ohtani's jacket

Matt, I expounded on the problems of lucha booking and storytelling to a greater degree in my latest entry -- http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/blog/8/entry-434-vintage-negro-casas-of-the-day-10/

I've always found 70s Cortez a little disappointing. I think he was better in the 80s. People really need to start exploring his stuff though as too many people don't know him from a bar of soap.

Negro Casas/El Felino/Javier Cruz vs. Atlantis/Ultimo Dragon/Ciclon Ramirez, CMLL 6/25/93 This began with Javier Cruz pacing back and forth in the ring cutting a promo in front of an empty arena. He was wearing a black (leather?) trench coat and doing what I took to be his best Bobby De Niro impersonation. At one point a valet appeared and gave him the thumbs up, then she disappeared again... was she real or just a figment of his imagination? It's like Twin Peaks. On paper this should have been a good trios match. We all know how hot trios matches can be in the lead up to a singles match, and this had all the ingredients. You had Cruz as the next challenger for Ultimo's middleweight crown, Felino and Ramirez building towards their mask vs. mask match, and simmering tensions between the Casas brothers. The rudo side wasn't that great, but the technico side was flashy, and everyone involved was at minimum a pretty good worker. The trouble was they couldn't decide whether it was a match about Cruz vs. Ultimo, Felino vs. Ramirez, or the Casas brothers squabbling. The secret to these lead in trios is that you have one match-up that's the central story line and then another match-up or two that serve as subplots, and as with a good screenplay those subplots either contrast or complement the central theme. Since they aired the Cruz vignette beforehand, ideally his title shot should have provided the main thrust to the bout, especially given they were a week out from it. Instead, the Cruz/Dragon issue was swallowed up by the Casas brothers' antics. The reason for this was two-fold: firstly, Cruz was such a passive personality that he was hardly going to stop the Casas brothers from overshadowing him, and secondly, apuesta matches tend to provide more interesting builds than a run-of-the-mill title match. In the case of the former, Casas was such an alpha male that he brought what should have been a third string story thread too far to the fore. In the case of the latter, if the focus was meant to be on Cruz vs. Dragon, they should have worked an up tempo workrate bout and saved the mask ripping and other apuesta motifs for a different bout. From memory there were a couple of neat moments in this, but sticking to my wider point about the narrative structure, there were two common lucha tropes on display here. The first was mask ripping and the second was infighting among rudos. I hate both of them. I really do. After hundreds upon hundreds of lucha matches and years watching the stuff, I detest those spots. They have to be done absolutely brilliantly to sway me otherwise they're just egregious time wasting. They're not done well here and in the case of the infighting, the bout literally stopped to accommodate it. I mentioned to new lucha scribe Matt D the other day that I don't think lucha does 'story' well. Obviously, it would make a difference if I could understand Spanish. That way I wouldn't be struggling to make heads or tails of the Casas vs. Felino soap opera or mysterious valets. But the language barrier doesn't explain away everything. You learn pretty quickly that lucha isn't episodic TV in the way that say Portland was. If you get a singles match with three weeks of good trios you're happy as Larry, but when it comes to angles, especially face turns, the promoters are about as committal as the apuesta challenges thrown out after every brawl. The mask ripping here was uninspired, though it did lead to some comical moments where Casas was tying Felino's mask back together. The squabbling between them was a distraction, to be honest. If it were American wrestling, you'd expect them to turn on each other and build to a hair vs. mask match. And while I don't expect what I'm watching to be Americanised, I don't think we should excuse or overlook bad booking because the wrestling's foreign. Lucha would be much better if there weren't so many loose threads. The booking at times is the epitome of throwing shit against the wall. Watching 1993 CMLL there are so many ways it could have been better. Too many ways, really. You don't feel like you're in safe hands. And it doesn't make sense from a business point of view. Surely, if they'd pulled the trigger on Casas turning face it would have done business. Perhaps those are the frustrations Pena had with Herrera and his faction. In any event, this failed to get me excited for either Cruz/Dragon or Felino/Ramirez, and made me wary of any other 1993 match involving both Negro Casas and Felino. So that's not vintage.

One of the strangest, weirdest, most idiosyncratic gimmicks I've ever seen, Billy Torontos: Ironfist Clive Myers... I much prefer him in the 70s with his cool Jamaican vibe as opposed to his later kung fu inspired shtick, but either way he was a cool cat.

