ohtani's jacket

Nancy Kumi vs. Leilani Kai (1979) Nice to see Leilani in a singles match instead of being Goon #1 or 2. Of course, she was still a stereotypical American brawler, but her brawling was tight and she made sure to stay with her woman and not let up. Kumi was a good worker and did some nice athletic spots for the era. The heels cheated to win and Moolah entered the ring to try to draw more heat for Kai, and man was she scarier than anything Leilani did in the bout. That was one frightening looking woman. This was pretty much what you'd expect from the era. Not too bad. Jumping Bomb Angels vs. Judy Martin and Leilani Kai (Royal Rumble '88) It's weird how workrate driven this was. I guess nobody was able to translate to Yamazaki and Tateno that you're not supposed to work like this in the WWF. Once again, Martin did the bulk of the work for her side, which wasn't such a bad thing as she was a pretty good bumper. There were some blown spots here and there, but it was a fairly exciting bout by WWF standards and it's hard to imagine it's been matched by their women's division since.

Les Kellett vs. Johnny South (aired 12/30/72) Les Kellett was a right bastard. It's hard not to think about how everyone hated his guts and hated working with him. Even when he's grinning and telling jokes you can tell he's a bastard, and it's amusing that at the end when he tries to hug South, Johnny doesn't want a piece of him. Kellet was a funny bugger, though. The comedy spots with Max Ward were gold. The rest was fairly middling. South was a decent foil, but if you've seen one Kellett match you've seen 'em all. They're all fairly entertaining, but the first one you watch is the most memorable. Mick McMichael vs. Bobby Barnes (aired 3/25/72) This is really early WoS footage in terms of what we had. Everyone looked so young and in Bobby's case so beautiful. Walton called McMichael one of the most underrated wrestlers around, which is a nice way of saying he was dull. This was par for the course from Barnes, but it was fun to watch him when he was so young. Alan Dennison vs. Johnny Kwango (1/5/72) God, this was awful. There was no way either Dennison or Kwango were going to lose, and since both wrestlers were used to controlling bouts where they did a lot of schtick, this was a rudderless mess where neither guy was about to get their shit in. One of them should have sacrificed their ego and made it either a Dennison or Kwango bout, the way Pallo/Kwango was a Pallo match. Brian Maxine vs. Zoltan Boscik (aired 4/22/72) This was another strong Boscik performance. Maxine's act wore a bit thin, but once Boscik began his comeback this heated up. Boscik was posting Maxine and snapmaring the shit out of him and then Maxine caught Boscik off the ropes with the nastiest looking forearm smash of all-time. He fucking nailed Boscik, who bumped like a motherfucker. It's really been a revelation to me how good a bumper Boscik was. For what it's worth, I found a live performance from Maxine with the backing bands for one of his country albums. He wasn't the greatest singer, but he seems like a fun dude:

You're probably thinking of Mick McMichael.

Are you sure about that? McManus was well retired before Relso was on TV.

Sangre Chicana vs. MS-1 (Hair vs. Hair) (9/21/84) This one is pretty straight forward. The most interesting thing about this match is that Sangre Chicana had his finger in so many pies at this point that it's interesting that they went with a return match for the Anniversary Show. Not only did he have a personal vendetta with each of the Los Infernales members, he also had bad blood with Fishman, Perro Aguayo and the Mendoza brothers. Hell, he'd even taken Los Guerreros over to El Toreo in '83 and started something with the Misioneros that led to a Super Libre match, which is basically a no DQ match. On the undercard of the 7/1/83 Mendoza brothers vs. La Fiera and Mocho Cota hair match, Chicana and Aguayo had a mano a mano bout that was so bloody the doctor stopped the fight. So, there was any number of ways Paco could have gone if he wanted a Chicana fight in the main event, and you can judge for yourselves if you think it was the right choice. Atlantis, Ringo Mendoza y Tony Salazar vs. El Satanico, MS-1 y Espectro Jr. (9/28/84) There doesn't appear to be anything special about this other than it's another bout with the original Infernales.

