Cesar Cuautemoc Gonzalez Barron, better known as Silver King, was a pro wrestler from Mexico. Perhaps one of the most important reasons why his career deserves the spotlight is he's somehow one of the most underrated pro wrestlers ever. He’s one of the best wrestlers to seemingly have been almost completely forgotten or overlooked by the majority of wrestling fans and critics, as of this writing. Many so-called wrestling experts appear to be oblivious about the fact that King was amazing, and is thus tremendously underrated. When the best Mexican pro wrestlers are being discussed, we usually hear lots of praise for Negro Casas and Hijo del Santo, and understandably so, since those two are certainly legendary luchadores. Sometimes we also hear praise for luchadores who are arguably less deserving of all that praise than King is (El Dandy, Satanico, and L.A. Park, for example). However, King seems to be overlooked in virtually every discussion that is about the best Mexican wrestlers of all time, even though he was one of the most talented Mexican wrestlers of his generation. That’s why it is important that we have a look at his entire career, and understand why he is the latest inductee into the Hall of Talent.

El Hijo del Santo may have been more graceful, Negro Casas may have been more thoughtful and detail-oriented, and Dr. Wagner Jr. may have been more charismatic and entertaining at times, but none of those outstanding luchadores were arguably able to adapt to different styles of the wrestling world quite as well as Silver King was able to. Wherever King went, he stood out as a spectacular and effective worker. He was trained in Mexican lucha libre, but quickly adapted to the lucharesu style when he wrestled for Universal in Japan. Whenever he returned to Japan, he kept showing that he was able to adapt to Japanese puroresu arguably better than any Mexican wrestler had ever done. Of course, Mil Mascaras and Dos Caras used to impress crowds in the 1970s, and Dr. Wagner Jr. did quite well for himself in Japan. However, King’s ability to adapt and combine the styles he encountered in Mexico and Japan was exceptional. He was a natural in any style and country he wrestled in. Even when King was hired by WCW, he understood he had to try to find a way to make his short WCW TV matches work. He wasn’t selfish, and while certainly not afraid to hit cool-looking moves, he seemed more concerned about getting everyone in the match over. Despite never getting a big push in WCW, he played his role well, and his matches were not dull. No matter where Silver King went, his style seemed to work, and he seemed to fit in each league and each country he wrestled in. He was deceptively agile, as he was a somewhat stocky luchador with a powerful upper body, but he was able to fly around like many of the smaller luchadores. His athleticism helped to be able to hit exciting moves seemingly with tremendous ease. Not only was he able to shine whenever he was on offense, he was also able to make his opponents look good through his ability to combine bumping, selling, timing and understanding.

Not too much is known about Silver King’s first five years in the wrestling business. King made his debut in November 1985 in Coahuila, the Mexican state he was born in on January 9, 1968. When King made his debut, he was 17 years old, and he was known as El Invasor. However, in 1986, when he was 18 years old, he became known as Silver King. During his early years, he was still a masked wrestler, but after he lost his mask to El Hijo del Santo in a mask vs. mask match on 11/13/87, King started wrestling without a mask. Despite losing his mask so early in his career, King ended up having a very successful career. It was revealed that King was the son of legendary luchador Dr. Wagner (Sr.). King’s brother, Dr. Wagner Jr., would also become a famous wrestler. There is very little footage of King’s 1980s matches, but in footage available of a WWA match in Tijuana from 1989, King showed that he had become at least a decent worker before the 1990s started. Another interesting fact about King’s earlier years was that at some point in the early 1990s, King was married to Xochitl Hamada, who was the daughter of Gran Hamada and older sister of Ayako Hamada.

Silver King’s career from 1991 onward is a lot more researchable, since there is a lot more information and footage available about King’s career from 1991 onward. 1991 was the year that King became a very good worker, as he started the year as a pretty worker and showed progression as the year went on. It probably isn’t a coincidence that 1991 was the year King started wrestling in Japan more often. He had been on a tour to Japan in 1987, but it was in 1991 that touring Japan on a regular basis started becoming a thing for King's career. Gran Hamada’s Federacion Universal de Lucha Libre (FULL), a.k.a. Hamada’s Universal Wrestling Federation, was a lucha libre league in Japan that was the first league to successfully be a Mexican-style wrestling league in Japan. The league was basically the predecessor of Michinoku Pro, a league that was very popular among puroresu fanatics on the Internet back in the 1990s, and which was more of a lucharesu league, a hybrid of Japanese and Mexican wrestling. While Michinoku Pro probably should be considered puroresu with strong lucha libre influences, Universal was an actual full-on Mexican-style lucha libre league that operated in Japan. King did well during his tours for Universal, and you could say that his run in Universal in 1991 and 1992 was when he first was able to put his name on the map of international wrestling in a successful way.

