Saturday 1 May 2021

Should we be watching more Espectro Jr?

Espectro Jr. v Atlantis (EMLL, 1/4/84)

I feel like Espectro Jr. probably deserves to be talked about a bit more. Even if it's the Satanico/MS-1/Pirata Morgan team that gets the most discussion, the original Infernales were awesome in their own right. I'm not saying Espectro was better than Pirata Morgan, but neither was he some scrub and I'm not sure the upgrade from the former to the latter was as all that huge. Espectro also has one of my favourite masks in lucha history, with the creepy cartoon smile and bugged out eyes. He was pretty great in this. It's mano a mano and Atlantis was probably going to need someone to do the leading at this point in his career, a year into it as he was. His selling was very BIG, almost comical in how he'd flop and flail around the mat. You could tell he was eager to hook the crowd and as a rookie I guess it's hard to blame him for trying so hard to garner sympathy. Espectro wellied him with one of the best uppercuts ever as soon as Atlantis stepped in the ring (which came after a pre-match mugging into the bargain), so I suppose they made it easy to root for a guy in that situation. Atlantis being a touch overeager sort of played into the story as well, as there were a couple moments where he'd mount a brief comeback, look to the crowd for reassurance, and Espectro would blindside him again. I also loved Espectro responding to Atlantis ripping at his mask (Espectro being the one who started that carry on in the first place) by just yanking Atlantis' entire mask off and throwing it into the crowd. Atlantis' tope at the end was a corker and I think Espectro launched himself backwards with such force he ripped a cluster of seats clean out the ground. If that's not the mark of a bullet tope I don't know what is. The lucha libre truly is the most beautiful of all. 

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