El Dandy

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

[Gregor]

I don't think I'll end up submitting a ballot, so I'll try to keep this devoid of opinion. Dandy's bigger feuds, and the availability of the matches of which they consisted:

 

vs. El Modulo (mask vs. hair in 1983, hair vs. hair in 1983, possible title match in 1982)

Poor Modulo. Dandy took/may have taken his National Featherweight Championship in 1982, took his mask a year later, and took his hair the week after that. No footage of this appears to exist, and Modulo was gone by the time we got regular TV, but Alfonso Morales frequently referenced this feud when talking up Dandy's career.

 

vs. Javier Cruz (hair matches in 1984 and 1986)

The '84 hair match is taped, but I don't think it's online. Other than that, you're pretty much stuck with whatever traces of the rivalry remain by the early '90s.

 

vs. Pirata Morgan (hair '88)

The hair match is out there, even if none of the setup is. You can still see these two mix it a bit in 1989 and 1990.

 

vs. Emilio Charles Jr. (hair '89, title '89, hair '93)

This is a pretty famous feud. The 1989 version consists of, as far as I can tell, the apuestas match, the title match blowoff, and three trios matches (which might mean there were more that I just don't know about). All of that is online. The '93 version consists of some untelevised title swaps, some trios matches that haven't made their way online, and the hair match, which you can find. They're opponents in a lot of trios matches in between.

 

vs. Angel Azteca (mano a mano '90, title '90)

Oddly enough, it appears that every match from this feud is online. Other than a couple of matches in 1989, they don't interact much outside of this feud.

 

vs. Satanico (hair '88 x 2, mano a mano '90, hair '90, hair '91, hair '92, a lot of matches in '14)

Probably Dandy's greatest rival. Frequent partners in 1990 until Satanico turns on him to start the most famous portion of this rivalry. A lot of this feud is online, but there's also a lot that isn't. I don't think either '88 hair match (or their title match from that year) was taped in full. The '90 singles matches are online, as are some of their matches from Dandy's retirement tour.

 

vs. Negro Casas (title '92, hair '96)

This feud has been covered pretty well. It extends through '96 as the two alternate between being partners and opponents. The '96 match is a triangle match, and Casas is gone by the one-on-one, mask-versus-hair part.

 

vs. Bestia Salvaje (title '92)

Not a feud that's been explored that much. It looks like it was kind of rushed and jumbled together with the '92 Satanico feud, which may have hurt both. They traded the CMLL World Middleweight Title in 1992, with only the initial match being filmed, and it's online. Thecubsfan's database lists a mano a mano between them from Guadalajara TV, but as far as I know none of that stuff has surfaced. They match up a lot over the years, even if it's not as part of a feud.

 

vs. La Fiera (hair '92)

Like the Bestia feud, not one that's been looked at much beyond the singles match. Four singles matches in half a year is a lot for one wrestler, but this might have been a late substitution for a Fiera-Love Machine feud. Fiera and Dandy wrestled in five straight trios matches at Arena Mexico, which is a bunch, to set up the hair match. In the only one of those five matches that's online, Dandy's as bloodthirsty as I've ever seen him, so this may have been an interesting feud. They have very few other matches as opponents.

 

vs. Javier Llanes (title '94)

Pretty basic - just three TV trios matches and then the title match. Not really a big feud for Dandy, as this was strictly an Arena Coliseo feud between him and a guy who spent 1993 in semi-retirement, but the title match is pretty famous among lucha fans. One of the trios matches that set this up is out there to watch. Llanes does not have many TV matches to his name.

 

vs. Black Warrior (title '96)

I haven't seen as much of this era of lucha as I have from the early '90s, so I can't say for sure how big a deal this was. It's set up with a couple of trios matches.

 

vs. El Hijo del Santo (hair '96, hair '04)

The '96 match was, for Dandy and Santo, set up with only two trios matches. I think that either one or both is online. They wrestled a lot in Monterrey in 2000 and in Tijuana in 2004, and to be totally honest I don't know how much of that stuff is available.

 

vs. Negro Navarro (title '01)

I'm just looking at results on thecubsfan's match finder now. In addition to the title match, which is online (and unhelpfully titled DandyvsNegroNavarro), they appear to have two trios matches from this period out there. You could also check out a match from 1992 that features Dandy, Mike Lozansky, and El Ninja against the remnants of Los Misioneros de la Muerte.