In the years leading up to 1992, Silver King had been making appearances for Lucha Libre International (LLI), better known as Universal Wrestling Association (UWA) to non-Mexican fans because of the fact LLI’s titles were all named UWA titles, since the UWA was the (fictional) governing body of the UWA championships. While it’s common for people to refer to LLI as UWA, this would be like referring to NJPW as IWGP. In the LLI, King did well for himself, and he had quite a good year in LLI in 1992, but while LLI was a fun league to watch for lucha fans, it wasn’t necessarily always a league that presented matches that brought out the best in the performers involved. Several of the LLI wrestlers who toured for Univeral worked quite a bit harder during those Japan tours than they did at LLI shows in Mexico. King didn’t only wrestle in Mexico and Japan in 1992, he also had a match in the United States. On 6/16/92, Silver King & El Texano (billed as Silver King I & Silver King II) wrestled Jimmy Garvin & Michael Hayes in a match that was quite a clash of styles at WCW Clash of the Champions. It was a random appearance that only happened because WCW needed a Mexican team for their world tag team tournament, and at least they picked arguably the best Mexican team around at the time (so somebody in WCW actually did their homework). This would be the first and only WCW appearance of King until he started working there on a regular basis five years later.

In 1993, Silver King started appearing on cards of Japanese hardcore/garbage wrestling leagues, first for the league known as W*ING, and in 1994-1995, in IWA Japan. King usually teamed with El Texano on these shows, and they oftentimes wrestled against the Headhunters, a mediocre American tag team that was popular among hardcore wrestling fans, partially because of them being heavy wrestlers who could perform moves that were usually not performed by workers of their weight category, like moonsaults. King & Texano wrestled the Headhunters several times, but their 5/5/93 match, which was possibly **¼ (judging from the heavily edited footage), was probably the best meeting between the two teams.

By 1994, Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL) had become Silver King’s main league and would remain his mean league until mid 1997, while still appearing on Japanese tours quite regularly. CMLL, which was founded in 1933, is the oldest wrestling league that is currently still active. 1995 was one of Silver King’s most interesting years, because his level of work had noticeably improved, and he had become an excellent worker and at times even a great worker. In 1996 and 1997, he wasn’t able to really show that excellence as much though. This wasn’t necessarily King’s fault, because he mostly seemed to get booked in matches with workers who weren’t really able to go all out with him, Emilio Charles Jr. and an over-the-hill La Fiera come to mind (or even worse, workers like the overweight Headhunters or the overrated Miguel Perez Jr.). Despite CMLL being the most traditional lucha league, they weren’t necessarily always providing matches that were good. When King turned heel towards the end of this CMLL run, the focus in his matches were more his heel heat and interactions with the crowd, and there was a little bit less emphasis on the wrestling. A lot of the trios matches King was involved in were matches with short falls that often seemed to lose momentum in between the falls. King didn’t always get enough time in the ring to do more than his usual spots. Of course, whenever he was in the ring with Negro Casas or Dr. Wagner Jr., it was really enjoyable. When he wrestled a guy like Felino, who could still go in those days, it was certainly also lots of fun to watch King’s work. King’s first run as a regular competitor in CMLL lasted from 1993 through May 1997. He would return to CMLL as a regular in May 2001.

The part of Silver King’s career from mid 1997 through mid 2000 was probably the most frustrating part of his career (at least from a wrestling fan’s perspective), despite still being in his prime. This wasn’t necessarily because of his work, but it was because after aligning himself with Konnan’s Promo Azteca league, King started working for World Championship Wrestling, a company that at the time was trying to go head-to-head with the World Wrestling Federation, the infamous sports-entertainment company you may have heard of. His run in Promo Azteca is pretty much forgettable, as he was usually involved in matches featuring workers who weren’t known for being good wrestlers (like Konnan and Vampiro Canadiense) in matches that were basically watered down AAA matches, which is something that is understandable since Promo Azteca was a place where Konnan’s buddies and/or workers who were looking for a fresh start (most of them being former AAA workers who had become unhappy in AAA) would attempt to make Promo Azteca the #3 Mexican league (which was a failed attempt that would come to an end by the end of 1998 when the league folded).

While appearing on WCW TV helped make a large number of people aware of Silver King’s name, working for WCW also meant that he was underutilized, under pushed and became used to performing 4-minute matches in front of crowds that weren’t really there with the intention to watch him or see good wrestling. On the bright side, if he would have worked for the World Wrestling Federation, he probably would have had an even worse time, because at least in WCW, he was involved in some fun matches against workers who were able to work good in-ring sequences with him. King’s push in WCW seemed to gradually decline over time though. He showed flashes of excellence in basically every match he was a part of, but almost none of his WCW matches should be considered high points in his career. For example, the 6/11/97 trios match he was involved in at a Saturday Night taping was a fun 5-minute match that was on its way to being a good match, but it should have gotten more time and attention from the company. It seemed that in 1997 and 1998, at least there was still some hope for King eventually getting somewhat of a decent run in WCW’s cruiserweight division. However, in 1999, his WCW push declined below a push that was already too low to begin with, and he rarely appeared on Nitro anymore, as he appeared mostly on the B and C shows (Thunder, Saturday Night, Worldwide) and house shows that year. On 10/21/99, Silver King & Juventud Guerrera vs. Kaz Hayashi & Blitzkrieg took place on WCW Thunder, and it was a match that was actually a very good 10-minute match and easily the best match of King’s WCW career. That match is even one of King’s 30 best matches of his career. On 12/21/99 in Salisbury, MD, in a match taped for WCW Worldwide, King lost to IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion Jushin Thunder Liger in a non-title match that lasted 4:43. The match was excellent while it lasted, but it was obviously way too short to really be considered a very good match. It’s a shame such a promising match took place on a C show, and it was in line with how this league didn’t really seem to care about these talented wrestlers. In early 2000, this trend of Silver King being underutilized would continue, as King rarely appeared on Thunder and mostly appeared on the C shows and house shows. His run in WCW eventually came to an end in April 2000, despite it seemed he finally was going to get somewhat of a push again when it appeared Stacy Keibler was going to be the valet of the Fabulous One. He ended up not being used by WCW anymore and was eventually let go later that year. This was probably the best thing that could happen to his career, and what followed were some of King’s most interesting years of his career.

