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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.

This was uploaded in full today. It ran about fifteen minutes and probably had fewer than ten wrestling moves, and it provides the best look we have at peak Chicana as something of a villain. One second he's taking a comedy bump outside of the ring, and the next he's smashing a bottle against the ringpost to prepare for his next attack. The rudo fans (or possibly just Chicana fans) jumped out of their seats just to raise their hero's hand in victory. Faraon isn't gonna outshine peak Chicana, but his bloody selling was fantastic, and between this and the title match with Atlantis there's a chance that the best worker in 1985 Mexico (or at least '85 EMLL) was Jose Luis Barajas. Sorry for the double post.

There's a long title match from IWRG that's probably your best bet to see extended Virus action from 2005. Just looking now, Youtube actually has a fair bit of 2005 IWRG, via Roy Lucier, IWRG themselves and other scattered accounts. I gotta check out that cibernetico from April.

Isn't there a British match that ended when someone slipped on a puddle of water once? That's the one I wanna see you guys debate.

Random thoughts on the Park that I've watched in the twoish years since that last post: - The mask match with Sandokan in Panama was excellent, although even back then he was doing BS finishes. His title match with Volador looked like they had some cool ideas for highspots and no ideas for anything else. I couldn't finish the title match with Sandokan. Eventually the torture inflicted upon Sandokan with those endless leg attacks began to transfer to me, the viewer, and my will was not as strong as Sandokan's. - The Wagner matches veered between hot brawling and tedium, sometimes in the same match. I thought the best one they had actually involved Mark Jindrak, Johnny Stamboli, Alberto del Rio and Lizmark Jr. - Park and Mesias would have these wild brawls that would end with ref bumps and cheap wins, the kind of bullshit that reminds you that it's just another wrestling match. Park and AAA Parka had a few moments when their match looked like it could have been something special, but it also had a lot of arguing between two old men in dress clothes. - Park and Rush have their match. Rush is gonna charge up the ramp, stuff is gonna get smashed, Rush is gonna miss a kick and get slapped, the belt will get used, both guys will bleed. They always go long, perhaps to justify the asking price for that match, and it always ends in some kind of foul nonsense. But it's two charismatic workers who know how to captivate an audience. Their match for something called Baracal Entertainment really stood out to me as something special. Somewhere inside of him, maybe not even that far from the surface, LA Park had it in him to be the Sangre Chicana of his generation. He also had the bumping and comedy ability of his mentor Jerry Estrada. Only Negro Casas could match that combination of skills. But the bullshit, man, he might as well have carried it with him to the ring in a sack. He just never seemed to believe that straight up wrestling, whether a technical match or a wild brawl, could hold the crowd's interest. I don't know why. He clearly got them going when he did normal wrestling stuff and wasn't holding the ref's arm to break a pinfall or kicking someone in the balls. Sangre Chicana did that stuff too, but at the end of the day Chicana would find himself alone in the ring with his opponent, one on one, and it would be like a shootout between two gunslingers. One man wins and one man loses. If Park scripted a Wild West gunfight the sheriff would run in to break it up and get hit in the junk somehow, one guy would ride off on the other man's horse, and they'd vow to settle it in the next town for the next movie. Yeah. Sure. Casas would fall flat on his face in the final stretch and turn a comedy spot into the most dramatic thing in the world. Park would try to sell the most unimaginative ref bump action as high stakes wrestling. To me that's the difference between a contender for number one all time and a fat guy in a skeleton costume, but, you know, I think being a fat guy in a skeleton costume has taken Park a long way anyway.

If I have a hard time not being cynical about Satanico, how am I gonna go into THIS guy's matches with an open mind? With that said, I really don't like the way he works as a base. So often he's clearly just flinging the tecnico around to the point that it's hard to even imagine that it's the good guy who's executing the move. I have the same problem with the way Espectrito worked against Mascarita Sagrada. To me the point of being a base is to hide the fact that you have to do some of the work, and genuinely great bases like Psicosis could do this. Some people hate flashy bumpers, I hate flashy bases. But again, it's likely that I'd have found some other reason not to like Ultimo Guerrero anyway.