This was from the summer tour of Kyushu and Okinawa. It must have been a hot summer as the girls were gleaming with sweat. The match was from that weird venue in the Okinawan countryside that looks like some kind of ditch. Folks are sitting on the banks, kids are running around free, it's in some field fucking field somewhere. Not only that, but the canvas looked like it had either been drenched by some kind of downpour or didn't fit the ring properly and the girls kept slipping on each other's sweat, I guess. None of this was really conductive to a good match and the end result was that apart from Ikeshita's awesome headbutts this was the most boring Kai match of the lot. I did enjoy the commentators, who don't help matters with their BS commentary, saying that brawling in the crowd was Tokyo-to style. There you go, whenever you see Japanese wrestlers brawling in the crowd that's distinctly Tokyo style.

Mick McManus vs. Kung Fu (4/19/78) This aired on Cup Final Day '78. The crowd at Croydon were all pumped up for a great match, Kent Walton was pumped up for a great match and the wrestlers seemed pumped up for a great match, but right before the match began the MC announced that Kung Fu was about to form a tag team with Kendo Nagasaki in the near future and that little tidbit should've been enough to trigger alarm bells. McManus seemed like he was working this match on fast forward, receiving two public warnings in the first two rounds, and to be honest he looked old here. Kung Fu had the better of the bout early on, but McManus ended up choking him out with his own gi. The bell sounded and McManus still wouldn't let go, prompting the rarest of angles in World of Sport, a run-in, with Kendo Nagasaki appearing from nowhere. Nagasaki chased McManus from the ring, which would've been an all right finish, I suppose, but then they went through this drawn out drama over whether to DQ Kung Fu or not, and they teased McManus having to return to the ring or the match would be ruled a no-contest, as though that mattered. Nagasaki, who was wearing these John Lennon type glasses, went into the back to find McManus, but his manager Gorgeous George claimed he was locked up in the toilet or somewhere. That's the kind of TV you get when you're not used to running angles, but the whole thing left me kind of peeved. I love McManus, but the fact that he got into the HOF with absolutely no critical appraisal whatsoever of his booking, the fact that he never lost, or even his work, is a free pass. Clive Myers vs. Tony Walsh (12/4/78) Tony Walsh was still fine tuning his gimmick here. He was wearing this awesome combination of a rugby jersey with cutoff sleeves and a wrestling leotard. I've got a soft spot for Walsh even if he was several leagues below the top heels ring-wise. It's just a shame the majority of his bouts were against Big Daddy. Even if his act was a bit green here, he bumped about as well for Clive Myers as anybody during the Iron Fist years and made the gimmick tolerable for me. Good job, Tony Walsh. Caswell Martin vs. Lenny Hurst (4/10/79) Caswell Martin was such a brilliant wrestler, it's just a shame that there's no one bout you could point to that shows it. You kind of have to watch all of his matches to get an overall impression. I was glad that they gave these two plenty of time, even if it was as obvious as the nose on my face that the bout would be inconsequential. Both guys seemed motivated working against one another and outside of the crappy booking the work was strong. I never get tired of watching Martin in the ring. Mick McManus vs. Jackie Turpin (aired 1/27/79) This was a waste of time. Not to turn on McManus or anything, but he should have retired earlier than he did as he wasn't helping put anybody over by hanging around. I've heard good things and bad things about his work behind the scenes, but he could have kept doing that without wrestling. Bobby Ryan vs. Sid Cooper (aired 1/27/79) This was a bit of a nothing bout as well, which was a shame considering it was Ryan vs. Cooper. Ryan did the nasty Euro piledriver on Cooper and Cooper got up, wound up on the outside and got himself counted out while arguing with the crowd. That's got to be some sort of cardinal sin in regard to selling a piledriver. Clive Myers vs. Young David (3/17/81) This was all right. It was probably the best Young David bout I've seen outside of the Breaks trilogy. But it was a bit too happy-go-lucky with Myers smiling every time the kid did something good and a crappy injury finish. Some of the action was good, but it didn't blow me away. Pat Roach vs. Romany Riley (7/15/81) Man, Romany Riley was unrecognisable from the 70s wrestler. The only way I would have recognised it was him was the arm tattoos. And he wasn't up to much in the 80s, falling pretty easily to Roach's Brummagem Bump, which is the hardest finisher in wrestling to spell. Pat Roach vs. Ray Steele (12/30/80) Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, how could they have aired so little of this? From what was shown it looked like the best Pat Roach vs. Ray Steele bout you could possibly imagine. Steele was fucking taking it to Roach, which if you know the vacuum of charisma that is Ray Steele you would be impressed by. I've looked over these WoS matchlists countless times, and I always get suckered into the Roach/Singh/Steele triumvirate. This is the shit I've been looking for, that I knew in my gut existed, and only half aired. Crap. It was fucking great, though. Ray Steele, take it to him!