Perhaps the most interesting part of Silver King’s career was the year and a half he spent working New Japan Pro Wrestling tours. It seemed that in 2001 he finally started blooming into the great worker he always had the potential to be. Despite being 33 years old at the time, 2001 was King’s peak as an overall in-ring performer. It came as a surprise when 2001 became his big breakout year, because many thought that his career would only go on a downward spiral after being in WCW. Of course, it helped that he was now working in the NJPW junior heavyweight division, which suited his style well. But, he also really seemed to try harder than before (not that he ever wasn’t working hard). He definitely seemed extra motivated, and seemed to be able to work better matches overall. He was at the right place at the right time. In this new chapter of his post-WCW career, he was very eager to impress the Japanese crowds, as he understood how important it was to have gotten this opportunity to be a star in the NJPW junior heavyweight division, a division with a prestigious wrestling history. Luckily, despite being in his 30s, he still was super athletic and was able to combine that athleticism with his now superior knowledge and experience, compared to when he was younger. Especially the times he teamed with Wagner in NJPW, which were probably the absolute peak of King’s career. While being away on NJPW tours on occasion, CMLL was his home league. In mid 2001, he started working under the name Black Tiger (III) in CMLL. He ended up working as Black Tiger (III) in NJPW as well, as it was NJPW who had picked King to portray the third incarnation of the famous Black Tiger gimmick. The first two Black Tigers were Mark Rocco (in the 1980s and early 1990s) and Eddy Guerrero (in the mid 1990s) respectively. King did a really good job at working the masked Black Tiger gimmick, and yet still be an excellent worker at the same time, not getting overly caught up in the new gimmick. It wasn’t just in NJPW that King was in the middle of the best run of his career in 2001, as one of the best matches he was involved in on Mexican soil took place in CMLL on 11/2/01, and that match was Black Tiger III & Virus & Juventud Guerrera & Nicho El Millonario vs. Rey Misterio Jr. & Felino & Black Warrior & Antifaz in an excellent match. King’s run in NJPW only lasted from early 2001 to mid 2002. Between 2003 and 2008, King’s tours to Japan would be for NJPW’s rival league All Japan Pro Wrestling instead. King’s best singles match took place in AJPW when he wrestled Low Ki on 10/26/03 in an excellent match. He also had a couple of memorable matches with Katsuhiko Nakajima in AJPW. From mid to late 2005, King wrestled as Bronco. He started using the name Bronco, because NJPW had decided that the Black Tiger gimmick was being passed on to Rocky Romero (Black Tiger IV). Silver King ended up working as Silver King again after the Bronco gimmick didn’t really work out for him. In late 2005, King was picked to portray the villain Ramses in the movie Nacho Libre (2006). The story goes that about 30 other luchadores were considered for the role, which apparently included luchadores like Shocker, Universo 2000 and Canek.

King’s matches in AAA were usually not that much more interesting than his matches in WCW. By 2008, AAA was certainly not a league that provided a good environment for workers to have matches on a high level. This is a shame, because King would have done so well in AAA back in 1992-1996 when AAA was at its peak (but King was in UWA and CMLL during those years). In the early-mid 1990s, AAA was a league that was a place for spectacular wrestling. By 2008, when King made his first appearance in AAA, the league had become a place for generic brawls and sports-entertainment-esque TV shows. Most matches were short one-fall matches featuring middling workers. A lot of King’s 2009 are available for viewing, but it’s unfortunate it was one of the least interesting years of his career. It would have been nice to have some more 1990 or 1993 available instead. In the weeks leading up to AAA TripleMania XVIII, which was held in Mexico City, King started wrestling under the name Silver Cain. This was because the boxing and wrestling commission (which tends to be particularly strict in Mexico City) didn’t like the fact that King was wrestling with a mask while using the Silver King name, as he had officially lost his mask while wrestling as Silver King in 1987. King spent quite a bit of time in AAA during the final decade of his career, and by 2014, King, while still decent, was no longer in his prime and relied more on solid rudo brawling without the exciting wrestling we’d used to see from him earlier in his career. On 3/14/19, at the Lucha Libre Estrella Fiesta show, which was a show that took place at Korakuen Hall and was co-booked by Tokyo Gurentai and STARDOM promoter Rossy Ogawa, King took part in a trios match where he teamed with veteran Fuerza Guerrera & promising luchador Diamante against the legends team of Ultimo Dragon & Shiryu (Kaz Hayashi) & El Hijo del Santo. This was not a good match due to the work of most of these workers not being as good as their work was in previous decades. Still, it was okay and around *¾, but it was good seeing King being in the ring with these lucha stars during what ended up being King’s final tour of Japan, a country where he had some of his biggest success during his prime years. King’s career and life came to an end on May 11, 2019 during a match with Juventud Guerrera in Camden, London, England when King suffered a fatal heart attack during the match. He was 51 years old. No drugs or medications were found in his blood.

