El Dandy vs. El Satanico, El Juicio Final (5/18/2014)

Here we have another commissioned review from friend of the blog/frequent contributor @beenthrifty. You can be like them and pay me to write about anything you would like also, be it a match, a series of matches, a show, or whatever. The going price is $5/match (or if you want a TV show or movie, $5 per half hour), obviously make sure I haven’t covered it before (and ideally come with a link). If that sounds like a thing you’d like to do, head on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon and do that. If you have an idea more complex than just listing matches and multiplying a number by five, feel free to hit the DMs and we can work something out. 

All these years later, the two meet again for, you guessed it, a hair vs. hair match.

Despite their big blowoff happening over twenty years prior, Dandy and Satanico never really finished with each other. The big feud saw its conclusion and it was a perfect one, yes, but they kept fighting on and off for the rest of the 1990s. They only ever stayed away from each other during the 2000s, parting ways in 2000 and not meeting again for over a decade. However, this is one of eight singles matches they had between 2014 and 2016, and it’s a wonderful thing to see.

Yeah, of course it isn’t on the level of their 1990-1992 matches against each other.

No shit.

Dandy and Satanico are older, in worse shape, fatter, less mobile, it’s on a much smaller show and lacks the feeling of spectacle that those matches put to such great use, all of these very valid reasons why this is the least of their apuestas together.

However, I do not really care, because this was fun in a totally different way. Instead of a bloody old school Arena Mexico apuestas match between two all-time greats at the peaks of their powers, we get something almost as cool, which is two barely mobile old man riffing around in a weird little venue and chopping and punching each other as hard as possible, before spending more time shouting at each other on the microphone post-match than they actually did wrestling.

Is it anywhere near as great as their peak work, objectively?

No, of course not.

Do I still like it a lot?

You bet!

Dandy and Satanico repeat the finish to their definitive 1992 match, more or less. Satanico is not pulling off a perfect bridging O’Connor Roll in 2014, of course, but it’s there in spirit. There’s a restart spot, and within a minute of the restart, Dandy has (relatively speaking) exploded on him, and won yet again with the Dandita.

A nice little finish to a nice little match.

They haven’t shared a ring since 2019, in the last match El Dandy wrestled to date. They had their last singles match three years before that. It is a fairly safe bet that these two will never wrestle each other again. However, given all they got to do together over a twenty to thirty year span, it’s a fairly easy thing to live with. They got to have a trilogy of spectacular apuestas matches, and years later, got to have what looks like a series of thrilling little codas at the end of everything else.

Not what it was, but as far as codas go, a fun little burst.

El Dandy vs. El Satanico, CMLL 59 Aniversario (9/18/1992)

Here we have another commissioned review from friend of the blog/frequent contributor @beenthrifty. You can be like them and pay me to write about anything you would like also, be it a match, a series of matches, a show, or whatever. The going price is $5/match (or if you want a TV show or movie, $5 per half hour), obviously make sure I haven’t covered it before (and ideally come with a link). If that sounds like a thing you’d like to do, head on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon and do that. If you have an idea more complex than just listing matches and multiplying a number by five, feel free to hit the DMs and we can work something out. 

This was a hair vs. hair match, completing the apuestas trilogy between the two.

In their first hair match in December of 1990, El Dandy won through a revenge fake low blow disqualification, following a series of matches where Satanico employed his patented technique. In their rematch the following December, Satanico got his revenge and to really spit in Dandy’s eye, did it almost entirely cleanly. It’s hardly the most traditional pro wrestling trilogy storytelling and has its own problems, but it stands out a whole lot, especially because it still leaves Dandy with something to work for in the third meeting between the two.

Like all the previous matches, this is real great.

I could write for the fourth or fifth time about the beautiful mechanics and the chemistry on display between these two or how perfect they are in their respective roles. Dandy’s punches, Satanico’s celebrations and shit eating grins, all the energy Dandy has on the comebacks, how smooth everything is, how they can get so much out of building up relatively simple pieces of offense, all of that. It’s been done to death talking about these two before, so I’m not super interested in doing it again. Two of the best wrestlers ever have yet another great match for the reasons they always do, but more interestingly, for other reasons too.