I've watched two Perro Aguayo Jr. matches for this project. Perro vs Atlantis (Jan. 2006) had an outstanding rudo performance from Atlantis and some nice moments of brawling from Aguayo, but most of the time he seemed more interested in making faces than in selling. I actually feel comfortable in saying that Perro alone stopped this from being a great match, and I hate saying stuff like that. Perro vs Negro Casas (Sep. 2004) saw Perro dominate Casas in the first fall but then pick him up one a two count to administer more punishment. His very next move was a side headlock takeover. But you just... Moving on, Casas got him in a scorpion deathlock, Perro screamed in agony, and then as soon as the ref broke the hold Perro popped up like nothing had happened and beat the shit out of everyone. I don't know if I'm going to watch any more Perro Aguayo Jr. matches for this project.

Roy Lucier uploaded it a couple days back. I don't know if you still want to see it, especially with that pitiful bell to bell time, but there it is. He also upped a Solar apuestas match from 1991.

That was an interesting post, GOTNW. The kind that made me sign up for this board years ago. If I go by what he often gets praised for, Bret would be the embodiment of stuff that simply doesn't excite me. I agree that his technical work is boring, and that in a way applauding someone for proper execution is just giving them credit for not screwing up. But to me realism is the same kind of thing, not far off from saying that a guy just isn't disruptively phony. I can't imagine ever jumping out of my seat because of how much sense something made. That's the kind of praise that I hear a lot about Bret, and it seems like such a negative way to watch wrestling, rating guys by who makes the fewest and smallest mistakes. It's great that he doesn't do stuff to take me out of a match, but it all sounds less like reasons to love a worker and more like preemptive defenses against potential criticism from the bastards out there who you know would like to take your heroes down a peg. But at the end of the day Bret is, to me, a match guy. Maybe he doesn't have an endless list of classics, but in the years since this thread was made it's become clear just how disposable great matches are. What Bret Hart classic was ever disposable? I'm not sure if there's any non-AJPW wrestler whose best matches have become part of a canon the way Bret's have. He planned his matches with the eye of the movie director that he once wanted to be, with clear visions in his head and what he wanted those scenes to say about the men in the ring. Steve Austin bleeding in the sharpshooter, Diesel sapping all of Bret's reserve by sending him through a table. These were spots that popped the crowd, and I'm sure Bret wanted to pop the crowd, but he wasn't thinking them up as a way to pop the crowd. To me that's his most impressive detail work, the way his matches reflected back on the Hitman character. Yes, he was clearly a vain man. He openly seethed at the idea that Ric Flair could be considered better (just like his fans), and he wanted his matches to be seen as works of art, but it wasn't like today where the goal was for the match to make Bret the worker look good. The goal was always to craft something transformative within the mostly fictional world of wrestling and for a great match to actually DO something. So maybe he's not a match guy by numbers, but I bet he got more out of his great matches than guys who have twice the four star ratings that he does.