Probably part of the reason why people tend to underrate Silver King is the fact that most people don’t do their homework properly. The more we watch, the more we get a complete picture. After watching over 100 matches from over 25 different years of his 34-year career, it can be safely said that Silver King was a very talented professional wrestler worthy of more praise than he has usually been getting from the majority of today’s wrestling fanbase. His hard work, dedication and passion got him really far in the cut-throat business he was involved in. With his induction into the Hall of Talent, it’s now our turn as wrestling aficionados to celebrate the greatness of the luchador who was known as Silver King. Let’s have a closer look at over 75 of his most memorable matches that have been selected for the reviews below, and this will be followed by a list of King’s best 30 matches of his career...

Universal 3/10/91 Tokyo Korakuen Hall, UWA Tag Team Tournament Round 1: Silver King & El Texano vs. El Signo & Black Power 14:23. Federacion Universal de Lucha Libre was a lucha libre league in Japan. Luckily, there is quite a bit of footage from Universal available, which means that we have the opportunity to see a decent amount of Silver King’s 1991 work. King looked a bit leaner here than later on in his career, but he already had a reasonably powerful-looking upper body. King moved around with ease, and he was already clearly at the least a pretty good worker, despite not quite having hit his peak as an overall worker yet. The moves King executed were performed well, and his exciting work helped enhance the enjoyability of this match. His tag team partner, El Texano, was a solid and experienced tag team worker,who had regularly toured Japan in the early 1980's as a primary opponent of FULL's founder Gran Hamada in New Japan, and even during his brief run in the original U.W.F. Together they were known as Los Cowboys, and they looked quite similar, especially since they always wore matching gear for pretty much every match they worked as a tag team. Texano was older and more experienced than King, but King was a couple of inches taller and more athletic than Texano. Los Cowboys showed significantly better teamwork than their opposition in this match. Along with Negro Navarro and El Signo, Texano used to be a third of Los Misioneros de la Muerte, a trio that helped popularizing trios matches in Mexico. However, as Texano started teaming with King on a frequent basis, Black Power had taken Texano’s spot in Los Misioneros. El Signo was an experienced but somewhat unspectacular wrestler, even though he bumped reasonably well. The matwork in this match was generally solid, but didn’t seem to serve a purpose other than just warming up for what was to come later in the match. Texano did a tiger feint. King stood out most in this match, because when he was in the ring, the pace picked up. Black Power wasn’t too impressive, and his movements were a bit clunky, but he was okay-ish overall. King hit one of his signature moves, which is a move where he uses the second rope as a springboard as he then leaps to the outside and dives on top of his opponent on the floor. King hit a couple more moves that were also spectacular before eventually tapping out, and this meant it was the end of Los Cowboys’ hopes to advance in this tournament. This was a decent match, but it’s a shame the better tag team had to lose in this first-round match. **½   

Universal 3/10/91 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Silver King & El Texano vs. Coolie SZ & Bulldog KT 11:26. Coolie SZ & Bulldog KT, who were together known as Punish & Crush, are a tag team you probably know better as Jado & Gedo. SZ was dressed up like Bret Hart, and his wrestling style was also solid, yet unspectacular. KT was okay, and at the time, he certainly wasn’t ruining leagues with uninspired Americanized booking yet, but you have to wonder why people think Gedo is a Hall of Famer when seemingly his lifelong dream was to reach a high level of mediocrity. The main quality of SZ & KT was their ability to function well as a team. Los Cowboys were more impressive though, because their movements were more fluid and appeared to be more effective. It’s no wonder that Silver King & El Texano at some point got the nickname Los Efectivos (The Effective Ones). This turned out to be an easy win for Los Cowboys. King hit some nice moves, but this isn’t a match that shows him at his best. **½ 

