[1992-08-11-CMLL] Atlantis vs Emilio Charles Jr

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Wow. In a year where Dandy/Casas never happened, this would be peerless. This isn't *quite* as proficient as Dandy/Casas, but it does have other things going for it that are huge positives.

 

The story of the match is pretty consistent throughout all three falls -- Emilio works over Atlantis' arm. It gets him a first fall win, and in the third fall, Atlantis takes a really prolonged, dramatic beating with some outstanding attempts to reach the ropes, where Emilio counters this by grabbing his free arm. Atlantis tries creating space between them by rolling outside, tries getting away, tries doing everything he can ... nothing really works. He's in major peril. Emilio has a pretty wide range of arm submissions at his disposal and all of them look great.

 

Really basic psychology and more great matwork. I don't care for the finish. Atlantis took SO much of a beating that he either should not have won, or the match should have been slightly more even. As it is, he got a lucky flash pin and feels a little like Ric Flair squeaking out a title match. Some of the nearfalls rival those in the best Flair matches, especially the reeeeally close two count off of Emilio's sunset flip.

 

Still, this is yet again one of the best matches of the year, and yet more proof that in 1992, the best wrestling in the world was happening in Mexico.

[Tim Evans]

Good mat wrestling based match. Not a big fan of the 1 minute second fall but that's normal in Lucha.

[shoe]

This was tremendous. Charles was attacking Atlantis's arm throughout the bout. Atlantis selling of the limb was great. I would have preferred if Atlantis would have won by submission. The matwork was real good here. It felt like a struggle. Atlantis was great selling underneath.

[Kevin Ridge]

Excellent match. I do too think the second fall happened a bit too fast but really only a minor gripe in the end. The armwork by Charles was great. Atlantis had to leave the ring to try get his arm worked on. I like how he used as much of the referee count he could before getting back in the ring. Almost felt bad for Charles losing in the end since he was completely dominating and really should have won the match.

[Zenjo]

Well here's one for all the ADD fans who get restless if a hold is applied for more than 20 seconds, and have helped shape contemporary wrestling into a dreadful monopaced style. A hold that lasted 4:37 is what launched this match to greatness.

 

In the early matwork Charles began attacking the left arm. It didn't affect the result of the first 2 falls which saw some nice flying. Emilio looks so unfasionably old school that it seems he shouldn't be as good an athlete as he is. Things get awesome in the 3rd with the epic Waki-Gatame. Atlantis kept struggling to the ropes was pulled away time and again. The fans got more and more behind him and were rabid in their support towards the end of this match within a match. From ther the combatents took it on to an amazing stretch. Mark out near falls as I had no idea when it would end. The selling of the arm was superb as was the exhaustion showed by both men. A wonderful epic and my favourite match from Mexico this year.

[WingedEagle]

Really focused arm work by Charles in the first fall which Atlantis sells well and sets up the marathon armbar in the third. I enjoyed the the quick second fall even if I just can't buy a stretch as a finisher. They did a really spectacular job working the arm in the third, with Atlantis making his way around the ring seeking a rope break for nearly 5 minutes. Its tough to argue with Atlantis working underneath for almost all of the first and last falls before the finish, but I didn't mind it because of how strongly and consistently he kept selling the arm into and after the finish. Really great.

 

****

 

This started off what at least for me has been by far the blow away disc of the set. Six ****+ matches by my count with one falling just short, and not one of them stateside. Such a comp would make quite the international intro, and that's before you explain it all took place over 9 days.

[PeteF3]

OJ talked of lucha being about holds being applied in new ways, and man, was this not a perfect match to follow up that post. It's incredible how smooth and well-versed these guys are on the mat, and one gets the feeling that these guys tend to improvise matwork like jazz musicians improvising countermelodies. Even though the holds are worked for very long stretches, the story is pretty easy for a novice to get into if they're willing to work with that--Emilio Anderson, Jr. takes Atlantis' arm apart, while Atlantis tries to hold on. Some of the best-timed kickouts I've seen in lucha follow, and while Atlantis' win is fluky the winning hold is so incredibly cool that I can overlook that. Terrific match, probably the #3 lucha MOTY behind the Casas/Rambo 6-man and Casas/Dandy.

 

I didn't have a problem with the three-fall format here and I haven't in most cases on these Yearbooks, but at the same time you can easily see why the U.S. all but eliminated the 2/3 fall format as a standard by the time the '80s rolled around.

[garretta]

If you'd told me I could enjoy a match where the major hold is an armbar an hour ago, I would have laughed at you. But such is the case. This match was all about the third fall to me, and Atlantis' struggle to stay in the match against an opponent who was bound and determined to tear his arm off. The way Charles and Atlantis worked the armbar was a thing of beauty, as Charles struggled to get additional leverage while Atlantis struggled to reach the ropes and force a break. Even when he briefly did, Charles was right there to apply the hold again. Aspiring wrestlers who want to know how to work an armbar without putting the audience to sleep should watch this match in wrestling school.

 

Eventually in almost every match, the heel makes a mistake, and Charles made his by going for the half-crab instead of staying on the arm he'd hurt. Atlantis managed to break the hold relatively easily, then cradle Charles for the pin. I loved watching Charles while Atlantis and Dandy celebrated; he was clearly wondering how the hell the match could have possibly slipped away from him. This is possibly my second favorite lucha match behind Dandy's December 1990 hair match with Satanico.

 

One complaint: We never saw how Atlantis hurt his arm in the first place. It didn't take away from the drama or anything, but it would have been nice to see, considering that 90% of the match's story concerned the bad arm.

[dawho5]

Great match for all of the reasons above.  I would add the following.

Atlantis losing the first fall after hitting a couple of big moves on Charles that he couldn't follow up on because of the bad shoulder and then Charles putting him away with a quikc follow-up move after a dropkick was genius.

Charles got away from the arm in caida 2, which is why Atlantis was able to hit a few high impact moves that targeted his back and finish him with the abdominal stretch.  If it had been caida 3 I would have been upset, caida 2 makes sense.

I called the finish once Charles started rolling him up over and over.  The fact that Charles went for a leg submission to set it up made it much better, but it made so much sense given the rest of the match.

[cad]

For me it was the tope that made me think that Charles was losing the plot. Even though it landed, commentator Andres Maroñas seized on it as an error, just because it deviated so wildly from the match that the challenger had made to that point. He seemed to think that Charles started to get desperate once Atlantis escaped that long armbar, which I liked as an explanation. Atlantis had defended the belt some thirty times by this point, several against Charles, and eventually it has to take its toll when you can't put the champion away. You start to doubt yourself and your gameplan, and you start to push things more than you need to. For all I know Charles just wanted to transition the match to the finishing stretch, but the way he started taking gambles when he had things under control gave his character the air of a man unsure if he was good enough. I've said that I don't think that Mexican wrestling does the Ric Flair just barely escape with the belt finish well, but after Charles's armbar the only offense Atlantis got was a shoulder to the gut and the winning rollup, and it worked, even as the babyface. Charles had sold how exhausting it was just applying that much pressure, so the fall was more than believable, and Atlantis came off as a true champion. He took everything his challenger threw at him, and he was the one who capitalized when he got an opening. After the match Maroñas said that it had been some time since Atlantis had given such a good match, which I thought was an interesting comment.