[1989-07-28-EMLL] El Dandy vs Emilio Charles Jr (Hair vs Hair)

[cad]

This match has the most well done ref interference I've seen. A backhanded compliment to some extent, but I appreciated the thought that they put into it. The issue is that Gran Davis doesn't want either man using closed fists. A fired up Dandy wrestles emotionally and repeatedly gets cut off when he prepares to throw a punch or simply protests Davis's admonishments. Charles on the other hand sees what's happening and plays the ref like a fiddle. A couple of times you see him tell Davis about Dandy's right hand, and then when Davis hassles Dandy, Charles nails him--with a kick. Charles of course uses his fists at points too, and Davis warns him as well, but Emilio never lets the ref take away his focus, and at one point basically tells Davis off when he tries to stop him from pounding Dandy into the dirt. The ref work never overshadows the two wrestlers, and instead the first fall is about how the two different personalities react to it. There's also plenty of fight and hatred on display throughout the fall, like when Dandy takes Charles down out of nowhere, and Emilio has to destroy him with right hands to keep him down. And when Dandy finally does make his comeback and busts Charles open in the second fall, he does it without throwing a single punch. By the third fall both men are bleeding and swinging wildly, and they've both gotten angry with Davis, so he gives up trying to enforce the letter of the law.

If you're the kind of person who appreciates incremental escalation, with the moves getting bigger and bigger, you might like the big flying spots in the third fall, as they go from Charles's standard tope suicida, to Dandy's plancha suicida, to the splash that Charles won the first fall with, to Dandy's tope suicida over the top rope. There's nowhere to go after that, and then Davis springs back to the forefront of the match by counting them out. I think that it would have felt a bit flat if he'd just done that out of nowhere and the match ended in a draw. With the crowd already angry at him after how he called the first fall, instead we get a heated postmatch featuring some guy calling Davis an asshole, fans tugging on Dandy's arm to convince him not to go through with the haircut, and Dandy and Charles looking like they might unite to force Davis to get his hair cut. I don't know if any of this is why I think this is a great match (personally, I prefer that shot of Dandy struggling to get up off the floor after Charles sent him flying off the apron), but I really am impressed with how they laid this one out.