One thing I forgot to mention about the Koshinaka match is that Baba had tried to set-up his own juniors division in the early 80s to provide some sort of counterpart to the success New Japan were having with Tiger Mask, and initially he had Onita as his juniors ace feuding with Chavo Guerrero Sr. When Onita was forced to retire, Baba bought the Tiger Mask rights to have something to replace him with. I believe this is the reason why their stay was cut short.

Gran Cochise vs. Satanico (9/14/84) Gran Cochisse was a trainee of Diablo Velazco in Guadalajara and made his debut at 14 years old. While working in the Jalisco region, he adopted a Native American gimmick and began calling himself "Gran Cochisse" ("The Great Cochise") after the famous Apache chief, Cochise. Gran Cochisse wore traditional feathered headdresses and face paint, and even carried a tomahawk to the ring at times. Why there were so many Native American gimmicks at this time, I'm not sure. It may have had something to do with Cochisse's generation being reared on a healthy dose of Cowboys and Indians, or perhaps it was just a popular gimmick in the Guadalajara region as there were other workers with similar gimmicks such as Indio Jeronimo and Indio Medina, who formed the Los Indios Bravos tag team in the early 70s. When Gran Cochisse and Águila India began tagging in the Jalisco territory, they also took on the Los Indios Bravos nickname, a gimmick they took with them to EMLL. Unlike most of the wrestlers we've profiled, Gran Cochisse didn't win a million titles. A real rough, physical type, Cochisse was more accustomed to bloody hair matches than ten pounds of gold. In the late 70s to early 80s period, he had hair match feuds with Americo Rocca, Sangre Chicana, Chamaco Valaguez and Mocho Cota, to name some of the workers now familiar to you. He even had a hair match feud with his Los Indios Bravos blood brother, Aguila India, in the summer of '83, just before Aguila India was repackaged as the masked worker Unicornio. With their partnership dissolving, Cochisse experienced something of a purple patch. On 8/18/84, he won the NWA World Middleweight title from Satanico at Arena Mexico, which led to the title defence you see here. After Satanico won the return bout, EMLL pulled another title switch in Guadalajara on the 30th. Cochisse then dropped the title to Gran Hamada at El Toreo on 11/18/84, clips of which are on YouTube. Cochisse ended his career year with a hair match victory over Cota on the 12/7 Arena Mexico show. The following year it seemed as though he was heading into the twilight of his career when he was used to put over the younger El Dandy, but he managed to stretch out those last rays of sunlight by winning the world's middleweight title for a third time on 5/18/86 when he became the first man to defeat Chamaco Valaguez for a major wrestling title. By the end of '86, Cochisse gave way to the new generation of middleweights such as Kung Fu, Atlantis, El Dandy and Emilio Charles Jr, but he enjoyed one last title run as UWA World Junior Light Heavyweight champion, a belt he took from Blue Panther in September of '88. After dropping the title to Ringo Mendoza, Cochisse was phased out of competitive wrestling and given the masked gimmick Espectro de Ultratumba ("The Ghost from Beyond the Grave.") Eventually, he took over as one of the trainers at Diablo Velazco's school in Guadalajara, but he lost that position when CMLL weren't happy with the quality of workers coming out of the school. Incidentally, there was also a phasing out of Satanico from the title picture around this time. Once he lost the UWA World Middleweight title in early '85, he became more heavily involved in trios wrestling and the various hair match feuds he was embroiled in. Presumably the reason for this was to push some of the young workers that EMLL had high hopes for in terms of reclaiming ground from the UWA.

