Black Terry & Jose Luis Feliciano vs. Rocky Santana & Skayde, Luchas 2000 4/1/04

Black Terry vs. Rocky Santana, hair vs. hair, Luchas 2000 4/1/04

This was interesting stuff. I've spoken before about the transformation that Navarro underwent from a balding, somewhat classical maskless luchador to the shaven-headed, shit talking ass-kicker he became circa 2006, but Terry also went through a similar shift, from a veteran guy still doing his 80s trios schtick to the phenomenal brawler and character actor we know today. In terms of his evolution, it was very much in the early stages here. That was evident in Terry and Feliciano wearing their Los Temerarios outfits and behaving very much like two thirds of a trios instead of the dominant personality that Terry would become, and in essence what we saw here was an older version of the little Terry we have on tape from the early 90s, but Terry is such a great worker that any Terry is key Terry.

The first fall of the tag featured decent "lucha-looking" exchanges. Feliciano was out of shape at this point so his stuff was perhaps a tad bit sluggish, but Skayde was in his element. Where the match got fun was in the second fall when the Temerarios took over. Their teamwork looked as smooth as ever and had that old-school UWA feel to it; the kind of trios work where you can almost smell what a hotbed LLI was for trios with new teams springing up left, right and centre and guys pushing the form with their teaming and triple teaming. And even with Terry not being Terry as we know him, his brawling was still sharp. I can just imagine what it must have been like to watch some of the Temerarios matches, perhaps not at El Toreo but at the smaller, more intimate venues.

Terry cheated to take the second fall and the match, which set up an impromptu hair match with Santana. It was a one fall, bloodless hair match that was more or less a third caida to the tag, but Terry rolled through some sweet looking offence and even showed his guile by pulling out of a top rope dive he would have missed and hitting a move off the apron instead. While I still maintain Terry's forte is brawling and hair matches, this was a reminder of how good younger Terry was offensively. I just love the career of Black Terry and what his talent has carried him to over the years. I'm sure he wishes he'd headlined the biggest arenas in Mexico, but I wouldn't have it any other way. The dude is the hero of this blog.