Video link to the match over at Youtube : https://youtu.be/HxBMFTVFZzU



Cagematch page for this match/event.



Who’s Who?

El Hijo del Santo

Making his debut in 1982, El Hijo del Santo is the youngest of 8 son’s Santo had with his first wife. The original El Santo died shortly after in 1984 after famously showing his face briefly on a TV appearance.

If you want to bask in the glory of Santo by watching him wrestle, you are basically out of luck as the original Santo doesn’t have much tape for various reasons. Luckily, his son became one of the best wrestlers on the planet during his storied career and lucha tape became more aplenty. If you want to see Santo wrestling his son is your best bet, but Santo’s luchador films did normally include some wrestling to establish him as a wrestler in those films and was a close as many people could get to wrestling if you lived too far away from an arena.

Like many talents in the 1980′s El Hijo del Santo worked with both EMLL and UWA which wasn’t odd and in fact was the norm for many talents at the time. 1992 came around and like many people El Hijo del Santo made his way to AAA, but unlike most people he left before the peso crashed going back to CMLL in 1996 and working there for a decade before leaving to form his own company in 2007 Todo X El Todo which still runs shows. He has retired for the most part now, but is still a public figure. Writing think pieces on current lucha events and still running his own indie company.

By this time in his career El Hijo del Santo had won the UWA World Lightweight Championship(x3), WWA World Lightweight Championship(x2), UWA World Welterweight Championship(x2), WWA World Welterweight Championship(x7), AAA World Tag Team Championship(with Octagon), Mexican National Trios Championship(With Angel Azteca & Super Muneco), Mexican National Welterweight Championship, Mexican National Middleweight Championship, CMLL World Tag Team Championship(with Negro Casas x3, which he was currently holding with Casas in their 3rd reign).

If my count was correct by this time his record was 52-0-0, which I think is the highest we have had and for good reason. Many luchadors obviously are basically nobodies when they start. Being son of hands down the most famous luchador meant that El Hijo del Santo started with a spotlight on him. Luckily, he thrived with the attention and while his father was the most famous luchador, El Hijo del Santo has an argument for being the best wrestler to don a mask and wrestle across the Mexican countryside.

Negro Casas

Negro Casas made his debut in 1979, like most talents in the 1980′s he worked for both CMLL and UWA. He was also one of the loyal talents to CMLL who didn’t leave during AAA’s boom in the early to late 90′s.

Less decorated than El Hijo del Santo who he is teaming with here for their 3rd reign together with the CMLL World Tag Team Championship. As a singles competitor Negro Casas held the NWA World Welterweight Championship, UWA World Middleweight Championship & UWA World Lightweight Championship holding those 3 belts throughout the 1990′s.

14-3-0 was his luchas de apuestas record at the time only losing to 2 people in his career this far. El Hijo del Santo in 1987 and again a decade later at CMLL Anniversary. The other person he lost to was Eddie Guerrero sometime in the 1980′s when both were pretty much unknowns in the scene. Though Eddie Guerrero had a leg up thanks to his father Gory Guerrero being one of the most famous guys of the Golden Era of Lucha Libre in the 50′s/60′s.

It was still fairly new at the time, but Negro Casas also won the 2000 Leyenda de Plata which is a tournament that started in 1998 in honor of El Santo. Who as his name would imply, is the father of El Hijo del Santo. As the 2000′s moved forward this would become one of the biggest yearly accolades anyone in CMLL could win and Casas would go on to win it 2 more times.

Negro Casas at 58 is still an active roster member in CMLL. One of the most respected talents in all of Mexico and in general. Few people in wrestling have had as long of a storied career or continue to wrestle at such a high level well into their 50′s.

Ultimo Guerrero

Making his debut in 1990 the first part of that decade he would be off the radar. His first wide exposure coming in the short lived Promo Azteca promotion that ran for a few years in the late 1990′s before making his way to CMLL in 1998 where he has been ever since, doing independent dates as well.

Not much to talk about when it comes to gold. At this point the only gold on record for Ultimo Guerrero was the CMLL World Tag Team Champion which Ultimo captured with his tag partner here Rey Bucanero in 2001.

2-0-0 was his luchas de apuestas record at the time. His 1st unmasking being Mr. Aguila at 1998′s CMLL Anniversary while the other was less important unmasking Difunto II at a 2001 live event.

So this match is before Ultimo Guerrero was such a standard bearer for CMLL. Which would be more cemented in the coming years. Both him and Rey Bucanero being a bit junior to the other team. It’s not night and day, but Casas/Santo have about a decade more experience each to Rey/Ultimo.

Rey Bucanero

Making his debut in 1991 and is nephew to the well known Pirata Morgan who was apart of the legendary Los Infernales stable. Which was an in for Rey Bucanero who worked for CMLL pretty early in his career in 1992.

As noted above, he held the CMLL World Tag Titles with Ultimo once before at this point. Before that though he also won the CMLL World Trios Championships (with El Satanico and Emilio Charles Jr.) in 1997 as well and was 1 belt more decorated than Ultimo Guerrero at this point.

2-1-0 was his luchas de apuestas record at the time. He had unmasked 2 men Pegasso I & Black Machine, before losing his own mask to Shocker in 1999. Which he still wears out as entrance gear even now in 2018.



Wasn’t mentioned in Ultimo Guerrero’s bit, so I’ll put it here. It should be noted in the year prior at CMLL Anniversary Ultimo Guerrero/Rey Bucanero were deadcenter in the main event angle. Which was them feuding over the Los Infernales name with Satanico and his henchmen. Ultimo/Rey didn’t win the name so they have since changed and gone to the Los Guerreros del Infierno name. Which was the start of the Los Guerreros stable, that same story spawned Mephisto and Averno who’d go on to have their own stables as the Los Infernales name quietly faded once Satanico retired from regular CMLL competition.

How is the match?

Fantastic, people will think I’m overstepping when I say this is one of the best tag matches you’ll ever see. I’d suggest just watching it. If you don’t like it, I don’t really know what flaws you are seeing. With the exception of a pretty ugly looking powerbomb at the tail end of this match that looked like it could have easily injured Negro Casas. Luckily it’s been 15+ years and Negro Casas is still wrestling, so I don’t think it could have been that bad. Negro Casas being a resilient fighter it seems.

Other than that one sorta sloppy spot at the tail end of this match it’s a great story with lots of pitch perfect counters and spots out of nowhere. In a very convincing way it seems like Ultimo/Bucanero both had answers to all the offense Santo/Casas could muster. Never letting either guy get their moves off more than once. A great example of that being pretty self contained here, but most of the time they didn’t do the move back to back. Even the finish of the match comes from a counter opening up a window for the rudos to take.

The Wrestling Observer Newsletter called Los Guerreros del Infierno(Ultimo Guerrero & Rey Bucanero) Tag Team of the decade and this won’t be the last tag match featuring them that we will look at this month. They were really on fire in the early 2000′s and much like the 1980′s had Los Infernales/Hermanos Dinamitas/Villanos/Los Brazos made Tríos wrestling popular, Ultimo/Bucanero for a time made CMLL’s tag division the most exciting thing in CMLL for a short amount of time. This was during that time where they were the most over and interesting tag team in CMLL and in wrestling as a whole. I’d really recommend checking this out. 4 great talents, putting on a great contest.