[1990-10-26-EMLL] Atlantis vs Kung Fu

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Just the third fall, as the match wasn't really that special, but it's Atlantis in a mask match, so I thought it should go on. Atlantis is pretty dominant here, and there's not as much heat as you'd expect for a mask match. I guess no one cared about Kung Fu. I'm being a little hard on this, as the action isn't terrible or anything. But after the last three consecutive matches on the set, it doesn't look all that impressive. Atlantis wins with the backbreaker and Kung Fu loses his mask.

[PeteF3]

Kung Fu really isn't very good and I think his heyday as a star was in the earlier part of the decade, but this is a famous historical piece and is Yearbook-worthy. The match itself is pretty well-laid out, at least in the fall we see, though it comes off as a real Atlantis carry-job.

[soup23]

I thought the action looked good and most stuff will look bad compared to the previous three matches. Having a day apart between watching those and this helped. This is my lucha novice coming out but is it typical for the Technico to be so aggressive in apuesta matches? I have seen lucha brawls where the technico is forced to strike but here Atlantis was the aggressor with punches, mask ripping, and slamming Kung Fu off the apron. I never get sick of unmasking ceremonies.

[Kevin Ridge]

Don’t know who Kung Fu so him losing the mask didn’t mean much to me. Atlantis jumping on the ref after winning shows how much is means to him to keep mask though.

[garretta]

This was a lot more of a back-and-forth third fall than I thought it would be after reading this thread. Still, Atlantis had the better of the action and was never in any real danger of losing.

 

I loved the postmatch celebration with Atlantis jumping into the referee's arms. I've seen refs give postmatch handshakes to faces before, but I've never seen a face actually jump into a ref's arms. Then again, most of the refs I've seen look like a stiff wind would put them flat on their back.

 

I like how the luchadors who win a mask match are allowed to keep the mask of the person they beat as a souvenir, a sort of "scalp", if you will. It's a nice touch that underscores the match's importance.

[GOTNW]

This match caught me completely off guard. I thought it was pretty much perfect and have no problem rating it that way. Classic start with the rudo jumping the tecnico, I was expecting a guy named Kung Fu to throw shitty fake karate kicks but instead he stomped the shit ouf of Atlantis with awesome looking kicks. Then there's Atlantis' comeback which is just punching the shit out of this douche, wrecking his head on the corner post, slamming him on the floor, all great stuff you'd want in a luchas de apuestas match. There's a great moment when Kung Fu grabs Atlantis' mask and almost rips it in half, it looked amazing and Atlantis running to the back to fix it was an amazing detail and the narrative was concluded in the post match where Atlantis viciously Snapmared (believe me that's possible) Kung Fu and tore off his mask. If someone can point me to more matches where Atlantis beats the shit out of people I could see him skyrocket on my GWE list.

[drew wardlaw]

Kung Fu seems like a really budget gimmick name. Anyway, this looked pretty good from what we saw, but I don't have a lot to comment on. Atlantis seemed really aggressive and fired up, so that's cool.