El Dandy/Piloto Suicida/El Brazo vs. Negro Casas/Loverboy/Kung Fu (Los Angeles, CA 9/19/92)

Vintage Casas of the Day gets requests!

This WWA handheld was a request from Pro Wrestling Only poster Gregor. Gregor doesn't post much, but I've always admired his taste in lucha and his penchant for seeking out the hidden gems like we do on the Great Lucha blog, so I was rapt to get a message from him.

Lucha house show matches are no different from other promotion's house shows. They're basically a stripped down version of what you see on TV. You get a bit of shtick, a few exchanges, a rudo beatdown segment and a couple of dives at the end, but they're generally more heat orientated and less physically demanding.

This match was hurt by the fact that apart from Casas and Dandy none of the other participants were very good, including El Brazo who mailed his performance in from Mexico City. I was a bit disappointed that El Brazo wasn't that third good worker a trios match needs, like Mano Negra in that recent Dandy vs. Llanes trios match I reviewed, but I was probably confusing him with Brazo de Oro as El Brazo was always the least of the brothers. Though to be fair, Dandy wasn't up for much in this bout. He seemed more interested in emulating the fighting stance of whatever third or fourth generation UWF bootlegs he was getting and throwing open handed palm strikes.

The match was meant to be a bit of fun so I don't want to be too critical, but it would have been better if they'd built it around the Casas vs. Dandy rivalry. Instead, it was an opportunity for the technicos to shine with some build for Lover Boy vs. Piloto Suicida tacked on at the end. They ended up having a mask vs. mask match at some point where Lover Boy was castrated, but it was quite literally an afterthought here.

What I did like about this is that we got to see on a house show just how amazingly charismatic Casas was in his prime. The guy simply exuded charisma in a way few wrestlers do. And he was constantly busy working in small details and riffs. I'm now convinced that he was better than Dandy during this time period. What set him apart here were the bumps he was prepared to take on an LA house show. They weren't huge bumps but they raised the level of the match and the standard of the performances. Plus it's fun to hear a tape trader from '92 gushing over how good he is. So it's definitely vintage Casas of the day.