Gregor

I think that this match took place on March 26.

This is good, but Dandy and Charles are two of my five favorite wrestlers of all time, so I wish it were better. There's not as much hate here as there is in their '89 hair match. It's kind of odd - you'd think that'd be something they'd try to focus on, given that neither man is as athletic as in '89 and that the two of them are long-time rivals. Still, even if you account for the fact that they go for a different kind of match here, they do some weird stuff that takes me out of it a little. I like how Dandy sneaks in a couple of rollups while Charles catches his breath, but on one of them he just kind of strolls up behind him right after hitting an ugly-looking tope. Then there's the interference. I didn't get that at all - why would the tecnico cheat? Emilio hasn't done anything particularly underhanded up to that point. I do like how it sets up Charles showing Dandy how it's done, as it's easy to imagine Emilio thinking, "So that's how it's gonna be, huh?" after they try that on him. On its own, though, it doesn't make sense to me. Maybe I need to see the trios that set this match up. Still a good match. They hit hard, and like Pete said Dandy looks like the classy technical wrestler and Charles the desperate, crafty brawler. It was strange to see Dandy taking all of the big bumps. I've been watching some '92 Charles lately and he doesn't look washed up at all, still running and flying all over the ring. Here he just looks like a charismatic guy who can sell and punch - good wrestler, but clearly past his prime as a crazy bumper. As a comparison to the Fiera match, to me that one has the feel of a typical hair match with a somewhat strange layout, whereas this one progresses much like a typical hair match but doesn't have the hatred, violence, or blood. I like the Fiera match more, but I don't know if that means that visuals and mood matter more to me than layout or if it just means that the '92 match is executed better.

I really liked this. Although I understand and even agree with Loss' criticism of the one-sidedness and absence of hope spots, Fiera's extended dominance doesn't really bother me. For one thing, I think he's a terrific offensive wrestler, and, for another, Dandy's great at selling. The match never drags or feels like Fiera's running out of things to do. It helps that the first two falls are over in under eight minutes, so it's not unrealistic for Dandy to have lasted that long before getting in his first offense of the match. The other complaint I can see people having about this is that Dandy doesn't bring enough hatred to the match. Fiera bloodies him, tosses him around and outside the ring at will, fouls him several times (including once with a beautiful inverted atomic drop), and gloats about all of it, but Dandy never responds in kind. Instead most of his offense is just him trying to win. That worked for me; in fact, if anything it actually makes the match better. Dandy can't afford to bite Fiera's forehead or anything like that. He's fighting from so far behind, and Fiera is so much in control, that all Dandy can do is go for quick strike pinfalls. It plays out like Jesse Ventura's hypothetical hockey game in which one team is peppering the net with shot after shot but manages to bang home only one of them, and the other team can't get anything off other than a few desperation slapshots, but two of them make it in. I really like how strongly they stick to that. Even in the third fall, by which point Dandy is back in the match, he still can't string together two offensive moves in a row. I actually like faces beating the heels at their own game, so Dandy's cheating works especially well here given that Fiera had cheated on a couple of occasions already. This isn't one of the best apuestas matches of all time, and it isn't challenging Dandy vs. Casas for CMLL's match of the year, but I'm not filing this one away as a disappointing effort from '92 Dandy, either.

