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I actually thought the third fall felt like it needed a big explosion that never happened. There was that cool moment when Chicana was banging punches off Satanico as he covered up, and soon after they went back to doing spots that felt like they were from the first two falls. Same pacing, same intensity. On the other hand, when I was trying to do top tens for each year with comprehensive TV from Mexico, this match ended up being a late cut for 1989. After this watch, it would make the list if I redid that.

http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/12069-rey-misterio-jr-winners-super-calo-vs-heavy-metal-picudo-psicosis-aaa-020793/ It does have a thread, just listed under the airdate. Looks like most people who watched both were more into the rematch. The linked video is to the rematch, by the way. Agree that it's one of Mexico's best matches of 1993.

I thought this was the best I've seen Panther wrestle too. The best part for me was when he started focusing on Santo's arm. Then he wasn't just a master wrestler who could go tit for tat with any of the tecnicos, he was a wrestler whose technical expertise and ring generalship could put his opponent in serious physical danger. Him making Santo back off out of fear of his skills was the most badass Panther's ever looked. Santo, for his part, wrestled a classic match that didn't fit his formula at all. He did his dives, and that was about it for stuff you get in every one of his matches.

When I last watched this match, I thought Lizmark looked pretty washed up, but his fundamentals and title match experience allowed him to hold up his end. Satanico I thought looked as good as ever and gave a strong performance, which is saying something given that I'd long since lost interest in watching him. Sometimes I wonder if Satanico boosters are the biggest reason I got so sick of the man. Lizmark had multiple matches with La Parka and Jerry Estrada, and the average match in those series was better than the average match in the Satanico series. I agree that he took too much of the Satanico fights, but most of his matches don't go like that. Using just the Satanico matches as an indictment on his overall ability is classic tunnel vision. I also question the logic of using "performance vs Satanico" as any sort of barometer. Satanico vs anyone is always going to be a Satanico match, and Satanico matches are the kind where even if he helps "anyone" have a good match the guy isn't going to actually look better in it. But that's how it is with Satanico. Bad matches are always the other guy's fault, any good performance (doesn't even have to be a good match) confirms the great man's ability, and in the end Satanico is still a strong contender for number one all time. Here we have Satanico carrying a sucky guy who didn't actually suck to a decent match. Doesn't really sound like the stuff of alltime greats, as you'd think they should find a way to get the most out of a weak opponent rather than just working around him, but then those guys don't make those incredible Satanico faces in every single fucking match.

Cactus Jack vs Hardcore Hak Eddy Guerrero vs Villano Tercero Hansen and Brody vs (Charly) Manson and Lodi Maxx Payne and Damien Kane vs Steven Dane and Lenny Lane Tank Abbott vs Baby Rabbit Insane Clown Posse vs Ted DiBiase Doink the Clown vs Bad News Brown William Regal vs Starship Eagle (an ECW match at Barely Legal) Mile Zrno vs Disco Inferno Edge and Christian vs Men on a Mission Commentary would be handled by Stevie Ray and Mike Tenay.

I like Angel Azteca vs Dandy more than Sangre Chicana vs MS-1. Some of that is just preferring championship style wrestling to a brawl, but I also think that in this case the title match was simply more interesting. Chicana vs MS-1 was not really that different from hundreds of other hair vs hair matches in terms of how it progressed. It's just that the wrestlers and the crowd were incredible. Angel Azteca and Dandy tried to wrestle a match that was not just better than but also different from the standard good title fight. AA vs Dandy also doesn't have anything as objectively poor as those MS-1 punches that he winged right over Chicana's head, although I'm not really a stickler for "good stiff strikes." As a bit of an aside, I thought that the refereeing in both matches was very good.

I'm sorry, but who are you trying to kid with this? Everything you've said in this thread goes against the idea that you just want to learn and talk about the matches. If you didn't want a conversation about whether the style is any good then you shouldn't have started the conversation by saying that the style isn't any good. On the other hand, this entire post has the sincerity and timing of Fuerza Guerrera reluctantly entering the ring with his hand outstretched, looking for nothing but a handshake, so kudos on your homage to one of the greats.

Yeah, I agree with this, and to me the skill tied his character together. It made him into almost an evil genius rather than just a trash talker. Does anyone know anything about Cota's listed maestro, Reveles Lopez? It looks like he was not a big name among trainers, which would mean that Cota got as far as he did without a boost from any kind of pedigree.

