ohtani's jacket

Jeff Kaye & Ian Gilmour vs. Jon Cortez & Al Miquet (aired 9/2/1972) Cortez and Miquet were billed by the MC as the biggest threat to The Royals in tag wrestling, though I'm not entirely sure what that meant since there was no tag championship. With that in mind, I was curious about how the two lightweights would beat the heavier Kaye and Gilmour. Somewhat predictably, they went with an injury finish, but rather than having Kaye unable to continue and have Cortez and Miquet do the sporting thing and refuse to take the victory, the lightweights forced consecutive submissions on Kaye's injured arm. Before that the action was nothing special, which was a bit of a disappointment as this was the last bit of Jon Cortez for me and he's one of my all-time faves. Kaye grinned too much afterwards. If it had been a heel taking advantage of his injury it would've been a different story, I'm sure. Jim Breaks vs. Steve Best (aired 6/28/72) This is really early Breaks, as you can tell from how young he looks and the orange trunks which I never saw him wear again. Man, was he a great worker at the time. You really get the sense that this was his physical prime. In many ways, he reminds me of a Bill Dundee only better. This really was must-see stuff for Breaks fans. His heel act was already established, but slightly less vocal. But really it's his work that's impressive here. He's a real dynamo, even getting his nose legit bust open. Best was a pasty white guy, who was a dance partner for Breaks at best, but did a good job of building animosity and took a couple of good shots at Jim. Good bout. Robby Baron vs. Al Nicol (6/6/73) Robby Baron was such a fabulous worker. Despite the fact that he was working a guy who was the equivalent of a body here, Baron worked the same competitive, hard fought bout he had with everybody. Over at Wrestling Heritage, there's a rather scathing review of Walton's commentary in this match where the writer goes into all sorts of conspiracy theories about how the likes of Baron and Nicol were being held back by the promoters. That forced me to "listen" to this again and really it was no different from any other Walton call. The writer at WH didn't like how Walton rolled out the same tired old lines about Baron being a newcomer and Nicol the much more experienced man, but that's Walton for you. Because he had such a great voice and learnt the names of so many of the holds, people tend to view him as the "voice" of British wrestling, which he was, but he wasn't above shitting on a match that he didn't like or being unenthused for various workers. But his call here was pretty standard. Jackie Robinson vs. Leon Fortuna (4/10/75) Solid action lightweight action, though Fortuna was closer to a welterweight at this stage. He was a popular Tongan wrestler, who like many of the guys from the 70s footage was past his prime but still able to deliver quality bouts. I'd seen this before so I wasn't overly enthused, but they worked well together, and Robinson's a guy we don't have enough footage of.

Jaguar Yokota vs. Leilani Kai, 9/23/83 This was shaping up as something good, probably the best Leilani Kai match other than the Chigusa matches, and then it ended. Horribly disappointing, but man Leilani took a queen sized bump into the ringside chairs. That's the way that bump should be done.

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Shinsuke Nakamura, 1/4/14 -- I liked this well enough. It wasn't one of the more memorable Tanahashi matches in recent times, but I liked how they went out and wrestled a normal match instead of trying to work some sort of drawn out Tokyo Dome epic. I can see how it mightn't have been special enough for a main event, but as a stand alone match it was an easy watch. -- Nakamura is kind of weird. His entrance reminded me of Prince if Prince were a pro-wrestler, though I'm sure if Prince were a pro-wrestler he'd be a whole lot cooler. His pre-match schtick is almost like he's trying to do the weirdest poses he can think of. Still, it's better than Tanahashi's air guitar shit, I suppose. -- The early going was the usual inoffensive stuff. Tanahashi sold his ribs for the majority of the match in so far as putting your hand in front of your ribs is selling them. They cut a good pace the opening stanza, which is typical for a Tanahashi match. -- I actually didn't mind the forearm exchange here. I don't know if it's because it works better in a Tokyo Dome setting or because Nakamura was great at overpowering Tanahashi, but the best spot in the entire match was that knee to the back of the head. -- That blown powerbomb spot really took me out of the match, but really the entire finishing stretch was muddled. Tanahashi had an unnecessary run of offence around that powerbomb sequence and went to the texas clover leaf too many times. It didn't help that Nakamura doesn't have a lot of big offence, but the finishing stretches are usually better in Tanahashi matches. -- All told probably a three star match.

