cad

RIP. It's sad that possibly the most famous, charismatic and beloved wrestler ever, at least stateside, got booed out of the building in his last appearance on a wrestling show. He brought it on himself, but it's still sad to see a story turn out that way. On the other hand, on a former stomping ground for some of the hardest of the hardcores, nothing could be more appropriate than a thread about his death being filled with mostly ill will. Eventually it got to a point where even they had to admit that the guy knew what he was he doing between the ropes, but this is much more tonally consistent with workrate fans' feelings about Hogan throughout his career.

Satanico vs Fiera, spring 1996 The first fall was missing, which is often the most interesting part of a title match, and all they showed was Fiera winning it with a pretty simple short arm scissors. Then the second fall began and Fiera was trying to get a hold of that arm and Satanico was desperate to keep it away from him. It had me flashing back to the way tecnico Fiera readily worked like a rudo against Negro Casas in 1993, or how Satanico and Cochisse kept working holds throughout their match in '84. That lasted for just a fleeting moment, though, before they just started working a standard, forgettable match. By the third fall both men looked like they were running out of ideas, as they basically did the same crossbody counter spot twice within a span of minutes. Fiera's offense worked much better in a brawling setting, and I dunno if Satanico was going through a sort of midcareer crisis or if he was just having a bad night, but his third fall offense was a lot better against Averno seven years later. The match was fine but not something to list in either guy's catalog.

Couple of things about Pirata Morgan: 1. Pirata's birthday is listed as July 29 1962. I know he has the Satanico match in 1993, and I know there must be some other stuff that somebody likes from his later career. but for the most part he made his case almost entirely in his twenties. How many other candidates can say the same thing? I assume some joshi workers. 2. Pirata is almost universally regarded as a great worker by lucha fans, and again that's with a case made up almost entirely of his work from his twenties. Does he have the best twenties of any candidate? 3. On closer inspection, the other Bucaneros all wore eyepatches that they could see through, so they weren't actually wrestling half blind. I was wrong about that, and I'm upset about that. Not as much as when I found out that MS-1 was not actually Mungo the Alien (I was wrong about that too), but I'd still rather have avoided that mistake.

Lotta Freelance fans here. I watched a couple of matches where he squared off with the master. Freelance vs Dr. Cerebro, May 21 2017 This was a good match. It was a little less mat based than your typical Cerebro match but he's not a one dimensional worker. Freelance clearly had more talent than a lot of the pikers I've seen Cerebro try to match holds with. On the other hand, it didn't really have anything special going for it, and Freelance pretty clearly just let go of a hold and walked away at one point. Keep that shit limited to Negro Navarro matches, please. Freelance, Fenix and Aeroman vs Dr. Cerebro, Fantasma de la Opera and Cerebro Negro, July 31 2008 Dr. Cerebro beat the absolute shit out of Freelance here. This was the kind of rudo performance I've wanted to see from the doctor for a long time. It wasn't heatseeking stuff, he just destroyed Freelance, who was a great sympathetic babyface. The other rudos got into it too and I loved how Freelance just collapsed with exhaustion after evening the match. They were two thirds of the way to a great one. I didn't really like Freelance's third fall offense. It was good tecnico offense in and of itself, and I have no problem with tecnicos making a comeback on rudos with flashy tecnico offense. I'm just kind of OCD about blood, I guess. Once you're busted open and having trouble even standing, that should be a sign that you're in no condition to be doing crazy standing flips or whatever. As usual with IWRG I can't understand what they wanted to do with the finish, which saw Freelance eliminated early before Aeroman and Cerebro landed winning blows simultaneously. Still, I gotta call the match a big success, as it improved my (already very high) opinion of Cerebro and made me want to see more Freelance.

I gotta rewatch this. I remember it being a 3.75 kind of match myself, but I don't have any memory of the technical work being brilliant. It exists in my head as a lesser version of Mogur vs Pierroth from a couple months later.

If it were to come out that one day a spaceship flew down to Earth and dropped off Bobby Backlund with express instructions of blending in with the humans as best as possible... well, maybe I'd be a little surprised, but definitely less surprised than for any other candidate I can think of. He's always just a couple of steps away from looking like an honest to goodness actual person. Whoa whoa whoa whoa.

That's interesting that it was a 3v3 that shaped your views of lucha. For a lot of people it seems like they can maybe get into the big apuestas or title matches but 3v3s just don't work for them. I hope you keep doing these.

