[1997-05-26-WCW-Nitro] La Parka & Damien & Ciclope vs Hector Garza & Super Calo & Juventud Guerrera

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Tim Cooke]

Maybe the perfect Nitro lucha trios match.

[goodhelmet]

When you have more time, you have to expand more on this.

[Tim Cooke]

WCW hit the nail on the head with this match and it was all down hill for the lucha trios matches after this.

 

The is the first trios match on Nitro. Tenay talks about Superbrawl and Clash earlier in the year. Hector Garza is making his debut and Tenay immediately talks about his amazing corkscrew plancha.

 

Rudos stooge to open up with Parka running through some of his comedy spots, with Juve interjecting with crisp, well executed high spots. One of the big things about this match is that the rudos play to the crowd. When Ciclope enters for the first time, he hits a lariat on Calo and then plays to the crowd. It gets heat, makes sure the crowd knows who to cheer for, and sets up the faces high spots to get more over. Calo hits insane move #1, a flipping tope over the guard rail and into the crowd and it gets over huge. Damian enters and plays to the crowd after hitting a lariat. When Garza is done with his fast rope running sequences, his tilt-a-whirl backbreaker gets a nice reaction. Garza hits a second turnbuckle moonsault to the outside for dive #2. Rudos take over with a cool triple team, followed by quickly beating up each face, who leaves the ring, making the rules about no tags very clear. Rudos have a miscommunication spot which leads to a great dive train.

 

* Parka is arm dragged from ring arpon to the floor by Juve

* Juve somersault flip from top rope to the floor

* Calo diving senton over the ropes to the floor

* Ciclope tope

* and finally, Garza's plancha, which gets over big and Tenay legit marks out for it.

 

Garza gets in the pin in his debut. They could have done this once a month for 3 years on Nitro and it could have stayed fresh. But thats WCW for you. Have to take the good with the bad.

[Loss]

Tim is right about how good of a job Mike Tenay does of explaining everything, despite Larry Zbyszko's racism and dismissiveness of the style. Huge dive into the crowd from Super Calo that shocked everyone. They also made a special effort to get Garza over as the star in this. I do think this is something that could have gotten over sporadically and with more explanation of the rules. The crowd seemed to like it a lot here.

[Ditch]

One more for the WCW/WWF comparison thread.

[Childs]

Larry Z's condescension was a sour note, but otherwise, this was a nifty addition to Nitro. They did a good job using Tenay to set up the excitement ahead, and the wrestlers paid it off by hitting a succession of spectacular spots. And yes, the crowd ate it up. The exciting undercard stuff was part of the reason I watched Nitro more than RAW during this period. I still appreciate that they tried this stuff, even if they didn't quite know what to do with it.

[Kevin Ridge]

Hector Garza is now in WCW. Calo’s somersault flip into the crowd was insane! Looked like nobody got hurt which is good but he flew in there with great velocity. I’ll never understand commentators being dismissive to the ring action when their job is to be selling everything. Great dives all around and finished off with a awesome corkscrew plancha by Garza.

[Robert S]

Yeah, that Caló dive was absolutely crazy. He should have least made sure not to hit any pre-teens kids. The guys in the second and third row seemed absolutely thrilled with being hit by Caló while the kid in the front row looked a bit shook-up.

[soup23]

I feel like one of the bigger Larry Z fans on this board but he needed to shut the fuck up. Being ignorant on the rules and letting Tenay shine is one thing, taking a condescending tone is another. The action was frantic and this was a perfect showcase spotfest. We got some fast matwork sequences and then some crazy dives. The dive that Calo did into the third row felt straight out of ECW and the corkscrew plancha looked great after Tenay hyped it up. Tons of fun and up there with the Faces of Fear as the best Nitro match so far.

[BackToBionic]

I've always loved this match. So much fun.

[El-P]

Yep, great TV lucha style match, the first one in WCW really, and it goes over really good with the live crowd. Tenay is excellent here while Larry Z hurts the product. THat was stupid of him like it was at times of Dusty and Heenan making fun of stuff they didn't understand. Damian & Hector Garza on my TV. Really cool stuff.

[PeteF3]

God, if you could combine the WWF main event scene of 1997 with WCW's mid- and undercard, you'd have the greatest American promotion of all-time. This is fantastic, maybe a better TV match than the one I just raved about over on Raw. The spots hit, the comedy works, the complexity of some of the sequences is breathtaking, and this is legitimately one of the better builds to a dive train that you'll ever see. Larry Z notwithstanding, this is also helped immeasurably by Mike Tenay's commentary--his build-up to Garza's corkscrew plancha is letter-perfect and paid off wonderfully. It really does make you wonder how much we're missing in not being able to understand the Moraleses, Riveras, Babas, and Fukuzawas of the world even if great in-ring psychology is universal.