The SummerSlam match is a bit of an anomaly. Yeah, once his comeback gets stopped he just sells typical late-match punishment/fatigue. As I noted before, though, there aren't that many matches around that time where he has to sell a certain body part. Most of the time all that he has to sell is that late-match punishment, and whenever his opponent halts his comeback string he immediately does sell it. He's not focusing on selling while he's running the ropes for the forearm, but nothing he does strikes me as atypical for a babyface comeback, especially in the WWF. They get fired up, they get on a roll, and then if someone puts a stop to it they go down and remind everyone that they were just running on fumes and are still in pretty bad shape. The Shamrock stuff was kind of a dick move, but in all honesty I wouldn't have noticed it if people didn't point it out to me, and occasional loud spot-calling isn't enough to take me out of a match. A lot of wrestlers do it unintentionally. The Hogan match - I haven't seen that in years and thought this was mostly about 1996 Michaels anyway. I vaguely remember that being about as good a match as one could expect from Hogan at the time, even with Michaels sort of selling like a goof. If he hadn't done the sarcastic promo the night after I don't know if anyone would have given him crap for that. There is that bump off nothing he took at IYH 8, where he just crashes to the floor for no reason - that was pretty terrible. "Sloppy, ill applied, and half the time not even like a Hurricanrana" doesn't really explain how he applies the move differently. That's just begging the question. When he does the move, what does he do that makes it those things? I guess it's not a true 'rana if it doesn't end in the pin, but that just means he's doing the takedown part into some punches. He very rarely "[tosses] out random moves that are too light to do any damage." He does stuff like headscissors and, I dunno, armdrags early in the match, and they aren't sold as damaging. "Random moves" is a really odd criticism of him; he's not a guy who had a big moveset or would throw out new stuff for the hell of it. His punches aren't great (they don't bother me, though), and I never liked how long Vader stayed down from his forearm, but other than that there aren't too many instances of an opponent's selling being too much for what he actually did. At best this is double-counting with "weak offense" and not really a psychology issue. Given that his signature spots all come in a row, and the forearm is the first one, I don't see how they can feel shoehorned into a match. I can't imagine watching a match and going, "Oh, there's no way that guy would have gone for an Irish whip there - come on." Sometimes I wish he'd deviate from them a bit, and sometimes they end a match too early, but they never feel that weak or... tacked on?

I don't agree with this at all. To give an example, his selling every shot from Diesel like death in their 1996 PPV match is part of what makes that match as good as it is. I mean, yeah, he's flying around during his comeback, but as soon as he gets hit he drops like a shot again, like he'd just been running on fumes. He also did a good job selling Owen Hart's and 1-2-3 Kid's kicks when he was doing the concussion thing earlier in the year. Fair point. I wouldn't say that he ruined the Vader match with his tantrum. Hurt it, yeah, but I don't see how stomping on Vader and screaming at him for a couple of seconds is enough to turn a good match into a bad one all by itself. Other than that, what matches does he ruin/hurt in this way? This one just baffles me. How is his execution different from that of, say, Atlantis or Lizmark? The only difference I see is that they end theirs in a pin. I'm struggling to think of 1996 Michaels matches with dodgy psychology. I guess it was weird that Owen Hart spent much of the February match working the back to set up the Sharpshooter when the big points of the match were the kicks to the head. Other than that, his psychology was pretty sound. Something like the Sid match - they did a good job of establishing that Michaels couldn't go toe-to-toe with him, so he had to resort to trying to work the knee, and by the end of the match he was just fighting on heart and will and all that stuff. My biggest issue with Michaels from his '90s face run is that his kip-up comeback doesn't work that well after limbwork-ish offense. He shouldn't be doing a moonsault after Razor Ramon spent the match busting up his knee, and he shouldn't be casually slamming Rad Radford after his inability to do so was a hope spot earlier in the bout. There aren't that many times when the heel works that way on offense, though, at least not in Michaels' matches from that period, so it's not something that ends up being a huge deal for me.

Whoops, no, I just messed up the date. 11/22 is the correct date for that one, and, yes, that's the one I was thinking of. There are other Infernales/Brazos matches from that period, though, if you really enjoy the big one. Edit: I screwed up the Infernales/Dos Caras/Atlantis/Konnan match, too. That one starts to come apart in the second fall.

Even with the limited '80s footage that exists, MS-1 probably has more '80s highlights than '90s highlights. His big 1990s matches: MS-1/Masakre vs. Ringo Mendoza/Faraon (hair) Infernales vs. Brazos (title, the 11/29/91 match is the big one) MS-1 vs. Faraon (hair) MS-1 vs. Cien Caras (hair) Random '90s MS-1 that I liked: MS-1/Pierroth Jr./Ulises vs. Dandy/Mogur/Popitekus MS-1/Masakre/Ringo Mendoza vs. Dandy/Satanico/Javier Cruz MS-1/Masakre/Ringo Mendoza vs. Rayo de Jalisco Jr./Cien Caras/Mascara Año 2000 (both of the last two matches were part of this brief trios tournament; the title says 1989, but I think it took place in July 1990) Infernales vs. Atlantis/Dos Caras/Konnan (I remember this one being good until it fell off the rails in the third fall) There's also a trios match that has the team of MS-1, El Dandy, and Astro de Oro on one side, and MS-1 just spends the whole match tormenting Dandy, but I don't remember if that was from 1989 or 1990.

