Raul Reyes Jr. y Climax vs. Mocho Cota y Loco Zavala (1985)

[Phil Schneider]

Raul Reyes Jr. y Climax vs. Mocho Cota y Loco Zavala (1985) 

[tim.]

Mocho ruled in this, from the beautiful opening mat work to the shenanigans between the first and second fall.  Him putting both hands behind his back as a DEFENSIVE maneuver was awesome as were his wild dives outside the ring to get away from Reyes.  Climax/Zavala spots in the first fall were great as well and felt like something very unique for lucha.  Ending stuff is good, especially the final submission and the brief but intense and awesome stand up between Mocho and Reyes.  Can someone find every Mocho Cota match ever?

[Curt McGirt]

Climax's white shirt, jeans and braces totally fit the Cock Sparrer tunes on the menu. First fall has the speed increasing exponentially until rudo miscommunication ends it. Cota powdering with his hands behind his back afterwards is tremendous. He stooges so good in this. Pretty ephemeral tag, but Mocho Cota brings the greatness.

[Graham Crackers]

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.

[Exposer]

Man, I’m tired as fuck and need to go to bed so I got caught staring off into nothing while watching this. This was a total blast and had some really excellent exchanges from what I know I caught. The early exchanges in the first fall were off the hook. Climax is exciting to watch. Reyes, Cota, and Zavala had some mean punches to deliver throughout this. That third fall punching war was fucking awesome. Once again, Cota was incredible. He’s one of the greatest rudos ever just off a small sample of footage. The crowd’s fucking loathe him and that segment early in the second fall with him being a total chickenshit with the lights going out was marvelous. He capped this off by begging to Reyes but catching him with a punch to the gut. The double submission finish was wacky as hell but I liked it. This goes on the definite re-watch page because of my sleepy ass but I caught most of it and enjoyed the hell out of it.

This is about three and a half stars or so. It’s about a solid B. Fun match. 

[Matt D]

Cota's matwork with Reyes is awesome. Tons of little touches. They reset with Climax and Zavala and it immediately turns into this awesome power showcase. Zavala just picks up climax and chucks him into the middle turnbuckle, twice. That Russov guy needs to do that in NXT. Climax hits a taunting shot and then when Zavala does it again he turns it into an armdrag and flurries him out of the ring. Awesome stuff. Then Cota comes in and is a total dick about it. I love the expressive body language each guy is using when he comes in to taunt and work the crowd. Cota hip tosses Reyes and then when he goes for it again Reyes reverses it just like Climax did before. This ha a really good mix of quick work and character/story. Case in point, Climax tries to irish whip Zavala and Zavala just holds on and thumps his chest. He does it again, and this time gets him but then Zavala just stops him mid way and powers him out and thumps his chest again. Climax manages to finally outspeed Zavala and slam his head into the turnbuckle a few times. He mounts the turnbuckles, does this crazy landing on Zavala's shoulders, knee first, and Zavala just chucks him over the top. Holy crap. Climax recovers and flurries him out again with a dropkick. This is crazy good even with the VQ. Cota comes in and just flapjacks Climax to hell. Climax looks like he weighs about 185. Again, repetition  he goes for it again and Climax does this glancing rana and flurries Cota out. We get Reyes for Zavala for the first time. It lasts for about three seconds before Cota comes back in and just punches and knees the crap out of Reyes. Climax comes in and hits a flying headbutt, (repitition) misses a flying headbutt and gets chucked out. Reyes comes out of nowhere to dropkick Cota out but then Zavala comes in and crushes Reyes. Climax pops back in and this is almost like a shooting gallery for Zavala, until Reyes can get him with a flying body press. Climax back into rana Cota and the technicos win the first fall. That was chaos at the end but it all seemed flawlessly positioned, full of character and even story. Pretty awesome stuff. I wish this had even 20% better VQ.

 

Cota is quite the dick between falls. I think he has a chair at one point, but when they're out of the ring it's all mud to me. It takes a whole fall for me to realize Reyes isn't wearing a mask. Cota gets chased out of the ring and it's kind of awesome. Cota begs off to lure Reyes in and it's definitely awesome. Pretty good rudo double teaming here. For some reason I like just about everything Zavala does, whether it's the mean double axehandle clubber off the second rope or the standing body block after irish whipping climax. Hell, i even like how he does sort of a wristlock instead of a full nelson to hold the guy so Cota can hit him. Cota sitting on the second rope waiting for Climax to get taken out of the ring is great, as is the senton payoff. Zavala just whips Climax into the corner and then holds his hand up in victory after. Then Cota picks him up and gives him the world's meanest AA before wrenching him to death. Second fall was pretty much all Cota after the first one was Zavala and the face offense.

 

I love the flourish Cota does in something as simple as a suplex body slam.  Cota puts on a nasty boston crab on Reyes and the video humorously messes with tracking while Climax has had enough and fights to get in, pushing the ref down and hitting Cota off. This allows Reyes to recover and suplex Cota. I'm okay with a taking-justice-into-one's-own-hand transition, especially because then Zavala comes in to break up a submission and put on the nastiest surfboard ever. Climax comes in and time stops as Zavala just stares at him until he gets nailed and Climax gets some revenge with whips into the corner and a really nasty camel clutch. Cota finally breaks it up but we're still fairly back and forth with Zavala coming in to break up another submission. He tries to keep Climax in the ring so Reyes can't atke over, which is neat but Climax gets out and Reyes comes in swinging hilariously. They start a boxing exchange until Cota comes in and gets dropkicked for his trouble. Rudos hold down Reyes and Climax dropkicks them both which makes a HELL of a lot more sense in a trios match since then you can pretend they're holding him for their partner. Technicos toss the heels together. Technicos try to battering ram the heels heads together but get thrown off. Zavala and Cota toss Climax and Reyes into each other and then do this awesome tandem human knot submission for the finish.