93. Ciclon Mackey, Espectro de Ultratumba and Fiera vs Ciclon Ramirez, Huracan Sevilla and Jinete (1992) No pages, more or less A journeyman reusing a sixty year old gimmick works over Ciclon Ramirez with headbutts en route to a mask match that never happens. Ramirez doesn't do a dive but he does pick up a row of chairs and let it fall on top of Mackey. La Fiera's out here gnawing on guys and doing headers into the stands. The only match from Guadalajara among these one hundred. 94. Jerry Estrada, Espanto Jr. and Parka vs Lizmark, Rey Misterio and Rey Misterio Jr. (January 27 1994) No pages Estrada makes a tremendous dickhead of himself as he beats on local hero Misterio Sr. and poses to the crowd every thirty seconds. Not content with that, he also performs his favorite party trick of press slamming Misterio Jr. as a way of getting under Senior's skin. Meanwhile all the tecnicos keep trying to get at him, and the other two rudos keep saving Estrada's bacon and finding creative ways to assault the good guys outside of the ring. I'd have ranked it higher if the third fall hadn't petered out a bit and featured the laziest ending imaginable. 95. Bracito de Oro, Cicloncito Ramirez and Mascarita Magica vs Damiancito el Guerrero, Fierito and Pierrothito (October 3 1997) PWO, Cagematch This one has a rep as an alltime classic in the 3v3 style. It's super fast paced with tons of athleticism and it all flows smoothly, but it's never struck me as transformative or unique. Just really, really good. You could do a lot worse than being really really good. For similar matches, number fifty-two on this list mixes highspots, technical work and comedy just as well, but everything has more of a chance to breathe. I can't tell if I shortchanged this one because it didn't quite live up to its reputation or if its reputation helped it snag one of the final few slots. 96. Duende, Halloween, Hijo del Espectro, Karis la Momia and Manicomio vs Power Raiders Azul, Blanco, Negro, Rojo and Verde (June 30 1995) No pages This one's a lot like the match above it, actually, a fast paced athletic match with some really good wrestling basics underpinning everything. Except this one features the wrestling staple of guys in masks ripping off a popular kids' TV show. Somewhere under there are familiar faces like Lasser, Skayde, AAA Parka and WCW's Ciclope. The rules here are that it's one fall and once a guy is beaten he's eliminated, but the match ends only when you eliminate the captain, so the two captains (Espectro and Rojo) generally pick their spots and try to stay out of the action. It's called relevos japoneses, because the Power Raiders are from Japan (no) and these are the rules used in Japanese matches (no). Whoever played Manicomio made a quickly forgotten undercard character into a lot of fun. 97. Gran Hamada, Silver King and Texano vs Negro Casas, Dr. Wagner Jr. and Rambo (February 23 1992) PWO thread Freewheeling match that feels like the UWA version of the famous AAA 3v3 from March 1995. Everyone here can work and this is when the Texano/Silver King team was considered one of the best in the world, but my favorite part was when Casas did his take on a Brazo de Plata bit. The only UWA TV match on the list. 98. Atlantis, Blue Demon Jr. and Huracan Ramirez II vs Pirata Morgan, Emilio Charles Jr. and Pierroth Jr. (March 17 1989) PWO thread Nothing particularly special happens in this one, but just look at all that talent. Emilio Charles! Atlantis! Pierroth! Blue Demon Junior! Pirata Morgan! Wait. 99. Cibernetico (parts two and three here) (December 30 1997) No pages Some people might want to see the event that began Virus's exit from the minis division, but I'm telling you that the real reason to watch this is to get a look at gimmicks like Pequeño Sayama and Pequeño Cochisse in action. I think this might be the only known TV appearance for like half these guys. 100. Hijo del Gladiador, Jaque Mate and Tierra Viento y Fuego vs Supremo, Pierroth Jr. and Ulises (April 21 1989) No pages Rudos vs rudos, but with Pierroth Jr. positioned as the de facto babyface. Despite his reputation as one of the quintessential rudos, that's a role he can play. He bleeds a bunch and we even get mask ripping psychology, as the reason that Jaque Mate tears Pierroth's mask open is so that his teeth will have greater effect digging directly into the skin.

