El Dandy

[Ryan Faulconer]

I was interested in lucha from watching bits of Telelatino blocks back in the mid 90s so I might not be the average fan reading about wrestling for the first time online. Scott Keith alone (at least back in 1997) is not harmful to your health. I wouldn't touch his opinions on most wrestling unrelated to Bret Hart with a pole on a pole match after 2001. At that time he was less harmful and more of catchphrase machine. I think there might be something to be said for being a tape buyer/trader because we were literally invested in our interests back then. A lot of today's breed of fan can float from site to site sampling matches and not giving anything that doesn't blow their mind right away a second thought, let alone a second viewing. El Dandy has an uphill battle for sure.

 

I started out reading Scott Keith's rants a long time ago on RSPW when I began reading about wrestling on the net. I also started reading into that DVDVR bunch back when they were one person who made a typo in a workrate report which bequeathed the eventual juggernaut. Then when I realized that the old green/red forum didn't have all the answers I wanted I read stuff like the Quebrada and listened to Meltzer's old Eyada show (which was supposedly the future of communication online...only before it had a name and iPods existed) who pimped stuff like Atlantis vs Villano III among other things. There was a young pot banger/Survival Tobita sympathizer who called in from time to time as well, IMSMR.

 

I got some good tips on women's wrestling from people like Ohtani's Jacket and friends too but that was harder to stay interested in when lucha is so plentiful and bountiful and whatnot year in and year out...pretty much every single year...except for a little while in 2003 when it got a little lean and the only connections we had were Samurai TV lucha broadcasts. Still, bad lucha for me is better than bad pizza. All those Pierroths would sure test my patience whenever they leaned a little heavy on the boricuas for awhile.

 

So...grain of sand and my interest in wrestling is a beach, or so the saying goes. As someone who first read about the luchadores in Scott Keith's rants/reviews I'd like to think that anyone could follow a similar route. If the world of facebook and/or youtube is any indication I'd probably be wrong though.

[ohtani's jacket]

The shoot style question is tough for me to answer because I haven't watched as much 80s UWF as I'd like at this point, and also because I'm not really sure if the matwork he rolled out in title matches was something new or something that just continued in the lucha title match tradition. It seems like it would be an easier question to answer if we had some title matches from the 60s and 70s available. What's your take on that point?

I haven't watched the Dandy/Azteca match in several years, so I'm not sure what he rolls out that is "shoot style" per se. If he just does armbars or what not, any number of luchadores could have picked that up on New Japan tours. Personally, I'm not sure why it would matter if Dandy incorporated shoot style aspects into his matches and it certainly hasn't had a long term influence on lucha libre.

[Jetlag]

In my first post on this forum, and since it's bothering OJ, I have to admit that it was me who wrote this. It's obviously kind of a troll, but I was (still am) really high on El Dandy's work, matches against Llanes, Morgan, Satanico, Casas, Navarro, the Santo brawls, all that stuff, so I wrote up this outlandish post combined with links to these matches and sent them to a bunch of people like Keith, Meltzer, or the EVOLVE contact formula (maybe Gabe reads that), just to see if it would tickle someone's fancy to see someone praise El Dandy like that and link to a 30 minute match. Didn't get any response of course. I guess writing up a serious article would've been the wiser thing to do if I wanted to get the Dandy into people's minds as a great worker, but then, those people make money off of smarks so they can listen to wrestling podcasts and post on a wrestling message board, they might've charged me for a serious reply.

 

As for OJ's queries...

 

If it's a troll then perhaps we can turn this thread into a Dandy thread.

 

Did he really incorporate shoot style into lucha? Is he really the greatest singles match worker of all-time? Were his mat skills several leagues ahead of anyone else at the time? Was he the best at trios? Did he have durable workrate? Is his post-prime stuff any good? Was Santo turning heel the greatest angle and feud ever? All worthwhile questions.

- not that I know of, aside from wearing kickpads and occasionally throwing NJ juniorish kicks. He was 100% luchador, atleast judging from the footage that I've seen on tape. I put that into the post thinking it might tickle some people's curiousity.

- bold statement, I know, but if you lined up the 10 greatest Dandy singles matches it would be hard to top. I think big part of that is that he and his fellows had rock solid formulas to rely on, altough they did awesome stuff with these. Personally, I think Fujiwara is the greatest singles worker of all time.

- he was really good, but I think that time and working that style "leagues ahead" wasn't possible, atleast not in the way that guys like Navarro or Panther these days are leages ahead of most other workers on the planet.

- never seen him put in a mediocre performance, altough I haven't seen a terrible amount. I think the term "workrate" is not right for a guy like him. Most people don't think of stuff like punches or selling when they think workrate, and Dandy seemed to always keep his matches in tact with those things.

- haven't seen much but the Antifaz match is good, stuff with Navarro in IWRG is awesome and I even really liked him briefly popping up in 2011. However he's been kind of crappy in TxT and I heard his AAA stuff is lousy, due to AAA being AAA.