Universal 11/7/91 Tokyo Korakuen Hall, UWA & UWF Intercontinental Tag Team Title Tournament Semifinal: Silver King & El Texano vs. El Hijo del Santo & Huracan Ramirez Jr. 9:14 of 14:27. Huracan Jr. (a.k.a. Blackman II) was the nephew of Huracan Ramirez, who was the innovator of the famous huracarrana. Everyone hit some good-looking flying moves. Los Cowboys hit a double flying headbutt on El Hijo del Santo, who later in the match hit a beautiful tope con giro. Los Cowboys brought a bit more stiffness to the match, and this match was a bit more gritty than the other matches on the card. It seemed like Los Cowboys really wanted to give Santo a hard time, and Santo was willing to take the punishment. King seemed eager to display his pro wrestling ability, and Texano seemed eager to show his toughness. As a matter of fact, after the match was over, Santo even raised the hands of Los Cowboys as a sign of respect. Santo had worked the majority of the match for his team, as he spent a good portion of the match selling the offense of Los Cowboys, who really were the most outstanding workers of this match. Huracan Jr. was the one who contributed to this match the least, and he took the pinfall for his team when he got pinned by Silver King via a northern lights suplex. What stood out here in this match is that, unlike a lot of other lucha libre matches, there was a real sense of struggle and workers having to fight to get what they want. I don’t want to claim this was a shoot style match, because that would be way overboard, but this match certainly didn’t have the usual fun and playful vibe most Universal matches had, and this was a lot more like a hard-fought battle. It doesn’t seem there is a complete version of this match, but the Champ Forum version is more than twice as long as the heavily edited commercial tape version of this match, and the Champ Forum version definitely gives a much better indication of what this match was like. ***     

Universal 11/8/91 Tokyo Korakuen Hall, UWA & UWF Intercontinental Tag Team Title Tournament Final: Silver King & El Texano vs. Coolie SZ & Bulldog KT 13:16. This match was quite a bit better than their 3/10/91 match. Silver King hit a spectacular plancha off the second rope to the floor onto Bulldog KT (a.k.a. Gedo). Los Cowboys showed tremendous teamwork. Some of you may remember a wrestler called Koji Nakagawa, an FMW worker who was pretty much a Bret Hart wannabe. Well, before Koji Nakagawa was around, there was Coolie SZ (a.k.a. Jado), who regularly wrestled in Hitman-style gear (and sometimes he’d wrestle in Mr. Perfect-style gear). It was a pretty good match, but SZ & KT felt like undeserving winners, even though they were okay as a tag team. SZ was a lot smarter of a worker than KT was. Los Cowboys were clearly superior workers here though, and they stole the show. They hit some cool-looking double-team offense, including a double flying elbow drop on KT. King was the worker of the match, as his work was the most dynamic. Despite SZ & KT being rather unpolished workers, everyone tried their best to make this a memorable final, and this ended up being a pretty good match with lots of spectacular action. ***  

Universal 11/14/91 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Silver King & El Texano & Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. Gran Hamada & MASA Michinoku & Monkey Magic Wakita 9:52; 4:18; 5:02. Dr. Wagner Jr. was quite decent in this match. He brought a lot of force to this match. MASA Michinoku was a green and maskless Great Sasuke. Monkey Magic Wakita was a green and maskless Super Delfin. El Texano was a solid tag team partner for Silver King, as usual. We didn’t get to see much of King until the second half of the match though. Even though King didn’t quite hit his peak as an overall worker yet by this time, he did enough good things that clearly indicate that he was at least good or even very good at the time. King won the match after a beautiful moonsault. Gran Hamada was the best worker of the match, as he showed a lot of intensity and performed some nice-looking spectacular moves. Despite being inexperienced, MASA was eager to impress and executed a tremendous space flying tiger drop. Overall, this was a very good lucharesu trios match that perfectly embodied the enjoyable wrestling this league presented. The fans enjoyed the match so much that they threw money into the ring after the match was over. ***½   

LLI 11/24/91 Naucalpan El Toreo: Silver King & El Texano & Transformer vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. & Fishman & The Killer 3:16; 3:05; 4:23. The Killer (formerly known as Siglo XX) was the least impressive worker in this match. He was just a dude with a black mask and black gear who worked like a generic brawling rudo. He was accompanied by some kind of Dracula-esque heel manager. Dr. Wagner Jr. definitely carried his team, but Fishman was an experienced luchador who at least was still somewhat useful despite being 22 years into his career. Transformer was an overachieving luchador who would have done really well in AAA. He actually did a bunch of cool-looking stuff. Some of the stuff he did here reminds us that a lot of the regular spots in Hamada’s UWF and later Michinoku Pro originated in LLI. The true stars of the match were Silver King & El Texano though, as they were easily the most exciting workers, and they were the ones who kept things going with their fast-paced tag team work. **¾ 