 

vs. Perro Aguayo Jr. (hair '02, title '03 x 2)

The hair match is a four-way bout in which Aguayo takes Dandy's hair. The matches from this feud don't have much of a reputation.

 

vs. LA Park (title '04, title '05, several others)

In case it's not clear, I'm not very familiar with post-'90s lucha. The '04 title match is out there, as is a WWA trios match from Tijuana that appears to be from way before that.

[ohtani's jacket]

Here's the first of what will probably be a long line of lucha appraisals -- http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/blog/8/entry-425-doubting-el-dandy/

[soup23]

Excellent stuff OJ , dandy is certainly someone where I want to watch his lesser stuff to see where he ranks.

[soup23]

Excellent stuff OJ , dandy is certainly someone where I want to watch his lesser stuff to see where he ranks.

[Loss]

I agree that this gives some much-appreciated balance. I will say again though that I don't think there's any sinister motivation to the lucha favorites not being looked at as critically as they should be. It's a style that is new to most people. It will happen, but it will happen with time. I don't see anything wrong with letting it play out.

 

Anyway, might El Dandy be the Hall & Oates of wrestling, where he has a few absolutely killer tracks and tons of filler?

[ohtani's jacket]

I'm still figuring it out. I find he's still great in '91 but not featured as much because Pena is beginning to exert more influence over the product and Dandy was clearly a Herrera guy. Then in '92 he stops being great on a weekly basis and from there he slowly gets out of shape. But I keep tempering my thoughts with the knowledge that the entire company was dire during 1993 and 1994.

[Matt D]

I say this on a completely selfish level, but the more matches are online for some of these guys, the more in depth they can be examined. That's one takeaway I got from reading the Dandy feud list.

[Timbo Slice]

Huge peaks. He's on the list but it'll vary for me. Want to see a little bit more of him still.

[goodhelmet]

First off, Hall & Oates had tons of awesome stuff. They were also the most successful recording duo of all time, overtaking the Everly Bros. who held the title for like 25+ years.

 

As for Dandy, there wasn't much filler in the 80s with Dandy in the mix. Even with matches we didn't nominate for the 80s set, we would usually acknowledge how great Dandy was in a match.

[NintendoLogic]

El Dandy might be the best technical wrestler I've ever seen, so he'll place pretty high on my ballot. I'm not nearly as enamored of his brawls, though. Then again, that's largely due to the fact that just about all of them involve El Gran Davis, the Earl Hebner of Mexico. Seriously, fuck that guy.

[ohtani's jacket]

That's a crass comment to make about Gran Davies. You could at least explain what you mean.

[NintendoLogic]

Why was it crass? Because he's dead? If that's the case, then a lot of people here owe the Brody estate an apology.

 

Anyway, his schtick sucked. The "Davis grabs Dandy's arm to prevent him from throwing a punch and opens him up to get blindsided by the rudo" bullshit would have been bad enough if it had been confined to a single match, but he did it in every apuestas match I've seen him officiate. I reiterate: fuck that guy.

[Loss]

I think he thought you were taking a swipe at his personal integrity since he probably thought you were referencing Montreal.

[ohtani's jacket]

It's crass because he didn't do anything offensive enough to be spoken about like that. So you don't like rudo ref shtick, I don't see the need to get tough about it. It was Pena who put the gimmick on him, not shtick he came up with himself. He's generally regarded as the best of the rudo refs. I don't understand what's so offensive about the spot you described unless you find the whole deal bullshit, but I've seen what happened when Pena had complete freedom in AAA and your ire is directed at the wrong ref.

[goc]

Watching El Dandy on the 80s set (haven't seen anything from the 90s yet) he is absolutely just as at fault for those frustrating "ref stops Dandy from throwing a punch moments" as the ref, if not more. In the Emilio Charles vs. El Dandy (7/28/89) match the whole first fall El Dandy stays totally focused on the referee and not Emilio Charles every time he starts to go on offense. I think the ref grabbed his arm once but every single time Dandy threw a punch he had to stop and argue with the referee. To me it wasn't because the ref was being over bearing it was because that was Dandy's go to transition to the rudo going on offense and he didn't want to do anything else even if the ref actually wasn't screwing with him.