The Fiera/Tiger Mask match is pretty well known here, and he also has a pretty good match against Ultimo Dragon in WAR on 7/15/92. He really brought out the big offense in the second half of that one. I'm a big fan of his rudo greaser run in the early '90s. He has a title match against Atlantis and a hair match against Dandy in 1992, but my favorite thing from that period might be a trios match from the buildup with Dandy: Fiera, Satanico, and Emilio Charles vs. Dandy, Pierroth, and Atlantis. For some reason Fiera brought out a side of Dandy that guys like Satanico, Charles, and Negro Casas never did.

Estrada vs. Morgan was designed to get heat on the seconds. It's not that surprising that the match wasn't good. In the three-way, Estrada escapes fairly early, and the Satanico vs. Morgan portion is kind of a preview of their hair match. It's nowhere near as bad as that mano a mano. On a broader Satanico note, I don't really like his tecnico run that much. The tag match with Dandy against the Infernales is awesome, but the apuestas match later that year isn't anything special, and I wasn't a fan of him in all of those tecnicos vs. tecnicos trios matches in 1990. Those matches are all about one-on-one exchanges, and his generally disappointed me. Yeah, he was a 40-year-old in a workrate match, but I don't recall any killer mat exchanges from him, either - just an endless series of armbar takedowns. Chavo Guerrero was a lot better in the same role earlier that year.

As a big-time Michaels fan, I felt like I should probably say something nice about him here. I like speed, grace, and bumps, so Michaels is fun as hell for me to watch. Even when he'd do a bump that I knew was cartoonish, he'd do it so smoothly that I wouldn't mind. Yeah, he had a lot of rope-running and bumping in his matches, but these were things that he did well. His offense, dreadful when he first went solo, improved eventually. When I last watched a bunch of his 1997-98 heel run, I thought he jumped it all the way up to decent. It wasn't great, and it wasn't even consistently good, but he did have some good offensive performances; his stuff against Bret was vicious and dickish, and at the Royal Rumble his offense sort of settled down and structured what had been an aimless brawl to that point. Most of his acclaimed matches still hold up for me (Jarrett, Diesel, Mankind, Undertaker, even the Sid one). Couldn't get into his '00s stuff, but that's how I feel about pretty much every wrestler, so I'm going to say that's on me and not on him. I do like that HHH match from December 2003. In the Mick Foley thread, someone brought up how the Mind Games match is impressive in that they had a match that good without (m)any nearfalls. Michaels actually worked a lot of his big matches like that - IYH 7 against Diesel, Survivor Series '96, One Night Only, Hell in a Cell. That strikes me as a smart way of working your endgame in a promotion that usually ends its matches on finishers. Some of his house show matches that I think are worth watching: HBK vs. Razor Ramon (1/15/94, ladder) HBK/Jeff Jarrett vs. Diesel/Razor Ramon (3/19/95) HBK vs. Bulldog (10/6/95) HBK vs. Goldust (8/24/96, ladder) HBK/Undertaker vs. Mankind/Goldust (9/29/96) HBK/HHH vs. Austin/Undertaker (11/15/97)

Casas/Dandy has two trios matches and a battle royal before the singles match, and one or two trios (never seen the second one, so it might not be a Casas/Dandy-focused match) afterwards. They're also on opposite sides for a trios match in Los Angeles in September, which is well after the feud has cooled off, but you still get to see them go at it.

Not an expert, but that's this match. The where is Arena Mexico and the when is March 23, 1990. Thecubsfan has a great tool on his site called the Match Finder that pretty much does what its name indicates. If you're wondering if two guys ever met in a match, or if you're watching a cool match and don't know anything about it, more often than not you can go there and find your answer.

As a fan, I always cared about the IC Title. Objectively, it was probably in 1995. Jarrett was the first IC champion who felt more like a midcarder than like an upper midcarder, and while champ he lost to Diesel, Aldo Montoya, and Bob Holly. From then until 1998 you get some good champions but also a lot of midcard guys, and the belt isn't featured in a good feud until Rock gets the belt in 1997.

