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We're all hoping the same thing when we see this line up; yes, Panther and Astro match up in the first fall. It's damn good and Astro does a backflip off of Panther during one of the lock-up monkey flip thing spots and it's pretty cool. The rest of the first fall is real good with some nice rudo schtick and Panther and Astro coming together again for an awesome faster paced exchange off the mat. Everyone is pretty great in this match but Astro especially, he might be the most purely spectacular wrestler of all time. Second fall has some more good action until the rudos finally gang up and take the fall. Techinco comeback is cool with Atlantis going after Charles, Astro after Panther and Faraon after Fuerza. Ending is awesome with Atlantis hitting a dive, Astro hitting one of the biggest holy shit dives off the set springboarding to the outside with his reverse headbutt, leaving Faraon to submit Fuerza in the ring. This kinda had it all for a trios. Good matwork, fun schtick, good fast paced action and a nutty dive spot to finish it off before the remaining technico submits the remaining rudo. I'll rank this above most of the trios on the set but not within the really upper echelon of the trios.

Really cool brawling tag. Dandy and Satanico have pretty obvious chemistry as a team; their comeback in the first fall was great and one of the better transitions I've ever seen. Satanico and MS1 really go at it, both bust the other open and there's this awesome revenge spot in the third fall where Dandy is holding MS1 and Satanico just goes nuts biting his cut, spitting the blood out like mist and hitting big punches to the cut. Lots of really, really great brawling spots; this was one of those really scrappy brawls that seem like a back alley street fight and cool stuff was happening pretty much every moment. Ending was really great with perfect rudo comeuppance. This will do well on my ballot.

Fun but lesser trios. Opening mat stuff is alright but nothing special, though the crowd getting rambunctious for Sin Nombre riding Charles' back was funny and Demon Jr's roll up to end the fall was cool. Sin Nombre's backbreaker to comeback after being worked over for awhile in the third fall was a good spot and Blue Panther sold it appropriately; then a fun two minute or so home stretch featuring a neat comedy spot before Blue Panther ends it for himself with the dreaded foule. Low end stuff but fun to watch.

disk 8 1. Sangre Chicana vs. Satanico (5/26/89) 2. Emilio Charles, Fabuloso Blondy y Pirata Morgan vs. El Dandy, Atlantis & El Faraón (7/21/89) 3. Pirata Morgan vs. El Dandy (9/23/88) 4. Emilio Charles vs. El Dandy (7/28/89)5. Mogur vs. Mascara Ano 2000 (9/23/88)6. Javier Cruz vs. Hombre Bala (6/30/89) 7. Super Halcon, Satanico y Masakre vs. El Texano, Lizmark y Rayo De Jalisco Jr. (3/17/89) 8. Atlantis, El Dandy y Popitekus vs. Gran Markus Jr., Pirata Morgan y Ulises (5/26/89)9. Angel Azteca, Atlantis y Blue Demon Jr. vs. El Dandy, Super Muneco y El Texano (3/24/89)10. Popitekus, Angel Azteca y Steve Nelson vs. Emilio Charles Jr., Gran Markus Jr. y Masakre (6/9/89) 11. Blue Demon, Blue Demon Jr. y Ringo Mendoza vs. Emilio Charles Jr., Pirata Morgan y Satanico (11/25/88)

This is one of the most epic matches on the set. That isn't necessarily to speak of its quality, though it is a great match, but by the end of this this really felt like a match where they both threw everything they had at each other until they had no more and brought all they could to the big apuesta. This doesn't reach the highs of the real high end stuff on this set but it's still a damn good brawl with some great moments and a heck of a third fall. The first fall I didn't much care for with the rudo ref stuff; I don't want to see that kind of schtick in an apuesta, especially one set up as hot as this was with the preceding tag, I want to see two guys beat the shit out of each other with no funny business. Still this gets real good in the second fall with Dandy launching and awesome comeback and really taking it to Charles. The third fall is the real gem of this match, as mentioned they throw everything they can at each other, are both bloodied and beaten and it feels like a cabellera contra caballera should feel. Ending is really cool with Dandy hitting a big dive and them brawling with each other on the outside til they get counted out and hair comes off all around.

