EL HIJO DEL SECRET SANTO: Match Club

[Curt McGirt]

I think the story was it was Damien's dream to wrestle Liger. Whether he used that as a reason to slop it up I dunno. For the six minutes he had he was animated enough and both him and the crowd seemed to be having fun. It's kind of an intentionally bad gimmick with his Misawa being hilariously bad, three elbows that couldn't break an egg and then the spinning elbow basically being a shoulderblock instead. I had to rewind it to examine just how awful it was. The best part is the fans chanting for Onita and him doing the full post-match with the water. You have to wonder if his tears in the back were real though, if it really was his dream to wrestle Liger and they booked him for a match losing to Crab Boy, I'd cry too. 

[Curt McGirt]

BTW I had picked that not having seen it in years and thought it might put a smile on some faces, glad to see it's had that effect. 

[Curt McGirt]

Okay, here's Ray's review of the match from DVDVR #100, which is where I first read about it. 

Quote

DAMIAN 666 vs. GRAN NANIWA: WAR Super J Cup '95: 
(REV RAY) 
This gets on the tape because the match is a whole lot of fun, not really for the back story of Naniwa refusing to put over Damian who's dream it was fight Lyger.  For those of you who've never seen Damian in Japan, part of the gimmick is that he does impersonations of other wrestlers.  So in the course of a match, he'll shout out someone's name and start doing their trade mark moves.  It's a fun match and Damian runs through his impersonations of Choshyu, Tenryu, Onita, Muta, Kudo, Fuyuki, Shinzaki and so on.

So I guess the bolded part is what went down. It's ridiculous to think a 17 year old kid had enough stroke to nix a job to a relative veteran, but whatever.

Edited June 23, 2020 by Curt McGirt

[Curt McGirt]

The Minis match is pretty good. My main issue is that Octagon and Negro, who are supposed to be seconds, don't stay in their lane and interfere too much in the match when they should stand back and let their pequenos work. Then again I'm not surprised because both of the minis could probably work a better match than the two big guys and they're likely jealous. It's kind of funny watching them at first, they look like somebody's kid cosplaying his parent at a high school rally, but after they get going it's clear they have great talent. Octagoncito is also clearly insane as he takes a full-on tope con giro backfirst on the concrete and then gets splattered again by a Negro dive, then hits another dive that only saves him by him landing with his leg kicking out at the barrier. Negro (the big one) really deserved to get beat down for how much he interfered in this one and even laying it in to poor Octagoncito after the finish, what a piece of shit. Hate to speak ill of the dead but I hope he got his own fire blown in his face after that. 

Jeez, we picked two matches with downer endings for this week. Does anyone have anything happier?

[Beech27]

Octagoncito Vs Mini Abismo Negro

There was a lot to like in this match, but I probably enjoyed the opening few minutes of matwork the most. It felt deliberate in a contemplative way. The idea behind this kind of opening is that both opponents are probing for an advantage, but it's often just an excuse to display ground-based acrobatics. There is a bit of that, but there are pauses and shifts in weight that show caution. Things pick up quickly, though, and before you know it the tecnico has the first fall. 

Octagoncito drops the second, however, after he destroys his tailbone on the floor. I really love the german suplex hold that finishes this fall, because it indulges one of my favorite little details--when a wrestler is clearly trying to kick out, but can't. Pinning should be effective, you know? If the only way to win is knocking your opponent into next week, so many nearfalls are less believable. 

The third fall is much longer than the first two, and does feature the substantial interference and escalating moves you'd expect. I felt things got a little less tight here; there were moments where each wrestler seemed to wait for a spot or just lose the plot briefly--which I'd notice less if they weren't so good about it earlier--but it was still really compelling. And the powerbomb that (basically) finishes it was suitably emphatic. 

[Matt D]

Octagoncito vs Mini Abismo Negro

Yeah, I tend to pick things I haven't seen so that I can see something new too. This was on a lot of lists for best lucha matches, period, and while those lists aren't necessary made with modern eyes and there are different things prioritized now, to a degree, I thought it'd be a good pick. Maybe not. 

My initial takeaway is that Mini Abismo Negro (Mini Viper!) is a great base. He makes all of Octagoncito's stuff look great, and is just there for him constantly. Good timing. Good cutoffs. Goes up and over for him early and then just crushes him on the back half like he's Vader against Brian Pillman or something. Octagoncito garners a ton of sympathy as he gets beaten on by normal sized Abismo Negro and takes the dive to nowhere. Just to give you a sense of what I think about older lucha ratings, my assumption is that this match IS rated so highly as much for that dive as anything else. "Good dives" is one of the vapidest ways to judge lucha. It's stil insane and then Mini Abismo Negro just crushes him after. I think they should have gone right to a finish after that without Octagoncito getting a little bit of hope in, but that's not how lucha works. 

The brunt of the tercera was all Octagoncito getting absolute crushed and that meant every bit of hope he had pop the crowd huge. He goes with the old Ricky Morton style of hope spots, all roll ups, which makes sense with the size differential. There's a clear shift in possibilities as Octagon takes out Abismo Negro and that lets Octagoncito hit his dive and lets them roll into a finish. At the end of the day, though Octagoncito had to take big risks to damage Abismo Negro and put him away and it just backfires which does give us an impressive downer ending. Octagoncito does get the belt back in 99, so I mean, there's there, right?

As for this project as a whole, I'm thinking people's appetite to move forward might just not be here right now with everything going on.