- I have no idea about that angle. Santo dressing up as Felino then revealing himself was a kind of creepy and awesome visual. That's pretty much all I know. It produced some great matches.

[ohtani's jacket]

I was confused because people were making out like Keith wrote it but he'd have no idea who Antifaz del Norte is.

 

I was at one point a pretty major Dandy fan, but I think if I were to look at him critically I'd say that his work prior to '88 is pretty green compared to the Dandy we know from '89-90. That '89-90 period is truly outstanding. After 1990, his output is sporadic. That was partially because of CMLL's booking style, which tended to have cooling off periods, and because of the exodus to AAA which left CMLL pretty thin on quality workers, but mostly it was because of Dandy's physical decline. He had a nice little period around '96-97 where he contributed well to trios, but after 1990 I'd say he has pockets of good work here and there. I'm often critical of Santo, Panther and Casas, but they've been far more consistent. Dandy in recent times is one of the more awful veterans. In '89-90, you could make a case a strong case for Dandy being the best wrestler in the world but there were a number of workers in Mexico who more than rubbed shoulders with Dandy at the time. It was a bumper crop of talent. Dandy got the push at that time for his weight class but there were a lot of guys who were equally good. We're also limited by TV. Who knows what was happening live.

[goodhelmet]

I wanted to bump this because I know Loss made this post initially because of the 1990s El Dandy stuff. When the 1980s lucha set is released, and El Dandy is seen from 1984-1989, he may go down as one of the best 5 wrestlers of all time when combined with his peak 1990s stuff. There are at least 16 Dandy matches that will be on the set with possibly 4-5 more to come. He ahd one tag match with El Satanico as his partner and that one tag may put them in my Top Two tag teams of all time.

[WingedEagle]

At least buy me dinner before you do me like that. Might as well have just taken the money right out of my pocket.

[Kevin Ridge]

Let Will have his foreplay. Dandy from the 80's is very intriguing for a guy like me working through the 90's watching him.

[goodhelmet]

This lucha set is one of the easiest to watch and one of the hardest to edit down to 100 matches. We have about 30 more matches to yay or nay and we'll have a final listing out soon but El Dandy will be all over it.

[WingedEagle]

Can't wait. B/w what sounds like excessive Dandy and undoubtedly a healthy serving of Santo & Casas, everyone should be all over this.

[Gregor]

El Dandy, Super Astro, and Kato Kung Lee vs. Fuerza Guerrera, Jerry Estrada, and Kung Fu (5/17/91)

The rudos, especially Kung Fu, did a really good job of selling Astro's and Kato's dancing spots. Other than that, this was fine without being particularly memorable, and with Dandy/Astro vs. Fuerza/Estrada I was expecting something memorable (the image of Kung Fu stripped down to his blue underwear is probably seared into my brain forever, but that wasn't the kind of memorable I was looking for). Dandy looked good in general and had some nice exchanges that ended with him dishing out the big right hand; watching this, though, you'd have no idea that he was arguably the world's best wrestler just the year before.

 

El Dandy, Angel Azteca, and El Jalisco vs. Bestia Salvaje, Espectro Jr., and Espectro de Ultratumba (5/1/92)

Now, that last match I'd expected to be really good. This match I was interested in mostly for the novelty of seeing Dandy and Azteca interacting in 1992. Of course, I ended up liking this one a lot more.

 

Dandy looked great in this. He had a really good first-fall mat exchange with Espectro de Ultratumba that lasted almost five minutes. That was quite a treat, and then he had a fun ring-clearing sequence with the Espectros later in the fall. It seemed like Dandy was the one in charge of things, as they did an armbar spot that he recycled in the title match with Llanes, and they finished the fall with the sequence that the Dandy/Satanico/Charles team used to win a few falls back in 1990. Here Dandy finished it with a hurracanrana instead of a missile dropkick, which caught me by surprise.

 

The rest kind of went as you'd expect. The rudos dominated the second fall, with the Espectros looking like Bestia's hired thugs. The highlight was Bestia's top-rope senton. Dandy stormed back in the third fall and got some pretty good shots in. Bestia sold his slaps like a champ. I really enjoyed Bestia's performance throughout the match. Taunting the tecnicos as he dragged Angel Azteca away from their corner, spitting in Dandy's face just for fun, and begging for mercy with his arms spread as if he couldn't understand why Dandy would treat him like that - he came across as someone who should have more to his name than he does.

 

I thought that this was really good, but I'm not totally sure what they were going for here. It looked like they were setting up for a Dandy vs. Bestia feud. Dandy bled off a post shot from Bestia, and the exchanges between the two of them seemed to be the focus here, but they didn't have a singles match until September. Dandy moved into the Casas feud after this. Maybe they changed plans when AAA split off.

