[1991-05-17-WWA] El Hijo del Santo vs Negro Casas

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Great match, much better and more memorable than the March encounter. This is not your typical Santo showcase affair, as he's more sympathetic against a very dominant, threatening Casas, and spends most of the match working from underneath. The end result of that is a better match, but also a more meaningful conclusion. Santo's low blow payback spot is the stuff of legend. What made this match work so well was that Casas was really built up to be a formidable challenge before Santo staged a comeback. If you like matwork, Disc 11 is where it's at, as we see it on display in different ways from New Japan, RINGS, UWFI and now here. This was super. These two don't always meet their potential in singles matches, but when they do, they do so in a huge way. Here, they did.

[shoe]

I loved this match. The mat work was done with some oomph to it. The work on the mat had a real element of I hate you . Even some of the drop kicks had a little extra on them. Even Santo's staple dives came across hate filled. Plus with the mat exchanges some of them were so fast. I loved the finishes of the 1st 2 caida's. The finish of the 3rd caida was tremendous with Casas using horse tackles on Santo's neck to set up a choke was great, but would be his undoing. It lead to his DQ. I thought this was worked spot on as the match before a mask vs. Hair bout. Both guys brought it here to have a MOTYC.

[PeteF3]

Top 3-5 MOTYC for sure. This wasn't worked like an exhibition at all--the pacing and layout and struggle in holds was much closer to a match in Japan. Casas carries himself like an asshole throughout, with hate being behind his every move and using low blows and chokes with impunity. But he also has Santo's best moves scouted. We get some incredible hate-filled matwork in the third fall, if such a thing exists, with great teases of the camel clutch and a gorgeous sequence where Casas reverses a Romero special only for Santo to reverse it right back into a half-Romero, half-camel clutch that I thought would be the finish. But there's too much hate here for this to end with a submission, and instead Casas reapplies his choke/sleeper thing one too many times and gets DQ'd for it. More, please!

[Kevin Ridge]

Excellent match that was given plenty of time with the falls spaced out. Great match work in the first fall. These guys are so smooth together going from hold to reversal to hold. The finish of the second fall was great with Casas hitting a spine buster with added low blow kick into a Scorpion Death lock. Referee didn't see it as Casas was so slick. Then we get some sportsmanship from Casas where he helps walk Santo over to his corner during the break and then hits him with another low blow! That was so awesome. This all leads to third fall with Santo getting his own low blow which was great. DQ finish but worked within the match as Casas gets caught finally for breaking the rules too many times.

[soup23]

I love matwork so I have eaten up all of disc 11. In fact as far as 1991, while there hasn't been a ton of really great matches (excluding this one) everything has been a ton of fun and I feel like we have had more hidden gem type stuff than in other years.

 

Santo is really short. I always knew that but really noticed it in the beginning when some of the kids in the ring were as tall as him. This match was a beautiful display. Maybe just a step behind their 1987 and 1997 iterations and much like Jumbo vs. Misawa from earlier in the year I don't count it against these two that this match is only really great instead of a top 5 MOTYC. Matwork was beautiful, crisp, and gripping. The build to the low blow by casas and then the retaliation by Santo was amazing. Finish was a tad confusing but is biggest blemish against this glorious match.

[Zenjo]

I was expecting this to be good, but was not expecting my MOTY for 1991. For 1990 & 1992 my no. 1 match was what I expected coming in. Not so this time.

 

In the early 90's Lucha still had a certain charm and innocence that had been lost elsewhere. You'll never see two wrestlers work a crowd any better than this. Santo was the perfect technico. Clean, sportsmanlike and honest as the day is long. But he's only a man and bah Gawd there's only so much you can take. All his actions were either morally correct or justifiable retaliation. Casas was the perfect rudo. Slimy, arrogant, sneaky, cheating, dishonest and with no sense of honour.