Yeah, I do. Jannetty's singles performances aren't very similar to Michaels' singles performances; it's not inconceivable that someone could find singles Michaels a chore to watch but still enjoy singles Jannetty.

For a long time, I wasn't really into Pierroth. He had a title match with Mogur in 1990 that I watched only because the trios match from the week before was good (and I watched that mostly because it had Dandy and MS-1). I was expecting one of those title matches in which they try to work around the gimmick (like Pierroth vs. Mascara Sagrada or any of Octagon's), but instead they didn't skirt the championship style at all and did a really good job on the mat. I've appreciated Pierroth a lot more since seeing that. He has a mano a mano with Supremo the week before their mask match. I don't know if anyone's seen that but it seems like weird booking.

I don't have a very clear mental image of AAA Juvi. Big fan of him as a stateside heel, though. His abusive relationship with Eddy was awesome and I wish it could have gone on longer. The four-way from Souled Out 1999 is one of my favorite WCW cruiserweight matches.

Lizmark's case is odd in that he doesn't appear on tape regularly until he's about 40 and is still good enough from there on out to make an argument for him on a list like this. His execution is some of the most beautiful of any luchador - Lizmark is to the plancha suicida what Ciclon Ramirez is to the tope suicida. Possibly the best wrestler in AAA, if not all of Mexico, in 1993. For a guy who turned 40 in 1989, we have a lot of title matches from him on tape: vs. Enfermero Jr. (August 1983) vs. Satanico (April 1984) vs. Ulises (4/13/90) vs. Satanico (7/17/92) vs. Universo 2000 (9/18/92) vs. La Parka (4/30/93) vs. Jerry Estrada (6/18/93) vs. Satanico (9/17/93) vs. La Parka (7/18/94) vs. La Parka (9/9/94) vs. Jerry Estrada (7/9/95) I'm pretty sure that all of these are online except for the first Satanico match. As far as I can tell, the ones with the best reputations are the Parka and Estrada matches from 1993 (personally, I'm not really a fan of the Parka series - I think the Satanico match from '93 is better than any of Lizmark's matches with Parka).

Jannetty had kind of a what-if career, but there's still a lot of really good stuff there. He has an argument as the best wrestler in the WWF in 1993 and didn't show any signs of slowing up in January 1994. After that, he doesn't have much on tape but his occasional long matches are enough to make it clear that he can still go.

Most famous on this board as ohtani's jacket's least favorite luchador. There are also people who swear by him, as seen in this thread. Kind of an odd wrestler in that I like his trios matches more when he's the third guy on the team than when he's feuding with someone, which is kind of a damning statement, but I do enjoy the bumping and comedy. Some matches, all online: Jerry Estrada vs. Javier Cruz - probably his most famous match and performance Estrada/Vulcano/Tony Arce vs. Ciclon Ramirez/Aguila Solitaria/Pantera - I thought he was fun here, although I can see people being annoyed by him Jerry Estrada vs. Lizmark - the '93 one Jerry Estrada vs. Stuka

There's something to be said for wrestlers who can be carried. Bulldog might do well if the strawmen who just add up great matches vote in this. My favorite individual performance from Bulldog is in this match, a 1995 IC Title match in MSG against Shawn Michaels. His offense looks outstanding there, and he does some pretty nice bumping, too.

British Bulldog (#1, #2, #3) Espanto Jr. (#1, #2, #3) Jerry Estrada (#1, #2, #3) Juventud Guerrera (#1, #2, #3) Lizmark (#1, #2, #3) Marc Mero (#1, #2, #3) Marty Jannetty (#1, #2, #3) Matt Borne (#1, #2, #3) Pierroth Jr. (#1, #2, #3)