The construction of the thing is also really spectacular.

More than any other three fall lucha match I’ve watched recently, this uses its time so well. The three falls all have enough time to really breathe, and maybe most impressively, the first fall is long enough and intense enough that for a moment, I wondered if this was actually a three fall match at all. Each of the falls not only has time to be its own individual piece of wrestling (while fitting together perfectly), but each of them has a real point to it too.

Dandy and Satanico start angry, but there’s still some science there in addition to the low blows (a quick note on the side: Satanico immediatly going to a low blow once he has the chance or it here is especially great after spending all of the second match disguising his low blows and also trying to lie about them) and face punching. Satanico gets nasty and violent in response in the second, winning out because of it, before Dandy beats his ass and delivers a million receipts in the third fall. It sounds simple, and I suppose it is, but few other matches come to mind that get it as right as this does. Not just in the execution of these ideas or how great the individual performances are, but how well paced and laid out it all is. Your standard three fall match is theoretically supposed to be a three-act narrative, but it rarely works out as well as it does here, with three distinctly different and even acts that just so happen to also come together into one complete thing as well.

It’s also a match that makes the most of every bit of material it has, never once feeling like a match with even a second more than it needs, and always moving forward at seemingly the exact right speed and in the exact right way. It is not astonishingly surefooted, in the sense that I am not astonished, but every single thing this match opts to do feels correct.

First and foremost, this is a match that succeeds on feeling.

The best quality this match possesses — and there are many great qualities this match possesses, as we will discuss — is that it feels genuinely climactic.

It’s not an easy thing to put into words, but there’s a powerful feeling present here at all times. Every punch feels like it’s being swung with not only the intention to end the match, but with so much force and hatred behind it too. I hate the word passion in a review because it feels both super vague and overused, but everything really comes pouring out of the screen here.

There’s also just a whole lot of stuff that whips ass.

Satanico vs. Dandy is a series full of great individual moments, and this has another of my favorites.

When Dandy finally does come back and draws blood on his enemy in the third fall, Satanico tries to retreat up the aisle with Pirata and calls for a time out, but Dandy sprints towards him and punches him in the face while he’s still motioning for a time out. It’s a fairly ordinary thing, but because of everything about this — how perfect both men are in their roles, the match up to that point, the series up to that point — it stands out as this really beautiful pocket chunk of professional wrestling. All of it is there in this thirty to sixty second package, Our Hero making the comeback, a shithead trying to evade justice in a deeply unrespectable way, and gets his shit rocked in the most satisfying possible way.

It’s the story of the match condensed into thirty seconds and it’s fantastic.

As the above might suggest, another strength of this match is that it sees them return to what made the December 1990 hair match so so great in the first place.

Tons and tons of blood.

the Satanico vs. El Dandy hair match from 1992, unsurprisingly, whips ass pic.twitter.com/4YeKnA09D1

— killer spelled backwards (@ElHijoDelSimon) November 21, 2021

Dandy bleeds first (an absolute gusher, as you can see above), but Satanico joins him before too long in the third fall. The work on the two open wounds is outstanding. You’d think that once again, the magnetism and pure evil of Satanico stands out the most, but El Dandy is just as great if not better. When he takes Satanico to task outside, there’s this little patch of time when he posts Satanico and the bad man just drops down by the post, and Dandy begins swinging the side of his head into the side of the post with these short little hammers, like he’s trying to break the ringpost apart from the ring itself, using El Satanico’s head as a blunt object.

Beyond the blood and the construction and the individual performances, what really elevates this in my eyes is what they chose to do with all of that, the ends that they applied all of these all-world raw materials towards.

True to that feeling, it is the conclusion, and what a conclusion it is.

With both all covered in blood and stumbling around and reaching frantically for any way to end the match, Satanico reverts back to who he is and always will be. Confronted with real adversity and not lucking out like he did last time, Satanico does what comes most natural, and cheats his ass off. He grabs the ropes on a bridging pin to steal it, only for cornerman Atlantis, Dandy, and the crowd to plead with the referee until an official comes out for the restart.

Dandy sprints at Satanico this time, and succinctly beats his ass with real finality now.

