Angel Azteca, Atlantis y Blue Demon Jr. vs. El Dandy, Super Muneco y El Texano (3/24/89)

[Phil Schneider]

Angel Azteca, Atlantis y Blue Demon Jr. vs. El Dandy, Super Muneco y El Texano (3/24/89) 

[tim.]

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.

[Graham Crackers]

A conversation that totally could have happened (but probably didn't):

 

"Hey Texano, it's me, El Dandy. I just got some New Japan tapes from Jeff Lynch and there's a fucking awesome Choshu vs Fujiwara match. We'll watch it after we drink and fuck some rats. Did you hear Fujiwara is going back to UWF? Maybe we'll get another Fujiwara vs Yamazaki match!"

 

So Atlantis vs Texano was pretty cool. Their matwork was a little more UWF-ish than some of the other matwork on the set. Outside of a couple flashy Atlantis counters this was more about attempting armbars and cool amateur wrestling. As a guy with a Super Muñeco avatar and signature I'm obligated to say that he's not as bad as tim says but I'll admit that his exchanges with Azteca weren't anything special. Blue Demon Jr. is pretty shitty though. he's pretty much only capable of a decent match when Hijo Del Santo is in the ring. Dandy tries really hard though and that's gotta be entertaining. Dandy vs Azteca is much better (that ends up being MOTY just a year later so that's no surprise). This is bottom half stuff but it has it's moments.

[Curt McGirt]

Dandy did not have any good intentions behind that back suplex, no sir. And of course Demon Jr. just gets up right after it. I guess Dandy just thought "if this doesn't cripple him it'll teach him a lesson anyway" and went for it. 

 

The crowd has X-Pac heat for Super Munico. It's like they want a straight maestros match and get him and Blue Demon Jr. involved instead. Still this has its high points: Texano is another dark horse of the set who can hang with anyone style-wise, even at such a young age. We also get more Atlantis than we got Lizmark last time (BOOOOOOO) but he's good in any amount anywhere by now. Probably finish low but still... TEXANO

[Lee B.]

I find technico-technico matches (that's what this was, right?) a bit of a challenge.  My attention wandered a bit during this, actually mostly in the first fall with the constant matching up, doing stuff, shaking hands, rinse, repeat.  I did like the submission finish to the first fall, where the announcers seemed to think it might be a choke, and it was good to see that repeated at the end of the match.  I'm surprised Atlantis tapped twice.  The Atlantis/Dandy exchanges were pretty impressively fast, especially a super-fast Dandy clothesline in fall 2 and the Atlantis dropkick to Dandy as he was climbing the turnbuckles in fall three, with Dandy taking a good tumble to the floor.  And Dandy's huge monkey-flip into the ropes.  Muneco was kind of compelling with the shrieking in the first fall.  He didn't bug me too much.  Texano had some good stuff too, like his nice shoulder-breakers in the second fall.  Still, this didn't have a lot of crowd heat, and it meandered a bit toward the end, maybe while Azteca is in the ring for a while.  I think this will land in my bottom half, although it was pretty decent with some fun moments.