One of my favourites, the very much underrated Robby Baron up against one of my least favourite wrestlers, Snake Pit trained John Naylor: The superbly talented Bobby Ryan, who always reminds me of Buster Keaton for some reason:

The Kamala match/angle was a heck of a beat down and another sick blade job. I'd preferred to have watched it in the context of the entire feud, but it was memorable for what it was.

Jungle Jack vs. Manami Toyota & Esther Moreno 4/29/91 is a good pick at some point.

Moreno was sensational in this and the glue that held it together. She made a real fist at speaking Japanese and I guess that helped with calling spots. I wasn't so sure whether that blade job was appropriate for the match they were working and it was a bit deep, but everything else she did was great and I thought she matched up with Aja tremendously well. Aja was like a fat kid at the pool with that plancha. Total belly-flop. The second rope power bomb to win it was vicious looking. Really fun, high energy bout. The time flew by which was a big positive.

In the 70s, they'd do a lot of showcase matches which usually went four rounds and reminded everybody of what a great wrestler a Mike Marino or Tibor Szakacs was. Marino was in a lot of these matches. I don't remember seeing him in a title match or anything special by TV standards. The finishes were more often than not screwy, which kept me from listing a few. Marino was also in his 50s at this point so it's difficult to gauge how good he was relative to his prime. He had the book at some point as well, and I assume he was booking himself in showcase catchweight contests while pushing other guys. Here are the bouts I wrote about favourably: Mike Marino vs. Wayne Bridges (7/31/75) Mike Marino vs. Caswell Martin (3/14/74) Mike Marino vs. Lee Bronson (4/21/76) Mike Marino vs. John Kowalski (11/20/74) Mike Marino vs. Bruno Elrington (12/18/75) Mike Marino vs. Roy St. Clair (2/13/75) Mike Marino vs. Dave Bond (3/23/77) Mostly positive: Mike Marino vs. Steve Logan (10/10/74) Mike Marino vs. Terry Rudge (1/22/77) Mike Marino vs. Pat Roach (5/21/75) Mike Marino vs. John Elijah (10/8/75) So so: Mike Marino vs. Man Mountain Moran (9/11/75) Hated it: Mike Marino vs. Amet Chong (12/11/74)

Shoot style belongs to a particular time and place in Japan. It would have never gotten over in the UK. Crowds would it on their hands for technical matches and pop huge for Crabtree telling Mal Kirk that Daddy will fight him anytime, any place, anywhere.

Marvin gorilla pressed all the normals in this thread. Warrior for the top 100!

I don't remember. Here are my brief comments about it from WKO:

Ikeda's 2/20/97 match with Greco is bad ass.

The maestro. Ken Joyce. WoS's answer to lucha maestro matches. Retired and came back more times than Terry Funk. Here is against protegee Johnny Kidd: Johnny Kwango, one of the looong time WoS stars. He was in his mid-50s in the 70s, but you wouldn't know it. This is a bit of a cheat as it's also the only full match of Jackie Pallo's we have available. Mind Walton's off colour references about Kwango's skin colour.

Peter "Tally Ho" Kaye, equestrian, landowner, country gentleman... Johnny Saint, you might have heard of him... rolls himself into a little ball... here he is in one of the better tags I've seen from a country that never really got tag wrestling. Oh they liked it all right, but they never got how to do it. This match also features Jeff Kaye, who often appeared as a referee in later years but was a fine wrestler in his own right.

His resume is good by WWF standards, but for a list like this we need to compare him with guys from outside the WWF. I don't meant to handicap him with the working environment he was in, but if you compare him to today's WWE guys they have much better week in/week out stuff.

There's no particular order to what I'm posting. I'm just introducing the characters and people can take it from there. Many of the wrestlers I introduce I don't expect to be nominees, but they were part of the WoS landscape and will help people get a feel for the television and discover what match-ups they'd like to see. There's two distinct eras -- the 70s and the 80s. The 70s has a lot of aging stars from the 50s and 60s who are still hanging on to their spots while Joint tries to push their latest bright young hope. Business was flagging in the mid-70s before Daddy got hot and they try to create a bunch of new stars in that era. The matches tend to better in this era and I'd say the 70s really encompasses what most people imagine WoS to be. The 80s are fine for the first few years, but a lot of talent jumps to All Star Wrestling and there's not the same variety to the television as there was in the 70s. The matches become more workrate driven to keep up with the times. 1974 is the starting point for the 70s and 1980 the starting point for the 80s.

