El Hijo Del Santo, El Mariachi, El Mexicano, Octagon vs. Blue Panther, Espanto Jr., Fuerza Guerrera, Psicosis, AAA 8/19/94

I was expecting this to be mat heavy since it read Blue Panther vs. El Mariachi, but actually I don't think it had much to do with Blue Panther vs. El Mariachi at all. It was loosely structured around Fuerza and Mariachi ripping each other's masks, but the action was more tit for tat than anything else. I can't think of a solitary reason why anyone would watch this beyond the week it aired, but I will say that the work itself was extremely fluid.

From the rudo side, I was impressed with Fuerza and Espanto. This wasn't the type of match where the rudos impose their will on proceedings and stem the flow of technico offence; it was the type of match where one worker takes over from the last and the exchanges continue along the same rhythm. To that end, I thought Fuerza and Espanto made near perfect working decisions. Wrestling is as much about the choices workers make as anything else. I've long admired the ability wrestlers have to make choices on the spur of the moment, but what set Fuerza and Espanto apart is the effort they put into even the most basic of choices. Even their transitions in and out of the ring were convincing, and that sort of care and attention to detail was in direct contrast to Blue Panther who had an off night. His open-handed strikes swiped the air a lot and his kicks weren't much better. As a result, he had a tendency to wander in and out of the match a lot. Psicosis was much tidier, but his participation was limited to guillotines off the top and so forth.

The technicos were all pretty good in this. It wasn't a match with huge momentum shifts or important turning points, so the transitions onto technico offence were all pretty soft, but once they started busting out the ring clearing exchanges, the match had, for the briefest of moments, the sort of cracking pace and electrifying exchanges that wow even the most hardened of fans. This is one of the reasons why I don't like to criticise Octagon. While he'll never win the Palme d'Or for lucha workers, he was perfectly capable of pulling out these Black Man moments when a trios demanded it. Credit often goes to the rudo who bumped, but Octagon had a spectacular way of contorting his body. Santo was also industrious in this match and gave a good performance.

Solid stuff, but like I said, not a lot to immortalise it beyond August of 1994.