There's not much I can add to the following two matches: Satanico vs. Shiro Koshinaka (Hair vs. Hair) (7/30/84) For those of you who don't know, Koshinaka was originally an All Japan wrestler before jumping to New Japan Pro-Wrestling. In March of '84, Baba sent Koshinaka and Misawa overseas on a learning excursion. They were expected to stay in Mexico for a year, but Baba called them back to Tokyo just a few months after this match. These Mexico stints were a real eye-opener for most Japanese wrestlers as in the early '80s Japan was still experiencing its post-war period of miracle economic growth, while Mexico was in the throes of a debt crisis that had caused its worst recession since the 1930s. Add to that the language barrier, no money and nagging concerns over safety and drinking water, and a lot of young Japanese guys found these tours a bit hairy. While in Mexico, Koshinaka and Misawa took on the names Samurai Shiro and Kamikaze Misawa and worked on the technico side, however because this match involves a foreigner there's an element of the crowd cheering for Satanico. Had they stayed in Mexico, it seems that Koshinaka may have gotten some sort of a title shot similar to Misawa's title shot against Satanico for the NWA World Middleweight Championship a few months prior, but Baba had bought the rights to the Tiger Mask character and was eager for it to make its debut. Ironically, when they returned from Mexico, Koshinaka saw the writing on the wall with the Misawa push, and after the deflections in '85 left New Japan shorthanded he made the jump. El Satanico y Espectro Jr. v. El Faraón y La Fiera (8/12/84) This was rudos contra rudos, and I believe part of the longstanding Satanico y Espectro Jr. vs. Sangre Chicana y El Faraon feud.

Yeah, the indies had women's wrestling. I'm not sure about midgets, though. I think there may have been midget wrestling in the 50s but it didn't take off. Princess Paula died last month, I'm sorry to say.

Yeah, the indies had women's wrestling. I'm not sure about midgets, though. I think there may have been midget wrestling in the 50s but it didn't take off. Princess Paula died last month, I'm sorry to say.

No, they never had midgets or women's wrestling. The independents may have.

It's a Bert Royal New Year. Bert Royal vs. Kung Fu (4/17/75) Bert Royal was the Heavy-Middleweight champion of Great Britain here and supporting a moustache and slightly more hair on top. You can kind of chart his male pattern baldness over the years from this footage. We got to see more of Bert Royal the stylist in this bout. He really was a superb mat wrestler, but this was an awfully one sided bout. Kung Fu was still masked at this point and a bit of an unknown entity, and he was never the greatest worker to begin with, but it was odd that Royal took so much of the bout from him and odder still that Kung Fu got the surprise win. Not much to this. Bert Royal vs. Steve Logan (8/21/75) These two made for a nice style clash. You had Royal the stylist and the brilliant mat worker against Steve Logan, the consummate heel who could barely walk at this point but delivered killer body checks. I'm not sure how mobile Logan was in his prime, but as far as the 70s go, nobody did more with less. He could spend an entire bout breaking the rules (and hiding it beneath his hair) and drawing heat, and he would never react. Not once. Not to the crowd, not to the ref, not to his opponent... He was the most stoic motherfucker ever. And he'd hobble about doing this all bout long, pretty much the antithesis to McManus, Pallo, Kellett, Masambula, and all the big names, yet he was one of the major television figures. Don't get me wrong, I like the guy, I just find it interesting that he never spoke. This petered out into a draw, which wasn't all that interesting, but man was it amusing watching Bert Royal's comb over fly all over the place. He looked like a wrestling Albert Einstein. Bert Royal vs. Sid Cooper (6/30/76) Sid Cooper worked the crowd into a lather in this one. One thing I'll say for Bert Royal is that he threw a hell of a punch. A bit of a haymaker maybe, but there was one punch that connected on Cooper flush that had me popping. Of course, Walton started lamenting about sad it was that a wrestler of Royal's class was reduced to this sort of a display, but the crowd were lapping it up. Fired up Bert Royal is pretty good, I'm just not sure I've seen it come in the perfect match. This was decent, but I've seen better matches with this kind of heat where it's Cooper in control instead of the fired up babyface. Bert Royal vs. Roy St. Clair (5/26/76) These two were good wrestlers, but when Bert Royal is the leading personality in the match you know you're in for a long afternoon. Surprisingly, they didn't pull out all the stops despite it being a Royal Albert Hall show. I've seen both guys give better performances in lesser matches than this, particularly St. Clair. It was also terribly predictable. I just knew the one fall required would come in the fourth round having watched a ton of WoS. Bit of a disappointment, though I'm not really surprised since neither guy was a titan of British wrestling in my book.

