ohtani's jacket

It seems to me that a CMLL/AAA split would be more likely if Vince were to die. The circumstances that led to Chigusa starting GAEA would be like Steve Austin starting up his own promotion. I don't see that happening in the US market. It's easier to start your own promotion in Japan because everything is run out of Tokyo.

A better question is why in the hell wouldn't Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson hate each other? That's a Sam and Dave situation if ever I heard one.

Los Infernales (El Satanico/MS-1/Masakre) vs. Rayo de Jalisco Jr./La Fiera/Tony Salazar, CMLL 1987 When I say "Classic Infernales," I really mean older footage of the Infernales in action, since Pirata Morgan had already left the group by this stage. Nevertheless, the Masakre version was a good team in its own right, and this was an awesome Southern style tag match. The Infernales were fantastic as Southern heels -- backing into the ref when the technicos wanted to duke it out, attacking from behind when the technicos turned their backs. Each of the technicos took turns playing FIP, and there were long stretches of two-on-one brawling, but not once did I feel like I was watching a sluggish opening fall. A lot of modern brawling relies on video editing to prevent it from being static, but the Infernales had an endless array of shit they could do to to keep a match ticking over. La Fiera was the best of the technicos here, but he was carrying a leg injury into the match. This was back when Fiera used a lot of high kicks. Needless to say, the Infernales saw an opportunity. The Little Master was in his element here. Some of the holds he put Fiera in, and Fiera's selling, made this worth including on a Best of the 80s set. After a fall and a half of rudo treatment, Rayo snapped into a babyface pose. There was a tremendous pop for Rayo, but unfortunately most of the workers were scattered at ringside. Rayo had to go to the floor to dish out his haymakers, which kind of killed things for the audience on the far side, but Satanico flung himself head first into the ring post for those of us at home. Back in the ring, the technicos cut loose. The Infernales did the most awesome punch drunk selling off whips into the turnbuckle. The contest was on to see who could collapse in the most entertaining fashion, and MS-1 may have been the winner. His unicycle act was incredible. Exaggerated bumps were a big part of 80s lucha, but looked awful when technicos did them. Kurt Brown told a great story the other day about how Dusty Rhodes flipped out the first time he saw Pimpinela Escarlata live. I think Big Dust would've lost it over most lucha if he'd had the opportunity to see it more often. If you think Arn Anderson was good at comic stooge bumping, the Infernales made an art form out of it. Fiera's offence was hot on the heels of The Karate Kid, Part II and straight-to-video kickboxing movies, but fuck me, you HAVE TO SEE his KO of Masakre on the outside. Really good match. Could've used a third fall, but it had a nice mano a mano finish between the captains MS-1 and Rayo de Jalisco Jr. I'd put it on the level of the trios leading into Satanico/Dandy, Dandy/Casas and Santo/Casas despite Rayo vs. MS-1 being a lesser feud.

Misawa and Kawada, though from what I hear that was from much from Misawa's side.

Why are Ultimo Guerrero & Rey Bucanero on the list when realistically Villano III stands no chance of being voted in?