Charles feuds: vs. Atlantis (title '88, title '90, title '91, title '92) Eternal rivals who were opponents for a lot of trios matches, even when they weren't feuding. The '88 match is the last of three title swaps between the two from that year. The '90 and '91 matches are the semi-mains of Arena Mexico cards with Rayo vs. Caras and Konnan vs. Perro main events; the '92 match is an Arena Coliseo main event and is a lot bigger. It's the only one of the three for which any of the buildup is online, which makes it annoying that the internet has only the '88 and '91 singles matches. vs. Angel Azteca (title '89, title '90) Never a particularly heated feud, but they have two singles matches online. vs. El Dandy (hair '89, title '89, hair '93) Famous feud for which most/all of the '89 stuff can be found pretty easily. For '93 all we have online is the hair match. vs. La Fiera (hair '94) None of this is online, but it looks like it was built up substantially. Fiera shows up a couple of weeks after the match with a scarred-up forehead that indicates that it was probably pretty nasty. This is a from a period of CMLL for which stuff making TV is no guarantee that it's even out there waiting to be uploaded. vs. Miguel Perez Jr. (hair '94) Similar story to that of the Fiera match but probably less important. The hair match is in the match discussion archives. I've never seen it, so I don't know if they finally shaved Perez's back after he lost. vs. Silver King '96 Hey, a feud for which not only is the singles match online, but so is a match from the buildup (Emilio Charles Jr./Negro Casas/Black Warrior vs. Silver King/El Dandy/Mr. Niebla). vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. (mano a mano '98, title '98) Tag champions at the start of the year, feuding by February. The match that's online is the mano a mano. vs. Satanico (mano a mano '98, hair '98) Thecubsfan's TV database isn't complete for 1998, so I'm not sure what made TV and what didn't. The trios match that started this feud (Emilio Charles Jr./Satanico/El Hijo del Santo vs. Negro Casas/Shocker/Mr. Niebla) is online, neither singles match is (but I'm fairly certain that the hair match was taped), and a match from the week after (Headhunters/Charles vs. Satanico/Wagner/Apolo Dantes) is. This feud brought Charles to the tecnico side for what I believe was the first time in his career. vs. Shocker (hair '01) Nothing from this or from the Apolo Dantes match that led to this is online. Charles and Shocker were stablemates who split up, and it looks like they spent much of 2001 building to this match. Here Charles lost his hair for the first time since '89. I don't think a list of feuds encapsulates Charles' career as well as it does Dandy's. Dandy's feuds were bigger and more frequent, whereas Charles spent a lot of his prime as the third man in trios matches.

Unbelievably, this was the third time - Buff feigned another neck injury at Fall Brawl and was loaded into an ambulance before jumping out to attack Rick.