[JerryvonKramer]

Since Dandy has been touted as being "better than Arn Anderson", I need to give him proper consideration. Other than the matches Gregor outlines, is there anything else that is "must watch" from him?

 

It would be good to get five bonafide "classic" performances from him to get me started.

[WingedEagle]

Grimmas, maybe you can start another thread that compiles these top 5 picks?

[ohtani's jacket]

Since Dandy has been touted as being "better than Arn Anderson", I need to give him proper consideration. Other than the matches Gregor outlines, is there anything else that is "must watch" from him?

 

It would be good to get five bonafide "classic" performances from him to get me started.

 

I think he's clearly better than Arn, but I don't think it's a good idea to go into the matches in that frame of mind. Dandy was a different sort of worker in a different position from Arn. There are plenty of rudos who play second or third guy in trios where Arn can be used as a barometer. Dandy was in more of a Flair position at least in his weight class. The best way you can watch Dandy is to view as much as his 1990 stuff as you can and if you agree that he was the best worker in the world that year then there's your argument for him having a high ranking. That was his peak and everything else is supplementary.

[Childs]

OJ, if you had to make your best guess based on what footage we have, how long was Dandy a great worker?

[ohtani's jacket]

He came into his own in '88 and was still contributing to the CMLL renaissance in 1997, so the conventional wisdom would be from '88-97. If you're talking about his absolute peak it's '89-90 with his physical peak being '88-91. His form from '92-94 fluctuates as much as his weight, and from '95 onward is his post prime. He gets overtaken by other workers starting in '92, which isn't the case in '89 or '90 where he's balling at an untouchable level. I'd like to see Gregor chime in because he's insinuated in the past that Dandy's '92 decline is overstated, which is an interesting discourse.

[Gregor]

CMLL rode Dandy hard after AAA split off. In a span of six months, he had four major feuds, and from a work standpoint all four delivered to some extent, even if Dandy ended up flopping as a draw and the booking wasn't particularly good. Physically, he wasn't where he'd been in 1990, and I don't think his '92 was as good as his '90, so in that sense it's fair to say that he'd begun to decline. At no point does he feel like a drag on the rudos he's paired with, though. This is just my opinion, but in each of those feuds there isn't someone I'd rather see Bestia or Fiera or whoever wrestle.

 

In terms of a match-by-match comparison, the singles matches in 1990 are better than those in 1992, but in trios matches the two years are a lot closer. Tecnicos vs. tecnicos just isn't a style that allows for the highs of tecnicos vs. rudos, for one thing, and the Dandy/Satanico/Emilio Charles vs. Angel Azteca/Atlantis/Javier Cruz matches have disappointingly little matwork, which is the biggest thing to look forward to from that kind of match. Those 1990 matches required a lot of skill from Dandy, but the Dandy-Casas feud was physically demanding as well. You could argue that in 1992 he was paired with the three best rudos in CMLL plus one of Mexico's all-time top workers, but in 1990 he was up against a better Satanico, and Angel Azteca was quite skilled himself.

 

1992 has a lot of successes from Dandy. There's a stark difference between that and 1993, when he has more misses, like that long match with Ultimo Dragon and Jericho.

[goc]

El Dandy is a guy who gets pimped as a lucha great but I generally find myself being more impressed by the other guys in whatever trio or tag I'm watching him in. I saw all his matches from the 80s set and he wasn't one of the big "revelations" of that set to me (as a total lucha newcomer) the way that Satanico, Sangre Chicana, Perro Aguayo, or El Hijo del Santo were. I haven't really gotten too deep into his 90s work and I know he's supposed to have a big year in 1990 so I'm not totally done evaluating him but I'm just not seeing him as one of the top tier luchadores right now.

[Dylan Waco]

That blows me away, because in my experience Dandy almost always stands out to me more than anyone else in every match he's in. In fact that's probably his biggest strength to me for something like this.

[goc]

Maybe it's just the trios I have been watching lately where he's really just been a background player as the trios have been building other feuds that aren't Dandy's. I've been writing about the stuff I've seen him in lately in the Microscope. I'm not writing him off or anything but I just can't remember anything I've seen him in yet where I thought "wow El Dandy was great in that"

 

Part of may be that El Dandy is seen as one of the "work rate" Lucha guys and I generally find myself more drawn to the guys with a lot of charisma and personality like Satanico or even Mocho Cota (who I am not saying is better than Dandy)