Lizmark vs. Jerry Estrada, Mexican National Light Heavyweight Championship, AAA 6/18/93 I hate Jerry Estrada. He's probably my least favourite lucha worker of all time. To me he's like the anti-Sangre Chicana. Sangre Chicana was out of his mind the entire time and took it to surreal heights. Jerry Estrada was out of his mind the entire time and was a train wreck. But like him or not, this was one hell of a match. By far the most coherent performance I've seen from Jerry Estrada and also the best Lizmark performance to ever make tape. It may even be the 1993 MOTY, and if it's not the greatest AAA match ever, it's certainly in the top five. Lizmark was brilliant in the first fall. This wasn't CMLL style, Satanico vs. Gran Cochisse or El Dandy vs. Javier Llanes matwork, so don't expect anything mindblowing like that. It wasn't the holds or matwork that impressed me here, but the psychology. Anybody who thinks lucha has no psychology, hasn't watched the right matches. Estrada played the challenger role to perfection. He tried everything he could think of to gain an advantage, but the maestro was on top of his game. Every time there was a break in the action, Estrada would stare Lizmark down. He couldn't believe how well Lizmark was wrestling. He tried changing tack, tried changing the point of attack, but Lizmark had a counter for everything. They used to call Lizmark The Little Blue Genius, and if you watch this match you'll get some idea why. He wrestled most of this fall from a defensive stance, standing ever so slightly on the back foot. This meant that whenever Jerry charged at him, he could use Estrada's own momentum to counter his offence. Jerry, as retador, was just a little bit guilty of forcing the action, and Lizmark was able to tie him in circles. The second fall was your typical two minute fall where the challenger strikes back straight away. Jerry was bumped for this fall and they started off by shoulder charging each other. Lizmark wouldn't back down from the challenge and sent Estrada to the floor with a flying headscissors. I haven't seen any of the trios leading into this match, but I can only imagine there was tension between the two. After dominating the first fall, Lizmark let his guard down and was suckered into working a rudo fall. Jerry leveled the score, and from the way he kicked the bottom turnbuckle, it was clear that he wasn't finished yet. The third fall was the type of fall that separates the great matches from everything else. It's not often that a third fall does justice to a match, so you have to sit back and admire this one. Estrada threw away the "retador" tag here and began working rudo, which I suppose is an effective way to deal with a counter wrestler like Lizmark. He can't counter much of anything if he's getting the shit beaten out of him. Lizmark tried some counter-offence and ended up sailing through the ropes, which set-up a tope from Estrada. It wasn't the fastest or nastiest looking tope I've seen, but if you've seen a better set-up than that from the current lot of workers, you are lying to yourself. The last few minutes with full of drama as Lizmark hung onto his title reign by a thread. They worked some great nearfall submissions, where Lizmark had to power his way out of the holds with all of his upper body strength. One of the ways to judge a match is by its arc, i.e. how far they've come since the opening bell. Lizmark was so smooth, so assured in the opening fall, but now he was scrambling. Time and time again, he avoided Estrada's Media Cerrajera hold, countering with a high risk gamble. He was sucking wind on a bridged suplex and at other times could barely pin the man. It's not every day of the week where you see a match where they lay it on the line like this. I won't spoil the finish. The tension was palpable and neither of them had anything left. It could've gone either way and the post-match was tremendous. The selling was fantastic the whole way through and perhaps my disdain for Estrada stems from his hair matches. If you'd like a copy of this, leave a message somewhere.

Enrique Vera vs. Dos Caras, UWA World Heavyweight Championship, 2/26/84 (slightly clipped) Dos Caras is a great wrestler. One of the finest to ever step foot inside a squared circle. But this isn't a great example of his work. The difference between Caras and workers like Lizmark and Solar is that Caras was a heavyweight, which meant he had to work from a dominant or standing position. Guys like Lizmark could zip around, but Caras had to maintain the illusion that he was difficult to take off his feet. He also worked the 70s NWA heavyweight style -- a style UWA honoured until the very end. This was similar to the 1992 heavyweight match between Caras and Canek; a slow building match, where matwork gives way to increasingly dangerous moves. There's a certain charm in watching wrestling where a carefully executed piledriver can put people out of commission, but there wasn't enough artistry here. It started off with the usual armlocks and grapevines, holds that peg your opponent to the mat and let him know he's not going anywhere; but the thing about Caras is that once he got into his mat sequences, there's never been a worker in the history of lucha libre with as many mindblowing holds as Dos Caras. He worked a few holds here -- holds that would blow away most workers' repertoire -- but as great as they were, they just seemed like standard fare from a guy as legendary as Dos Caras. It wasn't clear from watching this whether Vera was ever a good worker. He made his debut in '68 and was still quite young here (35), but his knees were taped and he didn't appear to be moving well. He wasn't as clumsy as Alfonso Dantés in his All Japan match against Mil Máscaras, but he was pretty ordinary. He looked as though he was cut from the same cloth as Ray Mendonza; big, strong, wearing wrestling tights and a pair of boots, but showed almost nothing on the mat, which is unusual for a Diablo Velazco student. He may have been a brawler turned technical wrestler, or perhaps he was better in the 70s, but in any event he was a disappointment. The other problem with the match is that it was technico vs. technico, which oftentimes is too polite. Caras was somewhat aggressive with the title in his sights, but for the most part this was pretty spineless. I do, however, recommend the Caras brothers' fight against Wahoo McDaniel and Frank Hill from 1979, which is anything but spineless! It's on youtube. Check out the chops.

There was never really an AJW split. The Matsunagas went bankrupt, couldn't pay the workers anymore and there was an exodus.

I caught WWE while switching channels the other day and what the fuck is with Hardy's facepaint?

I gotta take back what I said about Heenan awhile back. I've been watching a ton of WCW with the Smarkschoice poll running down and he really wasn't that bad, at least in his first year with WCW.

Negro Navarro, Trauma I, Trauma II vs. Black Terry, Cerebro Negro, Fantasma de la Opera, 7/9/09 I dunno what's been going on with IWRG lately, but there hasn't been any TV available and this is the first match I've seen in almost a month. Things got off to the worst start possible really, when Navarro called Fuerza out on the house mic. This led to some group conference over an angle I haven't been following, while the match time became shorter and shorter. Fuerza said his piece, the Cerebros + Fantasma got the jump on Dinasta Navarro, and we were away! Talk about your false starts -- the ref and the timekeeper ought to have called them back because this was the worst caida I've seen all year and that's covering an awful lot of territory. At this point, I was kinda worried that this angle -- whatever the fuck it is -- had ruined the only promotion I give a damn about these days, but something SENSATIONAL happened in the second fall. It happened towards the end of the fall when Navarro said "fuck this shit" and started throwing punches. The mark of a great worker is whether he can stem the tide, and this match was going nowhere until Navarro brought it to life. Terry's selling was fantastic -- everything you'd want from a 56 year-old guy selling like a 56 year-old guy, and the Traumas got stuck in with knee strikes. The refs tried lecturing the Navarros over their tactics, but Negro was so pissed that he had one of them flinching in the corner. We don't usually think of Navarro as a great actor, but he looked like every member of the Dirty Dozen rolled into one. Terry's blood pressure was soaring in the third fall and he had a chippy little exchange with Trauma II that left IWRG with no alternative but to book them in a singles match. Trauma I finally looked convincing in his role as the one who got all of Negro's size, and while strikes and submission attempts aren't to everyone's taste, but this was manly. The only way it could've been more manly is if Terry had told Trauma II to keep his lovin' brother happy. Watching this again, it wasn't quite as exciting as I'm making out, but it's pulp drama. The kind of rag you read once and throw away. But mark my words, one of these days Terry and Navarro are gonna have the showdown to end all showdowns.

Gotta say I'm enjoying the reviews Loss. Panther/Love Machine matches are never good outside of some of their trios work. Takada was a crap shoot style worker and UWFi was the worst of the shoot style promotions. Occasionally, Takada had a good match with one of the natives further down the totem pole, just like Yamazaki occasionally delivered in the midcard, but RINGS and early PWFG smoke it for quality.

I read the whole Matsunaga obit. It was OK as an overview, but Dave tends to generalise a lot. I appreciate that he took the time to write the obit (since I hadn't even heard about it in the Japanese news), but it read more like the obit he wrote for the company when they closed. Would've liked a bit more insight into the Matsunagas themselves, but I guess Dave's Japan connections aren't that strong anymore with the weekly magazines folding. There's more he could've written about the way they ran the company, etc. He was way off the mark about a lot of stuff, especially the "success" of Big Egg Universe, the old line that Sato wasn't a good worker, the lesbian references, the workers post-retirement profiles, the stuff he wrote about Kyoko Hamaguchi and so on.

Doesn't really fit your criteria, since he was a good worker, but it has to be Super Porky. His hair match with fellow slob Asesino Negro was mindblowing.

I guess that's an apt comparison, though Jaguar may be more famous now than she was in her prime. Dave always forgets that Jumbo had that period where he was the biggest pro-wrestling star in Japan.

True. I'm not sure what Dave is talking about really, since Bull was still heavily protected during the 90s boom and was still one of the top stars. Almost every AJW show in that era began with Bull addressing the crowd. It was pretty clear that she was still a top dog. Smart girl really. Got out of the business at exactly the right time and never looked back. If there was ever an MVP in wrestling, it was Bull Nakano from Chigusa's retirement in '89 up until the first Dream Slam in '93.

Matsunaga died? Dave's sentence should read "didn't have the TV to set business records."

I've always wondered if Japanese commentators were really good, or what. Not speaking the language and all, I can't tell. Which promotion would you say has the best commentators in Japan? If my Japanese ever improves, I'll let you know. The impression I have is that a lot of them were NTV, Asahi and Fuji TV guys who didn't exactly have the authority of a Kent Walton. Fukuzawa screamed play-by-play and didn't provide much in the way of psych. John's colleague would know better than me, I still think about all the Japanese I hear in English. Maybe it sounds better to a native speaker, but the stuff Fukuzawa says reminds me of Japanese soccer commentary, where they scream as soon as the ball is anywhere near the goal area.

El Hijo del Santo vs. Blue Panther, University of Essex, 10/8/04 Y'know when see a band play and the second night is better than the first? Didn't happen here. This was a mess of the highest order. The ring set-up meant that they couldn't dive into the crowd, so they threw in an "over the top" rule as a means of beating your opponent. In the first match, Santo tossed in a dive whenever he needed a highspot; here they tried eliminating each other. That's a fucked situation. If you can't dive, and you can't use the ropes, you grapple, right? When Santo was asked what London could expect from Lucha Libre, he answered: "You will see a contact sport but a great part of it is close to art. This is because in lucha we wrestle close to the canvas where you will see a lot of movement with ‘castigos’, holds and locks, it becomes harmonious and this beautiful skill converts into art." Whoever came up with the "Battle Royal" idea didn't have much faith in the art of lucha libre. Then again, neither did the workers. Santo dominated this match for long stretches at a time, but it wasn't what you'd call lucha matwork. He worked from dominant clinch positions, such as a front headlock or waistlock. Now I like matwork, but those are stationary holds. The longer you keep them applied, the longer you're stalling for time. There wasn't a lot of movement from Panther and not a lot of countering. Not once was there a flurry of holds, a rolling bump, or even a proper submission. I realise they had a turd for a ring, but these guys are supposed to be maestros: two of the greatest mat workers of all time. If this was your first time to see Panther, you'd have to wonder what the fuss was all about. Without the two-out-of-three falls format, they couldn't find a rhythm. Santo kept going back to clinch positions and there wasn't a whole lot going on. Far be it from me to suggest the Emperor had no clothes, but it certainly seemed that way. The other day I watched a UWA trios where Casas was running around like madman, pulling some guy's hat over his eyes. Santo was so pissed that he started brawling with Casas on the outside, and while all this was happening, Solar was leading a green as shit Dr. Wagner Jr. through classic lucha exchanges. Yeah, they were working in the trios format, and yeah, they had the benefit of shortened falls, but this UK match was dead. They didn't vary the pace enough and there was no energy to the performance. The final stanza was a disaster. Their timing was awful and they blew an extraordinary number of spots. Hell, even the spots they made they had no business doing in a third caida. I can't understand what Santo and Panther were thinking here. These appearances were organised by a University, an Arts Council and the Mexican Embassy, which ought to have given them a license to wrestle any way they liked. This was a chance for Panther and Santo to show us lucha the way it ought to be; the way it's meant to be. The way they're always telling us it should be wrestled. Forget these matches ever happened. If you want the real thing, I recommend their matches from Monterrey.

Are you voting in the Smarkschoice poll, Loss?

Tony and Jesse were brilliant together. In fact, Tony smoked Jim Ross in the early 90s. I dunno what happened to Heenan in WCW. It was as if he stopped being funny. I don't think it helped that he came on board at the same time that Hogan and Flair were feuding, but says a lot about his chemistry with Monsoon that his whole shtick fell on its ass in WCW. I'll tell you who's a shitty commentator and that's Akira Fukuzawa. Think clueless colour guy.

Atlantis vs. El Faraón, Mexican National Middleweight Championship, 3/22/85 A villainous El Faraón! I hadn't seen Faraón's rudo work, in fact I've never really seen him in his prime. He was a hell of a vet during the Dandy run, but this was another echelon altogether. I've always put a great deal of importance in how a guy moves in the ring, since I don't think it's something that can be taught. You can change the way you bump and sell, but movement can only really be aided by the right body position. Faraón was tall for a luchador (5'11") and his shoulders were slightly hunched, which made him seem slower than he really was. Watch how he trapped Atlantis in this match. Atlantis couldn't match Faraón for strength, so his aim was to avoid the lock-up. He was probably expecting Faraón to have a clumbersome first step, but Faraón swooped in, using the full length of his reach to overpower Atlantis to the mat. Once they were on the mat, they did a fall's worth of wristlock work. Faraón showed great agility with his reversals, but technique is for the birds. If Faraón had continued to dominate the matwork like he was capable of, it would've made a mockery of Atlantis' standing as middleweight champ, so little by little he gave away the ascendency. He did this by gradually selling pain, until he had an excuse to opt out of the matwork. Most workers ditch matwork in favour of the ropes, but Faraón didn't just settle for a pin fall. No sir. He used the ropes to dismantle his opponent. Atlantis became his whipping boy, literally. It was fantastic stuff from the rudo, because it was rough-housing, and the crowd knew it. He tread the thinnest of lines between legitimate strength and unsportsmanlike behaviour, which would've been perfect if Atlantis hadn't sold with all the enthusiasm of an amateur. His theatrics didn't hurt the match; Faraón had provided too excellent a platform for that. Instead, it was one of those WTF moments that leave you thinking, "shit, he was only 22!" Actually, Atlantis' age played something of a part in this match. Faraón won the first fall by submission, but held on for longer than necessary to rub in his gamesmanship. Faraón knew he was on to a good thing and began measuring Atlantis with short arm lariats. A few of them slipped too high and the crowd ripped into him for ungentlemanly conduct. Like a rudo great, Faraón protested that he was being villified. The ref started to issue a stern warning, but Atlantis was pissed. He tore into Faraón with an armbreaker, which Faraón sold in Murdochian fashion. It was impetuous stuff from the technico and hardly becoming of a middleweight champion. Faraón made sure the heat stayed on him, however, by rolling under the ropes. There's no time outs in wrestling! Jim Ross tells us that ad nauseam. Faraón was more brazen with his lariats after that and his selling was brilliant. Watch how he sells Atlantis' backbreaker. The cry he lets out gives you a full sense of how much weight Atlantis lifted. This seemed to exorcise the bloodlust from the technico, and once he got his revenged, he settled into more of a composed game plan. He tried to get the jump on Faraón in the third fall by flying at him with topes. This was a clever ploy from Atlantis, who realised he had to do something to negate Faraón's reach, but the rudo was too quick footed and soon he was on the offensive. Faraón began picking his opponent apart piece by piece, which is not that common a style for a luchador. It's not often that they work as methodically as Faraón did here. The problem was that Atlantis was still too green to edge ahead with more dazzling technique. Relatively speaking, he was the same as a 22 year-old middleweight in a modern lucha match. There was no way he was the "best in his class" at this point in time; he was a popular young technico holding one of the middleweight straps as part of his push. To "beat" an opponent like Faraón, you have to make it seem like you can actually beat him. Faraón jobbed for Atlantis here. It was plain to see and for that reason the third fall was flatter than I would've liked. There was some king sized selling from Faraón, who took each dive like the walls of Jerusalem were falling down, but the finish was a surprise rana, which was straight out of the playbook in 1985. I loved the Flair-like selling at the end, though, with Faraón scrambling and falling on his ass. More Faraón, please!

El Hijo del Santo vs. Blue Panther, Colchester Arts Centre, 10/06/04 This was first of two matches Panther and Santo worked in England, as part of an exhibition of prints by Mexican artist Demián Flores Cortés. 'Flores Cortés' work, which is inspired by Mexican pop culture and in particular lucha libre, was described by the Gallery Director as "full of the raw energy, movement, and the staged drama of the wrestling world." Santo and Panther were invited to "animate" that work and did so in front of a packed Arts Centre. Can you imagine Panther and Santo coming to your town? Me neither, but I've gotta tell you -- it wasn't that good. I won't beat around the bush here. I was expecting them to work like maestros, and in a way, I was hoping for something to remember Panther by. He doesn't have a lot of great singles matches and this had to be one. But instead of them working like maestros, we got a "lucha" exhibition with Panther working rudo. Lucha is never really lucha when you take it out of Mexico, for the simple reason that the fans view it as a work. We've all seen Mexican fans who were caught up the drama and allowed themselves to be worked; women who chastised rudos, men who were escorted back to their seats, rudos who were so hated they had to be out of their mind to incite the fans further. What ends up happening in a match like this is that Panther becomes the worker "in the corner of the bad guy" and Santo becomes the worker "in the corner of the good guys." The crowd cheer the technico on, urging him to take over and run through his offence. Usually, but the crowd know it's a work and keep on with their rallying cries. It's difficult to take heat away from the technico, because there's never any sense of the laws that govern lucha libre. Never any sense that the rudo has caused an indignity and that the technico must defend his honour. The rudo winds up being the token villain "in the corner of the bad guy." No one gets worked and no one gets suckered in. I have no interest in a match where the workers chase pops, which is why I would've preferred a straight technico contest. The only way to get around the "rudo problem" on an exhibition match is to go the London/Delaware route and work in a charismatic manner. There's no point trying to fool a crowd who know it's a work, so you might as well be self-referential and have some fun with it. The catch with that is that Panther's not a charismatic worker. The only charisma he's ever had is that he's Blue Panther, which to us means he's a maestro. His approach here was to work stiffer than usual, but the ref didn't admonish him enough, and Santo showed him up by throwing better punches. The end result was that he played second fiddle. That's surprising for pros like Santo and Panther, but a lot of these issues stemmed from the match structure. For some reason, they chose to work the match as a single fall over 30 minutes, which surprised me, since anyone who's ever watched All Star Promotions would be familar with a rounds system and a strong heel/face dynamic for that matter. They also tried working the same shifts in momentum that you'd find in a two-out-of-three falls match, but without the overlapping falls it's difficult to create the same sense of rhythm. The ring was too small to use the ropes like they usually would, so Santo tended to throw in a signature dive when he might usually do a rope exchange, and while it was cool to see him hit topes and planchas in such a confined area, they occurred at the most inopportune times. This did give us the chance to see the "real" Santo, however. I call this Santo the "UWA" Santo, because aside from the summer of '97 he never wrestled this way on TV, which makes me wonder why people care about him making TV appearances at all. His matwork was nothing you haven't seen before, but as usual it was his execution that stood out. Sims describes lucha as "the age-old fight between good and evil", where "good tries to overcome evil by superior work rate and abilities", and since there can be no greater technico than the son of the most famous luchador, this has always been an area where Santo Jr. has strived for perfection. In that sense, the hero's welcome he received in Colchester was fitting; it's just a shame that they forgot about the rudo's role in all this. Watch the "second caida" that wasn't and you'll see what I mean. The second caida is where the rudo begins to pummel the technico. If the technico's smart, he sells it like he's down and out. If the rudo's smart, he plots his own demise through pride or through avarice. Santo and Panther botched a surfboard and Panther laid in a stiff kick that was more of a slap on the thigh. This led to a brawling that was about as effective as the last time I watched CMLL television. If I were to sum up my disappointment with the match, I'd say it lacked the "raw energy, movement, and the staged drama of the wrestling world." It seemed like the print version to me. It has to be said that the crowd loved the match. They really did. It was a rare opportunity to see lucha libre workers in the flesh and there was a chant of "Santo! Santo! Santo!" from a kid who couldn't have been older than four or five. It may have come across better live than it did on tape or perhaps I'm living in an ivory tower of Satanico matches and Negro Navarro matwork. If I ever have a kid, I'm taking him to a show before the magic wears off.

