Kevin Von Erich, Mascara Ano 2000 y Halcon Ortiz vs. Coloso Colosetti, Pirata Morgan y Herodes (9/23/83)

Since I did a write up for this in the Lucha History Lessons thread, I thought I better get around to watching it properly.

The reaction to this match so far has been interesting. Since it's the first trios on the set, there seems to be this mix of confusion and anticipation over how a trios match should go. There's also been a lot of comments on how lost and out of place Kevin Von Erich looked. On the second point, by the standards of foreigners looking lost or confused in Mexico there have been far worse instances than Von Erich. I'll admit that I'm biased towards him because I find his barefoot quasi shoot style work fascinating, but I don't think he was bad. He didn't seem to understand the flow of a trios match or what the other workers were trying to do, but like I said I dig his strange offence. I think someone raised the point that his offence didn't fit a lucha setting, but Mexico has always been a melting pot of different styles. That's apparent even in this match where you have heavyweights mixing it up with light heavyweights, brawlers working with technicians, bumpers taking on fliers, comedy guys jousting with bleeders, and an American to top it all off. There's a sense that anything goes in trios wrestling because most of the time the matches are just thrown together. Which brings me to my next point, that this was a nothing trios.

I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way. It was one of those trios matches where there aren't any spectacular individual performances but everybody involved is a pretty good worker and the match has a bunch of solid exchanges. It was stock and trade stuff from pretty much everyone involved. The main story was the feud between Halcon Ortiz and Pirata Morgan, who had taken Ortiz' Mexican National Heavyweight title from him earlier that year. They touched on it throughout the match, but really it was an issue for another time and place and would escalate into a hair match. That's why if you take a "Who's feuding with whom? What's the story??" approach to lucha trios you're bound to be disappointed as the majority of the time they roll out of bed and there's the match. What impresses the long time fan are small details in the work or interesting spots. There was no big crescendo in this match because they didn't make an effort for there to be one, so structurally there wasn't anything to get excited about, but the bread and butter stuff was what you'd expect from the rudos and Ortiz held up the technico side of things well. There were at least six memorable things about the match and that's not too bad. It's unfortunate that it's the first trios on the set as we're missing a big chunk in the history of trios wrestling from the front end of the decade, but like so many other trios matches over the years it's more of an introduction to the workers than a great match. The highlight for me was Ortiz body slamming Morgan over the top rope and doing that close quarters tope. That was an impressive spot sequence for heavyweights.