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Graham Crackers

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Everything posted by Graham Crackers

  1. Chavo Jr had great matches with Rey and Evan Bourne. I know, everyone has great matches with Rey but at GAB 2004 he was about as game an opponent as Rey has had in WWE outside of Eddy, Jamie Noble, or Finlay. He actually had interesting matches with Kane and got decent stuff out of CM Punk during his questionable early years in WWE.
  2. What Mando have you watched outside of the AWA set? I think this is a pretty cool Mando match: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff76pPA-cIQ
  3. 1985 rankings: 1.) La Fiera, El Faraón y El Egipico vs. MS-1, Satanico y Pirata Morgan (3/29/85) 2.) El Solitario vs. Dr. Wagner (Mask vs. Mask) (12/1/85) 3.) El Hijo del Santo & Black Shadow Jr. vs. Espanto Jr. & Eskeletor (12/1/85) 4.) Atlantis vs. El Faraón (3/22/85) 5.) Raul Reyes Jr. & Climax vs Mocho Cota & Loco Zavala Sonora 1985 6.) Americo Rocca vs. El Talisman (3/29/85) 7.) Lizmark, Mil Mascaras & Valente Fernandez vs. Sangre Chicana, Angel Blanco & Angel Blanco Jr. (12/1/85) The top match here is in my top 4 or 5 so far. Number 2 is close to the middle and everything else is scattered around the bottom half.
  4. This was an interesting look at two guys with great reputations but not a lot of footage. I had seen both of them wrestle before but only in Japan so I still felt like I was coming in with a clean slate. This is clipped and like the other matches from this show it's not smooth and can be kind of distracting. We definitely missed some stuff that could have given changed this match's ranking but I think we do see enough to get a strong sense of how good it really was. This resembles the UWA heavyweight matches we saw earlier in the set but it's better than any of those. They were still working holds more than they were grappling but there was some chain wrestling that looked pretty nice. They definitely threw their weight around when they were grappling. There was a lot of force behind every takedown and that abdominal stretch into a pin sequence looked like a real struggle. This was a lucha de apuestas though so they did much more than grapple which may be another thing that pushes this ahead of those heavyweight matches from earlier. Wagner looks like a seriously bad mother fucker and I love that we can clearly make out some of his shit talk as if this were a Black Terry Jr. handheld. He throws some nasty strikes too and just generally moves around the ring like a brute. Solitario is more graceful but still looks like he is in a fight and knows it. He mixes some of his athletic takedowns with some good brawling. His selling is also pretty engaging when he's really getting beaten down. It's a shame that we still don't get much of a picture of him as a worker here because his reputation is pretty huge. He looks good but Wagner's contributions seemed much more apparent while watching this. I think this was really good but not a top tier match.It was also pretty cool to see Ray Mendoza as a ref. I think we also had Shadito Cruz as a referee in one of the earlier matches but I can't remember which one at the moment.
  5. i just want to thank you guys for continuing to move this project forward. The AWA was so much more fun than I thought it would be and I hope I have the chance to participate in every one of these sets from now on.
  6. Yeah, Angel Blanco Jr. ends up unmasked and didn't seem as concerned with covering up as others who have been unmasked on this set.
  7. I never realized Sangre Chicana vs Mil Mascaras was a match I wanted to see but now it is. The clipping here was a bit distracting for me but we did get to see lots of cool stuff. Outside of some great brawling by all parties this also had Sangre Chicana goading everyone, but especially Mil Mascaras into coming after him and Lizmark's fluid athleticism. That old lady dancing was pretty weird/funny. This is fun but probably not going to be very high.
  8. I thought this was mostly good but had a really bad finish. I can't get enough Santo vs Espanto and their exchanges here were pretty good though not as great as they would be in the near future. They mixed up matwork, brawling, and cool flying in some fun ways and thankfully that was the focus. Black Shadow Jr. was alright. He threw some decent punches and I liked his slingshot spinebuster but unfortunately he spent most of this matching up with Eskeletor who wasn't really any good. That said, I am a sucker for bootleg lucha gimmicks and his Skeletor costume was pretty endearingly bad. Bottom half, but I feel like that's the case for most of this 1985 stuff so far (with one major exception).