Following a series of the world’s most frantic punches and clotheslines, Dandy goes into the Dandina, and beats Satanico to take his hair for a second time. It is, perhaps, the ultimate testament to this series and the two wrestlers in it that they manage to make a simple La Magistral feel like not only a move with genuine impact, but also a perfect ending to a long-running blood feud.

El Satanico is the worst man alive, and finally, El Dandy not only defeats him in one of these apuestas matches, but really and genuinely beats his ass before pinning him un undeniable fashion, leaving him no legitimate gripe. It’s a perfect ending to a sensational story, with enough beautiful mechanics and delightful violence to satisfy just about everybody. One of those matches I would point someone towards to explain what this is all supposed to be and what it can be.

Spiritually correct professional wrestling.

***2/3

El Dandy vs. El Satanico, CMLL on Televisa (12/6/1991)

Here we have another commissioned review from friend of the blog/frequent contributor @beenthrifty. You can be like them and pay me to write about anything you would like also, be it a match, a series of matches, a show, or whatever. The going price is $5/match (or if you want a TV show or movie, $5 per half hour), obviously make sure I haven’t covered it before (and ideally come with a link). If that sounds like a thing you’d like to do, head on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon and do that. If you have an idea more complex than just listing matches and multiplying a number by five, feel free to hit the DMs and we can work something out. 

This was a hair vs. hair match.

It’s a sequel to one of the best matches of the previous year, in which Dandy faked a foul in revenge on Satanico to claim his hair. It’s a finish that I did not love, but that I found super interesting, Satanico getting his receipt at the worst possible moment for it, in a move that would have been a despicable move from the ostensible babyface in El Dandy, had he done it to virtually anyone else outside of the country’s most contemptable villain.

Nearly a full year later, El Satanico finally comes for revenge.

The least interesting thing about this is that it, once again, is a great match. You expect it from two of the best wrestlers of all time.

It’s great in the most obvious ways, the result of simple mathematics when you throw these two at each other again and give them twenty to thirty minutes in a match with the easiest to understand stakes in all of wrestling.

Dandy and Satanico have a truly outstanding physical chemistry with each other, and if nothing else, the match is a mechanical marvel. This is a match from over thirty years ago, nothing they do is all that revolutionary, but it has this certain quality to it. It gives me a certain feeling, the same one I get sometimes when watching the Rock & Roll Express or a Fantastics vs. Midnight Express match, seeing all of these super advanced and intricate exchanges revolving around pieces of offense we regard now as routine and basic as hell, but done with enough speed, precision, and commitment that they still work. Through a series of attempts and misses and dodges before the payoff, they’re able to make Dandy’s connection on a mere clothesline feel like a big deal.

El Dandy vs. El Satanico, CMLL on Televisa (12/6/1991) pic.twitter.com/kmpvvHFrfJ

— killer spelled backwards (@ElHijoDelSimon) March 30, 2023

There’s a bunch of other stuff from this match you can pluck out like that. It’s all quite simple, but it’s done so masterfully that the match itself hasn’t aged half as much as the quality of the footage might suggest.

Individually, the performances are also fantastic.

Dandy is, again, an outstanding babyface. You can chalk a lot of it up to Satanico and how great he is (more later), but it feels good as hell to see Dandy beat his ass. The offense itself is pristine, but there’s an energy to it above all else. Dandy’s long-term kind of cumulative selling in this match is also outstanding. The back hurts more and more, he does a great job of selling a weird kind of fluke knee injury near the end, so it isn’t just the energy and pure execution, but Dandy is Dandy.

This very much feel like El Satanico’s match though.

He is both a perfect cheap shot taking coward and totally in his element as a violent brawling heel. Equally in place and at home immediately eating shit in the first fall and spending the rest of the match doing a myriad of small and gruesome things. As at home trying to exaggerate contact to draw a foul (a move that feels sort of fair given their last match) as he is laying in the punishment when he finally takes over. The first time he drops Dandy with a right hand, he immediately follows with this gross series of punches to the back of the liver. He has this other great habit of walking away and either limping, walking some previous damage off, or complaining to the referee about something, before sprinting back to throw a stomp when Dandy gets up. It’s another really small thing, but a great ultra simple way to communicate a feeling of desperation. The match is full of a bunch of other little things like that you can pick out, but the simple acts of violence, done in such a specific little way, are the ones that always leave a strong impression.

