Thursday 22 June 2023

Santo and Parka! Bleed everywhere!

El Hijo del Santo v La Parka (Monterrey, 12/23/01)

Well shit son, how about this for one of the all-time great lucha brawls. I'm sure I've said this here before, but for a guy we associate with graceful dives and gorgeous wrestling sequences, the son of El Santo is a fucking animal when it comes to brawling. He went at Parka with a vengeance in that first fall, just a relentless force that wouldn't let up. He was an absolute pitbull. The way he then blended the beauty and the savagery with that tope was absolutely top drawer. Parka ripping rows of fixed seats off the ground with his body didn't hurt either. It was a total domination of an opening fall and Santo's viciousness was something to behold. After his comeback Parka maybe could've sprinkled in a little more selling of the beatdown he'd just received, at least in the early stages, but you forget that as soon as he starts yeeting Santo face-first into rows of seats. Santo's gusher is a horror of a thing and he BLEEDS EVERYWHERE and leaves literal trails of blood wherever he goes. There were pools of blood on the seats he'd been thrown into! He got hung upside down in the corner at one point and that part of the ring looked like a murder scene. By the tercera Santo's silver tights are half red, his silver mask is full red, and Parka's swank white bodysuit is covered in patches of blood with very little of it being his own. Parka ramming the back of Santo's head into the ring post is also legitimately one of the nasties post shots I've ever seen. Where Santo is on an island almost of his own is the way he sells blood loss. He was incredible in the deciding fall here, putting across the toll of what he'd sustained, even in how he'd climb the turnbuckles like that alone was an arduous process. Of course the dives were spectacular and there are very few things more lucha libre than spectators fleeing for their lives, scrambling to remove their children from harm's way, praying for the elderly in the front row too slow or frail to withdraw, as a wrestler ends up out in front of them as another wrestler runs the opposite ring ropes. And all of those people were right to retreat because Santo fucking obliterated Parka with that tope. I had no memory of what the actual finish was even though I knew it was something ropey, so I was preparing myself for it. To be honest though, I didn't think this was even in the top two or three tiers of horse shit Monterrey finishes. Santo needed to just be RID of Parka and the way he volleyed him in the balls was at least a hell of a spot on its own. A real Monterrey classic. 

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