  9. This was fun but other than the pop for the finish it lacked something spectacular that could have made it more memorable. It had a nice layout, simple and effective transitions, and some good looking offense. The only weak moment was one of Rocca's bumps over the top rope where it really just looked like he was jumping over the rope. Tim hit the nail on the head, this is towards the bottom of the list so far but is far from bad.
  10. God damn it, that sucks. 1/3 of my favorite team in wrestling history.
  11. We've already seen a couple of brawling tags and trios so far but none of them have been as violent or as epic as this one. In this match it's the stiff striking instead of the gore that really makes it so harrowing. I think part of that is due to Los Infernales upgrading when they added Pirata Morgan. Morgan adds a lot as he feels like a serious ass kicker but is also a wild bumper when he has to be. This lineup of Los Infernales turns double and triple teams into thuggish onslaughts. They don't do fancy triple teams, they just all drop b's on an opponent. It can be as simple and brutal as Satanico muscling an opponent around in a clinch while MS-1 throws nasty punches to their kidneys. La Fiera and Faraón already made great opponents for Los Infernales in their last scrap but they both manage to top those performances here. Faraón is a tremendous brawler and Fiera outdoes the suicidal missed tope from that match when he manages to fly off the top rope and land headfirst outside the ring. Egipcio is pushed into the foreground in this match as he spends most of it brawling with Pirata Morgan and they both make you want to see them in an apuestas match. By the end I was marking out for Egipcio's punch combos during his comeback despite not really having strong feelings about him going in. Good finish too with Egipcio and Pirata Morgan have their final showdown in the ring after everyone else has been taken out by dives on the outside.
  12. I was a bit lukewarm to El Faraón at first but he's grown on me after the last few brawls. I didn't know what to expect when this turned out to be a title match but I definitely didn't expect El Faraón to turn in such a great performance. He was great on the mat. I liked that rather than carefully set things up on the mat he would just grab Atlantis and take him down hard. There was a roughness to much of his offense that was fitting for a rudo in this setting. When Faraón was on defense in this he was even better. He took really took the time to effectively sell the pain of each hold before trying to escape. Atlantis was a bit of a disappointment here. He wasn't awkwardly playing to the crowd after every bit of offense this time around but his selling was definitely a bit too hammy. I thought it was appropriate for selling Faraón's axe bombers but he was already writhing around in agony during the first fall. This escalated nicely and settled into a fun final stretch run. This is better than some of the weaker title matches early in the set but doesn't reach the heights of the Mocho Cota vs Americo Rocca series or Satanico vs Gran Cochisse.
  13. This was a nice way to get back into watching this set after a little break. Something that I find alternately alluring and frustrating about lucha is how little of it's history we really know about and all of the classic matches we don't have on tape. What better way to hint at that forgotten history than a dateless match from 1985 in some arena in Sonora featuring three workers I've never heard of before. Much like this match, those mystery workers aren't revelations but they are pretty good. They're good enough to suggest that they may have had many other good matches and maybe even some great ones that we'll never see. Climax and Loco Zavala have some interesting exchanges and I can easily imagine that they have matched up before. Climax has some nice high flying and Zavala is a good chubby base. They match up well and even do a few spots I don't remember seeing before. The one wrestler in this one I do know is Mocho Cota and unsurprisingly he shows off all the qualities that have made him so impressive in other matches on this set. He has some nice mat exchanges with Raul Reyes Jr (who looks like a solid hand himself) but Cota's even better when he is just pouring on the rudisimo. I am loving him sneaking around the ring in tags and trios matches. He seems like someone who will stoop as low as he can just to win a match. I think this is somewhere in the middle of the pack at this point.