That Lawler/Funk No DQ match is so great. Pretty much perfection for that sort of stip. The Bill Dundee 8 man tag is too short for me to rate that high, but it's definitely a fun match. The concession stand brawl was a post-match angle and tough for me to rate as a match.

Lizmark vs. El Satanico (April 1984) This was one of the premier match-ups in Mexico at the time as you had two guys who were almost always near the top of their weight class, one of whom was one of the best technico workers in lucha and the other one of the best rudo workers. Unfortunately, the match we have of theirs perhaps doesn't do the match-up justice, but it was a rivalry which stretched all the way to their AAA days. Lizmark made his debut in 1976 under the tutelage of former rudo Braulio Mendoza. He worked for a few years at Arena Coliseo Acapulco and the surrounding Guerrero area before moving to Mexico City. On 4/18/79, he defeated Americo Rocca for the Mexican National Welterweight Championship in his hometown of Acapulco, which kick started his national career. The reason for Rocca dropping the belt was that he was slated to beat Mano Negra for the NWA World Welterweight Championship on 4/30/79. Lizmark immediately became a challenger to Rocca's world title and the pair fought in Mexico City on the undercard of the 6/15/79 Satoru Sayama vs. Alfonso Dantes hair match. Somewhat ironically, Rocca lost the world's title to Kato Kung Lee and took Lizmark's national title on 3/29/80. Undeterred, Lizmark went after new NWA World Welterweight champ El Supremo and on 6/4/80 won his first world title in Acapulco only four years after his debut. Lizmark enjoyed a year long run with the title, fending off the challenges of deposed champ El Supremo and early career rival Rocca, as well new rudo on the block Mocho Cota, before finally losing the title to another rising star, La Fiera, on 10/23/81. In the wake of his world title loss, he put on some muscle and moved up to the middleweight ranks, where he met El Satanico for the first time. Lizmark would beat Satanico for the National Middleweight Championship on 2/10/82, a belt Satanico had taken from Solar I, just to get your mouth watering. As National Middleweight champ, Lizmark feuded extensively with both El Faraon and Espectro Jr., who they pulled a title switch with, before challenging for Satanico's NWA World Middleweight Championship. Lizmark won that title on 6/3/83, making him a duel middleweight champ, and lost the title back to Satanico at the end of '83 on the 12/3 Arena Coliseo show. Which brings us to this title defence in April of 1984. One notable fact about Lizmark for those struggling to grasp the esteem he was held in was that when he later moved up to the light heavyweight ranks, he became the first Mexican since Gori Guerrero in 1960 to win NWA world championships in three different weight classes. Another interesting fact about Lizmark is that despite some intense, often bloody feuds against the likes of Satanico, Sangre Chicana and others, he was very rarely involved in apuestas matches. His two biggest scalps were Americo Rocca and El Faraon, but it's unclear when those matches took place. It wasn't that apuestas matches weren't teased, they just never materialised. Satanico, as we know, started coming into his own in 1980 when he defeated Satoru Sayama for the NWA World Middleweight title on 3/28/80 and then impressed everyone by successfully defending the title against Ringo Mendoza in Acapulco and El Faraon at Arena Mexico. He also had another coming out party of sorts when he tagged with Fantasma on a 10/3/80 Arena Coliseo show against Sangre Chicana and Mocho Cota, a short time after he'd taken Cota's hair and just before he faced Fantasma for his mask on 10/24. Satanico apparently got over big on this Arena Coliseo show and was basically the king of the middleweight division for the next few years as Chicana had been in the late 70s.

Regarding Sayama, his run in Mexico was a lot deeper than I ever imagined. If we had more footage of that it would help us judge how much of his Tiger Mask run was the gimmick hindering his work.

I watched that Jumbo/Flair match. There was an old school sensibility to the mat work that I'm not really into these days, but once they started exchanging moves the match started to captivate me. I've always thought the Jumbo/Flair match-up was underrated in the sense that Flair isn't really the Mid-Atlantic/Crockett Flair and Jumbo doesn't really dominate either, so people tend to write it off as a styles clash, but I always find their bouts interesting. I agree that the time passed quickly. The only disagreement I have is that I don't think Flair was that much of an asskicker. It seemed like he was working from underneath for a large portion of the match and simply weathered the storm. The match was hurt by the botched german suplex on the visual pin after the Lord Blear ref bump. When Jumbo tried to make up for it by hooking the leg, Flair was clearly in the ropes and even though they tried to sell it on commentary as Jumbo scoring a pinfall from the suplex it was a bit of a limp finish to the match. I did like how Jumbo submitted to the figure four, however, and the Japanese were as considerate as ever by putting ice water on the leg and putting over the damage.

