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Praise for Maroñas! I don't know if I've seen anyone compliment that guy, ever. Obviously not here, but not even in Youtube comments or anything. So I guess I'll jump on the bandwagon. One, I thought he did a really good job in Felino vs Mascara Magica, which is one of my personal classics. Two, the way that he loved to bring up Emilio Charles's weight loss, even in matches that didn't have Charles in them, helped shape my image of Emilio as a guy who had to take a look at where his career was going and radically transform himself in his early thirties to reach the levels that he did. I don't think that I would have grasped that element of his career, that he wasn't a Hennig type of second generation worker who immediately looked like a future star, if not for the way Maroñas frequently marveled over how hard Charles worked to make that change.

In a year when the big CMLL stars rarely dug deep in their big matches, these four undercard workers had the promotion's most frenzied brawl third from the top on a half full Tuesday show. They'd fought just the week before, and despite the rudos' win in that match Gran Apache dismissed them as a pair of talkers. I guess that set them off, because they wrestled cleanly for about thirty seconds before deciding to just swarm the Indios Bravos and doubleteam the hell out of them. Escudero Rojo in particular whipped in some wicked right hands and headbutts like a sawed off version of Baby Face. I don't know what the strengths and weaknesses of Gran Apache are in terms of his GWE candidacy, but he was excellent here trying to fight back from underneath and on the comeback. Definitely looked every bit as tough as the rudos. By the middle of the third fall his chest was covered in blood, Reyes Veloz might have lost even more, and Escudero could barely move his right arm. Because this was a rare big chance for these guys, they made sure to throw in some dives and other athletic moves to make sure everyone recognized their talent. It must have worked. At the end of the video the ringside fans were sending their kids over to hand the tecnicos money, and one parent even held up their daughter for a kiss from the bloodied Apache. They had a good rematch the next week with everyone's hair on the line, but the weird layout meant that it would never reach the level this one did. Great match from some unheralded workers.

Title matches often get treated as rare opportunities to see extended high level technical wrestling in the Mexican style. They really are, but there's a lot more to them than that, and this match provides a good example of the dramatic opportunities that the title match presents. The exchanges of holds in the first fall didn't have any wizardry to them, but they established Lizmark as the superior wrestler with an answer for everything Estrada threw at him, giving us multiple shots of Estrada standing across the ring wondering what he could try next. It wasn't about how beat up Estrada was, but when the essence of the match is to find out who is better, you can build to something just by having him repeatedly looking and feeling inferior. He finally got an opening and tied the score, and it surprised me how even through the break between falls Lizmark made a two second submission hold seem like a big enough move to override all of his prior offense and put Estrada in control. That was good selling. Then Estrada laid into him, took out all his frustrations on him with borderline moves like an attack from behind right on the bell and tosses into the turnbuckle, violating the spirit of the match if not quite breaking the actual rules. In a mano a mano or apuestas match, Lizmark could have fired back with some of the same, but here he had to dig down into the reserves of his ability to get back into it. All those reversals, all that skill on display in the first fall was nice, but did it actually mean anything when the chips were down and the match was on the line? That's not the kind of question the third fall of a hair match will have you asking. Lizmark managed to worm his way out of Estrada's submissions like in the opening fall, but he couldn't hang back like before. He was taking bigger and bigger gambles and time was clearly running out on him. In an apuestas match, there's often something downbeat about the postmatch, with a focus on the person who just lost as they surrender their hair or mask to the victor. Here we did get some nice acting from Estrada while Heavy Metal consoled him, but it was largely a celebration. Solar ran around the ring with Lizmark over his shoulder and almost dropped him, before the champ went over to kiss the middle aged women who brought a Lizmark banner with them to the show. Estrada was probably the least imposing of Lizmark's challengers in 1993, but I don't think that the triumphs over Satanico or Parka felt as joyous as the one here.