  14. I won't profess a great knowledge of bullfighting but being barbaric doesn't mean it can't also have a rich tradition. One could argue that boxing, mma, and good old pro wrestling are barbaric sports with rich traditions.
  15. 1984 Rankings: 1.) Gran Cochise vs. Satanico (9/14/84) 2.) Solar, Ultraman y Super Astro vs. Sergio El Hermoso, Bello Greco y Rudy Reyna (2/26/84) 3.) Mocho Cota vs. Americo Rocca (1/27/84) 4.) Tony Salazar vs. Herodes (3/2/84) 5.) Satanico vs. Shiro Koshinaka (Hair vs. Hair) (7/30/84) 6.) Hijo del Santo, Ringo Mendoza y Chamaco Valaguez vs. Jerry Estrada, Fuerza Guerrera y Talisman (3/9/84) 7.) Gran Cochise, Villano III y Rayo De Jalisco Jr. vs. Fishman, Mocho Cota y Tony Bennetto (11/30/84) 8.) Perro Aguayo vs. Sangre Chicana vs. El Faraón vs. Villano III (Elimination Match) (10/84) 9.) El Satanico y Espectro Jr. v. El Faraón y La Fiera (8/12/84) 10.) Atlantis vs. El Satanico (1984) 11.) Satanico vs. Super Astro (10/26/84) 12.) Mocho Cota vs. Americo Rocca (2/3/84) 13.) Sangre Chicana vs. MS-1 (Hair vs. Hair) (9/21/84) 14.) Atlantis, Ringo Mendoza y Tony Salazar vs. El Satanico, MS-1 y Espectro Jr. (9/28/84) 15.) Lizmark vs. El Satanico (April 1984) 16.) Enrique Vera vs. Dos Caras (2/26/84) 17.) Atlantis y Lizmark vs. El Egipcio y El Faraón (2/17/84) 18.) Sangre Chicana vs. Villano III (12/7/84) 19.) Javier Cruz, Impacto y Solar II vs. El Dandy, Franco Colombo y Panico (10/84) 20.) El Faraón, Herodes y Mocho Cota vs. Lizmark, Ringo Mendoza y Tony Salazar (2/24/84) 21.) Villano III vs. Perro Aguayo (10/7/84) 22.) Javier Cruz vs. El Dandy (Hair vs. Hair) (10/26/84) 23.) Jerry Estrada vs. Ultraman (3/2/84) These may change, especially after I watch some of these matches again but the top 3 are pretty much locked. I did watch match number 9 again and while it wasn't easy to follow every moment the crazy finish and truly wild violence really make it stand out. This seems like a pretty good year for lucha going by what we have and Satanico has a pretty good case for WOTY.
  16. Sangre Chicana is incredible. Tim is right about these first two falls being similar to the original Sangre Chicana vs MS-1 match but it's such a good layout that it's hard to hate on it. His comeback is so simple. It's just a punch and a tope but it's timed so well that you don't need anything more complicated. Villano III is a natural to play the role of guy who beats up Sangre Chicana for most of the match. Unfortunately there isn't much of a third fall so this won't be going too high in the end.
  17. Now that is a fun trios match. Mocho Cota continues to impress as a complete scoundrel. It feels like he's constantly up to something. I love when he ducks behind the apron to sneak to other parts of the ringside area. I love him arguing with old ladies. I like him trying to tell the ref he has been fouled when he very clearly has not. This seems to be building to a Gran Cochisse/Mocho Cota hair match with both of them constantly going after each other. Gran Cochisse's comeback was pretty spectacular and I sort of love how commonplace it is for babyface comebacks during this era to contain guys biting open their opponent's forehead. I liked the way the rudo team controlled the match during most of the chaotic brawling stretches but the tecnicos would dominate individual exchanges in the ring. I love a good Rayo de Jalisco Jr match and his stuff was really fun here. His exchange with Bennetto in the first fall built around Rayo's feints was as good as Rayo gets. Villano III was great as his team's enforcer. it felt like whenever someone from his team was getting cornered Villano III was there to back them up. I don't think this will be a super high ranking match but it was fun enough that I'm sure I'll still remember the best parts when the set is over.