Man, I forgot all about that Fujinami/Teranishi match. That match ruled so much. I wish all Japanese wrestling had been worked like that.

Mark Rocco vs. Chris Adams (12/6/78) This was the final for the vacant British Heavy-Middleweight title. We're lucky to have this stuff on tape, incidentally, and in pretty good quality too. Mark Rocco had a special knack for carrying Chris Adams to exciting matches, because Chris Adams in England was all karate kicks, chops, and ungainly shit he couldn't execute properly. The crowd were right behind him, however, as they hated Mark Rocco. 1978 may have been the peak of Mark Rocco's stardom as he was on TV a mammoth 14 times. He had got past Bert Royal on a coin toss, which pissed a lot of people off and they wrote in to Walton complaining about it. Usually, I'd have a bit of a chuckle at that sort of thing, but looking at the reaction Rocco gets and the number of grannies in the crowd, I'm inclined to believe it. It wasn't just grannies, either. Men, women and children were on their feet for this one. Joint Promotions went the whole hog on this and had Rocco's father, Jumpin' Jim Hussey, sitting next to the time keeper. Talk about a chip off the old block, with Hussey having the same dark hair and mustache (and the most 70s looking used car salesman suit imaginable.) The majority of the bout was an onslaught from Rocco with a bunch of kicks and other body strikes; some legal, some not. Very little in the way of wrestling, but the heat was immense. There was the usual mix of public warnings and fiery comebacks from the babyface before they did this really fantastic visual pinfall that created utter mayhem. Every man, woman and child thought that Adams had won and there was this huge swarm towards the ring. Amid all the confusion, Brian Crabtree announced that Rocco had been in the ropes and the bout continued. I'm no Adams fan, but this was one of those cases as with the best Breaks matches where you really want the face to win. Unfortunately, Rocco hit that nasty looking Euro style piledriver from this era and forced a submission from the neck area. If you bottled the heat you could have sold it to promotions that lacked it. The only people celebrating were Rocco and his father. This was exciting stuff and definitely Rocco Love. Mark Rocco vs. Kid Chocolate (aired 1/20/79) Only the main chunk of this aired so it's not possible to rate it, but Rocco was still on his streak of being the most hated man on television. For those of you who know your World of Sport, this was from Middlesbrough, which had that really strange ring set-up where the ring was right up against a stage. Rocco used the stage to full effect by throwing Kid Chocolate into it. A lot of this bout was Rocco throwing Chocolate into the ropes, actually, and since Kid Chocolate had a kind of Anderson Silva spidery body type it looked cool when he'd get tangled in the ropes. The Kid had a serious lack of charisma, though. Mark Rocco vs. Bert Royal (4/10/79) After Rocco beat Royal on a coin toss, the public's anger was quelled by having Max Crabtree appointed Royal as the number one contender to Rocco's British Heavy-Middleweight title, so the two great rivals wrestled all over the halls in '79. Walton sold this as one of the most popular men in British wrestling history against one of the most despised, and the action was fairly good. Royal's open handed slap to the face was a really cool antagonistic babyface move. Strangely, this ended with Rocco thinking he'd won a bout he'd been disqualified from and Brian Maxine (of all people) cutting a promo on Rocco. Maxine had a face turn at the end of the 70s, so that wasn't the surprising part. What surprises me is that for the number of times they had Maxine and Rocco work the halls in the second half of '79, they never taped one of their bouts for television despite running a TV angle to set-up the rivalry. As much as I love British wrestling, they really were slack with their TV at times. Let's chalk this up as Rocco Indifference. Mark Rocco vs. Kung Fu (2/3/82) So, Kung Fu came out of the wilderness to have this feud with Mark Rocco that was supposed to lead to a title match at the Royal Albert Hall, which Walton kept repeating you could see on television the following month. Only for some reason, Kung Fu left for Calgary all of a sudden and Rocco ended up facing an unknown guy in the form of Steve McHoy, which was a pretty good bout all things considered but must have been pretty embarrassing for Dale Martin promotions, who ran the London area. Shortly thereafter, Rocco left for All-Star promotions and Japan and was off the small screen for a number of years, so this match in many ways is the last hurrah of the Rocco I've been writing about for the past few days. He became the lead guy for All-Star when they got satellite TV coverage, but this was it for Joint Promotions Rocco. The picture quality isn't the greatest on this and the sound is low, which made it difficult to make out why Rocco had a manager in this and who he was. He was kind of a fat, Percy Pringle looking guy. Anyway, the match was fairly exciting with the usual Kung Fu and Rocco schtick. Kung Fu had learnt to sell a bit better since the last time we saw him, some five years earlier and this as kind of worth watching as the end of an era, but only really borderline Rocco Love.