God damn this match is incredible. Starts off with the rudos beating down the technicos, the technicos staging a comeback, but then they actually all go into trios mode and pair up in the ring. That coming after some heated brawling made everything feel especially intense; Dandy and Charles have already been all over each other and now they're working a great juniors-ish segment with special vigor. Atlantis also has a great babyface run of offense against Pirata Morgan to end the fall. Post-fall Dandy and Charles both duck punches from the other then Charles bails to fight another day with the fall lost. Fight another day he does as he viciously takes it to Dandy in the segunda, smashing him against the turnbuckles and drawing blood. Pirata ends the fall with a top rope splash on Atlantis and he really comes down like a ton of bricks. Third fall is really great, the technicos make their big comeback and extract their revenge with gusto. There's this great segment at the end where some dives are teased and countered, ending with Atlantis slingshotting Morgan over the ropes with a monkey flip followed by a perfect asai moonsault. El Dandy and Charles square off in the ring to end the fall and it's great in its own right, complete with a Martinete ending. Dandy and Charles were constantly at each others' throats in this match and it was great. If the hair match is anything like this it'll be something. Everyone else played great supporting roles and the Blondy/Faraon pairing was good in its own right. This will go very, very high on my ballot.

Another cool looking left field match up that turned out good. Opening stuff is cool with Bala hitting a big punch to counter a hip toss. Overall it sort of took me a while to get really into this, maybe because of the low crowd head (though that seems to be an issue with the audio as much as anything else), but there was still some neat stuff in the first two falls. This is really all about the third fall though. Cruz takes a cool apron posting where he smashes into the apron and then slides down it like a fireman's pole. Both guys bleed and they really throw a bunch at each other toward the end, two major highlights being Cruz hitting a Goldust style back elbow off an irish whip into the apron and Bala hitting a really cool tope spot, backflipping off the top as Cruz runs away from a dive and then immediately launching into the tope. Not really a mind blowing match but good stuff, a bit above mid-level.

Another fun but lesser tag. Some of the Masakre/Azteca stuff in the first fall was cool and I like how the rudos suddenly descended on the technicos, beating them down outside the ring to end it featuring a great posting and slide through drop kick. Popitekus gets revenge in short order for the second fall, coming down on Masakre with a sitting senton for the win and Masakre flails about in panic. Third fall is good stuff with Popitekus hitting a cross body on Masakre that Masakre sells beautifully, a nice Azteca dive and Steve Nelson finishing it with a really nasty spinebuster followed by a fishermans suplex. Definitely bottom half but a good match.

Fun sportsmanship kind of trios. This is all clean action with each guy pairing up uniquely each fall. I didn't really think any of it was exceptional, moreso that it was all consistently nice looking, expertly performed work that was fun to watch. Actually, more than anything else I found this match very relaxing to watch. Nice to see Popitekus who I remember liking from the El Dandy set, he just about kills Ulises off a cross body in this one. Ulises also hits a cool looking sort-of death valley driver on El Dandy in the first fall. Good, fast paced home stretch. Very enjoyable stuff though it probably won't knock your socks off.