 

They started out with expert technique and pureness. But Negro soon started cheating behind the referees back and it became more blatant as the match progressed. After winning the primera the Son of the Saint sportingly helped his adversary back to his corner. So post-segunda Casas decided to return the favour. It was so awesome as you just knew the cheap shot was coming. With perfect timing he kicked him in the nuts and the fans exploded with anger. There were many wonderful moments and this was the best of them all. It set up an electric tercera with great tension and real doubt over the result. 30m just flew by and was mark out mania for me. All the timings were just right, the wrestling was great and the psychology was perfection. At the finish Casas choked him out and thought he had won. But cheating did not pay, the hero prevails and justice is done. Lucha at its very best.

[garretta]

This was a good technical bout for the first two falls, then Casas hit the low blow on Santo between falls two and three and all heck broke loose. I use the word "heck" specifically because there were very few moments in this match that didn't feel like an exhibition in the NFL sense of the word. I didn't buy that these two were mortal enemies or anything of the sort, and that's not just because of lucha's style limitations, because I've seen plenty of heated, bloody lucha brawls. These two simply didn't seem interested in striking each other, and that took away from this quite a bit. Pretty moves that look like they hurt are nice, but I want fists and kicks from guys who hate each other, be they Mexicans, Japanese, Americans, or Martians.

 

All of that said, having back-to-back submission finishes in the first two falls was certainly inventive, and it's rare that you actually see the heel in a match DQed for refusing to break a choke by the five count, especially in a decisive fall. Not only that, but I liked Casas pleading his case to the ref without success, as the ref turns to him, shoves him down, and declares del Santo the winner. Some of you may think that that's too much ref involvement, and in most cases it probably would be, but here it tickled me for some reason.

 

Despite what I said above, I can definitely see that this match is above average for those who dig the lucha style. It just doesn't fit my parameters for a grudge match. If they were building to a hair vs. mask bout, as Shoe suggests above, I'm sure it would be more to my liking, since those kind of matches are much more violent. I hope we get to see a bout like that at some point in the year.

[JKWebb]

This has been my favorite discovery journeying through 1991 to this point. I assume this made the Top 500 of the 90's list, but I must have been unable to find it online at the time. This really blew me away! Total MOTYC. Here are some things I loved about this match:

-Negro Casas fighting out of holds frantically

-The precision and tightness of the holds Santo was applying

-The creativity in reversals from Casas

-The personality and presence of Casas (which for me, is a big part of what tips the scale from great to MOTYC)

-The pacing

-The dropkick that started the second fall

-The low blow after the second fall

I can go on. I really thought this was incredible. I'm not sure where it will end up ranking yet, but it is in my top 5 of 1991 without question.

[dawho5]

I'm 100% on board with the Santo dropkick that started caida 2 and the Casas low blow in between 2 and 3 as incredible moments. The matwork was really intense and well-done. Finish works great for the body of the match, which is too often not the case in wrestling. I hope Casas had some safe transportation out of the arena after that.

[Jetlag]

Pretty much a shootstyle lucha title match. They would mostly struggle over basic holds and really squeeze their headscissors, toeholds etc. I love the nice crowd ovations for basic moves like a single leg takedown in the 1^st fall. The pacing was like an UWF main event with lots of struggling, grinding holds, and the occasional explosion with a slick move. Casas doesn't play nice at all and would repeatedly brutalize Santito with stomps, dropkicks, kicking in the ropes etc. Not to mention that knee to the balls. The repeated headscissor spots are GREAT and they build to that classic beautiful sequence. Casas is really entertaining to watch at coming up with various escapes and holds on the spot but Hijo del Santo is the better technician, so Casas ends up forced to bail to the floor again and again, which eventually comes back to bite him when Santito connects a dropkick and wipes him out with a huge dive. Anytime Santo attempts the Camel Clutch or Surfboard Hold Casas would fight desperately to escape, which culminates in one of the most natural inventive spots I've ever seen when they do a rolling Tapatia. There is some rope running, but they keep going back to the mat and emphasize the importance of the mat stuff. When Casas foolishly tries to ground Santito again he ends up almost getting tapped with the Camel Clutch, he even hits a deadlift german suplex in the middle of a mat exchange. I loved the tenacious sleeper attempts in the 3^rd fall altough the finish itself left me slightly underwhelmed. Wonderful match regardless.