The first in a series of very good wrestling matches between two guys made to wrestle each other. This was actually one of the first non-Eddie Guerrero or Rey Mysterio matches from Mexico that I ever watched, and even then, without really having a handle on the style, I could tell it was something special. It was less about the blood and mask-ripping and forehead-biting you normally think of in a mask v hair match. Everything was still worked with an intensity befitting the stakes, though. It had a sense of urgency from the beginning that never really dropped. Casas was at his smug best, celebrating a dropkick like he'd just won the fall and then celebrating ACTUALLY winning the fall like he'd won the World Cup. He threw some of the best punches of his career in this and his right hand was a cannon that always got him out of trouble. He was throwing those shots from a dark place and in general it looked like he was trying to put Santo in the ground. At one point he, from inside the ring, ran Santo across the apron and rammed him into the post with such force that he almost flung himself out the ring in the process. It's little things like that that put him in the GOAT conversation. Some of his bumps off of dropkicks or knee lifts were great as well, just flying across the ring but managing to not make it look like 1989 Mr Perfect. The tercera is as heated as you'd want and even in a match worked mostly clean you aren't the least bit surprised that Casas will try and rip off Santo's mask by the eye holes. Whether it was planned or he just slipped and they ran with it I'm not sure, but Casas leaping to the top rope to hit a dive only to fall off was amazing and very Negro Casas. I'm pretty sure he did it against Ultimo Dragon once as well, that ego of his driving him to show that he's every bit as athletic or capable of the spectacular as his opponent. Loved the fight over the camel clutch at the end. Whether it's his hair on the line, his life on the line, a raffle ticket on the line, there's no way Casas is letting Santo grab that hold without a fight.
El Satanico v Sangre Chicana (EMLL, 5/26/89)
How fucking good are these two? Look, I grew up in a pretty rough part of central Scotland, in a town that has more pubs than houses. Well maybe not that many, but back then there was probably one pub per 500 houses and for a town with a population of about 8000 that is a lot of places to drink and fight. I have seen many a drunken pub fight in my life. This was that, and I was about to say "without the drunkenness" but then we are talking Sangre Chicana here so you know he would've been several units over the legal limit to drive or operate heavy machinery. One thing about the brawling in this, the realism of it is sort of staggering. It might genuinely be the most realistic fight I've ever seen in wrestling. I'm not talking fight in the shoot fight MMA sense with rules and restrictions; I mean fight in the way two men who've been drinking Guinness from 11 in the morning get to arguing about horse racing and one of them throws a punt tumbler at the other and they end up out on the street winging punches just as the kids are walking home from school. The way they (Chicana and Satanico, not the men we saw walking home from school) would hesitate, burst into fits of wild punches, retreat, size each other up again, burst back in, cover up while trying to fight back, it was amazing and as compelling as brawling has ever been. It didn't hurt that the punches were fucking incredible. There must've been a dozen where I thought "that might be the best punch I've ever seen." The tentative start was perfect and Chicana planting a headbutt right to Satanico's orbital bone was one of the best fuck you shots ever thrown, the grittiness getting ratcheted up a couple notches from there. In some ways the pacing felt a little like a lucha equivalent of Hashimoto/Fujiwara, not at all conventional but it felt 100% authentic and it was something I couldn't really take my eyes off. And then there's the selling from both of them, which was as wonderful as you'd expect from two of the best ever at that particular thing. Chicana getting entirely fed up with everything and throwing Satanico into the seats and trying to stomp him to death really did bring a tear to my eye. My childhood flashed before me and I yearn for those simpler times. An incredible bit of the pro wrestling.
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