves with a passion. If I were in charge of training luchadores, I'd tell them that the lord gave them three ropes through which to dive and a top turnbuckle from which to jump off, and if any of them wish to dive over the top rope or springboard themselves, they better be able to wrestle. I'm sure Diablo Velasco would approve.

Anyway, this was a decent watch in the context of the Santo/Casas brothers feud, but not a compelling watch on its own.