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Is Atlantis the most underrated historical figure in wrestling?


Sean Liska

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I'm not a lucha expert but I enjoy watching CMLL. And I was just watching and thinking about how you never really hear anyone talk about Atlantis as one of the true legends of the business. I know he's in the WON HOF and is very well-regarded, but to me he still doesn't seem to be talked about with enough reverence. Help educate me here if I'm wrong anywhere here. He's been a consistent main event guy for a major promotion for 35 years, headlining who knows how many shows that drew well. He was a spectacular flyer in his youth, I think would be considered a great wrestler at his peak, and to me is still enjoyable in his 50's. And to cap it, I know for sure he headlined the biggest money show in lucha history vs Ultimo Guerrero, and I think he might have the top 3 gates in lucha history to his credit, with the year they faked the Ultimo match and the match vs Sombra.

 

To me he's like the Undertaker of lucha except a more consistent better wrestler and a better draw at his peak. Am I overrating him?

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I agree with you. The comparison with Undertaker is perfect, althought I don't know if he was a better draw at his peak. Like Undertaker, he stayed in CMLL for his entire career.

 

He is probably underrated because he was never the top wrestler in CMLL, there was always somebody above him like Konnan, Mistico, Perro Aguayo Jr., Ultimo Guerrero...

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I think that if you are limiting the discussion to wrestlers for whom a ton of footage is available, then Atlaantis is a damned good choice for "most underrated/least discussed"

 

There's also a whole subset of wrestlers like Gene Kiniski (AWA and NWA champion), Gorgeous George (one of the first great heels and a true star of the early TV era) and, say, El Santo where they are barely even in the discussion because there is only limited footage available. It's hard to even rate those wrestlers properly at all, even if their historical importance is clear and obvious.

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I've been pimping Atlantis to friends ever since I got a bootleg action figure of him as a 10 year old kid. Dude is an all-time great and I feel he is so underrated. The Undertaker comparison is a good point, but I'd say Undertaker is a c-level Atlantis.

 

I always loved the way Steve Sims described him once:

 

"The list of professional wrestlers who have wrestled at least 30 consecutive years as main eventers for the same promotion is almost unheard of.
From injuries to travel to fewer promotions to the promotional value of creating new stars, workers don't usually last that long. It's very rare still these days for a wrestler to spend over 30 years with the same promotion, much less never changing character; only turning twice and on top of all that, never needing nor causing a major surgery in that entire period.
Combine all that and your Venn diagram might have a big dark colored center consisting of one. That would be Atlantis."
Atlantis is a dude like 'Taker or Shawn Michaels that has his big matches and knows how to build to 'big moments' or whatever, but he is also such a great mat worker. Historically I'd say he's one of the better mat workers from Mexico, even if he doesn't get to show off that skill set as much as I'd like. He was easily Blue Panther's best dancing partner. There were some late 1990s tag and trios matches that included Atlantis, Panther, El Hijo del Santo and Negro Casas, and the Atlantis-Panther work was better than what Santo-Casas produced.
I'll have more thoughts on Atlantis as this thread unfolds. He's such a great, smart and hard working tecnico.
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El Dandy totally loves Atlantis and puts him over all the time. Probably a lot due to their friendship back in the day, but it's funny reading Dandy on Facebook tell different Atlantis stories in all CAPS.

 

Also Eddy Guerrero said his big influences when he started wrestling and the wrestlers he studied were Casas, Dandy and Atlantis.

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I wouldn't exactly call him underrated considering his status as one of the first guys that come up when talking about mexican wrestling, his matches being gateway lucha introductions (well... atleast I hope that they are... Atlantis/VIII is one of the most watched lucha matches by non-lucha fans thanks to Meltzer approval) and his mask being one of that last huge prices in wrestling next to La Parkas... he did finish in the GWE Top 100 and even one spot ahead of Hogan, so I'd say the word has gotten around by now... personally I think the guy has been nowhere near as consistant as fellow maestros in the last decade, but in the grand scheme of things, he is probably a second tier lucha guy when it comes to work... behind your top guys in Casas, Santito, Satanico etc.

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Atlantis has what is probably the best collection of masks of any wrestler. He doesn't have nearly as many as El Hijo del Santo, but in the comparatively few mask matches he had Atlantis took the masks of Kung Fu, Mano Negra, Villano III, and Ultimo Guerrero. I'm not sure if Hijo del Santo has one mask that was as historically important as any of those four (well, I guess Kato Kung Lee's), and Atlantis still has some nice second-level ones like Talisman's. Santo the original might be ahead but I don't know enough to tell just from looking at the list of his wins.

 

The 1993 anniversary show headlined by Atlantis vs Mano Negra was one of the rare CMLL bright spots during a down period for the company, and it came at a time when their status as the number one promotion in Mexico City was actually being threatened. Vampiro was considered a bigger draw at the time, but it was Atlantis who saved the day. Apparently in the immediate aftermath the promotion went right back to drawing poorly with only rematches of the anniversary main event drawing anything for them.