El Hijo del Santo, Cachorro Mendoza y Chamaco Valaguez vs. Jerry Estrada, Fuerza Guerrera y Talisman (3/9/84) Santo's partners here are Cachorro Mendoza and Chamaco Valaguez. Mendoza is the guy in blue trunks with white boots and Valaguez is the guy in tights with the longer hair. I wish I could tell you a lot about Chamaco Valaguez, but the only information I could find about him is the standard bio stuff. The most interesting thing about Valaguez is that after he reached EMLL in 1980 he had three really lengthy title reigns, firstly for the Mexican National Lightweight Championship, then the Mexican National Welterweight Championship and NWA World Welterweight Championship, where he never lost the titles, instead vacating them each time because he moved up a weight class or held two belts at the same time. He wouldn't lose a belt to another wrestler until Gran Cochisse took the NWA World Middleweight title away from him on 5/18/85. What this means is that unless Luchawiki is wrong somehow, Chamaco Valaguez was undefeated in title matches from 6/12/80 until 5/18/85. What he did to deserve this kind of protection, who knows. It wasn't as though he was that big a star, but somebody in the EMLL front office liked him. As is usual in a lucha trios, there was a historical issue between Valaguez and Estrada, who had met in a hair match in January the year before. Cachorro Mendoza was the young brother of Ringo Mendoza, cachorro meaning "puppy" in English and referring to Cachorro being the youngest of the Mendoza brothers. Cachorro's rep has always been that he wasn't as good a worker as his brother and rode his coattails to a certain extent. I don't know how fair that is, but it's worth keeping in mind that EMLL lost a ton of young talent to the LLI/UWA in the late 70s, and thus the guys who stayed probably got pushes they wouldn't have received if the stars had still been around. Cachorro announced his arrival as Ringo's little brother by shocking the lucha world by beating Sangre Chicana for the vacant National Middleweight title on 6/8/79. Sangre Chicana had been the undisputed king of the middleweight division for the previous two years claiming 28 title defences as National Middleweight champion before the Comision de Box y Lucha Libre Mexico D.F. made him vacate the title for some complicated reason (though knowing Chicana he was probably suspended.) Cachorro's reign would only last a short time, but it catapulted him into feuds with both Sangre Chicana and Satanico, which ultimately led to his brother getting involved and a Mendozas vs. Satanico y Chicana hair vs. hair match in '82 where the Mendoza brothers went bald. For continuity's sake, this trios took place during Valaguez's Mexican National Welterweight title run and the Mendoza brothers long run as National Tag Team Title Champions. The main issue in this trios was the feud between Santo and Guerrera, which led to a title match later in the year after Santo claimed the UWA World Lightweight Championship. Talisman would go on to the form the trio Los Bravos with Fuerza and El Dandy the following year.

How can you consider the MOTY without watching Europe and the other sets first?