Look at that Dandy-killing unit assembled by Fiera. When you want to put the hurt on El Dandy, Satanico and Charles are the guys you call. Dandy brought some pretty good teammates with him too, as Atlantis in particular had one of those outings that made him the best backup tecnico ever. This felt like a post-AAA split version of the famous match from earlier in the year with Perro Aguayo, Rayo Jr. and Konnan. That was a chaotic brawl with a bright arena, a packed house and the hottest TV acts in all of Mexican wrestling chasing each other all around the ring. This brawl came in a darker arena and a snowy and grayed out video, and it wasn't quite as frenetic, but it also had a much more ominous mood from the sneak attack at the start to the DQ for attempted murder. Fiera looked like the scariest rudo going with the way he mugged Dandy throughout the first fall. Dandy was great trying to fight back (I loved when he pulled himself off the floor to slug it out with Fiera, only to get sent crashing into the front row by a spinkick), but he might have been even better getting his revenge. He busted Fiera open and even dropped a row of chairs on him (you can barely see it in the corner of the video, but it's there), and things somehow got worse for Fiera from there. 1992 was one of the best years for CMLL brawls, and even in that environment this match stands out as one of the best.

It doesn't look like they were even related, just two guys with the same last name. I haven't seen a Rudy Reyna biography mention a brother. Reyna is a fairly common family name. You might remember that MS-1 was Pablo Fuentes Reyna.

I don't see it as an either-or thing. To me a classic, alltime great championship match combines the two, with enough skillful wrestling that it seems like it's the two most talented wrestlers alive right there in the same ring, and then backs it up with riveting drama to produce a contest that feeks like the most important thing in the world while it's happening. By drama I don't mean blood, visuals, or other apuestas staples, but excitement and the sense that the match has come a long, long way from where it started, and that the wrestlers' positions vis-a-vis each other have changed over the course of the match. Mocho Cota is a memorable character, but when I think of his matches with Rocca I think of his dogged onslaughts to tie the score more than facial expressions or poses to the crowd. The April 2000 Panther vs Santo has a great image of Santo, his arm badly hurt, put in the unfamiliar position of having to back off from an unusually aggressive Panther. Virus vs Guerrero Maya had GM turn the match on its head and make Virus the underdog when he started blowing him away with big offense in the third fall. Those matches all had brilliant technical performances as well but managed to feel like there had been a major shift over the course of the action. The most you could say about this one is that the moves got bigger as the match got longer. And if a match trades on skill and execution, it really hurts to have a spot set up this shoddily. I can forgive a blown or poorly executed spot, but it's harder to do in a match whose selling point is aesthetics.

Storytelling within a title match doesn't necessarily mean playing into larger angles surrounding the match like in AAA. It's more like how the match could come off as described in a story for Sports Illustrated or some publication like that. Think of things like momentum swings, or strategy, or interplay between the characters. Surely you don't think that acclaimed classics like Rocca vs Cota, Cochisse vs Satanico, Casas vs Dandy, Santo vs Panther, Virus vs Guerrero Maya reached that status solely because of how technically good the wrestling was. If someone watched any of those matches and all they did was praise the technical work I'd feel like they missed something. If someone watched this match and all they did was praise the technical work I'd understand. The title match style is one that lends itself to displays of beautiful wrestling, and you can have a great one focusing on just that one aspect. There's also a lot more that can be done with the conventions of that style, and if the workers neglect everything else then it's hard to get past that 4.25 star level into bonafide classic territory, at least to me. If I weren't able to appreciate beauty in a match like this, I might not have praised it at all. There's also some rather obvious slop on display, and it goes beyond nitpicking how well two men can pull off a preplanned spot in a worked sport. Damiancito vs Cicloncito is the same kind of match as this one, and that one is pulled off much more seamlessly despite possibly having a higher degree of difficulty.

I feel like even people who see Blue Panther as a well rounded worker would say that he's at his best in title matches. I'd say that too, but there's always such a duality to his work and it's all on display here. The technical work is brilliant, so much that it becomes apparent early on that this match isn't just for the middleweight title but for the title of best technical wrestler in the company. They manage to get an Arena Mexico crowd excited over small victories, like the test of strength early on or some of the fights over leg holds, so they know a lot more than just how to apply the moves. It's extremely competitive all the way though. Yet for all Panther's skill, I've never thought much of his storytelling within the title match conventions. I thought they were going somewhere when Atlantis was pressing his advantage after winning the first fall, but instead of pulling off some genius reversal Panther just kicked out of a cover, whipped Atlantis into the ropes, caught him with a clothesline, and from there went on to even the score. I'm not of the belief that whoever is in control needs to stay in control until they counter or their opponent misses a move, but this was a flat way to tie it up and left me thinking that maybe those knees to the temple weren't as painful as Panther's spasms made them out to be. And for all the thought they put into the battles over individual holds, they didn't really worry about how to get to some of the other crowd popping spots. Panther at one point drops Atlantis, walks more than halfway across the ring and climbs the ropes with his ass sticking out for his famous Blue Panther Moonsault, which unsurprisingly gets him knocked to the outside. There's another time when he plops down on the top turnbuckle and has a rest, while Atlantis strolls over and superplexes him. So continuing the half and half theme, I agree with the consensus here that this isn't an alltime great match, even within the championship style. It's more like Angle vs. Benoit, skillful, action packed and competitive but without a real reason for the swings in momentum. And that can be enough. This time I came away thinking it was a great match that I'd probably underrated in my head for a bit there. It had a real big fight atmosphere and lived up to it, not an easy thing to do.

