[1990-03-16-EMLL] El Dandy & El Texano & Chavo Guerrero vs Angel Azteca & Javier Cruz & Americo Rocca

[Jetlag]

Legendary match, atleast in my book. Just one of those battles I can watch, lean back and enjoy again and again. No rocket science here, just about 25 minutes of brilliant matwork and exchanges. The highlight obviously being the Dandy/Angel stuff to set up the title match. These two were always dynamite together. Dandy was in his shootstyle kickpads and meant business. Also a masterclass on punctuation and competitiveness: Typical spotfest/workrate driven matches tend to blend together and just build to bigger spots. Here, something as simple as a corner bump were treated as special and got big reactions depending on the momentum swing. Also, there was no standing there and just glueing moves together, people would dodge, bock and counterattack all throughout the match in meaningful ways. There is working spectacular exchanges and then there is working spectacular, logical, meaningful exchanges like here. I love how educated the crowd is, booing Dandy for throwing a clothesline, and how the rudos tease double teams, theatratically decide against it but then do it anyways. Also hey look it's Chavo in a lucha match!!!

[Zenjo]

Both units walked the honourable path and fought in a technical manner throughout. It only went two falls, although they were both long. The absence of a beatdown is no bad thing in my book. The level was always decent at a minimum, with the quality rising whenever Dandy and Azteca squared off. A couple too many resets perhaps. The best part was the two leaders working a 1 on 1 closing stretch. A real bonus. Great buildup to Dandy vs Azteca and a satisfying trios in its own right. Ideal.

[Chess Knight]

Everyone is billed as tecnico here on the title cards but that doesn't stop the two teams almost coming to actual blows several times. Cruz almost gets stuck into Chavo when Rocca takes a spill to the outside thanks to him and the Dandy/Azteca exchanges lead to the other four guys coming in to provide a possible cavalry if need be. The Dandy/Azteca battles were all really good to the shock of no one who knows anything about 1990 EMLL, and I loved Dandy adding to the near-rudo style of his team by getting violently pissed being shown up in the second fall and throwing a big clothesline that gets a negative reaction. There's this one bit too where Chavo has Cruz and is ready to let Texano level him, until Chavo lets go of Cruz's arms, because they're like, really trying to play fair, man. It's hard! I liked Texano in the match a lot, he was really aggressively going for Cruz's arm when he first got in and seemed to arrogantly enjoy showing him up in exchanges later. Two fall win for Azteca's team was the right move to create intrigue around how (especially) Dandy would take that kind of loss after how he'd almost lost it a couple times, and not to mention that he'd almost beat Azteca at the end. Really good trio. I only just realised I skipped the match with the same six guys from the previous week so maybe I go back and watch that and maybe get even more context because lord knows what I've forgotten since 2012 or whatever.