 

I don't know who El Jalisco was. Luchawiki has an El Jalisco I and an El Jalisco II listed, but they lost their masks in the 1970s (the one in this match had a mask), and I think Alfonso Morales specifically said that this was a different one. He got the winning pinfall, but aside from that he didn't get to do much. He was almost invisible between the finish of the first fall and the finish of the third. Both Dandy and Azteca got to clean house in the ring after the match; Jalisco stayed on the outside. I think that this was his debut, so it felt weird that he wasn't a bigger part of the match. Conversely, this appears to have been Angel Azteca's last televised match for CMLL until his return. He and Espectro Jr. ripped up each other's masks, but of course nothing came of that.

 

El Dandy, Atlantis, and Ringo Mendoza vs. Javier Llanes, Mano Negra, and Back Magic (2/15/94)

This was a week before the Middleweight Title match between Dandy and Llanes. The focus was on the two of them, and Dandy bled. They had some nice spots, like when Llanes went to town on Dandy in the corner and when Dandy was swinging at Llanes's face while trapped in the figure four, but this never exploded like I wanted it to. A couple of times Dandy put up his fists like they were about to get into a mini-boxing match, and it never materialized. Llanes looked really slow here and was probably better suited for a cerebral mat-based match than something like this. He did have really good punches, though. I liked the way that everyone else stood on the apron at the end and let Dandy and Llanes fight it out.

 

The best spot in the match was when Mano Negra approached Atlantis with his hand extended and a big smug grin on his face, and Atlantis dropkicked him without even considering the offer.

[cheapshot]

 

El Dandy in 2014.

[Zoo Enthusiast]

 

El Dandy in 2014.

Will wearing a WCW jean jacket in 2014 be seen as ironic?

[Gregor]

I don't know who El Jalisco was. Luchawiki has an El Jalisco I and an El Jalisco II listed, but they lost their masks in the 1970s (the one in this match had a mask), and I think Alfonso Morales specifically said that this was a different one.

A minor detail in an old post that no one read, but according to Dandy the Jalisco in 1992 CMLL was Mogur. Sure enough, in thecubsfan's database Jalisco's tenure coincides perfectly with a disappearance by Mogur.

 

So, for the thousands of people wondering where Mogur went or who that newcomer was, there you go.

[JazeUSA]

I'm one of the many who never saw or heard of El Dandy except for the jobber role I saw in WCW when I first saw him, boy was I missing out! Between the 80's Lucha set & several 90's matches Ive seen that I would rate 5 stars El Dandy is defiantly in my top 10 all time list atm, he is so well rounded, ironically Bret Hart was always in my top 5 list since I started watching wrestling & I saw the ''comment'' but after seeing everything Ive seen since being involved in all the forum boards the last 6 years El Dandy could work circles around Bret Hart! With Bret it was always pretty much the same routine in every match, Dandy however can work multiple styles & different ways, I love me some El FKN Dandy!

[W2BTD]

Top wrestling scribe Brandon Stroud bringing the fresh Dandy jokes to the table here: http://uproxx.com/prowrestling/2014/10/happy-52nd-birthday-to-wrestling-legend-el-dandy-here-are-his-52-most-memorable-moments/

[soup23]

Not surprising but embarrassing nonetheless, in this day and age where youtube can be your friend, I really don't understand the position of not at least seeking out some of the highly touted Dandy stuff.

[El McKell]

Most people who watch lots of wrestling aren't aware there is highly touted El Dandy stuff, I wasn't until I signed up for this website.

[Tim Cooke]

Not surprising but embarrassing nonetheless, in this day and age where youtube can be your friend, I really don't understand the position of not at least seeking out some of the highly touted Dandy stuff.

 

This. Or even just typing his name into You Tube and seeing that there is a lot of stuff available.

[Matt D]

I say we send everyone on the board under 25 out into the wilderness to go tell people about El Dandy

[Jesse Ewiak]

Not surprising but embarrassing nonetheless, in this day and age where youtube can be your friend, I really don't understand the position of not at least seeking out some of the highly touted Dandy stuff.

 

You highly underestimate the curiosity of most people. Most people look for stuff on Youtube they've already seen, to see it again, or at most, they might click the links that come up on the right side of that video and fall in a Youtube hole.

 

I mean, even over on Reddit, a Youtube link to a random WWE match might get a lot of comments, and there's all this love for New Japan, but a link to a All Japan or AJW match from the 90's is met with crickets.

[Zenjo]

In a way it's good to read 'articles' like that from time to time. Most of the wrestling related material that I read is from this site. It's like residing in a magnificent palace whilst being surrounded by a city of filthy streets and ramshackle buildings. Ignorance can be bliss, but not when it comes to El Dandy.

[soup23]

I understand the lack of curiosity of most people that watch wrestling at times. It's a viewpoint I don't agree with but I can accept. I can't accept though blindly propelling old opinions without conducting an individual investigation.

[ohtani's jacket]

I'll never understand why people are bothered by this. It was a great promo by Bret.

[Grimmas]

I can understand most fans making that joke and not caring, but when people are fans enough to write articles, run web sties and do podcasts it is unacceptable.

[ohtani's jacket]

You can count on one hand the number of people who write articles, run websites and do podcasts about lucha. It's always been the poor cousin in hardcore fandom.