If you start from a point of "Puro is true wrestling, lucha is too different to be taken seriously" then obviously it loses. By definition it loses. But Japan's wrestling isn't any truer or more pure than anywhere else's. I could just as easily say that Mexico is the standard and judge everywhere else by how similar it is. Also I'm not sure if the UK's style is closer to Japan's than it is to Mexico's, but that's probably for someone who knows the stuff from the UK more than I do.

What other country has all of its wrestling glossed over with "it sucks"? And not just once, but frequently? There are people who have no interest in anything from Japan but I don't think I've ever heard anyone flat out say "I don't like it because all puro sucks." Same with US, PR, Britain, Germany. Also, protip, calling out someone's hypocrisy isn't an irrelevant argument. "But x is how you behave!" is a perfectly logical response to "I cannot stand people who behave in x manner."

I wouldn't claim that any of this is untrue, but I also don't think it matters much at all in this discussion. I for one am someone who has much more of an affinity for Mexican culture, and Latin cultures as a whole, based purely on the personal relationships I have with people of Hispanic descent. I generally don't have any personal ties to Japan or any Japanese people. I've been to Mexico, I know some Spanish, and some of my closest friends are Hispanic. If cultural bias was involved, I'd probably like lucha far more than puro, but I don't. I don't believe it has any bearing at all on my opinion of any particular brand of wrestling. It is a style of wrestling that isn't for everybody, and that is probably as deep as it gets. It's fair to call me out on that, and I sure as hell can't read anyone else's mind either. On the other hand, I don't think that any Japanese promotion's idiosyncrasies get questioned the way Mexico's do.

I wouldn't accuse someone of racism for not liking some kind of wrestling. Japanese culture in almost all shapes is usually treated as more important than Mexican culture, simple as that. Maybe it just captures the imagination more. I don't know why it would surprise anybody that the same holds true in professional wrestling.

I was going to say something similar to that, except with no film references and I'd also have added something about the scarcity of one on one matches.

I'm not sure I buy the "we" in that second paragraph. I believe that it's not just you. If I listened to wrestling podcasts, maybe I'd realize how widespread this is, but on the other hand maybe that would be the case only if I listened to a specific few, all coming from people who run in the same circles. On the same note I don't buy the term character work being satisfying to "no one". In its own way, a wrestler getting shoved to the ground off a lockup by a larger opponent, and then futilely attacking after the bigger guy has turned their back is accomplishing the same thing as the wrestler begging off after the shove. I don't see what is gained by lumping these together. I'm not sure that even you would lump them together, as the former is more active, but then I don't think categorizing everything as either active or reactive is particularly common. Bumping and selling often accomplish the same thing, too, and listing them together confuses more than it clarifies, because often they don't accomplish the same thing, and plenty of wrestlers are good at one but not the other. The same is true of (traditionally defined) selling and acting (in direct response to something). Mogur is a wrestler I'd list as terrific at the former and not really interesting at the latter. Splitting the difference and saying that he's average at selling is less descriptive, IMO. Stop. Disagreeing is different from not understanding. It's not a particularly complex point that you've made. Not that I didn't deserve the insult, as I was plenty snide and dismissive in my previous books, but let's not flatter ourselves either.

I understood your book just fine. There was another book I had responded to earlier to that was listing everything under the sun as selling. Such is life, I guess, when people try to affix their own meanings to words with commonly accepted definitions. Anyway, it's a needless redefiniton operating on the fallacy that people view wrestling only in terms of offense and selling. There is no "offense/selling duality". These were just two (of many) aspects of wrestling listed in the opening book, and no one tried to make them into anything more than that. Well, except for the people who tried to turn selling into more than it is. If you want to write a treatise on how everything a wrestler does falls into two categories, acting and reacting, power to you. Please don't call it selling. That word already has a definition. (I'm kind of worried that people don't take posts on wrestling message boards seriously enough, so I've decided to categorize them as books so that they get regarded with the importance that I think they deserve. Sorry about any confusion this may have caused.)