It’s not exactly a virtuoso Satanico performance, probably not near the top ten, but it’s a casually great one that I find so so impressive anyways. In the middle of a more casually great apuestas than a true spectacle or Encounter, it fits.

Narratively, it is once again a real thrill.

The beginning of the match — encompassing the entire first fall — is immediately perfect, not only as its own delightful little mini story, but at totally establishing everything about the match.

Satanico spends so much time outside before the bell talking and complaining to a referee while Dandy waits (I like to believe he was yelling about how he objectively got screwed last time in an apuestas againt Dandy, but as a non Spanish speaker, I have no actual idea). Satanico eventually and then suddenly bursts forward when Dandy has his back turned, only to instantly eat shit when Dandy hears, sees, and/or simply feels him coming.

Like, immediately. Not a shred of offense to it before he pays for his crimes yet again, both the deceit itself, but also a potentially greater crime of repeating himself, as it was also how he started their December 1990 match, albeit to far far far greater success. Dandy drops him overhead, clotheslines him four or five times, and puts on the La Magistral to go 1-0 within a minute.

In response, Satanico does Satanico shit. Trying to exaggerate to draw a foul only to be denied, hitting like five or six moves theoretically to the old bread basket but that Dandy sells a whole lot like low blows, which feels enough like a callback to the previous year’s match and feud that I’m choosing to believe it was intentional (listen, no, I do not think El Dandy and El Satanico did some years apart callback stuff on purpose so much as just this is how they wrestle, but it’s there and it fits), repeating things that work until they no longer do and he eats shit again. All of the good stuff.

Cruelly, it just comes down to luck this time.

Despite being able to survive La Satanica in the third fall when he couldn’t at the end of the second, and doing everything else right, El Dandy sort of tweaks his knee coming up off the mat following one Figure Four, and pauses for a moment. Between a hurt leg that he tries to shake off and the lingering back damage he’d been showing for several minutes prior, he gives Satanico too much road and/or doesn’t have what it takes when Satanico counters a second try into a cradle. The hook is in too deep, Dandy is just hurt enough, and this time, Satanico gets the win.

Satanico avenges his hair loss the previous year, and in the most demoralizing way possible. Not only a clean win, but a clean scientific win at the end of a match largely comprised of him fighting a crueler and dirtier sort of a match. On top of it all, a clean win that still doesn’t quite feel entirely earned, as a result of Dandy’s injuries.

When Dandy’s getting it chopped off though, the whys and all the little caveats don’t really matter all that much. The series is even, and the worst person alive has his day in the sun. A wonderful sequel, less in the sense that it really lives up to the original, and moreso in the sense of a classical middle act in a trilogy. Our Hero loses in the most demoralizing way possible, and literally, the devil has his day.

Beautiful professional wrestling.

It’s not quite the match that their last apuestas was, yeah, again. There’s no blood here, the drama isn’t quite the same, and it feels a little too clean when they get to the final moments trading nearfalls. All the same, it is Dandy vs. Satanico, and a natural chemistry and the strength of the individual performances still gets them real real far.

***1/5

 

 

Hechicero vs. El Satanico, Lucha Memes Chairo 12 (2/5/2018)

As with their 2017 match, it is maybe not great, but it is just an enormous amount of good dirty fun.

Satanico starts HOT this time, attacking Hechicero on the floor and up the small entrance way (or rather, the video file begins with this, and I am choosing to believe it is the start of the match), and spends like half the match just really Giving Him The Business on the outside. All around ringside, on the little entrance, through the crowd, it’s all a blast. Satanico really clobbers him as best he can, making a lot out of the environment by slamming him into railings and throwing the plastic chairs down on his head, all of it. It’s a great thing to see, as on top of the thought that comes to mind about how cool pro wrestling is for making you cheer for a guy named The Satanic, it also just rocks to see an old guy fired up and ready to devour the young.

Of course, this can only last so long.