86. Cien Caras vs Rayo de Jalisco Jr. (September 21 1990, mask vs mask) PWO, Cagematch It's a boring explanation to say that a match is awesome because it was a big deal historically, but doesn't that make it fascinating to watch? Cien Caras with the most memorable guitar shot in wrestling history. Sorry Honky Tonk, sorry Double J. They work a dramatic match but with none of the tricks to draw things out and force the audience to reflect on the importance of the event. If anything it's is a little rushed. Good job on whoever had a Mike Mareen track playing for the contract signing video. 87. Americo Rocca, Angel Azteca and Javier Cruz vs Chavo Guerrero, Dandy and Texano (March 16 1990) PWO thread What sets this apart from other tecnico vs tecnico battles isn't the level of skill (although it is very high). It's that this has a main issue between two of the wrestlers, like most of the best 3v3 matches, but that they're determined to settle it with clean wrestling. Only a bit of sloppiness, mostly between Cruz and Texano, holds this back from a higher spot. I think I understand what happened. On the mat, Texano is like a high performance sports car, and you can't call just any old mechanic in to work with him, even if it's a good one. It has to be a specialist or something. 88. Atlantis, Emilio Charles Jr. and Felino vs Black Warrior, Blue Panther and Dr. Wagner Jr. (January 1999) PWO thread? These two teams had a championship match in January 1999 that supposedly got a good word back in the day, but I prefer this brawl that set up the title shot. It's very short but everything looks good and it's probably the best babyface Charles performance on video. Wagner had been the one who had turned on him and sent him to the other side, and apparently they still remembered. I linked to the PWO thread because it sounds like the descriptions might be for this match. Roy Lucier lists this as their match from January 8, but the result matches that of their match from the fifteenth, so mark it down as another one with an unsettled date. 89. Caifan vs Hechicero (January 31 2009) No pages These guys have their own take on maestro wrestling. There are a lot of crazy submissions, and there aren't big swings in momentum or important individual moments, but they're also throwing suplexes and going for pinfalls in a much more universal, athletically driven style than what you'd get from aging veterans. At one point you can literally hear crickets chirping but it seemed like the fans were following the action nonetheless. 90. Bestia Salvaje and Scorpio Jr. vs Negro Casas and Hijo del Santo (March 19 1999, hair/mask vs hair/mask) PWO thread I have this issue with my memory where I struggle to believe that I'm actually remembering things correctly. I hate telling this story because it makes me look like a fucking idiot, but it's the best way to demonstrate what I mean. One time I got a text message from my sister berating me for not stopping to talk to her when we ran into each other somewhere, maybe the mall. And I'd seen a girl there and thought, "That looks a lot like my sister," before telling myself that it was just some random person who probably looked nothing like my sister. But that's who it was. Stupid, right? The point of this is not just that it isn't worth saying hi to me, but that when something doesn't stick in my head I tend to doubt my memory of it. There are a couple of matches that I punted off this list because I was looking over it and couldn't remember anything about them. This was one of those, but it had a thread on this site with a lot of very positive reviews, which was enough to confirm that I really did like it back whenever I watched it last. Not really an enthusiastic recommendation, I know. 91. Fuerza Guerrera vs Misterioso (December 6 1991, NWA welterweight title) It has a Cagematch page with no reviews. Normally I'd say that a great title match is too demanding of each wrestler for a carryjob to be possible, but this is Fuerza we're talking about. It wasn't a work of genius like Satanico's carry of Atlantis or Fuerza's one man show against Octagon earlier in 1991. Something like Fuerza's match with Pantera was out of the question. The longer the match went, though, the more Misterioso looked like he belonged, and when it ended he was a star. 92. Atlantis vs Blue Panther (December 5 1997) PWO, Cagematch Kind of like Santo vs Felino in that I don't see it as one of the alltime great rivalries, but I can recognize that they did some great work together. This is the final of a double elimination tournament, with Atlantis having already lost one match and Panther undefeated, so Panther can win the match by taking just one fall. I thought Panther did a good job early on pressing that advantage and pushing Atlantis's back against the wall. The technical work was excellent and the match was almost all technical work. On the other hand I've just never thought that their chemistry was that great off the mat, and that sunset flip spot was some kind of ugly.