But a lot of the stuff being pointed to as selling already falls under other commonly used categories, like psychology or acting, or offense. If you stretch the definition of selling to include anything with some sort of intent behind it, then you might as well just call it "pro wrestling". Pro wrestling minus shooting, botching, and rear chinlocks where the purpose is to work out the next few spots of your match. Giving selling a more specific meaning is a good thing. It's more meaningful to say "I saw a macaque" than to say "I saw a monkey", and it's more meaningful to say "I saw a monkey" than to say "I saw a thing, it definitely wasn't a dishwasher". I also don't agree that nonselling reactions are undervalued. It doesn't seem so unusual for someone to write off a match because of cheesy acting, illogic, poor character work, the wrestlers failing to make the audience care, and on and on. Also, selling gets its own little domain because specificity in words is better and because it's what separates pro wrestlers from lesser performers like actors. I'm sure Willem Dafoe could convey the heartbreak and disappointment of losing a match, but could he convey that his knee hurts? Has there ever been a debate on which of the Stooges was best at making the eyepoke look real? It's an idea that's very pro wrestling, and that's why it has its own pro wrestling term. If you have an issue with the idea that selling is everything, the solution isn't to change the definition of selling so that selling IS everything, it's to argue that there's much more to wrestling than selling. Maybe you could vote for offense in the poll.

If Negro Casas yelling at the crowd in frustration is selling how unnerved he is, or Casas using holds in the first fall is selling how good a technical wrestler he is or how this match is a true test of skill, then of course selling is going to be more important, because it encompasses more things. That's such an expanded definition of the term that it makes it meaningless. Obviously the most important part of the wrestling match is going to be the part where you pretend it's a real wrestling match. If it's offense vs acting out pain, then I think I have an easier time envisioning a good match with weak offense and good selling than vice versa. It goes both ways, though. I've seen matches in which the selling was good but I wasn't buying it because they hadn't done anything interesting to lead to the selling.

I used to think that Blue Panther the man among rudos, but the list of really good Blue Panther matches is virtually the same as it was ten, fifteen years ago. The only new additions are matches he's had since then. Everyone else from his era has added to their resumes with old stuff that's popped up on Youtube.

Alfonso Morales narrating boxing highlights from the 1970s (not that unusual, but I didn't expect to hear his voice when watching a nonwrestling Youtube video) Also there's another boxing match where DDP was the ring announcer, but I can't remember which one it was.

That's true about the card, but it's not that different from the previous year with Perro vs Konnan on top supplemented by Atlantis vs Emilio Charles and a six man with Rayo and Kamala. Even Perro and Konnan got support from underneath. For 1992, Fiera was a replacement for Bestia Salvaje, and even then Bestia's aborted challenge for Atlantis' belt had only one match's worth of build. I don't think it was much different from the 1991 Atlantis vs Charles match in terms of being a complementary piece of the card. Love Machine generally wrestled like a tecnico during the matches but he had a bit of an edge. More than once he ripped Panther's mask off after the match, and somewhere in there was an interview with Panther that Machine interrupted with a shove and a challenge, and then they had a brawl. But there wasn't any Fabuloso Blondy stuff or even that much overt nationalism, aside from Machine being a known American who had red white and blue on his outfits. He wasn't a dud, he certainly did contribute to the feud, but I honestly don't see how what he did could have made him a star that quickly. There was appeal in seeing one of Mexico's own defend his mask against a foreigner, but I don't know how well that works if the Mexican is just a standard midcarder, especially a midcard rudo. Even Blondy went after Lizmark, Pirata, and Ringo rather than Angel Azteca, Hombre Bala, and Cachorro. I can't read the mind of anyone who was there, though. That's fair, but you posed the question of why they didn't book Panther in more mask matches if he was a big part of the massive crowd. I was just pointing out that he didn't wrestle in an abnormally small number of mask matches. He had two in 1993, and then there were a few years where he didn't really stay in one place for long enough to build one up. By the time he settled down in the CMLL it was almost five years after his last match with Machine. Rayo I brought up specifically as someone who was in big matches and then didn't have a mask match for years. Anyway I don't think he was a bigtime draw or anything. Saying he was kind of along for the ride with Love Machine shortchanges him a bit, that's all.