Hechicero eventually gets the match back into the ring, and once that happens, poor old Satanico is out of his element. Once the match stops being a fight and, through Hechicero’s effort, is forced to become a wrestling match, it is over.

Not immediately, of course, but slowly and definitively.

The gaps that Satanico could close through sheer fighting when trapped inside a phone booth with Hechicero are so much wider when the wrestler in his prime now and not a quarter century ago has the space to run and leap and use the ropes like Satanico can’t and close distances a hundred times faster than Satanico can. Hechicero wins with a complex Indian Deathlock variation, but ultimately, it could have been any hold. Satanico puts up an outstanding fight, but some battles simply cannot be won.

Even the devil can’t quite grab that treacherous little arrow in midstream.

A better outing than their first match, if still not great, but let’s be honest and admit that this was never going to be GREAT. Time is linear, and there are many problems with that. It is cool that we got to see it at all, let alone twice, and the fact that they bothered enough to put forth an even better effort the second time around, and one that just slightly builds upon their first match, is endearing enough.

Sometimes wrestling can just be really fun.

El Satanico vs. Hechicero, Lucha Memes/MDA (6/4/2017)

Is it great?

No. I mean, of course not, right?

This is a big company guy working a smaller spot show (although one in Arena Puebla and using CMLL’s ring and set up) against an old man whose best days were twenty years plus in the past at this point. I am not saying that this is a great match or, really, even one on the borderline.

It is, however, a whole lot of fun.

Said big star is great at all of the little things a match likes this requires to still work, in spite of a result never in question and an opponent who is not at his physical best, which is to say Hechicero hits real hard, can roll around on the ground in some fun ways, willing to take a big bump or two, can cover if things don’t go perfect, and above all, is a real hard guy to look away from. El Satanico sure isn’t what he was, but the bones of what made one of wrestling’s best routines work are there, which is to say that he’s also still just such an engaging personality to watch even when doing almot nothing and can still throw shots with the best of them.

If you don’t have anything else to do for ten or fifteen minutes (and I know you don’t), you might as well give this a spin. It only works in small ways, the match doesn’t come together as a really GREAT match at any point, but if you came across “Hechicero vs. El Satanico, 2017” and have reasonable expectations, this will probably be a fun little time for you too.

El Satanico vs. Octagon, EMLL Super Viernes (4/12/1991)

This isn’t exactly a classical great match, but it’s unique and a real blast.

On paper, this is Satanico just whipping Octagon’s ass for close to twenty minutes but getting carried away at the end and getting caught out of nowhere. There’s a lot of potential for it to go wrong or to get boring, but Satanico is the best possible guy to put in this role. It’s all simple, but it’s so incredibly mean. He’s able to waver in between unbelievably cruel and almost charming at the drop of a hat. It’s deeply mean spirited, but tying Octagon’s mask to the top rope by the sashes attaches to it is just so cool and fun. Every little elbow or punch to the face once he tears Octagon’s crummy little mask open and breaks the skin a little bit also feels just that much more more violent when performed by such a spirited maniac.

Octagon wins with a flash flurry at the end, but whatever.

Not one to seek out, but yet another testament to the greatness of El Satanico, because this probably falls apart without him and instead it’s this gripping little display of physical and mental violence.

El Satanico/Emilio Charles Jr./Kamala vs. Atlantis/El Dandy/Rayo de Jalisco Jr., EMLL Super Viernes (3/8/1991)

What a wonderful thing.

Kamala is once again a blast in this environment, but at this point, I get the feeling that you can slot just about anyone into a Satanico vs. Dandy trios match and it would still be great. Kamala adds a fun element as a monster for our heroes to try and get past, but the meat of this is Charles being made to eat shit by Atlantis over and over again, and especially, Satanico and El Dandy getting to go at it again. Once again, they’re perfect together. With all due respect to the great All Japan match ups or something like the chemistry Pillman had with Flair and Windham around this time, I’m pretty sure this is the best one on one pairing in the world at this point.

This match goes as the formula does. The good guys get it together to take first fall. Revanchist attacks follow that and the villains take the second through mean spirited skullduggery. Kamala then inflicts his will to hand the win to the prancing shitheels behind him, who are all the more despicable or doing really none of the work.