If you see Felino vs Santo as an alltime super classic, there's no way either of those matches will surpass it. Number one is one of those matches where you get a little bit of everything, technical work, comedy, violence, dives, all built around the Halcon Negro vs Olimpico rivalry. I think it's been on Youtube for well over ten years at this point in terrible quality. Number two is a pure technical match where Santo and Felino let some of the potential next generation workers eat at the table with them. That was a fairly recent Roy Lucier upload.

Usually the way that you work a fake foul into a match is at the end. Here they did it in the first fall, and I really can't express how well it worked. If Dandy was furious after being suckered in the first fall, he was ready to have the hair match right then and there after Satanico did one better and outwrestled him in the second. It takes some guts to put your all into a match built around your getting shown up, and Dandy couldn't have done a better job showing his humiliation here. Not just in smacking the turnbuckle with his head in frustration, but also in the way he let his behavior cross the line after each fall, trying to get Satanico worse than Satanico had given to him. I always think of Dandy as the kind of guy who's never willing to let himself get oneupped by a rudo and occasionally willing to give a rudo a taste of his own medicine, but repeated fouls and postmatch attacks are hard to justify from a tecnico. Rather than having Dandy look like a brat, it worked, I think because the indignities got worse as the match progressed, and because Satanico certainly doesn't make himself difficult to hate. There was some great brawling between the two and even a fast exchange off the ropes to show off their skill, and Atlantis is one of the best at the backup role in this kind of match, so the action is excellent too. I just really liked the mind games here and the way they paid off in the eventual apuestas match.

In Mexico: 1. El Hijo del Santo 2. Felino 3. Maybe Zumbido There is not a lot of 1998 lucha on Youtube, okay? There's not a lot of discussion over what the best 1998 matches from Mexico are, either. I don't know that I've ever heard anyone call 1998 a standout year for Hijo del Santo (oops, my mistake, Microstatistics did it several posts up), but you can basically follow the CMLL plotline by watching his matches until he finally turns in September. I also don't remember rudo Santo doing stuff like challenging up and comer Tony Rivera to a mat contest in 1997. Felino was probably the best CMLL technical wrestler at this point, or at least he was the one giving the best technical displays. Those two were the guys who stood out to me. For third, I dunno, I went with Zumbido. Maybe he wasn't the third best wrestler in the country in 1997, but I do think that he, at least briefly, surpassed Virus as the most exciting short guy with a mullet, quite an achievement in itself. On resume I probably should have gone with Karloff Lagarde Jr., a pasty gormless faced man who really tried hard to be a good technical worker. As ever, pleading ignorance on Japan. Who was the best US worker, Benoit? I'd take 1998 Santo or Felino over him. Ten of them:

To me this is the defining Satanico performance. Maybe he has better matches, but I don't think Satanico himself was ever better than he was in this one. At least not in anything we have video of. I recall that somewhere in there Atlantis kind of fucks up a backbreaker and the announcer says something along the lines of, "You can see how nervous he is, being in there against a great wrestler like Satanico." I always liked how he acknowledged it, gave a reasonable excuse for it and put over the stakes all at the same time.