Maybe it would've been better to watch the version Gregor posted that cuts out the stuff with the commission. I need to do a full write-up of that match because I think you cared too much about the reffing.

This has the most complete version of Parka/Lizmark that I know of -- I think someone broke it into smaller files if you want to watch it that way --

Villano III vs. Perro Aguayo (10/7/84) This marks the first appearance on the set of one of the biggest names of the decade, Villano III. The match is from a Japanese commercial tape that was released in the 80s. The tape was basically a one hour special release dedicated to Villano, heralding him as the 1984 MVP, an award given to him by LLI at their annual awards dinner. The full length version features footage of Francisco Flores, El Toreo, and the lengthy post match scenes. As many of you will know, Jose Fernandez wrote a lengthy and detailed bio of Villano III a number of years ago which is hosted on the Luchawiki website, so I'll just bring you up to speed on how Villano got to this point. Villano began his career working as a rudo in a lot of the smaller arenas on the UWA circuit. This was basically how he cut his teeth. He'd come in and work spot shows where they'd build to hair vs. mask matches or mask matches with the local talent. It was a formula that served him well for the entire decade, even when he became a big star at El Toreo, as he grew to become one of the lucha de apuestas guys in the independents. When he'd feature at El Toreo, it was usually on the undercard either tagging with his father or brother, but in 1981 Flores gave him his first big push by having him upset Fishman for the UWA World Light Heavyweight Title, which was a huge deal at the time and got tongues wagging about how the younger Mendoza was following in his father's footsteps. Flores next move was to turn Villano technico, which he did by having him feud with Los Misioneros. For weeks on end, the Misioneros would beat Villano up, tearing his mask and making him bleed. This wasn't come across on the set, but in the 80s UWA was by far the bloodier of the two major lucha libre promotions, and the Misioneros in particular were notorious for having bloody matches. As Jose mentions, Villano would blade not only his forehead but his arms and chin as well. Villano challenged the Misioneros leader, El Signo, to a hair vs. mask match which took place on 8/1/82, and when Villano won the reaction he got cemented him as a technico. El Signo's partner, El Texano, tried to avenge his captain a few weeks later and suffered the same fate. After a tour of Japan, Villano officially turned technico by forming a trios with two of the biggest masked superstars of the era, El Solitario and Anibal. The trio were known as "Los Tres Caballeros" (The Three Gentlemen), and were basically the personification of what you imagined masked technico luchadores to be. Now that Villano was the top light heavyweight technico it was only fitting that he feuded with the top light heavyweight rudo, Perro Aguayo, who was the number two rudo to El Canek (Canek had this weird thing where he was a technico against foreigners and a rudo against Mexicans.) On 3/20/83, Villano defeated Aguayo for the WWF World Light Heavyweight Title. In August of that year, they had a massive three match series. First Aguayo won the title back on the 7th, then the following week they had a super libre match that Jose describes a blood bath, then on the 21st they had one of the most famous matches in Villano's career when he defeated Perro Aguayo in a hair vs. mask match. Much like Sangre Chicana, Aguayo continued feuding with everyone through '83 and '84, before the Villano feud was restarted in late '84. Aguayo had dropped the WWF strap to Gran Hamada in Tokyo on 4/17/84 and Villano won it from him at El Toreo the following month. This match was Aguayo's first challenge during Villano's second run with the belt. What you see here is a bout that is a lot cleaner than these bloody El Toreo matches I've been describing and one that's a teeny bit junior heavyweight influenced as this was really the world's light heavyweight championship at the time and picked up a lot of different influences from a lot of different places. Villano would go on to hold this title for a full two years until Fishman took it from him on 8/24/86. The Villano vs. Aguayo feud would carry on until the late 80s though it abated somewhat as Villano moved on to feuds with Sangre Chicana and Rambo and Aguayo became caught up in a web of bloody hair matches with Chicana and El Faraon.

Nah, this match and the 5/92 Computer Challenge match were the two best Rude/Rhodes bouts. Their '93 series was really underwhelming with each match getting progressively less interesting.