Not a great match, but a wonderful application of formula to whet an appetite for coming matches.

El Dandy vs. El Satanico, EMLL Super Viernes (12/14/1990)

This was a hair vs. hair match.

It’s really great.

I don’t think it’s quite as great as many of my contemporaries do, but it’s a very great match, and if not the best lucha match of the year, it’s right up there next to the 10/19 build up trios.

They continue on and utilize the things they’ve built up over the last two to three months, as Satanico repeats his idea from October and jumps Dandy before the bell. Dandy bleeds a little bit, and the trade off for him not being quite so much like a faucet as he was in October is that it stains his tights now and produces a real gnarly look. They treat the first fall as something of a pocket version of the super libre in October, as Dandy survives it all and wins the first fall with the La Casita.

The final two falls each have proper time to breathe, and feel like much more of a struggle as a result. Throughout the second, it never feels like an impossibility that Dandy might win two straight. Satanico is able to get him with a Gory Special pin, and the third fall carries on much of the same feeling. A lot of the times, the fall breaks can just feel like transition points where they threw a fall in. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, it probably makes the most sense of any approach, but it’s cool when a match is able to come at the three fall structure from a different angle like this.

El Satanico gets busted open in the third fall, and unlike Dandy’s cut, Satanico BLEEDS. He hasn’t been quite so villainous in this match, taking it somewhat more seriously and also just not being able to because of Dandy’s full court press after the failed attempt to start the match, but it’s just as glorious and rewarding. He is the consummate son of a bitch, and he takes a beating like few others. He’s just about perfect here, constantly lashing out. He’s a desperate fighter and clawing in a way that few others have been in what I’ve watched so far. There isn’t a single opening that he doesn’t at least try to take advantage of. To define the idea of “cagey” in a match like this and in lucha libre in general, I would direct one to watch Satanico here.

There is a slight problem in the third fall, and it’s entirely because of the finish. Satanico is the one largely surviving at the end, and while they may have planned out a desperate struggle, Satanico is the one very visibly covered in the effects of the battle so far. Dandy’s cut closed twenty minutes ago. His white tights have stains on the thighs, but he’s far healthier than Satanico, and it always feels like he’s just a step away. So, when he echoes Satanico’s actions to end the first fall of the October 26th match and fakes a foul when the referee is down, it’s a cool idea.

I just hate it as the finish to what is, ostensibly, the end of this wonderful feud.

It’s a nice callback, and as always, it’s a sort of comeuppance that I really do appreciate. It’s a great idea in theory. Would have been a tremendous end to the 10/26 match, or even the first fall of this match. The problem with it as the finish is that it’s comeuppance for something that happened in another match. It’s comeuppance for something that happened in a match that El Satanico already lost. It’s not this debt that’s existed for two months. He did a thing in that match and already suffered the consequences, so the result is less that El Dandy finally gets this son of a bitch back, and more this feeling that now El Dandy is the one doing the cheating and sinking to Satanico’s depths to do what he’s unable to do fairly. Satanico, somehow, comes off more likable in the moment as prior to that, he had been the one now spouting blood like a geyser and being absolutely pummeled. The way it ends, it’s as much payback for Satanico’s prior villainy as it is Satanico now being the blood soaked survivor and being robbed at the end.

It would be an incredibly interesting story if I thought it was what they were going for at all. If they were, I would be over the moon for it. There’s a rematch a year later which may well reference the material in their two 1990 singles matches, but until I see that, it’s only fair to judge this upon on its own merits and the things that have happened so far.

If you combined this with the match from 10/26, they might synthesize into a match that I might hold in the same esteem with which everyone holds this, which is as an all-timer and MOTY level thing instead of simply being a really great match. That being said, it is a really great match that should be seen by anyone so inclined to give a shit about lucha brawls from thirty years ago.

***1/2

El Dandy vs. El Satanico, EMLL Super Viernes (10/26/1990)

This was a Super Libre match.

Awesome awesome awesome fight. Satanico gets the jump early on and he’s a real son of a bitch, but in a laid back way. Biting and working the hand (hello yes i love you), minor cheating, and oh man, the punching. Satanico is a special sort of wrestler who can change up his all-time great punches and use them to convey so many different things. He’s initially dismissive here when he’s throwing them, but that changes as the match keeps evolving.