 

I think you people are sleeping on this. I liked it more than almost every tag and trios match I've seen on the set so far (though not the rudos vs rudos brawl and I have to rewatch the ultraman one). Insane amount of fun with tons of character and just enough story to not bug me. 

[Matt D]

There's not a lot out there about Zavala (who I thought was a ton of fun to watch) but "DJ Spectro" wrote something. It's in spanish, so ymmv:

 

http://djspectro.blogspot.com/2012/07/el-loco-zavala-junio-de-1985-llego-y-se.html#more

 

Sonora a sido cuna de varios gladiadores que an escrito paginas gloriosas en el arte de los costalazos,asi fue que en Junio de 1985 hacia su presentacion  un elemento oriundo de aquel estado,con 10 años de experiencia y de estrafalaria presencia el luchador rudo de peso semicompleto llamado Loco Zavala debuto

en suelo azteca el jueves 23 de Junio en la Pista Revolucion al lado de Pirata Negro y  El Salvaje para enfrentar a Al Rojo Vivo,Rokambole y El Magnifico,lucha que desafortundamente perdio

Sin embargo repitio el domingo 26 de Junio,subio en la lucha especial en la Arena Mexico en un cartel en el cual tambien lucho El Caballero 2000 y quien luego seria conocido como Damina 666,ya que en aquella epoca los domingos en la Mexico servian para dar la oportunidad a muchos valores de provincia

Pero para el Loco fue su debut y despedida de la Mexico catedral ya que aunque siguio un par de semanas mas luchando en la capital para los coliseinos tanto en La Pista como en la Coliseo,regreso a su terruño antes de cumplir siquiera un mes en la capital,mala suerte o mal rendimiento?,no lo se,lo que si se es que habia mucha competencia en esos años por parte de los nuevos valores tanto los que llegaban de provincia como los salidos de la escuela de la EMLL,asi que la competencia por hacerse de un lugar en las filas tanto coliseinas o independientes era durisima y solo habia lugar para unos cuantos,tristemente para Zavala no hubo lugar

 

The gist seems to be that he had an extremely small (one month) shot at the capital before going back to Sonora. 

[DouglasC]

I could watch Mocha Cota do his rudo shtick for the entire card. If he needed to take a break, I could watch Zavala chuck Climax into the turnbuckles for the remainder of the time. And it ends with your an insane lucha submission. What more could you want from a match? Other than decent video quality. My favourite match on the disk so far. 

[Lee B.]

Yes, Cota stole the match with his antics, which are well-documented above.  The other three played their roles well.  Climax looked pretty low-rent in his get-up, but he had some nice moves and could take a toss into the corner.  The final submission was wacky, but I can live with that.  The video quality will probably push this down to mid-range for me, although there was nothing wrong with it and a fair amount of cool stuff, mostly from Cota.

[Robert]

A fine tag match though nothing overly special. Another one of those matches which I feel only made the set because someone was a big Cota fan - much like an earlier Dandy trios match that was included. Cota was great as usual but I thought Zavala was right up there with him. I've seen limited Zavala stuff but he's definitely one of those guys you just wish more stuff existed to get a better idea how good he really was. Tecnicos were limited and did their usual preliminary guys act with a couple of neat spots and good selling - especially for the larger rudo. Negatives would be match slowed down too much in the middle & finish seemed random (although it was cool!). A definite middle of the pack to lower half match.

[soup23]

This match had a big "fun" feel to it. It may not reflect well on my overall rankings but it was refreshing from the glut of title matches and brawls we have seen as a change of pace. I almost equate it to a lesser version of the Space Cadets trios in that regard. Climax and Zavala were both fairly interesting. Reyes didn't do a whole lot for me except when he was taking punches from Mocha Cota. Finish was a little abrupt and the beginnning portion of the second caida seemed fairly directionless. (***1/2)

[goc]

I'm behind everyone so by the time I get here I feel like everything has already been said. But yea, Mocho Cota is fucking bad ass in this and Zavala chucking Climax into the turnbuckles was AWESOME. Zavala looked pretty good overall even if I thought Climax sucked. Especially that deal where he stomps on the ref's foot to get past him and then moments later he's got to stop and look at the crowd and hulk up before saving his partner who's in a submission.

 

This match was really all about Reyes & Cota though and I thought Reyes looked good, especially on the mat in the first fall. He also had some really deep arm drags. He also managed not to die after that senton from Cota to end the 2nd fall so he has that going for him too. The finish to the third fall was some very odd looking double submission move that I really wish we had in HD quality so I could figure out what in the hell is going on there. I definitely thought they were building to the tecnicos win during that finishing stretch and didn't see that coming at all. This was a lot of fun and definitely worthy of inclusion on the set despite the bad video quality. I could see this somewhere between 60-75 on my ballot.