October 2003 (Part two) February 2004 June 2004 November 2004

Satanico got a bit of play in Guadalajara during the first decade of the 2000s: Satanico vs Charro (October 19 2003) Even in his fifties Satanico still knew how to carve a fellow up. I don't know Charro from Adam, so maybe he was a brilliant local worker, but as far as I could tell the first fall was fantastic just because of how good Satanico was at beating up and bloodying tecnicos. This is the sort of specific thing that I would point to if I ever wanted to make the case for Satanico as the GOAT, or for Satanico over Negro Casas. Not many could do it like Satanico. Charro made a bizarre choice in his second fall comeback, but I suppose it was the sort of Attitude Era influenced move that wrestling saw a lot of around then. They didn't really go big in the third fall, but there's no taking away that first fall. Satanico vs Averno (February 15 2004) Satanico vs Averno (November 7 2004) Couple of title matches. The first one was for the welterweight (yeah right, Satanico) belt and saw some cheating from Averno and a rather muted response from Satanico. I'm used to tecnico Satanico fighting fire with fire, but I guess he wanted to play it babyface. The second match was for the middleweight championship and was really good. They didn't really dig into the first fall technical work enough or display enough creativity for it to be a classic title match, but the falls were paced well and the third fall had all the dramatic swings and nearfalls that you'd hope for. I was impressed with how Satanico pulled that off without busting out some new-gen offense. He still had the sense of timing to get it done with moves he could have been using twenty years back. I still think that the Cochisse match is doing a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to Satanico's reputation in title matches, but this was at the level of the handheld match with Chicana or maybe one of the better Lizmark matches. Satanico vs Ringo Mendoza (June 27 2004) This felt like two Diablo Velazco students doing their own take on the burgeoning style of maestros wrestling. Not much flash, just one fall of trading barebones holds, with an attempt to keep it realistic and grounded in the principles taught to them in the '70s and '60s (Ringo is OLD). Same as they'd have done in the first fall of a title defense from 1982.

Positives are that he gets incredible heat for modern wrestling and that he brought a sense of violence to 2010s Arena Mexico that no one else could. But he's so one dimensional. Doesn't sell much, and never emotes anything other than smugness. Pretty much any early '90s rudo was a more varied performer. Yeah, I know that prime Rush was "the most hated tecnico" or something, rather than a true rudo, but still.

Never hated Triple H. I respect a lot of his matches. But even with peak HHH, I don't really know what I'd say his greatest strength was as a wrestler. Does that mean it was some nebulous quality like "ring generalship" or "a sense of the moment"? Maybe he was just "more than the sum of his parts." I do think that he was good at being a loathsome heel while still making himself look like one of the top wrestlers in the promotion, instead of working as a weasel/coward or an unstoppable badass.

Overachiever. Warrior almost objectively sucked giant ass as a worker but his list of good matches (and MEMORABLE good matches) is better than it has any right to be. Like, I doubt he was more talented than Vampiro, but Warrior clearly has the better matches. I don't think it was just his opponents, either. Warrior's character somehow lent itself naturally to big, important matches, and I'm sure it helped that Hellwig seemed to fancy himself a genuine real life superhero. If you're one of those guys who rate squashes, I'm not sure there was ever a more legendary squash than Warrior vs Honky Tonk Man.

Small guy, didn't do flips or twists but moved like a cat. He had a really nice plancha suicida and a beautiful straight right that worked as part of a fired up tecnico comeback or a rudo beatdown. His charisma was like that too. Totally believable as a spunky babyface or a little prick. Sounds like an awesome worker, right? The catch with Apache (and there's always a catch) is that if you want an extended look at him in action then you have to watch a bunch of matches that were designed to top out at three stars or so. Matches where all they're doing is playing out some AAA backstage soap opera storyline in the ring for the live crowd, or openers where he and the guys are told to just go out there and warm up the audience. I'd likely have overlooked him if not for a match he had in 1993 when they took the shackles off him and he worked this dramatic, bloody war that showed that he could do big exciting encounters as well. It was just a matter of being booked to. That knowledge helped me appreciate his smaller matches more, once I got that it was the promotion rather than his own abilities setting those limits on him. These are probably the most attention grabbing Gran Apache matches: Gran Apache and Mestizo vs Escudero Rojo and Reyes Veloz (this match sold me on Apache, with parents sending their kids over to kiss his bloody face afterward) Gran Apache and Mestizo vs Escudero Rojo and Reyes Veloz (this time it's an apuestas match and it's still dramatic, but the layout takes away from it a bit) Gran Apache vs Oscar Sevilla (yeah, as mentioned above, the ring is soaked and they still have a fun AAA brawl)

He was an important part of the wrestling landscape for only a few years, but to see him once, as the saying goes, was to never forget him. Fans from the TV boom period still fondly remember the Saetas del Ring even though they generally just wrestled matches that opened the TV shows. His big push happened after AAA formed and CMLL business started circling the drain, but the mask match with Felino nonetheless stood out as a major event in those rough years. In a lot of ways he was the quintessential luchador whose career could never recover from his unmasking. In an ideal world his career would have gone better, but he was a guy whose legend outstripped his kayfabe accomplishments. I think that's something we'd all like in the end, to be much more than the sum total of what we've done. He'd recently taken to referring to himself as "el rey del tope." Who could ever have challenged that? I am sad. RIP, Celso Reyes.

Believing that a son should disown his father is asking a lot of him.