El Faraon

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

[Grimmas]

Anyone going to bat for him?

[El-P]

Watched one or two matches of him for the 2006 poll, and they were terrific. Haven't really watch any lucha since, and probably won't do.

[Parties]

The jury is still out with me on Faroan. He's a guy who looks awesome in some matches (esp. in the 80s) and downright bad in others (his later stuff). He's a guy who I wanted to investigate further as the Morgan bloodbath is so great, but I've yet to see anything that lives up to that (though the '92 one with MS-1's very good as well). Watching stuff that comes up various searches of his name, he feels like a solid also-ran in a promotion w/ 20 guys who are ahead of him. But if anyone knows of great performances from him, I'm watching as much old lucha as possible before the deadline.

[cad]

Faraon was in maybe the earliest CMLL match on video in 1980 and was a fantastic tecnico. As a rudo, he looked brilliant on the mat in crafting a terrific title match with young Atlantis in 1985. I love his realistic selling and his tope, which always looked out of control but always connected perfectly. And for some reason I'm never all that excited when I see his name in a match. Part of it is that about half of his matches are from the late 1980s and early 1990s, when he was 40 years old and semiretired, but even then he managed a very famous and revered match with Pirata Morgan. The bigger deal for me is that I don't have a solid grip on what he was all about. He just didn't have a very big personality, and with his career on video split about evenly between tecnico and rudo runs, it makes it hard to envision what all of those forever unseen Faraon matches looked like. Hard to say whether that's on him for not being more of a character or on me for lacking imagination. I do wish he had more technically based performances like that one against Atlantis, though.

Matches:
Faraon and Rayo de Jalisco Jr. vs Asesino Negro and Indio Jeronimo
Faraon and Egipcio vs Lizmark and Atlantis
Faraon vs Atlantis

[Rah]

I recommending watching the Sangre Chicana vs Faraon handhelds. I believe there are three and the elusive hair match I've been hunting for a near decade. 

 

I've only ever found these highlights 

 

[cad]

On 7/31/2022 at 12:08 AM, Rah said:

I recommending watching the Sangre Chicana vs Faraon handhelds. I believe there are three and the elusive hair match I've been hunting for a near decade.

I don't know if these are the three you were talking about, but this is what I found.

Faraon vs Chicana in Arena Mexico, purportedly from 1982 (not sure if I'm buying it), had a lot of bullshit. I knew there were DQs and copout finishes back then, but this had ref intervention and dick pointing and an absurdly convenient DQ finish. Chicana looked like his '90s self rather than the legend from his '80s stuff. Faraon outworked him.

The Arena Coliseo match, listed as from 1982 but likely this one, was not bullshit. Chicana looked like a badass and Faraon did the veteran boxer trick of using the ref to wipe the blood out of his eyes. He put the fear of death in Chicana when he made his comeback and despite the introduction of broken bottles the match never went off the rails. Well, not in what was shown. There was a lot clipped out. But my opinion of Faraon went up from watching this.

And then there was a triangle match, which again was described as being from 1982 but was instead from the week before the big Chicana vs Perro Aguayo hair match. Faraon was the forgotten man here, as he was in the match most of the way and the crowd spent all match calling for Chicana, waiting outside the ring, to ruin Perro. It kind of supported my point that Faraon didn't quite have the personality of his contemporaries who were pushed at the same level. He could brawl with them, though. I'm slightly more comfortable in thinking that extensive footage of '80s Faraon would make him a strong pick.