Seibu Dome is pretty easy to get to. I don't think it will be a turn off for hardcore fans. They'll have a hard time drawing in the casuals the way a concert or sports event would out there.

Nancy Kumi vs. Leilani Kai (1979) Nice to see Leilani in a singles match instead of being Goon #1 or 2. Of course, she was still a stereotypical American brawler, but her brawling was tight and she made sure to stay with her woman and not let up. Kumi was a good worker and did some nice athletic spots for the era. The heels cheated to win and Moolah entered the ring to try to draw more heat for Kai, and man was she scarier than anything Leilani did in the bout. That was one frightening looking woman. This was pretty much what you'd expect from the era. Not too bad. Jumping Bomb Angels vs. Judy Martin and Leilani Kai (Royal Rumble '88) It's weird how workrate driven this was. I guess nobody was able to translate to Yamazaki and Tateno that you're not supposed to work like this in the WWF. Once again, Martin did the bulk of the work for her side, which wasn't such a bad thing as she was a pretty good bumper. There were some blown spots here and there, but it was a fairly exciting bout by WWF standards and it's hard to imagine it's been matched by their women's division since.

Les Kellett vs. Johnny South (aired 12/30/72) Les Kellett was a right bastard. It's hard not to think about how everyone hated his guts and hated working with him. Even when he's grinning and telling jokes you can tell he's a bastard, and it's amusing that at the end when he tries to hug South, Johnny doesn't want a piece of him. Kellet was a funny bugger, though. The comedy spots with Max Ward were gold. The rest was fairly middling. South was a decent foil, but if you've seen one Kellett match you've seen 'em all. They're all fairly entertaining, but the first one you watch is the most memorable. Mick McMichael vs. Bobby Barnes (aired 3/25/72) This is really early WoS footage in terms of what we had. Everyone looked so young and in Bobby's case so beautiful. Walton called McMichael one of the most underrated wrestlers around, which is a nice way of saying he was dull. This was par for the course from Barnes, but it was fun to watch him when he was so young. Alan Dennison vs. Johnny Kwango (1/5/72) God, this was awful. There was no way either Dennison or Kwango were going to lose, and since both wrestlers were used to controlling bouts where they did a lot of schtick, this was a rudderless mess where neither guy was about to get their shit in. One of them should have sacrificed their ego and made it either a Dennison or Kwango bout, the way Pallo/Kwango was a Pallo match. Brian Maxine vs. Zoltan Boscik (aired 4/22/72) This was another strong Boscik performance. Maxine's act wore a bit thin, but once Boscik began his comeback this heated up. Boscik was posting Maxine and snapmaring the shit out of him and then Maxine caught Boscik off the ropes with the nastiest looking forearm smash of all-time. He fucking nailed Boscik, who bumped like a motherfucker. It's really been a revelation to me how good a bumper Boscik was. For what it's worth, I found a live performance from Maxine with the backing bands for one of his country albums. He wasn't the greatest singer, but he seems like a fun dude:

You're probably thinking of Mick McMichael.

Are you sure about that? McManus was well retired before Relso was on TV.

Sangre Chicana vs. MS-1 (Hair vs. Hair) (9/21/84) This one is pretty straight forward. The most interesting thing about this match is that Sangre Chicana had his finger in so many pies at this point that it's interesting that they went with a return match for the Anniversary Show. Not only did he have a personal vendetta with each of the Los Infernales members, he also had bad blood with Fishman, Perro Aguayo and the Mendoza brothers. Hell, he'd even taken Los Guerreros over to El Toreo in '83 and started something with the Misioneros that led to a Super Libre match, which is basically a no DQ match. On the undercard of the 7/1/83 Mendoza brothers vs. La Fiera and Mocho Cota hair match, Chicana and Aguayo had a mano a mano bout that was so bloody the doctor stopped the fight. So, there was any number of ways Paco could have gone if he wanted a Chicana fight in the main event, and you can judge for yourselves if you think it was the right choice. Atlantis, Ringo Mendoza y Tony Salazar vs. El Satanico, MS-1 y Espectro Jr. (9/28/84) There doesn't appear to be anything special about this other than it's another bout with the original Infernales.