  18. The draw finish with both guys having to get their head shaved was pretty poetic as both guys should have been trying to win the match. In a hair vs hair match when pride is on the line you should be trying to win. These guys were busy showing off offense when they should have been going for pins or submissions. In some ways this was the brawling equivalent to the Santo/Atlantis vs Fuerza/Lobo Rubio match from earlier. This was about young guys pushing the pace of wrestling faster. When they were just brawling it looked good and they had some interesting ideas for spots but stuff like the 2nd fall overkill DDTs without a follow up hurts this. Pulling your opponent up off the mat during a pin when you haven't won a single fall yet seems foolish. Santo/Atlantis vs Fuerza/Lobo Rubio worked because they worked within archetypes as old as wrestling itself but put their own spin on offense and pacing. This had it's moments but ultimately they lost sight of what really mattered.
  19. I don't think piledrivers became illegal until the late 80s early 90s. You will see many more piledrivers on this set.
  20. I liked this a lot though I think this is another really good match that will end up in the middle of the ballot because it's not great. I liked that Satanico dominated and Super Astro only managed flurries of offense. Super Astro's flying looked as beautiful as it usually does. I like all of his tope variations. I'm surprised I don't see indy guys do the tope en reversa more often. Speaking of his headbutts, that one where he's on his knees and bridges back before unloading a headbutt was pretty cool. Still, this lacked the kind of big moments that push a match from good to great.
  21. I have a feeling there won't be a lot of people reading this thread before watching the match so a lot of people will probably be going into this with no idea what the rules are. I really hope they watch this with an open mind and try to piece them together as this match goes along because if they do they will find a lot to like here. The opening fall as I understand it was designed to set up what the initial matchups would be. The two wrestlers eliminated first had a one fall match against each other and the two winners of that fall had another one fall match against each other. Then the winner of both singles matches faced off in a 2/3 falls match. Oy.There was a lot of malice on display here and having the wrestlers who were not participating in a given fall constantly throwing in cheap shots gave this a pretty tense atmosphere. The Perro Aguayo vs Sangre Chicana match up that finished this lived up to the promise it showed on paper. It's not the best brawl on the set but we've already seen some of the best brawls in wrestling history on this set so the standards are high. It delivers blood, great punches, and some dramatic dives so I definitely liked it. As I've said before, nutshot finishes are the best bullshit finishes. This is a pretty epic kick to the balls right here. I love the way Sangre Chicana stands almost frozen with his own disdain for Perro Aguayo after he hits the foul. Aguayo may have won by DQ but with the crowd rushing the ring and chanting "Chicana" we all know who really won this match.
  22. I watched the first few minutes of the match again and the announcers are clearly saying Ringo. I'm not sure what had me so confused. Maybe they were just talking about Cachorro later in the match. Sorry about that.
  23. Was that Shadito Cruz as the referee in this match?
  24. Yeah, I definitely think we are missing something here because I also only saw the finish to two falls. We were definitely JIP at the beginning and there was also a sudden clip not too long after that. I didn't hear anything about it on the commentary though I wasn't listening very close to this one either. What we do see is pretty good though being incomplete hurts it. This set has had lots of great punches so far and this match was full of them. Dandy especially has a nice mix of different punches. The air he gets on those sentons are pretty impressive as well. He's only a few years into the business here but he already looks great. Trios matches so often have multiple people being pinned at once or in quick succession that it's really cool to see them have wrestlers eliminated at different times. Having each team lose one man made that final stretch of Dandy vs Cruz pretty exciting. Dandy teaming with two CMLL bookers is kind of funny considering his relationship with the CMLL office in the last dozen years or so.
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