This could have sucked. Pierroth isn't a guy who really embraced the dramatic opportunities that came with a title match, and Mogur's most notable characteristic as a wrestler is his complete lack of charisma. But what happened here is that they filled in the gaps for each other. Mogur isn't charismatic? That's fine, obviously Pierroth can work a crowd. More important, though, was that Mogur IS a good technical worker, and they played to that, built the match to him totally outclassing Pierroth on the mat until there was nowhere for Pierroth to go. He'd held his own at first with little tricks and a focus on Mogur's arm, but once Mogur came through with that brilliant slam counter the match belonged to the champ. He was torturing Pierroth, humiliating him, to the point that Pierroth's only hope was a genius reversal of his own (lol no) or perhaps a more out of the box solution. It was a great foul. Right there for everyone to see, but how could you possibly call that deliberate? Both guys sold everything wonderfully. Pierroth you'd expect, but Mogur might actually have outsold him here, even if he didn't possess Pierroth's theatrical flair. One of the best title matches of the '90s.

I wouldn't say it's the number one reason I love this match, but the most impressive thing about it to me is that, if all you had was a blow by blow description, you couldn't know how well the match came off. When Dandy wants some heat, he does a bodyslam, or a clothesline, or an escape from a camel clutch, or a legdrop. There's a nearfall off a diving headbutt, but for the most part the close calls come off rollups and basic suplexes. The fans are with them all the way, though, because everything is timed perfectly. Everything is built up. Everything is sold right. You can get heat off a clothesline when it's largely surrounded by matwork, when the recipient sells it like a big move, and when the guy who executes it immediately and without any prompting holds up his forearm to indicate that what he did was technically within the framework of the rules. They've scarcely left the mat by the middle of the second fall, and the match has still turned into a life or death struggle by the time Dandy has to fight out of Angel Azteca's leglock. Then, having gotten that much out of holds, it opens up a third fall in which almost everything is a potential match ender. There are no nearfalls in this match in which it feels like the match should end. Instead they've managed to make it so that anytime someone's shoulders hit the mat it feels like the match COULD end. I love the technique on show here, but beyond that this is just a very well crafted bit of wrestling.

Eh. In my mind felt more like some kind of statement that they were trying to make than the culmination of a yearlong, promotion dominating program and a careerlong rivalry. But this wasn't something that I rewatched this time around and I'm going off old memories. It's a universally praised match, even somewhere like Cagematch, so I'm likely either remembering it wrong or offering a goofy opinion.

For Mexico: 1. Damiancito el Guerrero 2. Cicloncito Ramirez 3. Blue Panther The most important wrestling footage development for 1997, for me, is that rnrwrasslin stopped uploading TV shows midway through the year, limiting the stuff I got to see. I suppose that if I were truly dedicated I could get a hold of some of that stuff for myself, but that's not the kind of person you're dealing with here. Besides, I got no stomach for that kind of life anymore. As a result you get a pretty generic list for this year of minis and ciberneticos. Virus and Cicloncito are more of a 1/1A scenario than a true first vs second. Virus was a more interesting character I guess, so I placed him first with no real conviction behind it. I thought that the minis were pushing things with their work more than the big men. Blue Panther's 1997 work had the same flaws that it always did, but he did seem to want to establish a strong footing for himself upon his CMLL return. I also respected his attempts to brawl with a nextgen Mascara Sagrada and to wrestle on the mat with Apolo Dantes, who was solid there but not really a guy who saw the thrill in that type of work. What Virus and Cicloncito lack in (filmed, available) quantity, they make up for in an outstanding hit rate. They're definitely more pure work candidates than well rounded personalities, so you'd have to be okay with guys whose abilities lean more towards that side. An attempt at a top ten:

This match has the most well done ref interference I've seen. A backhanded compliment to some extent, but I appreciated the thought that they put into it. The issue is that Gran Davis doesn't want either man using closed fists. A fired up Dandy wrestles emotionally and repeatedly gets cut off when he prepares to throw a punch or simply protests Davis's admonishments. Charles on the other hand sees what's happening and plays the ref like a fiddle. A couple of times you see him tell Davis about Dandy's right hand, and then when Davis hassles Dandy, Charles nails him--with a kick. Charles of course uses his fists at points too, and Davis warns him as well, but Emilio never lets the ref take away his focus, and at one point basically tells Davis off when he tries to stop him from pounding Dandy into the dirt. The ref work never overshadows the two wrestlers, and instead the first fall is about how the two different personalities react to it. There's also plenty of fight and hatred on display throughout the fall, like when Dandy takes Charles down out of nowhere, and Emilio has to destroy him with right hands to keep him down. And when Dandy finally does make his comeback and busts Charles open in the second fall, he does it without throwing a single punch. By the third fall both men are bleeding and swinging wildly, and they've both gotten angry with Davis, so he gives up trying to enforce the letter of the law. If you're the kind of person who appreciates incremental escalation, with the moves getting bigger and bigger, you might like the big flying spots in the third fall, as they go from Charles's standard tope suicida, to Dandy's plancha suicida, to the splash that Charles won the first fall with, to Dandy's tope suicida over the top rope. There's nowhere to go after that, and then Davis springs back to the forefront of the match by counting them out. I think that it would have felt a bit flat if he'd just done that out of nowhere and the match ended in a draw. With the crowd already angry at him after how he called the first fall, instead we get a heated postmatch featuring some guy calling Davis an asshole, fans tugging on Dandy's arm to convince him not to go through with the haircut, and Dandy and Charles looking like they might unite to force Davis to get his hair cut. I don't know if any of this is why I think this is a great match (personally, I prefer that shot of Dandy struggling to get up off the floor after Charles sent him flying off the apron), but I really am impressed with how they laid this one out.