I kind of messed up the description on the finish to that Rocco/Kung Fu fight. Rocco took a bump to the outside and as he leapt back onto the apron to re-enter the ring, Kung Fu came sprinting at him and hit a cross body block over the top rope that knocked Rocco right off the apron. It wasn't quite a plancha to the outside, but still a really cool spot. Mark Rocco vs. Bert Royal (11/9/78) Mark Rocco against one of Walton's favourites, Bert Royal. Let's see what magic they can do together, shall we? These two were rivals in the heavy-middleweight division. In fact, it was Rocco who ended a pretty lengthy two year reign Royal had as British Heavy-Middleweight champion between 1975 and 1977. This was the quarterfinals of a tournament to decide that vacant title, which Marty Jones had won from Rocco and relinquished as he was already the British Light-Heavyweight title. Since these two were natural rivals there was less wrestling here than in Rocco's best bouts. The match was joined in progress from roughly the fourth round with no-one having scored a fall so far, and Rocco appeared to be on his best behaviour, but Royal started using the open hand slap as retaliation for some inside move Rocco had pulled and the bout unraveled from there. At this stage, I'm not really interested in seeing Rocco heeling it up as it's not all that compelling, and the Bert Royal monkey flip isn't wrestling's most exciting comeuppance spot. Technically, the match was okay, but I wanted to see them wrestle so I'm going with Rocco indifference on this one.

Tony Salazar vs. Herodes (3/2/84) There's really nothing I can add about this that you don't already know. It was a mano a mano grudge match between Salazar and Herodes after Salazar had taken Herodes’ hair at Arena Mexico in September of '83. What I will reiterate is that this period of lucha ('84-85) really is toward the end of the competitive careers of many of these unmasked guys. Salazar would go on to become the masked Ulises, Talisman would become Hijo del Gladiador, Tony Benetto "Gran Markus Jr," Halcon Ortiz "Super Halcon" and Americo Rocca "Ponzoña," though that was slightly later on. Even Herodes would get re-gimmicked as a crazy man who would: "wear strange hair cuts and dye his hair with different colours, while showing up dressed like a roman emperor or a boxer and acting like he believed that was what he was." It's not that uncommon for older luchadores to take on new masked identities after their money making days are over, but it's interesting that workers like Ringo Mendoza and El Faraon never had to.

Jerry Estrada vs. Ultraman (3/2/84) Since I've now learnt more about Ultraman than I ever thought possible, I thought I better watch his title match. But this match was more about Jerry Estrada than it was Ultraman. I won't re-air my historical grievances with Jerry Estrada, instead I'm going to praise the kid here. He was a fresh faced young rudo who'd been working in Mexico City for less than two years but looked really comfortable. He didn't have the charisma of other rudos on the set like Sangre Chicana, Satanico or Mocho Cota, but those guys weren't born legends. Everybody makes a start somewhere and this was a very good start for Jerry Estrada. It's easy to see why people within the company thought that he was the future along with El Dandy and La Fiera. If you're expecting the coked out, manic bumper that Estrada later became you're in for a disappointment, but for a year two guy in the big leagues this was really impressive and a big moment for him. I liked the way he stuck with Ultraman's arm through the first two falls as though he was working to a strategy. This was clearly past whatever athletic prime Ultraman had so there as nothing really slick about the mat exchanges, but for sheer tenacity I liked how Estrada stuck to his game plan despite some pretty sharp looking take downs from the man from the future. I actually thought they'd give the champion the first fall on those swinging neck breakers and was a bit surprised by how many beats they went beyond that, but I'd rather complain about a fall being too long than too short. Jerry went after the arm to start the second caida and his psychology was better than a lot of vets. Ultraman had to resort to some Space Cadets style counters to work his way out of trouble and open his account before a pretty rousing third caida where the arm damage got the better of him. Ultraman was pretty great at stumbling around hurt, falling into the ropes and hitting a tope that looked equal parts ugly and reckless. It may have been a poor tope, but if it was it fit with the narrative and Ultraman even struggled rolling back into the ring. The injury was an interesting way to put Estrada over without having Ultraman job. Usually I'd be kind of ticked off about that, but I loved Estrada's goofy overselling and Ultraman being carried from ringside draped over his second's shoulders. This wasn't a classic; the rhythm and pacing could have been better for starters and the third fall could have lasted longer and been more dramatic, but I thought it was a neat bout that worked well in the smaller setting of Arena Coliseo. Ultraman's no super worker, but Estrada showed a lot of promise even if he wasn't completely there yet. Definitely a case of young Estrada being better than I would have given him credit for before the bout, which makes this a better match than I was expecting and a plus as far as the set goes. This may be the most positive entry I have ever made about Jerry Estrada. I really am softening up, but he really was very good. Dug his early look too, before the earrings and the leather jackets and Marty Jannetty tights. Good shit.