This was from the summer tour of Kyushu and Okinawa. It must have been a hot summer as the girls were gleaming with sweat. The match was from that weird venue in the Okinawan countryside that looks like some kind of ditch. Folks are sitting on the banks, kids are running around free, it's in some field fucking field somewhere. Not only that, but the canvas looked like it had either been drenched by some kind of downpour or didn't fit the ring properly and the girls kept slipping on each other's sweat, I guess. None of this was really conductive to a good match and the end result was that apart from Ikeshita's awesome headbutts this was the most boring Kai match of the lot. I did enjoy the commentators, who don't help matters with their BS commentary, saying that brawling in the crowd was Tokyo-to style. There you go, whenever you see Japanese wrestlers brawling in the crowd that's distinctly Tokyo style.

Mick McManus vs. Kung Fu (4/19/78) This aired on Cup Final Day '78. The crowd at Croydon were all pumped up for a great match, Kent Walton was pumped up for a great match and the wrestlers seemed pumped up for a great match, but right before the match began the MC announced that Kung Fu was about to form a tag team with Kendo Nagasaki in the near future and that little tidbit should've been enough to trigger alarm bells. McManus seemed like he was working this match on fast forward, receiving two public warnings in the first two rounds, and to be honest he looked old here. Kung Fu had the better of the bout early on, but McManus ended up choking him out with his own gi. The bell sounded and McManus still wouldn't let go, prompting the rarest of angles in World of Sport, a run-in, with Kendo Nagasaki appearing from nowhere. Nagasaki chased McManus from the ring, which would've been an all right finish, I suppose, but then they went through this drawn out drama over whether to DQ Kung Fu or not, and they teased McManus having to return to the ring or the match would be ruled a no-contest, as though that mattered. Nagasaki, who was wearing these John Lennon type glasses, went into the back to find McManus, but his manager Gorgeous George claimed he was locked up in the toilet or somewhere. That's the kind of TV you get when you're not used to running angles, but the whole thing left me kind of peeved. I love McManus, but the fact that he got into the HOF with absolutely no critical appraisal whatsoever of his booking, the fact that he never lost, or even his work, is a free pass. Clive Myers vs. Tony Walsh (12/4/78) Tony Walsh was still fine tuning his gimmick here. He was wearing this awesome combination of a rugby jersey with cutoff sleeves and a wrestling leotard. I've got a soft spot for Walsh even if he was several leagues below the top heels ring-wise. It's just a shame the majority of his bouts were against Big Daddy. Even if his act was a bit green here, he bumped about as well for Clive Myers as anybody during the Iron Fist years and made the gimmick tolerable for me. Good job, Tony Walsh. Caswell Martin vs. Lenny Hurst (4/10/79) Caswell Martin was such a brilliant wrestler, it's just a shame that there's no one bout you could point to that shows it. You kind of have to watch all of his matches to get an overall impression. I was glad that they gave these two plenty of time, even if it was as obvious as the nose on my face that the bout would be inconsequential. Both guys seemed motivated working against one another and outside of the crappy booking the work was strong. I never get tired of watching Martin in the ring. Mick McManus vs. Jackie Turpin (aired 1/27/79) This was a waste of time. Not to turn on McManus or anything, but he should have retired earlier than he did as he wasn't helping put anybody over by hanging around. I've heard good things and bad things about his work behind the scenes, but he could have kept doing that without wrestling. Bobby Ryan vs. Sid Cooper (aired 1/27/79) This was a bit of a nothing bout as well, which was a shame considering it was Ryan vs. Cooper. Ryan did the nasty Euro piledriver on Cooper and Cooper got up, wound up on the outside and got himself counted out while arguing with the crowd. That's got to be some sort of cardinal sin in regard to selling a piledriver. Clive Myers vs. Young David (3/17/81) This was all right. It was probably the best Young David bout I've seen outside of the Breaks trilogy. But it was a bit too happy-go-lucky with Myers smiling every time the kid did something good and a crappy injury finish. Some of the action was good, but it didn't blow me away. Pat Roach vs. Romany Riley (7/15/81) Man, Romany Riley was unrecognisable from the 70s wrestler. The only way I would have recognised it was him was the arm tattoos. And he wasn't up to much in the 80s, falling pretty easily to Roach's Brummagem Bump, which is the hardest finisher in wrestling to spell. Pat Roach vs. Ray Steele (12/30/80) Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, how could they have aired so little of this? From what was shown it looked like the best Pat Roach vs. Ray Steele bout you could possibly imagine. Steele was fucking taking it to Roach, which if you know the vacuum of charisma that is Ray Steele you would be impressed by. I've looked over these WoS matchlists countless times, and I always get suckered into the Roach/Singh/Steele triumvirate. This is the shit I've been looking for, that I knew in my gut existed, and only half aired. Crap. It was fucking great, though. Ray Steele, take it to him!