Holy shit, this match is like nothing you could've expected. It's like lucha libre meets boxing meets MMA or something. Just about everything in this match is nuts. Starts out great with Satanico going for a handshake, Chicana holding onto the hand a squeezing it and Satanico playing it off as the bell rings. Then they engage in a series of lock ups and rope breaks before Chicana fires off an awesome headbutt off a rope break and then we're off to the races. I love scrappy brawls and they don't come much scrappier than this, they're throwing huge punches, kicks, lunges, anything to take it to each other. The opening round to strikes is awesome with the crowd popping big when Sangre hits his first big punch, and what a punch it is. So many great moments here, at one point Chicana is on the mat taking a beating from Satanico and manages to fight his way back up by grabbing Satanico's leg, twisting it around the bottom rope and wrenching on the ankle; at the beginning of the second fall Satanico fights his way back in the ring by grabbing Chicana's leg, tripping him up and leaping through the ropes onto him in a forehead bite. Sangre picks up the first fall after staggering Satanico with some big blows and Satanico fighting his way back in the second fall is great, he psychs himself up, weathers some more punches and then gets within range to land some blows of his own and takes the opportunity to start choking Chicana against the ropes. To get just about any hold broken in this match the ref has to start pulling on the hair and literally tearing them away from the other. The third fall is really something else. They're on the outside duking it out and Chicana is like a champion boxer swinging for the fences. Satanico has to take to tackling him down in desperation to survive the onslaughts. They fight up the ramp and into the crowd and everything. There's this great moment toward the end where Satanico gains control in the ring, pushes Chicana out of the ring and is playing king of the hill keeping Chicana outside but Chicana lures Satanico to the outside with him and unleashes this ungodly fury of left and rights to the head and face and all Satanico can do is over up and duck. They fight way back into the stands to end this, the crowd gets displaced and floors the ringside area and they're both counted out. This match is totally awesome and worked in a completely unexpected way. Top 5.

Can someone please unearth a Texano/Atlantis title match? Those guys just killed it when they faced off in the first fall. They open up the match with a really great mat section, tons of struggle and with a really strong grappling feel to it. Later on they work a faster paced but still awesome segment where Texano is sort of working a headlock for a while and it's awesome. Unfortunately that stuff is the highlight of the match by far. Blue Demon and Super Muneco really stink up the place. They both look bad trying to go technically with El Dandy and Azteca respectively. There is one cool moment though where Blue Demon is trying to put some kind of move on El Dandy, can't get it on right, so El Dandy just kind of breaks into a nasty german suplex. So yeah, there's some good stuff in there outside of Atlantis/Texano -- Azteca hits some of his beautiful armdrags and they work an interesting brief FIP segment on Atlantis -- but after the first fall this isn't too good. And even in the first fall that goodness was like 90% Atlantis/Texano. Man was that good though.

This match had flashes of greatness but overall is bottom half stuff. The Texano/Masakre exchange at the beginning of the second fall is really awesome and makes you want to see a singles match with them. The real story of this match though is Jalisco vs. Halcon who are constantly at each others throats. Especially in the last fall there's this great moment where they're in the corner, they both have their masks all ripped up and they're still grabbing and swinging at each other like it's a wild street brawl. Another great moment is when during a Jalisco/Halcon brawl the camera cuts to the outside and Lizmark is just laying in one Satanico with BIG punches, just beautiful looking lefts and rights over and over like a mad man. If this match could've sustained those highs this would've been something.

As one can expect, the crowd here is wild for Blue Demon. Beginning is cool with them viciously booing El Dandy just for getting a few arm drags in. This is a big star spectacle match and all about Blue Demon, and the crowd is just molten for him. And really, that's it. This is fun to watch as a spectacle and to see a match from one of the preeminent lucha legends but this isn't on here for work. By the numbers trios but it didn't need to be much more; and at least in the third fall there is a pretty cool though short section where Mendoza dukes it out with Pirata and Satanico. Bottom 10 stuff but worth watching.

After the Caras/Siglo, Arandu/Guerrero Negro and Mogur/Charro classics on disk 7 I'm at the point where a random looking match between two sort of unheralded guys on this set has me as excited as one between two highly regarded GOATs. To me this looked appropriately left field and it turned out to be appropriately awesome. There were some real WTF moments in this match, in a good way: Mogur ends the first fall with a sit-out powerbomb of all things and in the second fall Dos Mil is hitting these big Alabama Slams. There was some good if brief scrappy brawling in the first two falls but this really pops off in the tercera. It just keeps going, again in a good way, and they throw everything plus the kitchen sink at each other but can't keep the other down. In the end, Mogur has a submission of Dos Mil and thinks he's got the submission victory and breaks it in celebration; he was gravely mistaken though and Dos Mil comes up behind and drills him with a big back drop. Mogur folds over himself and it's like Kawada hitting Kobashi with a big backdrop. They even play a slow motion replay of the move like an AJPW commercial tape. This was great stuff, and I kind of hate to make this criticisms, but I feel the lack of blood made it less dramatic. They were beating on each other, biting and mask ripping, and the fact that most such matches features some big blade jobs which were conspicuously absent here just made it feel that there was something missing. This is still top shelf stuff.