Universal 1/17/92 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Silver King & El Texano & Solar I vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. & Villano IV & Villano V 20:37. Los Villanos were solid, but failed to put their stamp on the match. Their work wasn’t quite on the level of the others. In general, the execution in this match was good enough, but not always super crisp. Solar I was decent here, but he really didn’t stand out. Solar has the reputation of being a good technical wrestler, but he didn’t really show it in this particular match. When Solar wrestled the Villano brothers, what he showed is kinda what is to be expected in a lucha match. Solar’s match against Robin Hood (of all people) on 1/23/92 gives a better indication of what he was capable of delivering at the time. When Dr. Wagner Jr. wrestled Silver King, they showed more advanced wrestling. Los Cowboys stood out the most because their work was more explosive. This match was pretty good, but it felt there was something missing to really make this memorable. It’s almost like someone told them last-minute they’d have to go 20 minutes instead of the usual 12 minutes or so. It was a relatively long one-fall match, and while the work was generally interesting, it was the final minutes that saw the action pick up more and help confirm this was a pretty good match overall. ***  

Universal 1/19/92 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Silver King & El Texano & Dos Caras vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. & Lightning Kid & Jerry Lynn 11:44 of 15:14. Lightning Kid was 19-year old Sean Waltman, and he certainly lived up to his name, as he looked like a kid here, and he was lightning-like fast. However, The Kid hit some spectacular high flying moves during his tours for this league, but this particular match wasn’t his finest outing in this league. The Kid’s cannonball to the floor was certainly awesome though. The most interesting thing about Waltman’s work at the time was his recklessness. The more experienced luchadores didn’t take it easy when The Kid was in there, and The Kid even ended up bleeding from the mouth. Jerry Lynn seemingly tried to be impressive and fit in with these breathtaking high flyers, and he was okay here, but he didn’t really impress too much. It looked like Lynn was going for some nice moves, but then often he failed to deliver something really interesting in this match. This doesn’t mean he wasn’t a good worker at the time though, because Lynn had proven himself in pretty good matches he had with The Kid in 1991 in Texas-based Global Wrestling Federation, which were matches that were seemingly heavily influenced by Japanese junior heavyweight wrestling and Mexican lucha libre. Dos Caras executed a nice tope suicida, but other than that, he was just kinda there. Dr. Wagner Jr. showed more than we had seen from him thus far in the Universal footage, and when he wrestled his brother Silver King, both brothers sold well for each other, with King doing some big bumping. King executed a beautiful somersault into the ring off the apron onto The Kid. King & Texano, Los Cowboys, showed very good teamwork, as usual, and they stood out the most in this match. *** 

Universal 1/19/92 Tokyo Korakuen Hall, UWA Tag Team Title: Gran Hamada & Kendo vs. Silver King & El Texano 10:54 of 15:00. Silver King & El Texano showed their capabilities as a team and dominated the match early on. Los Cowboys showed why they were a top tag team, while Gran Hamada & Kendo seemed more like two random workers put together. Kendo was a luchador from the Dominican Republic, who actually started becoming more well known and popular because of his tours for this league, as the Japanese crowds seemed to love him. He wasn’t the most all-round worker, but he was athletic and the crowd liked his tendencies to mix in quite a bit (too much) of comedy into his work. King and Hamada provided the best work in this match. Hamada always seemed to mix things up, as you’d never really know what he would come up with in his matches; and he always seemed to give a strong effort. This made him an exciting worker to watch. As the match progressed, the spots got more spectacular. Hamada landed on his feet after he was on the receiving-end of a back body drop attempt; and King took a Jerry Estrada-esque bump to the floor. Texano executed a piledriver on Hamada on the floor, and it was sold well. In the end, Los Cowboys were simply too strong of a tag team, and they deservingly became the new tag team champions. ***¼

Universal 1/23/92 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Silver King & El Texano & Dos Caras vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. & Villano IV & Villano V 5:14 (3:47 shown), 4:11, 3:41. Villano IV and Villano V aren’t necessarily the most famous members of the Mendoza family, but they were solid luchadores who were reliable enough. They teamed with Dr. Wagner Jr., who was the strongest worker on the team. Dos Caras was a classic luchador who was really solid, but he wasn’t outstanding here. He did have a good amount of technical ability, but he didn’t always show it. It seemed that once in a while he’d give a strong performance, but sometimes seemingly years would go by before a strong performance of his would pop up again. In a match like this, despite not standing out, he would still bust out a cool-looking tope suicida. Los Cowboys were the workers of the match. Their individual work and their tag team work was outstanding. This was a fun match, and things particularly picked up in the second half of the match. The work overall was very good, and even though this match took place in Japan, this match is actually a really good example of what Mexican lucha libre is all about. ***½

LLI 2/16/92 Naucalpan El Toreo: Silver King & El Texano & Gran Hamada vs. Negro Casas & Dr. Wagner Jr. & Tigre Canadiense 4:30; 2:30; 3:25. Silver King was one of the best workers in the match, and as good as his performance was, the two most outstanding workers in this match were Negro Casas and Gran Hamada. Dr. Wagner Jr. seemed to be inspired by these three excellent workers, and tried his best to do his part in the match. Wagner was a solid base for the opposing team’s offense. El Texano wasn’t quite on the level of Silver King and Gran Hamada, but he gave a pretty good performance himself. Tigre Canadiense (Spanish for Canadian Tiger) was Canadian wrestler Mike Lozanski. He certainly isn’t one of the 30 best Canadian wrestlers ever, but he was adequate and tried. He lacked the flexibility needed for a lot of the things he tried to do, making his work come off as very clunky. However, Lozanksi didn’t drag the match down too much, since he understood his role as the odd one out and tertiary member of his team. Overall, this was a good 10-minute match with plenty of exciting action. ***¼   