One thing I forgot to mention about the Koshinaka match is that Baba had tried to set-up his own juniors division in the early 80s to provide some sort of counterpart to the success New Japan were having with Tiger Mask, and initially he had Onita as his juniors ace feuding with Chavo Guerrero Sr. When Onita was forced to retire, Baba bought the Tiger Mask rights to have something to replace him with. I believe this is the reason why their stay was cut short.

Gran Cochise vs. Satanico (9/14/84) Gran Cochisse was a trainee of Diablo Velazco in Guadalajara and made his debut at 14 years old. While working in the Jalisco region, he adopted a Native American gimmick and began calling himself "Gran Cochisse" ("The Great Cochise") after the famous Apache chief, Cochise. Gran Cochisse wore traditional feathered headdresses and face paint, and even carried a tomahawk to the ring at times. Why there were so many Native American gimmicks at this time, I'm not sure. It may have had something to do with Cochisse's generation being reared on a healthy dose of Cowboys and Indians, or perhaps it was just a popular gimmick in the Guadalajara region as there were other workers with similar gimmicks such as Indio Jeronimo and Indio Medina, who formed the Los Indios Bravos tag team in the early 70s. When Gran Cochisse and Águila India began tagging in the Jalisco territory, they also took on the Los Indios Bravos nickname, a gimmick they took with them to EMLL. Unlike most of the wrestlers we've profiled, Gran Cochisse didn't win a million titles. A real rough, physical type, Cochisse was more accustomed to bloody hair matches than ten pounds of gold. In the late 70s to early 80s period, he had hair match feuds with Americo Rocca, Sangre Chicana, Chamaco Valaguez and Mocho Cota, to name some of the workers now familiar to you. He even had a hair match feud with his Los Indios Bravos blood brother, Aguila India, in the summer of '83, just before Aguila India was repackaged as the masked worker Unicornio. With their partnership dissolving, Cochisse experienced something of a purple patch. On 8/18/84, he won the NWA World Middleweight title from Satanico at Arena Mexico, which led to the title defence you see here. After Satanico won the return bout, EMLL pulled another title switch in Guadalajara on the 30th. Cochisse then dropped the title to Gran Hamada at El Toreo on 11/18/84, clips of which are on YouTube. Cochisse ended his career year with a hair match victory over Cota on the 12/7 Arena Mexico show. The following year it seemed as though he was heading into the twilight of his career when he was used to put over the younger El Dandy, but he managed to stretch out those last rays of sunlight by winning the world's middleweight title for a third time on 5/18/86 when he became the first man to defeat Chamaco Valaguez for a major wrestling title. By the end of '86, Cochisse gave way to the new generation of middleweights such as Kung Fu, Atlantis, El Dandy and Emilio Charles Jr, but he enjoyed one last title run as UWA World Junior Light Heavyweight champion, a belt he took from Blue Panther in September of '88. After dropping the title to Ringo Mendoza, Cochisse was phased out of competitive wrestling and given the masked gimmick Espectro de Ultratumba ("The Ghost from Beyond the Grave.") Eventually, he took over as one of the trainers at Diablo Velazco's school in Guadalajara, but he lost that position when CMLL weren't happy with the quality of workers coming out of the school. Incidentally, there was also a phasing out of Satanico from the title picture around this time. Once he lost the UWA World Middleweight title in early '85, he became more heavily involved in trios wrestling and the various hair match feuds he was embroiled in. Presumably the reason for this was to push some of the young workers that EMLL had high hopes for in terms of reclaiming ground from the UWA.