Dandy bites his face though and he erupts like a faucet, immediately paying for not taking this more seriously from the start. He gets his ass absolutely BEAT, until he’s once again able to evade justice for a time by faking a foul to win the first fall. Dandy doesn’t bleed quite as much, but nobody’s leaving this match clean. Everyone pays in the second fall for the actions they took in the first. Dandy bleeds too, but as cosmic punishment for faking a low blow, the referee disqualifies Satanico when he catches him with an errant shot on accident to even it up.

They unload upon each other and it’s wonderful. It’s frantic, mean, desperate, and just great. There’s a smoothness to it that never undercuts the violent panic behind both of them, and that goes the other way as well. Satanico’s games stop working like they did in the first fall, he overreaches, and El Dandy is barely able to wrap him up in a La Magistral for the win.

Satanico is immensely talented, and the bulk of the exchanges between these two have been these super smooth exchanges that show he can basically do everything, and that’s a delight. This match is fantastic, but ultimately, it’s important to remember that more than anything, El Satanico is a mother fucker and a son of a bitch. He took the easiest way out to win the first fall, and spent the match paying for it. It’s perfect. Flawless storytelling. He got what he deserved for playing the games he chose to play, even if this isn’t quite the conclusion of the story these two are telling.

In the end, you will always get what you deserve. Buy the ticket, take the ride. It’s one of my favorite phrases and it’s truer here and about this sort of lucha than it is about most other wrestling ever.

A match that’s maybe fallen in the shadows behind their (seemingly?) more famous hair match later in 1990, but such a great match all the same.

An airtight morality play.

***1/4

El Satanico/Perro Aguayo/Kung Fu vs. El Dandy/Atlantis/Ringo Mendoza, EMLL Super Viernes (10/19/1990)

Another hyper effective build up trios, this time for a Satanico/Dandy Super Libre and an Atlantis/Kung Fu mask match, both happening the following week on October 26th.

Mendoza is whatever but Perro is QUITE the motherfucker, so it balances out well enough. Satanico vs. El Dandy slides back to the #2 focus this week, with the mask match being a clear blowoff situation and the Super Libre not being that so much. Kung Fu opens up the offense more this week, and he and Atlantis have some really fun exchanges. Less a hateful brawl than a classic heel vs. face match. Atlantis is low blowed, choked, and his mask is torn halfway off of his face, en route to being taken out for half of this match. Kung Fu is a capital m Motherfucker, and it is going to feel good when Atlantis finally beats his ass.

But that’s for next week.

Meanwhile, Satanico and El Dandy get to fight a lot again in the second and third falls, but work less as a brawl now and more just as this really smooth and awesome pairing.

A million little things like that. I write a lot about build up tags that it’s hard to make me want to either a.) see a match up that there’s no way I can get excited for or b.) a match up that I already REALLY want to see. This should fall into category b but these two are so talented and so particularly well suited to fight each other that they still manage to make me more excited for the match the next week.

Perro and Mendoza are also given some time here as kind of the odd-man-out C pairing and while it doesn’t light the world on fire, it’s also great. Perro is much better as a rudo here than he was years prior in the other direction, just an absolute motherfucker even when playing third fiddle. A handful of delightful punch fights between them, before Atlantis comes in to try and wreck shit, only to just be too beaten up.

Satanico takes Dandy out with a hideous back senton off the apron, leaving a hurt Atlantis basically by his own. Kung Fu keeps cheating, and ties him up in some sort of fancy hold (interrupted by an inconvenient burst of static on the VHS recording, because 1990) for the win, going into the mask match a week later.

I’ve reviewed a handful of classic lucha trios match that I’ve called perfect build up trios and I’m not taking that back, but this was a little more direct. There’s a difference between establishing grudges and making me want to see match ups and directly building up for a pair of singles matches, specifically building up to a mask match. The best term would be, I guess, more of a go-home tag. Perfect sort of go-home tag.

The best EMLL match of 1990 so far, but I anticipate that changing soon enough.

***1/2