There's nothing like when a match like this lives up to its promise on paper; and this is that. This is a bloody affair right out the gate with Pirata Morgan attacking Dandy and drawing blood within the first minute, then proceeding to dominate the first fall in beautiful fashion, slamming him over the top rope and even hitting this really cool sit out axe handle smash. Dandy's big comeback in the second fall is great: after constantly being stymied in his punch attempts by the ref and thus always having his comebacks cut off, he finally hits this huge clothesline with both him and Morgan coming off the ropes at full velocity. Third fall is just epic, Dandy takes it to Morgan full on featuring a sick blade job from Morgan and then they just go at it, a real epic war of attrition final fall. Morgan hits a top rope splash that looks like it squashes Dandy and Dandy hits a wild over the top dive. The figure four leg lock was a big motif in this match and Dandy ends it by countering Morgan's attempt into a small package. This is in my top 10 so far.

disk 7 rankings 1. Cien Caras vs. Siglo XX (4/10/87)2. El Dandy, Magico y Super Astro vs. Gran Cochise, Javier Cruz y Javier Rocca (11/11/87)3. Arandu vs. Guerrero Negro (1988)4. Mogur vs. As Charro (9/18/87)5. Pirata Morgan, Hombre Bala y Verdugo vs. Atlantis, Angel Azteca y Ringo Mendoza (3/88)6. El Hijo del Santo vs. Negro Casas (7/18/87)7. El Hijo Del Santo vs. Espanto Jr. (4/10/88)8. Atlantis vs. Emilio Charles Jr. (8/12/88) 9. Blue Panther/Sergio El Hermosa v. Super Astro/Solar (10/17/87) 10. Kung Fu v. Javier Cruz (3/88) 11. Kato Kung Lee vs. Kung Fu (4/29/88) Great, great disk. Gives disk 5 a run for its money; it might not have as high highs but it was amazingly consistent and had a lot of variety plus some out of nowhere (for me at least) classics.

Damn good title match. Opening mat work is nice, smooth stuff. Not the level of some of the best matwork on the set but it's still very good. Charles wins the fall and dominants at the beginning of the segunda; Atlantis' comeback is really great, hitting two of those spinning arm drag things that he gets unbelievable air on, a corkscrew front flip followed by a splash for the win and even front flipping out of the pinfall triumphantly. Atlantis dominants the beginning of the third fall but Charles turns it around with a really forceful whip into the corner -- from then on the big, extended end stretch kicks and and it's top notch workratey title match action, an awesome roll up series, some great back and forth, a big dive from Atlantis and a really great ending.

This had a neat feel to it with two martial arts guys going at it in a lucha de apuesta. There were some cool strike exchange and offense from both guys that made this feel really unique to the set but really I don't think it was that great. It's a good match, I enjoyed watching it a bunch, but it will go relatively low for me.

I was doing some wrestling related google search that actually led me to an old dvdvr hosted just fine on the main site. Let me find the link; here you go: http://www.deathvalleydriver.com /dvdvr/ (delete the space)

Another great pre-match mobbing of the ring with kids jumping around the apron trying to get Santito to sign autographs. This was sort of disappointing to me because I recall watching this some years ago and thinking the matwork was really high end. Maybe I was thinking of a different match because although this was no doubt good stuff, it wasn't on the level of other stuff we've seen on this set. Still some darn good stuff overall and the ending stretch of the first fall is really great. The end stretch of the third fall though is one of the great end stretches of all time. Starts with Espanto taking another big Feurza bump -- the camera angle makes it look like he just flies off the edge of the Earth -- which Santo follows up with a big top rope dive and the fans jump on the apron as Espanto narrowly beats the countout. Then we get a big run of Santo roll ups that are all fantastic and has the crowd, especially the front row opposite the camera, going nuts, followed by a great struggle over the camel clutch. Ending is great with Santo going to slam Espanto to set up for the senton but it gets reversed into a roll up and soon after Espanto has a nasty submission locked on which he wrenches with the help of the ropes for the win. This was very good throughout, though disappointing at times as I was expecting a title classic on the level of their mask classic, but the end stretch really sucks you in. Not quite top 20 I don't think but not terribly far out.