There's not much I can add to the following two matches: Satanico vs. Shiro Koshinaka (Hair vs. Hair) (7/30/84) For those of you who don't know, Koshinaka was originally an All Japan wrestler before jumping to New Japan Pro-Wrestling. In March of '84, Baba sent Koshinaka and Misawa overseas on a learning excursion. They were expected to stay in Mexico for a year, but Baba called them back to Tokyo just a few months after this match. These Mexico stints were a real eye-opener for most Japanese wrestlers as in the early '80s Japan was still experiencing its post-war period of miracle economic growth, while Mexico was in the throes of a debt crisis that had caused its worst recession since the 1930s. Add to that the language barrier, no money and nagging concerns over safety and drinking water, and a lot of young Japanese guys found these tours a bit hairy. While in Mexico, Koshinaka and Misawa took on the names Samurai Shiro and Kamikaze Misawa and worked on the technico side, however because this match involves a foreigner there's an element of the crowd cheering for Satanico. Had they stayed in Mexico, it seems that Koshinaka may have gotten some sort of a title shot similar to Misawa's title shot against Satanico for the NWA World Middleweight Championship a few months prior, but Baba had bought the rights to the Tiger Mask character and was eager for it to make its debut. Ironically, when they returned from Mexico, Koshinaka saw the writing on the wall with the Misawa push, and after the deflections in '85 left New Japan shorthanded he made the jump. El Satanico y Espectro Jr. v. El Faraón y La Fiera (8/12/84) This was rudos contra rudos, and I believe part of the longstanding Satanico y Espectro Jr. vs. Sangre Chicana y El Faraon feud.

Yeah, the indies had women's wrestling. I'm not sure about midgets, though. I think there may have been midget wrestling in the 50s but it didn't take off. Princess Paula died last month, I'm sorry to say.

Yeah, the indies had women's wrestling. I'm not sure about midgets, though. I think there may have been midget wrestling in the 50s but it didn't take off. Princess Paula died last month, I'm sorry to say.

No, they never had midgets or women's wrestling. The independents may have.

It's a Bert Royal New Year. Bert Royal vs. Kung Fu (4/17/75) Bert Royal was the Heavy-Middleweight champion of Great Britain here and supporting a moustache and slightly more hair on top. You can kind of chart his male pattern baldness over the years from this footage. We got to see more of Bert Royal the stylist in this bout. He really was a superb mat wrestler, but this was an awfully one sided bout. Kung Fu was still masked at this point and a bit of an unknown entity, and he was never the greatest worker to begin with, but it was odd that Royal took so much of the bout from him and odder still that Kung Fu got the surprise win. Not much to this. Bert Royal vs. Steve Logan (8/21/75) These two made for a nice style clash. You had Royal the stylist and the brilliant mat worker against Steve Logan, the consummate heel who could barely walk at this point but delivered killer body checks. I'm not sure how mobile Logan was in his prime, but as far as the 70s go, nobody did more with less. He could spend an entire bout breaking the rules (and hiding it beneath his hair) and drawing heat, and he would never react. Not once. Not to the crowd, not to the ref, not to his opponent... He was the most stoic motherfucker ever. And he'd hobble about doing this all bout long, pretty much the antithesis to McManus, Pallo, Kellett, Masambula, and all the big names, yet he was one of the major television figures. Don't get me wrong, I like the guy, I just find it interesting that he never spoke. This petered out into a draw, which wasn't all that interesting, but man was it amusing watching Bert Royal's comb over fly all over the place. He looked like a wrestling Albert Einstein. Bert Royal vs. Sid Cooper (6/30/76) Sid Cooper worked the crowd into a lather in this one. One thing I'll say for Bert Royal is that he threw a hell of a punch. A bit of a haymaker maybe, but there was one punch that connected on Cooper flush that had me popping. Of course, Walton started lamenting about sad it was that a wrestler of Royal's class was reduced to this sort of a display, but the crowd were lapping it up. Fired up Bert Royal is pretty good, I'm just not sure I've seen it come in the perfect match. This was decent, but I've seen better matches with this kind of heat where it's Cooper in control instead of the fired up babyface. Bert Royal vs. Roy St. Clair (5/26/76) These two were good wrestlers, but when Bert Royal is the leading personality in the match you know you're in for a long afternoon. Surprisingly, they didn't pull out all the stops despite it being a Royal Albert Hall show. I've seen both guys give better performances in lesser matches than this, particularly St. Clair. It was also terribly predictable. I just knew the one fall required would come in the fourth round having watched a ton of WoS. Bit of a disappointment, though I'm not really surprised since neither guy was a titan of British wrestling in my book.

That Lawler/Funk No DQ match is so great. Pretty much perfection for that sort of stip. The Bill Dundee 8 man tag is too short for me to rate that high, but it's definitely a fun match. The concession stand brawl was a post-match angle and tough for me to rate as a match.

Lizmark vs. El Satanico (April 1984) This was one of the premier match-ups in Mexico at the time as you had two guys who were almost always near the top of their weight class, one of whom was one of the best technico workers in lucha and the other one of the best rudo workers. Unfortunately, the match we have of theirs perhaps doesn't do the match-up justice, but it was a rivalry which stretched all the way to their AAA days. Lizmark made his debut in 1976 under the tutelage of former rudo Braulio Mendoza. He worked for a few years at Arena Coliseo Acapulco and the surrounding Guerrero area before moving to Mexico City. On 4/18/79, he defeated Americo Rocca for the Mexican National Welterweight Championship in his hometown of Acapulco, which kick started his national career. The reason for Rocca dropping the belt was that he was slated to beat Mano Negra for the NWA World Welterweight Championship on 4/30/79. Lizmark immediately became a challenger to Rocca's world title and the pair fought in Mexico City on the undercard of the 6/15/79 Satoru Sayama vs. Alfonso Dantes hair match. Somewhat ironically, Rocca lost the world's title to Kato Kung Lee and took Lizmark's national title on 3/29/80. Undeterred, Lizmark went after new NWA World Welterweight champ El Supremo and on 6/4/80 won his first world title in Acapulco only four years after his debut. Lizmark enjoyed a year long run with the title, fending off the challenges of deposed champ El Supremo and early career rival Rocca, as well new rudo on the block Mocho Cota, before finally losing the title to another rising star, La Fiera, on 10/23/81. In the wake of his world title loss, he put on some muscle and moved up to the middleweight ranks, where he met El Satanico for the first time. Lizmark would beat Satanico for the National Middleweight Championship on 2/10/82, a belt Satanico had taken from Solar I, just to get your mouth watering. As National Middleweight champ, Lizmark feuded extensively with both El Faraon and Espectro Jr., who they pulled a title switch with, before challenging for Satanico's NWA World Middleweight Championship. Lizmark won that title on 6/3/83, making him a duel middleweight champ, and lost the title back to Satanico at the end of '83 on the 12/3 Arena Coliseo show. Which brings us to this title defence in April of 1984. One notable fact about Lizmark for those struggling to grasp the esteem he was held in was that when he later moved up to the light heavyweight ranks, he became the first Mexican since Gori Guerrero in 1960 to win NWA world championships in three different weight classes. Another interesting fact about Lizmark is that despite some intense, often bloody feuds against the likes of Satanico, Sangre Chicana and others, he was very rarely involved in apuestas matches. His two biggest scalps were Americo Rocca and El Faraon, but it's unclear when those matches took place. It wasn't that apuestas matches weren't teased, they just never materialised. Satanico, as we know, started coming into his own in 1980 when he defeated Satoru Sayama for the NWA World Middleweight title on 3/28/80 and then impressed everyone by successfully defending the title against Ringo Mendoza in Acapulco and El Faraon at Arena Mexico. He also had another coming out party of sorts when he tagged with Fantasma on a 10/3/80 Arena Coliseo show against Sangre Chicana and Mocho Cota, a short time after he'd taken Cota's hair and just before he faced Fantasma for his mask on 10/24. Satanico apparently got over big on this Arena Coliseo show and was basically the king of the middleweight division for the next few years as Chicana had been in the late 70s.

Regarding Sayama, his run in Mexico was a lot deeper than I ever imagined. If we had more footage of that it would help us judge how much of his Tiger Mask run was the gimmick hindering his work.