 

Having (arguably) great matches in 1984 and in 2015 is an impressive feat, even if he was carried for the Satanico match in '84. I don't think he had a whole lot of MOTYCs during his prime as a worker, but I really do like the Blue Panther match from 1991 and the Emilio Charles match from 1992. He seemed to drop off in a major way after 1992. It's either a backhanded compliment or a forehanded insult, but that played a major part in the decline in CMLL match quality from 1992 to 1993, IMO. So many 1993 matches when you see Atlantis' name and go in thinking they might be awesome, and then they aren't, in part because he isn't. Goes to show how important having him in there at the top of his game was in the years before that.

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based on what I have seen of him he is very underrated when i comes to the causal fans when yu say name a Mexican worker ot most casual the will say Eddie or rey [ you know my views on these and there nationally] also i think now his mask is the most treasured in all on Lucha i do not think i can name one form his era be began in that is still intact that are not Mil or dos [ who like Santo will never lose their masks .

 

im also i big fan of his finish move

 

but yes he is very underrated by most

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I wouldn't exactly call him underrated considering his status as one of the first guys that come up when talking about mexican wrestling, his matches being gateway lucha introductions (well... atleast I hope that they are... Atlantis/VIII is one of the most watched lucha matches by non-lucha fans thanks to Meltzer approval) and his mask being one of that last huge prices in wrestling next to La Parkas... he did finish in the GWE Top 100 and even one spot ahead of Hogan, so I'd say the word has gotten around by now... personally I think the guy has been nowhere near as consistant as fellow maestros in the last decade, but in the grand scheme of things, he is probably a second tier lucha guy when it comes to work... behind your top guys in Casas, Santito, Satanico etc.

 

is there any maskes frim worker of his era debute pre 1980 who are still intact?[ not mill dos or Hito santo ] them fot are the only ones i can think of

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Per Western Lucha fan standards, not as underrated as the likes of Pirata Morgan, Sangre Chicana, Brazo de Oro, Brazo de Plata, Villano III, MS-1, Super Astro, El Faraon, Colosso Colisetti, Rambo, Espanto, Emilio Charles, Mocho Cota, Herodes, Bestia Salvaje etc. Cien Caras, one of the all time biggest draws cant get into the observer HOF so comparatively Atlantis gets his props

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Per Western Lucha fan standards, not as underrated as the likes of Pirata Morgan, Sangre Chicana, Brazo de Oro, Brazo de Plata, Villano III, MS-1, Super Astro, El Faraon, Colosso Colisetti, Rambo, Espanto, Emilio Charles, Mocho Cota, Herodes, Bestia Salvaje etc. Cien Caras, one of the all time biggest draws cant get into the observer HOF so comparatively Atlantis gets his props

Karloff Lagarde id not in the WON HOF among many others form lucha who should be

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I kind of feel like Verne Gagne is more historically underrated than Atlantis. With Gagne, we have footage of the bad years and his poor decisions and of an old man still putting himself over. Most people haven't gone out there and found the 1950s Chicago stuff where you can see him at the top of his game. He was to Chicago what Bruno was to New York and I feel like he doesn't have that same level of prestige with a lot of people.

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I kind of feel like Verne Gagne is more historically underrated than Atlantis. With Gagne, we have footage of the bad years and his poor decisions and of an old man still putting himself over. Most people haven't gone out there and found the 1950s Chicago stuff where you can see him at the top of his game. He was to Chicago what Bruno was to New York and I feel like he doesn't have that same level of prestige with a lot of people.

That's a very good one, he was a titan of the industry for decades and we tend to think of him as the guy putting on a TV show in an empty pink room or whatever that was.

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I like his rudo stuff more than I like Santo's rudo stuff generally, but I know I'm a crazy outlier there.

 

I'm with you on this, if only because Santo tended to gobble guys up. Part of that was necessity I suppose, and there were quite a few great matches during Santo's rudo run, but his matches I sometimes wished were more competitive.

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Underrated relative to what? Every lucha commentator I've seen rates him highly as a star and a worker.

Maybe it's just a thing where CMLL doesn't get talked about much in the internet as we've discussed a lot. To me, the fact that he was in the main event last Friday night at Arena Mexico is this cool special thing, it's like if Hogan was still headlining MSG, if Misawa was still headlining at Budokan, if Flair was headlining at the Greensboro Coliseum, and they were still popular and solid in the ring and just a few years ago drew the biggest gate ever for their company.

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Atlantis is a tricky one. I've seen a lot of bad Atlantis performances that make me want to say he wasn't on the level of Santo, Lizmark, Solar or Villano III as far as masked tecnicos go but there's so much more footage available of Atlantis and it's not as though those workers never had mediocre performances. I would like to see more of Atlantis' work from 1988 since his work from '89-91 is excellent, and I believe that 1988 was when he started coming into his own as a worker. I thought he was quite good during the '96-00 CMLL period but you rarely get to see him display the full range of his talents. Often he's just running through his signature spots in trios matches which can get a bit tiresome after a while. The fact that he's managed to stay relevant in CMLL for so many years means he's never really worked the maestro circuit properly which is good for him but bad for us. I would have really liked to have seen what he was capable of against Negro Navarro, for example.

 

I dunno, somebody about him doesn't scream "legend." Respected, long time star yes. But he doesn't quite have that aura that Santo had or even Villano III. He is almost at that Blue Panther type level.

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