LLI 2/23/92 Naucalpan El Toreo: Silver King & El Texano & Gran Hamada vs. Negro Casas & Dr. Wagner Jr. & Rambo. 3:00; 4:10; 10:00. The work was good whenever Rambo wasn’t in, as he was a luchador who was only good in comparison to Sylvester Stallone. Perhaps it was mediocre Rambo dragging down the match (and at least he wasn’t as bad as he would become in later years), but it took a while for the match to get beyond just some brawling and triple-teaming. Eventually, this turned into a good match. Negro Casas was the worker of the match, and he worked exceptionally well against Gran Hamada and Silver King. Casas’ hard work and bumping stood out most. He added a lot to this match, but without overshadowing the others. Dr. Wagner Jr. and El Texano did well for themselves whenever it was their moment to do their part in this match. Texano was solid and reliable, and he was there when needed. Dr. Wagner Jr. hit some effective offense, and was also a solid base for the opposition’s offense. The third fall had more fast-paced work than the first two falls. King showed his agility and his moves looked slick. They certainly made up for the somewhat generic brawling in the first two falls by pulling all the stops in the third fall. The referees eventually lost control, and deemed it a no-contest. ***¼    

Universal 3/12/92 Tokyo Korakuen Hall, Universal Strongest Trio Decision League: Silver King & El Texano & Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. El Hijo del Santo & Coolie SZ & Bulldog KT 5:15 of 20:12 shown. It’s a shame we didn’t get to see the entire match, because the highlights shown looked really good. Silver King showed his excellent athletic ability in the brief moments that were shown of his work. Perhaps the biggest highlight of the match was El Hijo del Santo literally knocking a Japanese lady off her chair at ringside when he hit a tope suicida on Dr. Wagner Jr. They all tried hard and gave a strong effort. This appeared to be at least a good match, judging from what was shown. ***¼ 

Universal 3/14/92 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Silver King & El Texano & Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. Gran Hamada & El Hijo del Santo & Dos Caras 11:00 of 13:48 shown. The action was pretty much non-stop with everyone trying hard. Dos Caras probably stood out least, especially since this usually isn’t the type of match he excels at (and he was somewhat inconsistent as a worker most of the time anyway), but he still showed some good moves. Gran Hamada may not have been the most graceful flyer, but his flying moves always look effective. Hamada was definitely a worker who stood out in this match. Silver King & El Texano bumped around very well for the opposition. El Hijo del Santo knew his role, and he knew exactly when it was the right time to add something to the match. He certainly was a smart trios match worker. The high pace combined with the high-quality wrestling made this a memorable match. After the match was over, the fans stormed towards the ringside area to shake the wrestlers’ hands and ask them for autographs. ***½ 

LLI 6/26/92 Silver King & El Texano vs. CanAm Express I & CanAm Express II 15:02. Los Can-Am Express were Canadian wrestler Phil Lafon & American wrestler Doug Furnas turned into masked luchadores. Just like their opponents, Los Cowboys, they were one of the best tag teams in the world at the time. What stood out early in the match is that Lafon went for a cover early. This pinfall attempt wasn’t successful, but it was still something that was memorable, because it wasn’t common in Mexican lucha libre to go for cover attempts early in the match, unless it was the actual finish of the first fall. Another interesting moment had Furnas trying to prevent Silver King from making the tag to his partner El Texano, which is another thing you wouldn’t normally see. This is why it’s so interesting to see a top international tag team, like Lafon & Furnas, bringing their own influences to this match. Also, it’s interesting to see King, a worker who would keep having more opportunities to add more international influences to his collection, have this experience of wrestling against this top international tag team. King and Lafon are two of the most underrated pro wrestlers ever, so it was particularly interesting seeing those two against each other here. However, Texano also deserves credit for his contributions here, as he worked hard and juiced. Furnas wasn’t quite as impressive as the other three here, but he was a solid tag team partner for Lafon. The first two falls were solid, but seemed to have the purpose to build things up for the third fall. It was a good match, but it wasn’t quite the really good match it may have appeared on paper. I think because this was held in LLI, it wasn’t as explosive of a match as it perhaps would have been in a league like Universal or AJPW. Los Can-Am Express beat the UWA World Tag Team Champions in this non-title match, but two days later, they would beat them again with the belts on the line. Los Cowboys would get their revenge on 7/12/92 when they would beat Los Can-Am Express in a masks vs. masks match. ***¼     