Satanico vs. Lizmark, NWA World Middleweight Championship, 4/84 With both these guys retiring on the Luchas 2000 show, I thought I'd pay tribute to two of my all-time favourite workers. This isn't a great match, and to be honest, I wish it had been much better, but it's as close as we'll ever get to the heart of the Lizmark/Satanico rivalry. There's a moment towards the beginning of the match that sets the tone for everything that follows. The ref is giving his instructions to Lizmark and has to call Satanico over to listen. Satanico is as cool as ever, nodding and gesturing that it's fine, but he's somewhat bemused as the ref continues to explain. Suddenly, he gets this glint in his eye and grins at the pair of them. The ref brings them together for a handshake, but Lizmark gets the brush off. That may seem like a minor detail, trivial even, but Lizmark looked foolish and it was a high class insult. Watching that moment, it struck me that no-one could outperform Satanico. There's not too many workers you can say that about, but it's true. He was impossible to outperform. I've seen dozens of Satanico matches and the psychology is always the same. He had a bag of tricks he liked to use; brushing off the handshake was one of them, losing his temper was another. But no matter how many times he did them, it never came across as stage craft. He was this supremely confident, supremely arrogant guy, who was quick to anger and prone to tantrums. A lot of guys have played rudo and played it well, but Satanico was a natural. He was also a fairly demanding worker, who expected guys to work at his level, and nowhere was this more true than in title matches. Steve Sims describes the lucha title match style as "almost always a technical-style match, putting over the championship, where both men wrestle as cleanly as they can to see which is the more deserving of being 'best in his class.'" There's more to it than that, but if you look at the middleweight title histories from this era, you can see that only the most capable of middleweights held the straps. Satanico's credentials as a middleweight champion don't need any introduction, but I think a lot of people are unaware of how good Lizmark truly was. Unfortunately, only two of their matches exist on tape; this one from '84 and a later one from AAA. Neither of them are classics, which doesn't help my cause very much. It could be that they were too good for each other as opponents, or it could simply be that their best matches are lost, but nevertheless this '84 match pits arguably the best rudo worker in Mexico against the best technico worker. The first caida is beautiful, with Satanico wrenching on a side headlock and Lizmark looking for a submission straight away. This was a return match, and either Satanico had done something illegal to win the title in December or he'd been baiting Lizmark in trios, because the technico was unusually aggressive here. They needled each other on the first break and it seemed like there was more to it than the brush off. Satanico lost his cool the way he always does, by being outwrestled and outgrappled. What I love about these temper spots is that Satanico always responds with such authority; this time with a series of throws. He landed a single leg takedown, but was too caught up with swatting away Lizmark's free leg and ended up having the hold reversed. It was one of those cases where the reversal is more painful than the original hold, and as you'd expect, that's how Satanico sold it. Watch the way that Lizmark springs into position. He was such a fluid wrestler in his prime. Just beautiful technique. The armlock reversals to end this exchange are incredible. One of my favourite Satanico tricks is when he'd appeal to the ref for help. Rudos usually wrestle a title match cleanly. They may wrestle aggressively, they may push the boundaries and be cautioned by the ref, but by and large they adhere to the rules. Foul play is rare and disqualifications even rarer. Occasionally they cheat to win, but the goal is to outwrestle the so-called "technico" with technical wrestling, thus proving their superiority. This was particularly true in Satanico's case, since he was a supremely talented wrestler who believed he was a supremely talented wrestler, but whenever he was down on points, he'd start reminding the ref of the rules and the sanctity of a title match. The same rules he didn't want to listen to at the outset. It was always a sign that he was getting his ass kicked and boy was that the case here. Satanico didn't have an answer for Lizmark in this fall. Lizmark wrapped things up with a double underhook suplay, which is about as definitive a throw as it gets. What strikes me as odd about this match is how aggressive Lizmark is in the second fall. Satanico is still feeling the effects of the suplay and doesn't want to lock-up. Lizmark is so pumped up, so aggravated that he launches an all out attack on the head and neck area that not even the crowd are sure about. I can only imagine that Satanico had done something to Lizmark at some point, because it's not the type of behaviour befitting of a technico in a sanctioned title match. It was, however, a sight to behold. Things get even stranger with Lizmark refusing to break and targeting the eye area. Satanico is unable to mount any sort of a comeback and Lizmark ends up piledriving him not once but twice. Just deserts for the diabolical one? It's not a turn of any sort, but it's not exactly premeditated either. And it's tough for the ref to officiate on. The fall ends with a rather weak Satanico counter, where he falls backwards clutching his head. I dunno where that caida came from, because Satanico didn't put up a fight at all. The third fall followed more traditional lines with both guys hanging on for dear life. The highlight of the fall was Satanico charging at Lizmark only for the technico to step aside and send him hurling through the ropes. He crashed into the padding, and by the time he looked up, Lizmark was already halfway through a spectacular Plancha Suicida. No-one has ever done that move better. He was an amazingly flexible guy and you could see that in the way he'd contort his body on the mat. It was sudden death after that, and to be frank, the offence was poor. This was a revancha match that didn't bring with it any revenge and ended in a double pin. Satanico retained the title and had a hell of a sore neck for his efforts, but Lizmark lost his way in the final fall and didn't deserve the win. That's OK in legit sports, but in a worked sport, as lucha libre title matches present themselves, it's pretty average when you compare it with something like Satanico/Gran Cochisse or even Zatura/Trauma II from a few weeks ago. We'll never know whether Satanico vs. Lizmark ever lived up its billing, but there was enough quality here to suggest that they were pound-for-pound the best in this or any other weight class. But can anybody explain the story to me?