El Dandy/La Fiera/Ultimo Dragon vs. Negro Casas/Black Magic/Jaque Mate (5/17/94)

This was just a 15 minute, straight falls win for the technicos, with a bit of dissension among the rudos, but man were the Casas/Dandy exchanges good. They had an opening mat exchange that was very reminiscent of their work from '92; where the purpose of each hold was to show who's boss. Casas would take Dandy down face first to canvas and slap him in the back of the head or pull his hair, and Dandy would use his athleticism to escape, flaunting his machismo while slowly getting ticked off. I often mention how Dandy lost a lot of his athleticism after '91, but he was trimmer here than in a lot of his post-prime work and moving extremely well. Eventually he got frustrated with Casas, and they had a slapping contest that let to some feisty headlock take downs; but when everyone flooded the ring, Dandy shook Casas' hand to calm things down, showing that their rivalry was built on mutual respect as much as contempt. Then as an added bonus, we got a surprisingly good mat exchange between Norman Smiley and Ultimo Dragon with a lot of quick movement and jockeying for position before the necessities of the story line took over. It's a shame Casas and Dandy didn't have more singles matches together as they were clearly one of the best pairings of all-time, but kudos to the guy who found and uploaded this as it was one of the better lucha exchanges I've seen in a while.

Tony Arce/Vulcano/Bestia Salvaje vs. Apolo Dantes/Cesar Dantes/El Antifaz (3/29/91)

This started off a bit low key, but picked up as they did more crowd pleasing spots. It was during a somewhat aimless period for Los Destructores where they were without a regular partner and had a different rudo fill in most nights. Bestia was the man here and was having a whale of a time, bumping like a fool and letting out huge cackles. He was a fantastic wrestler at this point and in the prime of his life. The form on his flog splash was beautiful. Cesar Dantes also impressed me here. He's not a guy I've seen a lot of, but he was a compact sort of worker who brought some neat offensive touches to the match, kind of like Javier Cruz.

Lizmark vs. La Parka, National Light Heavyweight Championship match (9/9/94)

As a title match, this was a joke: Lizmark spent more time fighting La Parka's second, Vulcano, than Parka, Parka won two falls with fouls, and most of what they did wouldn't fly in an apuesta match let alone a title bout. As a spectacle, it was worth watching just to see how far they would go. There were a couple of amusing moments, like someone in the crowd putting their hat on Lizmark while he sold a beat down and Parka gyrating with the belt around his waist, but in the main they just shat on lucha title match wrestling; which is a real kick in the balls, Parka style, as I was pumped to discover there was a trilogy of these matches.

El Satanico/MS-1/Pirata Morgan vs. El Dandy/Konnan/Octagon (11/15/91)

Short semi-final for the World Trios title tournament that was neither here nor there. Konnan was terrible, but Dandy and Octagon spared their side any blushes by having some awesome ring-clearing exchanges with the Infernales. None of the rudos were at their best, though, which made this a bit more uneventful than it could have been.

El Dandy/El Satanico/El Texano vs. Angel Azteca/Atlantis/Xavier Cruz (4/13/90)

1990 may be my favourite year in lucha, but I haven't watched much of the Azteca stuff in a while. This was a rare case of all six guys in the match being good, so what we got was a spotfest of sorts where the rudos tried to show their technique was superior or equal to the technicos. Folks looking for swings in momentum or any sort of storytelling will be disappointed, but for rapid fire exchanges this one is tough to beat. As per usual, it's the singles matches that could have come out of this that was the most enticing part. Texano was amazingly athletic in this and his exchanges with Azteca made him look like a much better dance partner for Angel than Emilio was, and the Dandy/Atlantis exchange at the end is so beautiful and intricate that they were surely the best possible match-up of 1990, making it a damn shame that their only recorded bout wasn't a proper match.

Perro Aguayo vs. Sangre Chicana, cage match (Monterrey 1991)

This had the usual amount of blood and violence from Chicana vs. Aguayo, but there was too much bullshit with the ref for it to be considered good and it was painfully slow at times. The crowd got a kick out of the ref being stripped to his underwear, but even though Aguayo used the ref's shirt sleeve to choke the life out of Chicana, shit like that did nothing to spark my enthusiasm. The best thing about this was a television ad where a pizza guy hopped into the ring and delivered right to the apron. That had a lot more action than the endless low blows and wandering about.