[1989-03-31-EMLL] El Dandy & El Texano vs Atlantis & Angel Azteca

[KB8]

This was one of the very first non-Eddie Guerrero/non-AAA matches I watched when I was getting into lucha way back when. 2v2 tags were my least favourite match dynamic in lucha even back then, but this stood out in a way none of the Gringos Locos tags did. Even back then, only really having scratched the surface with EMLL, this felt like a whole different kind of lucha libre. It felt legit. It felt PROPER. This was the lucha I needed to dive into. I suppose it shaped my tastes in lucha about as much as anything else and a goodly number of years later those tastes haven't changed too much (compared to American and Japanese wrestling, especially), but it doesn't quite stick out as being mind-blowing like it did then. Having watched as much of these guys as I have by this point there wasn't much here that I haven't seen them do before, bigger and better and flashier and quicker. What looked unbelievable at the time now looks merely good, like the sort of par-for-the-course performance you'll get from all-time level guys like Dandy and Atlantis. And that isn't even a knock on the match itself as opposed to a larger point about how good these guys could be at their best. It's still a good bout. The primera was about ten minutes of really strong exchanges, the segunda kept it short and sweet like you'll often get in title matches, and while the tercera had to contend with the backdrop of an injury angle it still had enough going for it. The fact this never even made the DVDVR 80s set maybe tells you how strong EMLL was in 1989, and I'd tend to agree that this misses the cut for a compilation like that. It's still these guys in a title match and even if it's an average one that's not a particularly low ceiling.