Kung Fu starts out by cracking Cruz in the head with a nunchuck, and Cruz starts the bleeding. I have never seen Kung Fu as a rudo before, and his karate offense is really nasty looking. A pair of cool dives, some cool brawling and a ton of blood makes this a nom

Yeah weird to see Kung Fu work like this. He does the super grissly thing of having to move the mask from off his chin so as to drain out the blood pooling under mask. this is also a match that feels to me like a thing thats on the line but just on the plus side of the line. We will have many better Javier Cruz matches. But for now I say this is a yes. I think this is a title match and really not worked at all like a lucha title match.

I got the sense that - bopping Cruz with the nunchuks aside - Kung Fu's karate offense mainly worked here because he had Cruz eating it. Coming out of the Texas set, I am reminded why I like babyface Kabuki so much more than heel Kabuki. Still, Cruz will bleed and eat your sillier offense like a king, and I thought all of Kung Fu's traditional wrestling offense looked really good. Nice neckbreaker after scoring the first fall. This had problems. Primera caida dragged a bit. Love the way Cruz takes being rammed into the turnbuckle, but still got the feeling the fall was lapping itself. Match also had a weird stretch run, where the bloody brawl turns into a battle of roll-ups, and then they end up outside of the ring, and Cruz appears to graze Kung Fu with an Asai Butt Butt, which I'm pretty sure isn't what he was going for. Then they get back into the ring and Kung Fu just turns his back to his opponent to pose for the crowd so Cruz can put him in a cavernaria......yeah, that didn't work for me. Still, pluses outweighed the minuses, and I'll second the nomination.

Javier "El Monarca" Cruz vs. Kung Fu (March 1988)

 

Kung Fu was swinging the chucks like Great Kabuki before the match then just fuckin jackslapped Cruz right at the bell which was fucking awesome. Cruz is juicing from the eye immediately so Kung Fu goes to work on him fiercely while constantly bowing to the fans like a fucking dick. Cruz is pinballing all over the place while bleeding and it makes you really want to see him kick the shit out of Kung Fu. Cruz would finally wake up and he would throw Kung Fu into the ring post face first on the floor and the shit is on now as he rips at Kung Fu's mask which Kung has to raise it up so his blood can flow under it which was so fucking great. Kung fires back though and the psychology shifts from brawling to a battle of rollups which was odd before they go to the floor with some fun dives. The stretch run was fun as well and this is a solid nomination.