Think this is unfair to Panther. The mask vs mask with Love Machine drew a turnaway crowd to Arena Mexico, and that was for masked tecnico Art Barr. The people weren't there to see whether Love Machine kept his mask, they were there cheering on Panther. Barr's charisma didn't explode until he became a rudo. Also I think this overlooks that part of what got Love Machine over was that he was competitive against someone as good and as popular as Blue Panther. You really think substituting for Panther with somebody like Bestia Salvaje would have had the same result? It's possible. Might not have drawn as much as it wouldn't have been mask vs. mask but Pena had already created a string of successful gimmicks using the same formula. It depends on how popular the Love Machine gimmick was with the public. I don't think you can claim they drew a turn away crowd simply because he was programmed with Panther. If that were the case then surely Panther would have been booked in far more apuesta matches over the years. The Panther/Love Machine program was certainly successful. It drew in two different promotions and Panther certainly deserves some of the credit for that regardless of how hot Pena's booking was at the time. But it's offset by the fact that there were clear headliners like Caras, Aguayo and Konnan pulling the crowds. Panther/Love Machine is not that different from an IC title feud drawing during Hulkamania. None of Panther's other programs came close to touching it, and it doesn't really help that the matches are among his worst. I'm not saying that Panther mask matches automatically generated sellout crowds. It was a hot feud in a hot period for the company, but not every Arena Mexico show sold out. Bestia Salvaje vs Huracan Sevilla drew what was reported as a below average crowd (for the time--I'm sure it was better than some of the crowds later in the year). That was what happened when genuine midcarders headlined at Arena Mexico in early 1992. Panther vs Machine headlined what I believe was the biggest and most anticipated CMLL card that year. And Machine wasn't popular at all with the crowd. Despite being a well-meaning tecnico who'd been with the company for less than half a year, he had a packed house hoping he lost. Okay, he was an American going up against a Mexican, but for that to happen you still need a rudo the fans want to get behind. I don't think it follows that if Panther was primarily responsible for that crowd then he'd have been booked in more apuestas matches. For one thing he has as many to his name as Rayo Jr, Cien Caras, and Atlantis, and he didn't have much of an opportunity for them from 1995-97 because of the way he was hopping between promotions. As for the matches sucking, I don't see what that has to do with who was driving the feud.

Think this is unfair to Panther. The mask vs mask with Love Machine drew a turnaway crowd to Arena Mexico, and that was for masked tecnico Art Barr. The people weren't there to see whether Love Machine kept his mask, they were there cheering on Panther. Barr's charisma didn't explode until he became a rudo. Also I think this overlooks that part of what got Love Machine over was that he was competitive against someone as good and as popular as Blue Panther. You really think substituting for Panther with somebody like Bestia Salvaje would have had the same result?

Pre-1989: Lizmark/Atlantis vs El Faraon/El Egipcio 1989: Ciclon Ramirez/Huracan Ramirez II/Super Muñeco vs Pirata Morgan/Hombre Bala/Emilio Charles Jr. 1990: Aguila Solitaria/Remo Banda vs Comando Ruso/Leon Chino 1991: Centurion Negro/Black Magic/Panterita del Ring vs Negro Casas/Cien Caras/Arandu 1992: Hijo del Solitario/Blue Demon Jr./Huracan Sevilla vs Bestia Salvaje/La Fiera/Jerry Estrada (January 24) 1993: Lizmark vs Satanico 1994: Javier Cruz/Mogur/Cachorro Mendoza vs Halcon Negro/Felino/Arkangel 1995: I'm struggling I chose just one for everything before 1989 because of how rare TV shows from those years are. It feels wrong to pick a one on one match for "favorite not great matches" but there are not many three on threes from that year that left me thinking "That was as good as it could possibly have been." I couldn't think of anything for 1995, so that's where I gave up.

Satanico Nemesis: Lizmark Archenemy: Dandy Blue Panther Nemesis: Atlantis Archenemy: Love Machine Emilio Charles Jr. Nemesis: Atlantis Archenemy: Dandy

Anyone who refers to Eaton as Beautiful Bobby is crazily overrating him. I'm generally skeptical of wrestlers who aren't particularly athletic or skilled. Charisma first guys can win me over but it usually takes a while. Finding out that video of x event actually exists makes it hard for any of the matches to disappoint me. It's like closing the case on a mystery, the conclusion might not be all that satisfying but at least I know the answer. I'd rather dig and dig at certain years from certain promotions than hop around. I'm either very thorough or very picky. Specific to Mexico: - 1993-1995 CMLL being better than 1993-1995 AAA sounds good but I'm not sure if it's right. Almost every CMLL wrestler got worse when the calendar flipped over to 1993 and the promotion itself is just so depressing. - MS-1 is my favorite Infernal. - 1992 is the best year from the '90s. - Blue Panther is closer to one-dimensional than to a well rounded worker. - Arena Coliseo DF is the best setting for televised wrestling.