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Blue Panther/Sergio El Hermosa v. Super Astro/Solar (10/17/87)


Phil Schneider

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  • 1 month later...

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.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The first fall of this match is probably one of my favorite individual falls on the whole set. The Solar vs Blue Panther matwork is every bit as good as it looks on paper. Not only does it feature long sections of uninterrupted chain grappling I also liked the way their matwork works in some aspects of amateur riding and mounts into what is some very distinctly lucha matwork. Super Astro vs Sergio El Hermoso is also what you expect it to be and pretty damn good as well. Honestly, I liked the rudo control stuff too but it's that rudo ref shit that is way too distracting. Sigh...

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  • 2 weeks later...

I took a break for a little while from the set (busy with other things: work, my band, endless driving, being a drunken lout) but I'm back to it now. I reviewed a bit of this before the stop and here's what I wrote:

 

"If you don't lose it for the first caida in this one then I don't know what to say. Two maestros go head-to-head and smoke any Eddy/Malenko match that those two were stealing from. Then we get a beautiful bit from Sergio el Hermoso and Super Astro with Sergio chewing gum and having his mouth busted and I am all in on this match."

 

After that I paused the DVD and never came back to it, so went back and started fresh. Overall this was one of the most purely enjoyable matches on the set, and though in general I HATE HATE HATE rudo ref interference this came off more like he was a dunce. Yeah, tercera caida wasn't near the first two, mostly due to that. But it wasn't the deal-breaker I expected it to be. Solar's backbreakers are an artform in and of themselves in this one. The open is just as good as I thought it was, maybe better. It is a crying shame we don't get any more Solar or especially any more Solar vs. Blue Panther on the set. It's almost Thanksgiving, so be thankful a gem like this is on the set, heel ref or no heel ref.

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  • 9 months later...

Yeah, that opening sequence with Solar and Panther was super-smooth and fun to watch.  I totally loved seeing Sergio here, and his rope-running with the waving arms could have gone on for 10 minutes as far as I'm concerned.  He did a great job selling the punch to the face.  At first I thought the ref was the lucha Tommy Young, what with the insanely elaborate leaps to make the counts.  When I realized he was a heel ref, I dug him even more.  I guess I haven't seen a lot of heel refs, outside of Danny Davis in the WWF (and that super-annoying Texas set ref whose name escapes me, although he was more inadvertently heel), so I enjoyed the novelty of his ludicrous actions during the match.  And it's not like he cost Astro and Solar the match or anything.  Solar's backbreakers at the end were a thing of beauty.  I guess one flaw was that I never bought the heels as real threats.  Despite that, I watched a lot of this match with a smile on my face and will put it in my top-half, although not super far up.

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  • 2 months later...

You seriously don't see Sergio or Super Astro for almost the entirety of the Solar/Panther pairing. There's one shot where you can see Sergio's hand and leg and one of Astro's face but otherwise, the massive ring and the focus of the camera on the two maestros makes this almost look like it isn't a tag match. Sergio's facials (har har) are great and I love the moment when Panther comes in to save his bacon by standing in front of Astro and clapping.

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I can understand people not liking the heel ref stuff, but the ridiculousness of the ref strutting as he keeps the other babyface from helping his partner is just too good to not enjoy. And they needed someone on the heel side to help make up for Sergio El Hermoso working this match like the lucha Honky Tonk Man. Plus, I think the ref working against them makes the babyfaces look even better when they manage to win. This won't go too high on my ballot but it was definitely a fun watch.

 

You can only hate this so much:

 

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