Pirata Morgan/Gran Markus/Ulises vs. Popitekus/Atlantis/El Dandy, 05/28/89

Wow, this wasn't good... I was surprised since 1989 El Dandy, Atlantis & Pirata Morgan is what hooked me on lucha in the first place. It was almost technicos v technicos, complete with matwork. When it comes to lucha matwork, I'm as big a sucker as the next guy, but this was... middling.

Javier Cruz v. Jerry Estrada, hair vs. hair, 10/20/89

For the life of me, I can't figure out what other people see in Jerry Estrada.

If you ever wanted to see a wrestler work a match from their lizard brain then this is the match. If I were Cruz, I'd be scared for my safety. You never know what the fuck Estrada's gonna do next. It's like watching a method actor work with an old school Hollywood type. Consensus says this is a great match, so you should check it out for yourself. This is the second or third time I've subjected myself to it, and it's bad. So very, very bad. Estrada's in a stupor from the beginning & can't do the simplest of moves without his brain wiring his extremities. Cruz may have been just as tanked, but he was never the type to take a match by the scruff of the neck. In a sense, I admire him for trying to sell such shitty, slow, botched offence, but the finer points are lost. Estrada is grandiose. If grandiose means showing up to a match all fucked up.

Atlantis vs. Emilio Charles, Jr, CMLL Lucha Libre 1984

OK, a match I liked... There's no way of knowing for sure, but this felt like a new kind of lucha. It had an old school build to it, in that there was more emphasis on winning each fall (including working your man over far more than in later lucha), but instead of grounded, leverage-based matwork, they did a lot of awesome fast-paced exchanges. You forget how much of his game Atlantis shelved, or indeed how quick he was... and Emilio was an awesome worker in the 80s. This was the best showcase of 1984 Atlantis I've seen. The kind of match where he reminds me of Lizmark. Given it was a year or less since his debut, credit ought to go to Emilio for being a new school rudo. It would appear that these guys were part of a generation who were shaping a new kind of rhythm in lucha.