I don't think I'll end up submitting a ballot, so I'll try to keep this devoid of opinion. Dandy's bigger feuds, and the availability of the matches of which they consisted: vs. El Modulo (mask vs. hair in 1983, hair vs. hair in 1983, possible title match in 1982) Poor Modulo. Dandy took/may have taken his National Featherweight Championship in 1982, took his mask a year later, and took his hair the week after that. No footage of this appears to exist, and Modulo was gone by the time we got regular TV, but Alfonso Morales frequently referenced this feud when talking up Dandy's career. vs. Javier Cruz (hair matches in 1984 and 1986) The '84 hair match is taped, but I don't think it's online. Other than that, you're pretty much stuck with whatever traces of the rivalry remain by the early '90s. vs. Pirata Morgan (hair '88) The hair match is out there, even if none of the setup is. You can still see these two mix it a bit in 1989 and 1990. vs. Emilio Charles Jr. (hair '89, title '89, hair '93) This is a pretty famous feud. The 1989 version consists of, as far as I can tell, the apuestas match, the title match blowoff, and three trios matches (which might mean there were more that I just don't know about). All of that is online. The '93 version consists of some untelevised title swaps, some trios matches that haven't made their way online, and the hair match, which you can find. They're opponents in a lot of trios matches in between. vs. Angel Azteca (mano a mano '90, title '90) Oddly enough, it appears that every match from this feud is online. Other than a couple of matches in 1989, they don't interact much outside of this feud. vs. Satanico (hair '88 x 2, mano a mano '90, hair '90, hair '91, hair '92, a lot of matches in '14) Probably Dandy's greatest rival. Frequent partners in 1990 until Satanico turns on him to start the most famous portion of this rivalry. A lot of this feud is online, but there's also a lot that isn't. I don't think either '88 hair match (or their title match from that year) was taped in full. The '90 singles matches are online, as are some of their matches from Dandy's retirement tour. vs. Negro Casas (title '92, hair '96) This feud has been covered pretty well. It extends through '96 as the two alternate between being partners and opponents. The '96 match is a triangle match, and Casas is gone by the one-on-one, mask-versus-hair part. vs. Bestia Salvaje (title '92) Not a feud that's been explored that much. It looks like it was kind of rushed and jumbled together with the '92 Satanico feud, which may have hurt both. They traded the CMLL World Middleweight Title in 1992, with only the initial match being filmed, and it's online. Thecubsfan's database lists a mano a mano between them from Guadalajara TV, but as far as I know none of that stuff has surfaced. They match up a lot over the years, even if it's not as part of a feud. vs. La Fiera (hair '92) Like the Bestia feud, not one that's been looked at much beyond the singles match. Four singles matches in half a year is a lot for one wrestler, but this might have been a late substitution for a Fiera-Love Machine feud. Fiera and Dandy wrestled in five straight trios matches at Arena Mexico, which is a bunch, to set up the hair match. In the only one of those five matches that's online, Dandy's as bloodthirsty as I've ever seen him, so this may have been an interesting feud. They have very few other matches as opponents. vs. Javier Llanes (title '94) Pretty basic - just three TV trios matches and then the title match. Not really a big feud for Dandy, as this was strictly an Arena Coliseo feud between him and a guy who spent 1993 in semi-retirement, but the title match is pretty famous among lucha fans. One of the trios matches that set this up is out there to watch. Llanes does not have many TV matches to his name. vs. Black Warrior (title '96) I haven't seen as much of this era of lucha as I have from the early '90s, so I can't say for sure how big a deal this was. It's set up with a couple of trios matches. vs. El Hijo del Santo (hair '96, hair '04) The '96 match was, for Dandy and Santo, set up with only two trios matches. I think that either one or both is online. They wrestled a lot in Monterrey in 2000 and in Tijuana in 2004, and to be totally honest I don't know how much of that stuff is available. vs. Negro Navarro (title '01) I'm just looking at results on thecubsfan's match finder now. In addition to the title match, which is online (and unhelpfully titled DandyvsNegroNavarro), they appear to have two trios matches from this period out there. You could also check out a match from 1992 that features Dandy, Mike Lozansky, and El Ninja against the remnants of Los Misioneros de la Muerte. vs. Perro Aguayo Jr. (hair '02, title '03 x 2) The hair match is a four-way bout in which Aguayo takes Dandy's hair. The matches from this feud don't have much of a reputation. vs. LA Park (title '04, title '05, several others) In case it's not clear, I'm not very familiar with post-'90s lucha. The '04 title match is out there, as is a WWA trios match from Tijuana that appears to be from way before that.

There's probably a better way to phrase it, but what do you think of routines between two opponents? When I first started thinking about match quality, I would try to rationalize Michaels and Bulldog doing the eyepoke-hurracanrana and short-arm scissors spots in a lot of their matches together. They were fun sequences, but Michaels pretty much never used the short-arm scissors, except for when he was wrestling a guy who reversed it every single time it was put on him - you'd think he'd realize that it wasn't an effective strategy. I don't know why this kind of thing doesn't bother me anymore. I remember watching an Atlantis-Emilio Charles Jr. match a year or so ago, and Charles was trying to force a bridging Atlantis' shoulders to the mat with a knucklelock. I knew what was going to happen next - I imagine every person in Arena Mexico but one knew what was going to happen next - and it just cracked me up that Emilio thought that this would be the one time that he wouldn't end up soaring across the ring off a monkey flip. It's actually disappointing when those two match up and Charles doesn't take the monkey flip and then charge into a backbreaker. It isn't really logical that this would happen every time they face off; at the very least it makes Charles look stupid or unrealistically self-assured. I just don't care, though, because it's a great routine. They zip around the ring, Atlantis' technique is perfect, Charles takes each bump beautifully, and he sells the backbreaker at the end as if he's been set on fire. I absolutely appreciate guys who can figure out new things to do every time they're in the ring together, but I'm also impressed by two guys who have a series of spots so good that they can bust it out at any time and never fail to get the crowd going. So do you like stuff like that? If so, what are your favorite routines? If not, what are some specific repeat exchanges that have taken you out of a match or hurt a wrestler's standing in your eyes?