I see. My comment was more for anybody who might be wondering why I chose the match. Lassartesse is a guy both Jetlag and I have enjoyed from the 80s where he's a thousand years old so it was great to see the two catch bouts from the early 60s. I haven't watched enough catch to know what I should chalk things up to, but there are certainly idiosyncrasies.

John Naylor vs. Jackie Turpin (3/31/81) This was all right I suppose, but you have to ask yourself why a Wigan trained wrestler like Naylor relied so heavily on pinning combinations and simple takedowns. Maybe Turpin couldn't work the mat. but any rate the mat work was zilch. Johnny Kidd vs. Jackie Turpin (11/30/81) Fun bout with Kidd doing plenty of matwork (mostly of the Ken Joyce variety.) This was a tournament bout so it was on the short side, but it was kind of JTTS meets JTTS so it had a more interesting dynamic than a lot of Kidd footage where he's up against an established star. Tally Ho Kaye vs. Jackie Turpin (10/11/82) As you can see, the promoters booked Turpin with Tally Ho Kaye a lot (presumably because Kaye was a veteran hand.) The last time we saw these two fight, Turpin took a nice bump over the top rope and was unable to beat the count, and Brian Crabtree got the heat back for himself... err, I mean Turpin... but cutting a promo on Kaye afterwards. This time round Turpin had grown in stature and they actually gave Jackie the win after having him work an injury for most of the bout. Progress Jackie! Tally Ho Kaye vs. Jackie Turpin (12/15/82) Just to prove it was no fluke, the pair were back on television a few months later in the semis of a knockout tournament. Props to Turpin for wearing a cape in 1982. Again Jackie worked the bout around a leg injury before surprising Kaye with a pin. I wonder if they plotted that out in the halls. I would have liked to have seen Kaye in the halls actually as I heard he had a number of bloody stip matches, which is a side of him he was never allowed to show on TV. Alan Dennison vs. Jackie Turpin (2/24/83) Dennison took this pretty seriously and actually wrestled for a change, which was interesting. I half expected some bullshit to creep in, but he treated Turpin pretty well. Dennison wasn't a bad worker. He was similar to Kaye in that he knew his way around the ring without being spectacular. The bout ended up being less competitive than it seemed at first, but still if Dennison had worked like this more often I would have a better image of him. Dave Finlay vs. Jackie Turpin (1/28/86) 1986 Jackie Turpin -- still rockin' the cape, but now with a moustache. This was a fun bout. It was for all intents and purposes a competitive squash but Turpin threw in some headbutts and open handed strikes to make life interesting. Finlay was heavy on the shtick at this time being under Princess Paula's thumb. Whatever plans they'd had for Jackie were over by this point and he was just another guy, but this was short and sweet. Daddy came down afterwards to demand a match with Finlay. Not sure why your super heavyweight needs to demand a match with a middleweight, but his comically bad mic work made it entertaining.

For the record, I didn't nominate the Allary/Lassartesse match because it's a great match per se, but instead to get Lassartesse out there.

The Embry match was great. I've become a dyed-in-the-wool Invader fan after only two matches.

Both, but generally the former.

It's not really a footage issue with CMLL. The problem is that the booking doesn't follow traditional American patterns. It's difficult to understand why Felino and Casas are always squabbling without guessing. If CMLL had run it like Bret/Owen it would be easy to understand but moments that would lead to one wrestler turning on another in the States are blown off and they're back to tagging the next week. I would actually go so far as to say that everything story related in lucha is by and large disappointing aside from hot trios matches in the lead-up to a singles match and a nice narrative structure in said singles match. Rudos in fighting, mask ripping, baby face or heel turns, all pretty disappointing.

Which just adds to the shitty feeling of "this is not a triumph." This almost feels like the sort of payoff that should kill a territory to me. The best moment was when Chigusa hugged the ref at the very end though. That was heartwarming. The nebbish scholarly bullied scribe was able to find his courage and help the heroine stand up to the bully and together they vanquished her, at least for today, etc. The only way you can kill a territory of schoolgirls is if something more interesting comes along. It was a fad not so much a territory.

If have a feel for serialised lucha, please explain 1993 CMLL to me, Matt! Chigusa had actually been moving away from the Dump stuff for some time prior to this match and concentrating more on being a serious wrestler and not so much of an idol. Even Dump began to change after the bout. She slimmed down and they stretched out her forced retirement to milk a bit more cash out of her. As she gets closer to retirement she becomes more of a fan favourite out of sentimentality. The '85 bout was the peak of the feud and then the '86 bout was the blow off, which may feel like more of a coda judging by your comments.