El Hijo Del Santo vs El Dandy

[GOTNW]

I am so bored of some of these discussions and comparisons, I swear we've had ten threads on the variation of "who is the best out of these All Japan wrestlers" (sorry Elliot your thread is actually interesting becuase it does add some other candidates into the mix). We could use more direct comparisons between the top lucha guys probably. Would anyone take Dandy over Santo? He certainly has an argument on peak. I actually had him higher on GWE but think that was a terrible mistake on my part in hindsight as I hadn't watched some Santo matches that completely changed my perception of him and I now see as some of his best like the Espanto Jr. title match from 1988, one of the LA Park matches etc. Actually watching the 1996/1997 CMLL I noticed Dandy would sometimes drop selling to play to the crowd (it bugged me a lot in the famed hair match). I've liked Dandy into the 2000s but he doesn't reach the highs of Santo who has all time great stuff like the Blue Panther Monterrey matwork classics, LA Park bloodbaths, the insane Perro Aguayo brawl etc. It'd be interesting to see how they compare in 2010s, I've heard someone mention Santo had great stuff in TxT, I don't think I've seen any of that and Dandy has been great in the Satanico matches. Right now I would take Santo pretty easily

[cad]

I watched some 1998 CMLL recently that had Fiera and Negro Casas in it. They were fine, but it wasn't the same as 1992. Casas was bug eyed and kind of hamming it up to get the crowd with him, and he was throwing Ringo/Solitario style spinkicks, and Fiera just wasn't a badass anymore. Lots of kicks but no dark underside. When a guy like him turns there should always be the hint that he could snap and unleash the kind of violence on the rudos that he used to deliver as one of them. Point is, Dandy made that switch and didn't lose a thing, and that impresses me more and more with everything I see from other wrestlers. He'd pump his fist trying to get the fans to chant his name and he wouldn't look desperate, he'd look like a man who knew he could control the crowd.

 

How all that stacks up to having to wrestle as a character brought to life entirely by someone else, and all through that present yourself as the best in the land and a representative of your entire country, I don't know. I agree about Dandy's selling, but only rarely. The 1989 hair vs hair match with Emilio Charles is great, but it really did bother me when Emilio slipped a sweet foul past the ref for a two count, and then Dandy got up quickly and suplexed him. The other side of that is I don't know if Santo ever sold as well as Dandy did for something like that one Angel Azteca leglock in their 1990 match.

[GOTNW]

That's a pretty great point about Dandy's character. I think OJ has been critical of some of his revenge spots (the La Fiera hair match comes to mind) but it was always something that stood out to me with him, that they never felt forced or that he was just acting like a prick.

 

The other side of that is I don't know if Santo ever sold as well as Dandy did for something like that one Angel Azteca leglock in their 1990 match.

His desperation selling after he lost a fall in the Espanto Jr. mask match and children started coming to his aid and checking on him would have to be up there.

[Microstatistics]

Santo has a longer duration of quality but Dandy wins for me because of higher peaks and versatility. It's close though.

[ohtani's jacket]

Santo had the better career, but as a preference, if there two lost classics on the table from Dandy and Santo, I bet the Santo performance would be a whole lot more predictable than the Dandy one. On the other hand, the Santo one would be safer and the Dandy one more likely to disappoint. That speaks to the higher degree of difficulty of what Dandy achieved during his peak. I think his bouts were more complex wheres Santo leant more towards iconography. Santo clearly produced some powerful stuff doing so, but I prefer Dandy's brief peak.