Mexico's top three: 1. Negro Casas 2. El Dandy 3. Felino HM: Mascara Magica, Black Warrior I'd be lying to you if I said that I had a solid grasp on every Mexican group's 1996 matches. AAA fell victim to the throes of Konnan booking before eventually becoming an organization based on indistinguishable guys in bodysuits and Halcon Dorado Jr. Promo Azteca got TV at some point this year but never found its footing as a promotion. IWRG got TV too but I think the only ones who saved video of it are IWRG themselves. This is mostly just me rating CMLL stuff. They had a big bounceback year in 1996, and so did two of their biggest linchpins of the 1990s, with Casas at his most creative since early 1993 and Dandy at his best since 1992 or maybe even 1990. Like with Dandy vs. Emilio Charles in 1989, I thought that Dandy probably had the better list of matches but that Casas gave the stronger individual efforts. I will say, though, that over the last three months of the year, after Casas had turned tecnico, Dandy was outperforming Casas and might have had one final run as the top guy in the country. Felino gets third again. This year he actually got some spotlight matches, and we did see his overindulgent tendencies crop up, but his four fall title bout with Mascara Magica ranks as the banner outing of his career, to me anyway. Mascara Magica had a good six minute mat based match with Kung Fu Jr. this year. That's when I was sold that he was a real talent. He and Black Warrior both looked like future greats but never really built on what they had at this point. I thought that Casas and Dandy were up there with anyone in the Western hemisphere in 1996. Japan I can't really speak to though. Top ten matches:

My top three for Mexico: 1. El Hijo del Santo 2. Rey Misterio Jr. 3. Felino Santo's tough to rate for these things because he doesn't really change. Some years his matches are better, but he's always the same guy. What stood out for me in 1995 wasn't any particular performance but how the balance of power in terms of match quality shifted the moment he jumped. Just about marked the end of the AAA golden years for workrate fans, and suddenly CMLL TV became good after months of their TV presence consisting mostly of condensed matches. Not that it was all his doing (mostly it was that they stopped with all the clipping), but it helped for a narrative in my head if nothing else. Misterio was a genuine phenom. I've never found him interesting as a character and I prefer more grounded workers, but he had the year's preeminent big match and didn't totally reject the classic tecnico style. Felino's a guy I haven't always taken seriously. What I didn't understand was that 1992-94, which is more in my wheelhouse, represented his Stunning Steve years, when he was a clear talent who was maybe 75% of the way there. No one thinks of Felino when they think of 1995, and no one thinks of 1995 when they think of Felino, but this was the year that he seemed to mature and find the right balance (for him) between comedy and wrestling. He was a pure background character this year, and normally I try to list guys with more prominent roles, but, um, I guess didn't this time. Misterio Jr. actually was considered a best in the world candidate at the time. I think Santo was better, and he actually has a really strong case if you're high on his title matches with Psicosis and Casas, both of which have gotten strong reviews at one time or another. My top ten:

Mexico in 1994: 1. La Parka 2. Javier Cruz 3. Solar Not exactly one of my favorite years, this. Parka sort of wins by default, even though I doubt anything from his 1994 would make a "Best of LA Park" playlist. He had the flair to make a mount exchange with Mascara Sagrada one of the year's highlights for me, and I've never seen better AAA brawling than him vs Lizmark in some 4 vs 4 match. Javier Cruz put out more energy more consistently than any other CMLL worker in 1994. Whether because of dedication or because he could feel himself slipping down the cards, he fought his hardest against the lifeless atmosphere of 1994 Arena Mexico and managed to produce a classic with an increasingly irrelevant Ciclon Ramirez. Cruz didn't have the charisma to make everything he did must see TV, but he did manage some fun stuff with Los Rebeldes de Jalisco, one of the most pointless teams ever to garner a name. And I went with Solar because the Panther match had some nice technical work, he did some good stuff with Angel Azteca at points, and he managed to keep his form even while giving up the character that he'd made his name with. If that sounds like a stretch, well, fair enough. For that third spot I was wracking my brain for guys who could possibly go there and crossing them off the list one by one until eventually it got to a point at which I was considering if Mascara Sagrada, the full size Mascara Sagrada, was maybe the third best wrestler in the country, and that's when I knew I was in too far. I don't think any of the three listed names had a best in the world kind of year, and in fact it's probably more interesting what happened with the usual candidates. Santo had kind of a coasting year. Outside of the strong program with Javier Llanes, Dandy would sometimes start off like he really wanted to leave an impression (vs Felino, vs Hijo del Gladiador), before the matches would simmer down and end up not far off from average. Most of Casas's big opportunities this year came in a feud with Mocho Cota, and I don't think they ever really clicked as personalities. Pirata Morgan looked washed up. Fuerza Guerrera didn't have much going on. Atlantis didn't either and seemed to have shelved his technical side. Rey Jr. wasn't quite there yet. I'm not a fan of the AAA mini style or Art Barr, but this wouldn't be a bad year to list them, even with Barr's death. This was my top ten:

MEXICO #93 (12 mos) Q-GOOD 1. Negro Casas 2. La Parka 3. Lizmark HM: Satanico Just AAA/CMLL stuff this year for the most part. Negro Casas continued his inspired run from 1992 for the first few months before cooling off a bit towards the summer. By that point La Parka was probably more consistently entertaining, although Casas came back with a great match at the anniversary to ensure that he'd keep the top spot for the year as a whole. I don't know what to say about Lizmark. He was laying down the big title defenses this year, and no one seems to give a damn. I don't know if the matches don't hold up, or if the accomplishment just hasn't impressed anyone, or what. Try naming a better tecnico for 1993. Satanico really turned it on after jumping to AAA, but this was after five months of not a whole lot. Casas was still at his peak, but as the year wore on he didn't seem to have to same fire week in and out that he did in 1992. With big matches hard to come by for Mexican candidates, you have to be impressive in almost every appearance to match up with the candidates from elsewhere. It probably doesn't help that all CMLL footage from the final two months of the year seems to be lost (with one exception). These were my ten favorite matches:

Top three for Mexico: 1. Negro Casas 2. Espanto Jr. 3. La Fiera HM: Atlantis, El Dandy, El Hijo del Santo, El Signo, Pirata Morgan, Emilio Charles Jr. For footage this year, we lose Monterrey and gain another weekly TV show when AAA forms in May, briefly giving us three promotions' TV. Saved UWA TV becomes rare by the summer months and the show is gone by the end of the year. We also get a few months of Guadalajara TV in the summer-autumn months. Last year's number one, Fuerza, started off the year continuing the fun Misterioso feud but soon reignited his rivalry with Octagon, which felt like a rehash this time out. This about marks the end of his time as one of the best in the world. Around the same time, Negro Casas had one of his best matches with Santo and made it clear that he was Mexico's number one, but with Casas footage so scarce beforehand he may have already held that title and we just can't prove it. Espanto Jr. was the star of the UWA TV for me, and one of the great things about it is that he got to show how he wrestled against opponents who weren't El Hijo del Santo. He also had a great match with El Hijo del Santo. La Fiera, man. La Fiera did everything in 1992, title match, hair match, green foreigner match, match where he's the foreigner, bloody brawling, comedy, insane bumping, ref spots, and often several of these in one match. And he was in the zone in terms of pointless details, like when he'd start blinking his eyes after Ultimo Dragon shot his mist into the air, or bouncing on the apron when big Kendo Nagasaki took a bump. Lot of honorable mentions this year. I'll just mention that Dandy had some great performances but also quite a few big matches that ended up being fine when they could have been special, and that Signo was another one of the best workers on UWA TV, putting together a good LHW title reign and flying all over while the heavies around him moved in slomo. Casas does something brilliant almost every time he's on TV this year, and his match with Dandy is one of the legendary title matches in lucha fan canon. I think you've gotta reckon with him if you're naming your best in the world. This is my favorite year for Mexico, actually, but the workers spread the wealth around, so I don't know if anyone else had a 1992 that screams WOTY. My ten favorites from '92:

Emilio Charles Jr. in WCW

Generally speaking, the 1993 match is a lot more competitive than the 1992 version. I'm not seeing the narrative similarities between the two at all. Casas looked like a chump in 1992, getting waxed all match and pulling out a couple of fluke falls. There wasn't any leg work in the second fall, just a scorpion deathlock out of nowhere. In 1993 he legitimately got back in the match by attacking the knee, fouled Dragon between falls and maintained control into the third. I'd actually cite the 1992 match as something that Mexican wrestling does NOT do well, and that's the Ric Flair style title match where one guy looks like the lesser man but manages to pull out a fluke win. It's never satisfying, not when Satanico does it against Lizmark, not when Santo does it against Psicosis, not here. Dragon looked like the better wrestler throughout in the latter match, but it still felt like he'd had to overcome some serious danger and a crafty champion to win it. Casas looked a much more worthy opponent on the ground in 1993 too. In the '92 match Dragon just sort of shuffles Casas from hold to hold, with Casas rarely even getting to counter. I liked how he blocked the figure four, but for the most part it's the counters that people look for in this kind of match for it to feel competitive. Dragon wantonly switching from armbar to leg scissors to figure four is hardly treating each hold as important, even if it maybe does resemble the universal ideal of NJPW style matwork. I wouldn't describe what they did on the mat in '93 as two guys aimlessly riffing. If it bored you it bored you, but every one of those sequences established that Dragon had the upper hand. I'm not sure what you were talking about with the third fall of the 1993 match. There's the spot when Casas falls off the ropes and they do a double down? But they kind of had to do it, or else you have Dragon just popping up for no reason. I actively looked for them slowing things down like a big WWE match and couldn't find it. After every kickout they went right back to work. I suppose they sold the big moves to the outside, but if they hadn't I'm sure they'd have gotten raked for that too. Long story short, I'm not quite sure I really bought that narrative of the '92 match being the same match but done better, and I don't know if some of the other analysis was executed that well either, but Casas doesn't deserve to get treated any more delicately than anybody else. I'd always assumed that this was one of the more accessible Mexican classics, so if I learned anything here it's that perhaps that's not the case.

Mex. '91: 1. Fuerza Guerrera 2. Atlantis 3. Brazo de Oro HM: Pirata Morgan, El Hijo del Santo Finally, we get something besides just CMLL footage this year, and it comes from... Monterrey? The UWA TV show started in October to provide another alternative. Last year's number one, Dandy, began the year in Japan and then I think took some time to heal from injuries. By the time he got back in March, last year's number two, Fuerza, had already laid down his Octagon classic on his way to leaving the rest of the promotion in the dust. I'd say Fuerza had the top spot on lockdown all year. Atlantis was no longer the top flyer in the world as he'd been in 1989, but he had enough facets to his game that he was just as good overall anyway. He finally got his excellent showcase match, against Blue Panther, and it remains one of his signature performances today. I've always found Brazo de Oro fairly uncharismatic, but his match with Santo is a classic, and there is a LOT of terrific technical work from him in 1991. For the last four months of the year, Pirata was performing at the same level as Fuerza. I just can't in good conscience rank him with how his tecnico run, which made up half his year, provided no real highlights and finished up quickly, almost as if everyone admitted that it had been a mistake. Hijo del Santo had some brilliant performances and probably was better than at least Brazo de Oro. There isn't enough of him to know what kind of a year he really had, though, especially given that Santo did sometimes have a tendency to coast a bit. I don't really think that Atlantis or Brazo de Oro could hang with the true best in the world candidates for 1991, but Fuerza? If you can accept a world number one who spends half his time falling on his ass, you'll see a guy who had a classic with an unremarkable opponent, built up an exciting match with a forty-nine year old who had never been a big name, and basically turned Misterioso from a flashy undercard worker into one of the promotion's young stars. There can't be a lot of years like that, where a guy is tasked with good hand duties and churns out superstar performances. My top ten: