ohtani's jacket

The British Kendo Nagasaki.

Thanks, this was really interesting. Though I guess they must all do an excellent job if I don't notice any of them

I think like anything else in lucha it can either be done poorly or really well. The way I would justify it is that the technico's technique is supposed to be too strong for the rudos and the rudo dominance is supposed to be too strong for the technicos. Sometimes a guy will be out of position or sort of walk into the pinfall or submission, or there will be a guy who wasn't involved in the fall too much who shouldn't be pinned so easily, but I think as far as the crowd is concerned it's all about who won. Luchadores tend to struggle with one fall matches so I think any change in the number of falls would take some getting used to.

Loss just made a comment about Nick Patrick being awesome in 1997. I've got to admit, I rarely pay attention to referees. What is it that people notice about them?

It certainly happens a lot, but when you have a trios with three great workers like Los Infernales (Satanico, MS-1 and Pirata Morgan) or even the version of Los Infernales where Masakre replaced Morgan, the rudo beatdown segments are awesome because of how inventive each spot is. Those guys had a finely honed three man rudo act and about a thousand different beatdown spots. The lucha you see when you turn on Galavision often has the same rudo beatdown in each match. It's gotten pretty slack. Why didn't I think of this? A Brazos comp would be perfect for getting people into lucha. The Brazos worked every trios style there is, which would make it the perfect introduction to that particular form of lucha.

That's one of the things about the lucha style that I never got used to. Sometimes the matches feel like they're sharply divided into different acts, and in each act one guy will beat on another guy forever without any receipts. The control segments often seem more sharply delineated and strictly observed than in almost any other territory. I can't explain exactly why I don't like it, but it still feels weird and forced to me when the entire primera caida is the faces beating up the heels unanswered, then vice-versa for the segunda, and then back to the first plan for the tercera caida. I guess I've just been programmed by all the other styles of wrestling to expect more back-and-forth reversals than that. I don't think it's quite that delineated. Often the technicos will get off to a flyer or the rudos will jump them, but the primera caida can be relatively even until someone makes a mistake or one side makes its move. Sometimes what seems like a "rudo fall" can end with a surprise twist and vice versa. But no matter what happens it almost always carries over into the next fall. You seledom see the second caida begin with a role reversal. The only time you really see that is with shock falls where the loser of the first fall wins the second straight away. Sometimes the turning points within a caida are done well and sometimes they're lazy. When they're done well, they're one of the most exciting things about lucha. The third caida is almost always a back and forth slugfest with several changes in momentum.

You will sometimes get a type of face in peril during the rudo beatdown sections, particularly when it's a trios being used to set up a wager match. To me the great thing about trios is that there are so many different styles, whether it's a comedy match or a brawling trios; fast paced and high flying or all matwork. Often the best matches are a combination of all those styles. You always know that if the rudos win the first fall then the technicos will have to make a comeback in the second or if the technicos win the opening fall the rudos will dominate the second, and so on, but there's a number of ways they can play it and they're able to shorten or lengthen the falls to control the rhythm. Once you learn the basic format of everyone squaring off once and then either swapping partners the second time round or speeding things up, then the way either rudo dominance or technico momentum overlaps each fall and leads to a turning point or swing in momentum then trios matches are easy to follow.

They've had a few singles matches, there's a JIP fancam of one on youtube Yeah, I know, but trust me we've been waiting four years for a Black Terry/Navarro match. As for Konnan and Vampiro, Mexico's no different to anywhere else in terms of the guys on top not always being the best workers. Konnan had the look (well, mostly the physique) and worked big programs with Cien Caras and Perro Aguayo. He sucked, but it wasn't difficult for him to do crowd pleasing spots. I guess the equivalent would have been Sid if he'd been successful in '91 and '92. Also, he was a Pena creation as far as I'm aware and Pena had his finger on the pulse at the time. Most of what he touched turned to gold. The Vampiro stuff is so bad I don't bother watching it, but I assume it was his look and possibly his size.

Instead of matwork or confusing trios matches or a lack of psychology I thought I'd share some of the things I find frustrating about lucha in order to sympathise with newer viewers. However, for each complaint I'll try to offer a flipside. 1) The lack of footage. There's nothing more frustrating as a lucha fan than looking up old title match results or luchas de apuestas results and realising how much stuff is missing. Not all of it made tape obviously, but reading old lucha mags or listening to folks talk about the matches they saw can drive you nuts at times. The flipside to this is that not a lot of people have combed through the lucha that does exist. With most other styles you have a certain number of folks who've seen everything and whose recommendations form a large part of what's considered must watch stuff, but with lucha you have to do a lot of the searching by yourself. It's like of like digging through the crates in a record store. No matter how much you've watched, you never know when you're going to find some sort of hidden gem. And just skimming through match lists isn't enough. You may look for the same names to pop up, but it only takes one or two guys to have a good trios match. 2) The lack of continuity One really frustrating thing about lucha is that it's not really booked from week to week like a wrestling television show. It's changed over the years, but the TV is still more or less a filmed houseshow. They'll run a program for a couple of weeks and drop it, they'll tease a blow off match that never happens, guys will get really good then suddenly disappear and not a lot of feuds or angles get strung together from week to week. The flipside to this is that the wrestling content is higher, I suppose, since the focus is more on showing some matches than furthering an angle or storyline. 3) The storylines don't make sense Perhaps they would if I spoke Spanish, but then some lucha fans speak Spanish and it doesn't appear to help. I still don't understand the Santo heel turn properly and I'm not sure anybody has ever figured it out. The best you can really hope for is that there's a series of heated trios leading into a singles match. Is there a flipside to this? I suppose the answer is that the in-ring storytelling is strong when the program is given a proper build-up to the wager match. 4) Denying us the dream matches This used to be more of a problem in the past but even today we don't get some of the match-ups we want like Black Terry vs. Negro Navarro. What this means is that for a lot of the singles match-ups you'd like to see, you're lucky if they've wrestled a few trios exchanges in what amounts to a couple of minutes of interaction. I guess the flipside is that when you go get a dream match-up it's something to savour. A lot of those flipsides seem weak. Sorry.

Virus vs. Guerrero Maya Jr., CMLL World Super Lightweight Championship, 7/6/11 This was a great match. It was almost assuredly the Match of the Year for 2011 and hasn't been topped since. The early part of the match was a clinic from Virus. There's plenty of matwork where you get a more even contribution from both participants, be it Navarro and Solar, Casas and Panther or even Virus and Valiente, but in terms of carrying a guy this had as much rhythm as any of those match-ups and was a testament to what a great worker Virus has been for the past fifteen years or so. He spent most of the first fall circling Maya, applying one hold while all the while thinking two or three holds ahead. At one point he clung to Maya's back like a parasite trying to worm its way into a submission opening. When nothing came of it, he tried a different route, probing and circling and all the while waiting... Recently, there was some criticism on this site that lucha matwork rarely plays into the finish. I'd argue that you're much more likely to see a submission finish in a lucha match than the NWA style it was patterned after; but in this match, after a cool looking segment where Maya had to bridge his way out of a head scissors, sure enough they took to the ropes. Now the argument goes that this usually leads to one guy missing a move and the other guy scoring either an instant tap-out or flash pin. And to be fair, it's true that this happens a lot in the most uninspiring of lucha. But let's take a look at this match: instead of Maya scoring a flash pin from taking it to the ropes, Virus went in for the kill. And what a kill. When I said he was waiting, it was like a shark waiting for the right time to strike. Objectively speaking, I don't see how anyone can say that Virus didn't set that finish up. And when people say the grappling wasn't as good as the IWRG style, that may be true but you don't see the same psychology in those matches. The second half of the match was an offensive showcase for Guerrero Maya Jr. I haven't seen much of Maya so I don't know how good he really is, but it's difficult to imagine that he's the former Multifacético. What really made this match was how great the tercera caída was. Maya reminded me of 1984 Atlantis in his second fall comeback, but in the third caida he took it up a notch with all sorts of nasty modern offence. The third caida was a really modern CMLL fall, but these can be exciting with the right rhythm and plenty of cool spots. The difference between this and so many other matches like it is that they got the timing right on every single spot. From the dropkick from behind to the senton to the outside to the armdrag takedowns, the match kept building and building; and for the first time since probably Sombra's match against Ephesto I found myself actively rooting for a technico to win. You can't beat that sort of drama in a wrestling match and that's why they haven't been topped since last summer. Probably the Match of the Decade thus far.

TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #43 -- The Undertaker This was better than I expected. I hadn't seen the original Undertaker schtick in years and was expecting it to suck, but Tito Santana trying to kill a zombie was pretty exciting. This was an awfully big win for Tito at this point, possibly to get him over as a draw in front of a Spanish speaking audience? The finish took forever, though, as Undertaker fluffed around wrapping him up in a body bag. Then Tito hit two of the worst looking piledrivers you'll ever see. Match was fun, but I wouldn't bother with the finish. TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #44 -- Jesse "the Body" Ventura This was much better than I expected. I've always had this lingering memory of Jesse as one of the worst workers I've seen, but he wasn't that bad. He wasn't good, but he wasn't criminally bad. His matches with Tito couldn't been a whole lot better, but you could say that about 90% of Tito's matches. The Toronto bout is better than the Boston match. It gets cut off at the legs just as it's getting good, but it's a fun bout. TITO SANTANA VS. THE WORLD #45 -- Doink the Clown This was pretty much what you'd expect from a Doink/Tito match. They didn't go out of their way to do anything special and therefore it's not one of those Hennig/Jannetty type Doink matches.

I doubt it will have the same effect that it had on PRIDE. DSE lost Fuji TV. NOAH doesn't have anything to lose.

It's one of the matches I use to try to convince people of how great Satanico was. Now I can tell them it's Loss' 4th best match for 1993. I thought the primer was light on trios matches so I added Los Cadetes del Espacio vs. La Ola Lila.

I thought the Santo tag was significantly better than Casas/Panther. I actually liked the Chico Che/Terry hair match better than Casas/Panther.

Blue Panther vs. Negro Casas, hair vs hair, CMLL 3/2/12 This was the match that pretty much everyone expected it would be. I won't go into too much detail about it as I assume everyone's seen it by now, but I'll share a few thoughts: There wasn't any blood and it wasn't a hair match. You're not going to see blood at Arena Mexico, but it's still worth mentioning that it wasn't a hair match. The workers lost their hair but that was about all it had in common with classic lucha. It was a tightly worked affair with a lot of holds applied, and the tercera caida was notable for the lack of big moves and nearfalls that you usually see in a hair match. In other words, there was a hell of a lot more wrestling. The upside of all that wrestling was that the match had a ton of psychology; the downside was that it was short on storytelling. People can always come up with a story if they want to, that's a trait of any match that people like, but I don't think this match had the level of selling that you'd expect from a performer like Negro Casas and the tercera caida wasn't dramatic enough to compare it with a Sangre Chicana hair match or a Pirata Morgan hair match. They made up for that by having a keen contest, but it was a different sort of match. The best parts were similar to their lightning match and involved plenty of invention and skill, but I was disappointed in the tercera caida which I thought dragged and was more suited to a title match than a brawl. The match was geared more towards a technical brawl than biting each other's foreheads and spraying blood everywhere, but it slowed down in the final fall and there wasn't the same level of intensity. It didn't stop me from appreciating what an excellent match it was, but I watched it three times and it never got any better. I did think it was a better match than they could've had in their primes, since their collective age and experience has played such a big part in it being a maestros feud and Panther was never that great at apuestas matches, but at the same time I thought it exposed some of the weaknesses in Panther's work since he unmasked. No matter how hard he tries, he's just not that expressive. To really excel at these matches you have to be charismatic. The deranged old man act and the biting through the boot bit are fine but not enough to carry a match. I liked the Fujiwara armbar in the opening fall, though it seemed to me that they blew the spot later in the match. But again, it wasn't enough. Not to make this a truly great match. I actually liked the Black Terry/Chico Che hair match more than this as I thought Terry outperformed both Casas and Panther. The wrestling might have been better here, but I thought Terry captured what a hair match is all about. Still, Casas/Panther, it's stupid to complain. Sticking these two together has been great and dream match-ups like this are something you rarely ever see in lucha. Therefore, it'll be in the reckoning come Match of the Year time.

Added Mascarita Sagrada vs Espectrito I and Rey Misterio Jr. vs Psicosis to flesh out AAA a bit more. The whole thing probably needs an edit and rethink, but maybe some other people can chime in.

I need to include a couple more AAA matches, but my favourite match from that era is the Satanico/Morgan hair match and I don't think it's representative of that era. The rest of the primer wasn't easy. I tried to include matches which I thought were significant for one reason or another. Negro Navarro vs. El Dandy, IWRG 11/18/01 El Hijo Del Santo vs. Perro Aguayo Jr, CMLL 8/13/04 Blue Panther/Shu El Guerrero vs. Black Terry/Villano III, 2004 Mistico vs. El Averno, CMLL 1/30/05 El Texano, Negro Navarro & El Signo vs. Super Astro, Ultraman & Solar, IWRG, 02/10/05 Mistico vs. Ultimo Guerrero, CMLL 2/25/05 Negro Navarro/Villano 4/Villano 5 vs. Dos Caras Jr./Heavy Metal/Solar 1, AULL 11/2/06 Black Terry/Negro Navarro vs. Solar/Mano Negra, Lucha Libre VIP 3/10/07 Mistico vs. Dr. Wagner, 07/27/07 Blue Panther vs. Villano V, 09/19/08 Black Terry/Cerebro Negro/ Dr. Cerebro vs. Negro Navarro/Trauma I/Trauma II, IWRG 4/23/09 Zatura vs. Trauma II, 6/18/09 Black Terry, Dr. Cerebro y Chico Che vs. Gringo Loco, El Hijo del Diablo y Avisman, 3/14/10 Virus vs. Guerrero Maya Jr, CMLL 6/7/11 Negro Casas vs. Blue Panther, 3/2/12

He's talking about that '93 tag, which is awful.

I would break it down into eras: The early to mid-80s where very little footage exists but the matches we do have suggest Mexico was one of the best territories of the 80s. The 1989-92 CMLL television run that is the first set of largely complete TV we have and features many of the great workers in their primes. AAA's hot run from '93-95, which is the equivalent of when WCW outdrew the WWF, I guess. CMLL's 1997 run, which is arguably the greatest year of lucha we have on tape and possibly the most stacked roster. Modern CMLL from 2001 onwards (just to be fair) and the maestro period of 2000 onwards where the older workers began providing an alternative to the modern style. This would be my primer: Ray Mendoza vs. Tatsumi Fujinami, El Toreo, 8/13/78 Dos Caras vs. Dr. Wagner, All Japan, 3/2/80 MS-1 vs. Sangre Chicana, 9/23/83 Los Cadetes del Espacio vs. La Ola Lila, UWA 2/84 Gran Cochisse vs. Satanico, 9/14/84 Sangre Chicana vs. Perro Aguayo, 2/28/86 Espanto Jr. vs. El Hijo Del Santo, 8/31/86 El Satanico/El Dandy/Emilio Charles Jr. vs. Atlantis/Javier Cruz/Angel Azteca, 5/13/90 Angel Azteca vs. El Dandy, 6/1/90 Atlantis vs Blue Panther, 8/9/91 Los Infernales (MS-1, Satanico & Pirata Morgan) vs. Los Brazos, 11/22/91 Trio Fantasia v. Thundercats, (Masks vs. Masks), 12/8/91 Espanto Jr. vs. El Hijo Del Santo, 5/14/92 El Dandy vs Negro Casas, 7/3/92 Love Machine, Eddy Guerrero & Hijo Del Santo vs. Fuerza Guerrera, Fishman & Blue Panther, AAA - 8/1/93 Mascarita Sagrada vs Espectrito, AAA 3/12/94 El Hijo Del Santo/Octagon/Rey Misterio Jr./La Parka vs. Blue Panther/Fuerza Guerrera/Pentagon/Psicosis, AAA Triplemania III-B, 6/18/95 Rey Misterio Jr. vs Psicosis, AAA 9/22/95 Cicloncito Ramirez vs Damiancito El Guerrero, 1/7/97 Atlantis/Brazo De Oro/El Dandy/Mascara Magica/La Fiera/Negro Casas/Shocker/Ultimo Dragon vs Black Warrior/Dr. Wagner Jr./El Hijo Del Santo/Felino/Kevin Quinn/Satanico/Scorpio Jr./Silver King, 4/18/97 El Hijo Del Santo vs. Negro Casas, 9/19/97 Bracito De Oro/Cicloncito Ramirez/Mascarita Magica vs. Damiancito El Guerrero/El Fierito/Pierrothito, 10/3/97 Blue Panther vs. Atlantis, La Copa Victoria final, CMLL 12/5/97 Atlantis vs. Villano III, 3/17/00 I'm a bit tired and the 00s on is something I need to think about a bit more.

Yeah, I agree with this 100%. There was an expectation that the WWF could make him a star, though, as they'd done with Austin and Foley.

I was a fan of Jericho's schtick in 1998 and willed him to have success in the early part of his WWF career, but his jump ended up being a failure on so many levels that I soon lost interest. His early work is awful, especially his runs in CMLL. To me he always had problems with offence. It wouldn't surprise me if his cruiserweight stuff was his best work or possibly when he finally learnt to work WWF style. But yeah, not a fan.

If it were a thread for people who are trying to get into lucha I'd be all for it, but that's a very different set of match recommendations than lucha for people who don't like it.

I only have strong memories of the 5th Anniversary show. I remember like the Cutie Suzuki/Scorpion and Devil Masami/Yamazaki matches. Both matches are on youtube (in fact, I think the entire show is on youtube.) Perhaps FLIK or someone can watch it. The only JWP match I've seen that hit four stars from '86-92 was the Devil Masami/Kandori brawl from '87, so if you include any JWP it's not for the match quality but a look at what another women's promotion was doing. Some of the factions are interesting.

I watched every JWP commercial tape from 1990 and 91 that was available from Champion.

The one panel I saw where everyone seemed to get along was JR, Foley, Patterson, Hayes and Taz.