This is great. The crowd is deafening and it adds a ton to the atmosphere. First fall rudo beat down is good stuff, slamming Atlantis over the top rope and sending Azteca flying halfway across the ring with a huge 3 man press slam; which is played off nicely later as when the technicos mount their comeback, which is a great moment, they throw (I think?) Estrada across the ring with a big two man press slam. Then the match really kicks into gear. A lot of it from then out is classic technico exhibition, showing off their skill and finesse by taking out multiple rudos at once, but to me that stuff really felt like it had a certain edge to it and made it more competitive and hard fought than normal. Atlantis and Azteca are spectacularly athletic in this match and hit some beautiful stuff while Ringo brings the strikes to add some intensity. Match ends with Azteca hitting a dive, Atlantis hitting an incredibly wild over the top dive and then Ringo getting one of the better foules you'll see right as the tape cuts out. Since the low blow was in full view of both refs I can't imagine this goes on much longer but it's still a let down. One of my top 5 trios thus far. On his blog OJ says not all of the viewing committee was sold on this one which strikes me as odd, I loved the hell out of this.

Kung Fu smashes Cruz in the head with the nunchucku pre-match and the proceeds to ram his head into anything he can find; it's funny seeing a character made for comedy and schtick like Kung Fu working rudo, ironic bows to the crowd and all. Kung Fu ends the first fall with a neat submission, Cruz does a cool running posting of Kung Fu during his comeback and there's some nice back and force during the tercera but this is sort of a middling lucha brawl for the set. Good stuff but nothing blew me away. There were a couple awkward moments in the third fall too.

This disk keeps killing it with great matches I've never heard of featuring guys I've never heard of. This is wild stuff, the atmosphere and crowd are nuts and they really take it to each other with the brawling. Guerrero Negro's comeback is amazing, the crowd comes unglued and crowd the ringside are as he's trying to throw him into the seating. Arandu seems to get into a scuffle with one of the fans even as he's making his way back. They add a great homestretch at the end of this and after Guerrero Negro accidentally drop kicks the ref out of the ring, Arandu takes advantage with a big FOULE followed by a roll up for the win. Wild, super heated stuff. This will do well on my list.

Now this was a good clean fight; and a damn good one. They worked it technical all three falls and always extended courtesies and displays of sportsmanship. Well, aside from Dandy and Rocca, whose tempers would continually flare against each other. So much great stuff here: Cochisse and Astro work a lovely opening segment on the mat, Astro in general is at his spectacular best here and Dandy and Cochisse work an outright stunning sequence in the third fall. The work is just top notch all around. Ending is great with Dandy hitting a huge over the top dive that he goes vertical for, Magica hitting a sort-of botched but still cool cartwheel backflip dive and then Astro finishing Cochisse off in the ring with a great springboard headbutt. I could've watched these guys do their thing for much, much longer. One of the best trios on the set.

Open match up is Blue Panther vs. Solar and you get what you want. All the maestro technical skill you're familiar with plus and youthful spryness, and it lasts a good while too. Afterward the match comes off the mat but continues to be good with some nice stooging spots from the rudos. Once the rudos take control though I think the match goes pretty steeply down hill. The rudo control wasn't particular compelling to me and the rudo ref spots overstayed their welcome. Ending was pretty cool though with Solar delivering two great looking backbreakers to Sergio. So this ended up disappointing given how outstanding the first fall and first bit of the second fall were but man was that opening mat section gorgeous.