79. Dr. Cerebro vs Multifacetico (part two here) (June 2 2011, WWS welterweight title) PWO thread Halfway point between Cerebro's match with Santo in 2000 and his maestros work, as this three goes falls and features moonsaults and drivers but still features long exchanges of pointedly complex holds. Cerebro is an interesting worker. Whereas most wrestlers tend towards long dramatic finishing stretches to really amp up the drama and cement the match as a memorable one, Cerebro always looks like he wants to get it over with as quickly as possible and instead puts most of his thought into the body of the match. Here that meant a lot of technical work that you could get from very few other wrestlers in 2011. 80. Hijo de Lizmark, Dos Caras Jr. and Dr. Wagner Jr. vs Johnny Stamboli, LA Park and Marco Corleone (May 19 2006) Cagematch page (it has an empty PWO thread too) Wow, you mean I get to watch Lizmark Jr. AND Alberto del Rio in the same match? Some of these lower picks probably made it because I remembered how much they exceeded my expectations, and when Dos Jr. is looking awesome doing agile tecnico spots, the crowd is chanting for Lizmark Jr. and Mark Jindrak is looking like a good rudo, well, then I'm getting a lot more than I thought I would. This is my favorite thing I've seen from the Park-Wagner rivalry, in part because Arena Mexico is actually in tune with what they were doing. It's weird how Wagner's charisma played such a part in their turning on Atlantis but not too long after they happily cheered Park over him. 81. Comando Ruso, Corsario Negro and Negro Casas vs Gran Hamada, Panterita del Ring and Super Astro (1991) No pages Not sure if the structure of a wrestling match has ever mattered less. Casas and Panterita keep brawling during the end of each fall, to the point that even the cameraman misses the end of the second. It's 3v3 but I'm not sure either man acknowledges any of his teammates. And the match ends after three falls, as they do, but the fight doesn't stop until Negro Casas disappears behind that clubhouse door, leaving Panterita outside, furious that the war had reached its end for the day. 82. Danny Boy, Lasser and Robin Hood vs Leono, Panthro and Tigro (August 17 1990, national trios title) No pages A UWA team and a team from Monterrey come down to the capital's Arena Coliseo and work a title match complete with a breakup angle. It's wrestled cleanly, tecnico vs tecnico, and part of the fun is watching these journeymen in outlandish cartoon gimmicks show some legitimate skills. It's also astonishing that they had a such a strong match while they were running a breakup angle. Those tend to dominate and sink a match, as everything becomes about one guy standing there refusing to tag in. I dunno what set Danny Boy off against his partners, but he was working here. 83. Fiera, Emilio Charles Jr. and Fuerza Guerrera vs Hijo del Santo, Mascara Sagrada and Misterioso (November 29 1991) It has a Cagematch page but no one's rated it. This is how Fuerza Guerrera sets up a big match. Yes, there's brawling and the ripping of masks, but he also slugs his own partners and falls on his ass when Charles gets angry about something. His rudo backup was outstanding and Fiera's frogsplash on Mascara Sagrada is cemented in my head as the defining execution of that move. 84. Felino, Shocker and Tony Rivera vs Hijo del Santo, Karloff Lagarde Jr. and Violencia (June 19 1998) No pages Both teams work tecnico, and it's cool seeing guys like Lagarde and Rivera portrayed as equals to the big stars like Santo and Felino. I hope anyone who stumbles across this post at any point has someone in their life who is as excited about them as Alfonso Morales is about Tony Rivera. 85. Felino vs Hijo del Santo (1998, WWA welterweight title) PWO thread, Cagematch page 1, Cagematch page 2 (they both refer to the same match) I've never been the biggest fan of this matchup (despite listing back to back iterations of it here). I don't like how Santo dominates a capable technician like Felino on the mat, but here they sort of play into that and have Felino use his speed and cunning (and legwork) to take control of the match. Amusingly, Luchawiki has a potential date for this match that's different from either of the ones posited on Cagematch, just to demonstrate how hard it can be to pin some of this stuff down.