Search the Community

The atmosphere was amazing, the drama was epic. Loved Villano in this - his work on top was excellent, he brutalized Atlantis in such a brilliant fashion, and Atlantis' selling of that was really good, too. This is heavily pimped as the best lucha match of the 2000's, and it sure was a classic. ****1/2

This is the start of Disc #4 of 6 and man, I'm really happy that I got this set a year ago. Its taken me awhile to watch it but, I think that's for the best. This stuff has been a real blast to watch. OK let's get to the matches: vs Villano III (09/03/82): Joined in Progress, This was a fun match with some good moves from Tiger but nothing of much substance. Still a good match to start out with... vs Pete Roberts (09/10/82): Black Tiger Rocco tried to jump Tiger Mask before the match but he and Roberts handle B.T. and get onto their bout. Interesting since Roberts and Rocco/Black Tiger teamed up earlier in the year. Anyhow, that aside we get a slight skip ahead in the the tape (not much) and wow! We get two technical wizards having a good old fashion duel! Tons of holds, counter holds, escapes and reversals are in this match. This was technical marvel! Classic match...this is Tiger in his element. vs Chris Adams (09/17/82): The mix of styles here was rather pleasant. Adams could do Tiger's mat stuff but, also had good punches and of course the Superkick/Thrust kick. This busted Tiger Mask's mouth open. I think it loosened a tooth frankly. TM responds with kicks of his own and tries to fight his way out of hole. Not quite a heel/face match but, Adams was no Gentleman Very good match where Tiger has to go for broke! Tiger Mask & Kantaro Hoshino vs Villano III & Black Tiger (09/19/82): This is a much better showing of Villano III than the singles match above. He and B.T make a great team. I wonder if they were teaming regularly in Japan at this time. There was no problems here despite one guy being Mexican and the other being British wrestling two Japanese guys. That being said, this was a high energy match that is really easy to watch. Everything just seemed to flow together. Now, I would have like a little more drama to have been built by working to a hot tag but that's my opinion. There were some good pinfall break-ups but, they should have been a bit more conservative with them to really make the later ones more thrilling. That is do fewer of them so it gives greater meaning & purpose to them. That's my complaint but, overall another very good go-go match. This was much more of a showcase for Black Tiger & Villano III than Tiger or Hoshino. And there's no complaints there! 6 DVDs of one guy can be pretty repetitive but Tiger Mask is not that repetitive of a wrestler. I was really worried about that and is why I held off on buying this set for a long time. In all honesty, I think I got that feeling from watching the Dynamite matches. And I don't want to knock those (we got one more fight in '83) but, I prefer these other match-ups. Those TM DK bouts stand out stylistically from his other matches and those laid the ground work for much of wrestling that would follow. But I got the feeling Tiger Mask was a flippy-floppy wrestler who did some dives and that was ahead of its time BUT 40 years later...that's old hat. This set and shoot! even the above bouts put that misconception to bed. Its worth the time to watch some of these just to do the man some justice and say "yeah, he's more than just his Dynamite matches." But I think it's worth watching these to see great wrestling in a style that you don't see anymore...and frankly I don't think most folks lack the skills and patience to do it. Oh before I forget! -BONUS- Tiger Mask & Tatsumi Fujinami vs Pete Roberts & EL Solitario (09/04/81): A year earlier we find this match. Its NOT on my big Tiger Mask set but on Archives.org. Thanks to the person that posted this! Its 13 minutes of fantastic chain wrestling, rope running action. I'm really not sure why folks don't do this today. Its as athletic as the stuff nowadays and a whole lot more interesting to watch. This was a very good match and Roberts had two amazing chain sequences with Tiger & Fujinami. Thanks for reading! Stay safe everyone

Talk about it here.

Shamelessly stealing this topic from Elliott @ GWE Forums because this forum has more activity and I thought this would be really interesting to discuss:

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

I did a podcast with LuchaWorld's Fredo Esparza talking about every candidate in the Lucha region of the Observer this week and we got into pretty much everyone, but would really enjoy the fine folks at PWO to give it a listen and see what the experts here think, whether you're a voter or just someone more interested in Lucha history I think this show hits on a few levels and we even go into a few meta topics like how important magazines were to Lucha Libre back in the old days, how hot things were in the 80s, how influential Los Misioneros are to Trios wrestling style, "cool" rudos, how awesome Sangre Chicana is, how big a star Huracán Ramirez was in the movies, and who the better dancer is between LA Park and Kraneo, among other things like a comprehensive bio of Ruben Juarez in Fredo's own words. it's hard to tell which way the wind is blowing in regards to the voters, but it was worth it just to talk about all these legends. I did my part to run point and hopefully came across well as outside of Juarez I was familiar with the rest. I really enjoyed the show and hopefully you enjoy it too. Show link: https://art19.com/shows/lucha-talk/episodes/1fa28aab-7c55-42a4-bc64-951fbdc17973

This was quite the good trios match. In the first fall, everyone hits the mat and we get some nice lucha grappling. I especially enjoy Villano IV on the mat as he is such a beast. There were also some fun Pantera flying moves against both the Diluvios. The last two falls have some bad ol' brawling with Panther going after Villano III. It is that special kind of poetry you only get in lucha that years after being such a dick to VIII Panther would lose his mask to his brother. Panther rips III's forehead open with his bare fingers and then digs his fingers into his eyes, really grueling stuff. The third fall has awesome Villano punch combos and dives. Not a mindblowing classic, but they work really hard and deliver the goods considering this could've easily been mailed in.

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.