I've been watching some Sangre Chicana lately. I've also been thinking about him from a GWE perspective. He was my number 39 in 2016 off the back of not too much footage, or at least not too much footage of him in his prime. Shit, if his prime was during the 70s then there's no footage of him in his prime at all. But there's a decent amount of 90s Chicana on the youtube and I feel like it might be worthwhile watching every bit of Sangre Chicana footage there is. So we're watching Sangre Chicana, boys!
I don't know anything about the context of this. No idea how long they'd been feuding, no idea why they were feuding in the first place. I guess it had been a minute since the Viboras Salvajes were a thing - I'm pretty sure Mocho Cota was in jail around this time - but from the opening here it looked like they both kept some measure of respect for one another. Even if their days of running together were over I suppose there was at least the faint remnants of kinship. Maybe that's me projecting, or maybe it's my way of rationalising a hair match starting with a handshake, but I've watched some of that 80s run recently so naturally it's fresh in the memory. I actually liked how they started with a bit of wrestling, the way they struggled over one hold that Chicana managed to keep on top of. Chicana even took a quick trip to the floor to shake hands with one of his supporters. Then it all went out the window. As soon as Fiera managed to - quite literally - wrestle away control, Chicana decided enough was enough. It was simple, but Chicana immediately going to the kidney punches looked brutal and Fiera sold it like he was about to piss blood. I thought this was an absolutely mesmerising Sangre Chicana performance. As soon as he ramped up the violence I couldn't take my eyes off him, and that's even with Fiera putting in a pretty sensational selling performance. Chicana would take his time with the beatdown, jawing with fans at ringside in between ramming Fiera into the post. I don't know if Nigel McGuinness was a lucha fan but jesus christ did La Fiera set the original bar for stupid insane unprotected ring post shots. There were at least three where he went clean into it at speed and if the ringside mic was better I assume it would've sounded like a cooked turkey hitting the pavement from a twelfth story balcony. My favourite moment of the match came at the end of the second caida, as Chicana waded into the dimly lit crowd before reappearing with a jug that he smashed over Fiera's head. It earned him a DQ, which evened up the falls, but I thought it was the perfect Sangre Chicana move. Fiera is bleeding everywhere, dead on his feet, probably has kidney trauma, so fuck it, why would Chicana be worried about giving up a fall? He's Sangre Chicana, of course he'll take that hit. Fiera's comeback in the tercera started with one of the best spin kicks he's ever thrown and I loved Chicana selling it like he'd been shot. The big Fiera tope was a fucking madness as well. He gets almost vertical coming over the top rope, which sort of hampered him hitting Chicana full in the chest as intended, but you forget that when Chicana ends up in the second row after ripping four seats out the ground in the process. Imagine being part of the arena staff the night of a Sangre Chicana apuesta match. You spend all that time securing furniture despite knowing for a fact at least some of it is going to be unusable by the end of the night. The finish was a little botched, but I thought it was great and wrapped up their seedy story nicely. Fiera had made several attempts at a backslide throughout the match, usually in response to Chicana kicking the shit out of him, but Chicana would shut him down every time with the kidney punches. They were the best kidney punches you've ever seen and they were the perfect counter to the counter. That the backslide looked ugly in the end wasn't enough for me not to love how Fiera's persistence paid off.
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