CMLL 2/11/94 Mexico City Arena Mexico: Silver King & Ultimo Dragon & Atlantis vs. Negro Casas & Mocho Cota & Ishinriki 3:00; 5:00; 4:40. Koji Ishinriki was a former sumo fighter who had wrestled for the SWS and WAR leagues in Japan. He was a very bland and mediocre wrestler. Mocho Cota was an experienced luchador who had been wrestling since 1979, and he was okay, but not very spectacular. The rudo team (Negro Casas’ team) got a quick victory in 3 minutes to win the first fall. Ultimo Dragon (Yoshihiro Asai), an excellent Japanese pro wrestler, was among the best to be able to blend the Japanese junior heavyweight style with Mexican lucha libre. It was a joy to see him in the same match as Silver King and Negro Casas, two of the very best Mexican luchadores. Despite Ishinriki doing everything in slow-motion, Dragon treated him with respect. Atlantis, a popular tecnico (babyface) luchador, was at least decent here, but he didn’t stand out much, compared to the outstanding performances of King and especially Casas. This match wasn’t one of King’s very best, but he showed that he was a very good worker nonetheless. Casas’ selling was phenomenal and helped make everybody look a bit more interesting. ***

CMLL 3/4/94 Mexico City Arena Mexico: Silver King & Ultimo Dragon & Ringo Mendoza vs. Negro Casas & Sangre Chicana & Mocho Cota 7:47; 3:40; 4:04. Sangre Chicana was a brawling-type of luchador who participated in some of the more memorable brawls in Mexican lucha libre history. For example, his bloody match from 9/23/83 against MS-1 is one that comes to mind. Also, he had a match in 1985 or 1986 that was supposedly one of the greatest lucha brawls ever against El Faraon (unfortunately, only short clips of that match are available). However, by the mid-1990s, Chicana’s performances had become more inconsistent and less interesting overall. He still focused on his typical brawling style, but he just lacked the fire and energy he once possessed. Ringo Mendoza never was a favorite among lucha experts, and while he certainly wasn’t one of the best luchadores, he was okay-ish whenever he was in the ring here. Mocho Cota certainly showed he was a somewhat limited brawling-type performer, but he didn’t necessarily do anything less than expected. Silver King showed his athleticism and his moves were fun to watch. Ultimo Dragon was excellent and it’s always a joy to watch him in action. Negro Casas was a a great luchador, perhaps the greatest luchador ever, and everything he did certainly added quality to this match. Casas’ tights in this match were more colorful than his usual black trunks. The first few minutes of the match were particularly interesting, because Casas worked with Dragon on the mat, but Cota kept interrupting their greatness by trying to get attention. In the second fall, Casas and King worked some cool sequences, but it would have been nice to see them battle it out a bit longer, as their interactions were too brief. In the third fall, we got to see some of King’s selling ability, as his seling made the opposing team look more vicious than before. However, also in the third fall, it appeared Casas had a falling out, and this storyline distracted things a bit, Casas’s team was all business and beating up Dragon soon enough again. King’s team lost after he got fouled (low blowed) by Cota. Casas, Dragon and King were all really good whenever they were in the ring, but the other three workers slowed things down a bit too much with their basicness for this match to be considered very good. Still, it was a pretty good mid-’90s CMLL trios match overall. **¾ 

IWA Japan 5/23/94 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Silver King vs. El Texano 13:11. The battle of Los Cowboys! It was interesting to watch these two regular tag team partners against each other in a singles match. Obviously, their work meshed really well. Silver King impressed the crowd with some of his trademark moves, including the springboard plancha off the second rope in the corner to the floor and his awesome moonsault. Despite being tag team partners, they didn’t take it easy on each other. It seemed they enjoyed working against each other, since they were very familiar with each other’s ability. They tried to take it to each other constantly. There were plenty of counters and reversals. King was clearly the more exciting performer, but El Texano’s performance was solid. Some of the parts in between the high spots weren’t super interesting, especially when Texano would slap on random holds seemingly just for the sake of it. One of the coolest moments took place after Texano took a Jerry Estrada-esque bump, as King then hit a huge somersault plancha over the top rope to the floor. This was easily the best match on what was a mediocre show presented by a garbage wrestling league, which featured random fantasy booking simulator-esque match-ups like Dick Murdoch vs. Masayoshi Motegi (which was not surprisingly not a good match). Perhaps someone had sent the wild Texan barroom brawler to beat up Motegi as a punishment for dragging down the average match rating of the 1994 NJPW Super J Cup. Anyway, this match between King and Texano was a good match, because of the work these two displayed, but it was also extra interesting because of the novelty factor of seeing Los Cowboys wrestle each other. ***¼  

CMLL 7/15/94 Mexico City Arena Mexico: Silver King & El Texano & El Dandy vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. & El Hijo del Gladiator & Gran Markus Jr. 6:55; 4:02; 10:04. El Hijo del Gladiator was previously known as Talisman, and he was a solid lucha worker in the 1980s. Gran Markus Jr. was another experienced luchador, but he generally never got as much praise as his tag team partners did in their respective careers, and he was just adequate. Los Cowboys teamed with El Dandy, who started getting overrated in various corners on the interwebz after Bret Hart jokingly mentioned his name on WCW TV back in the late ‘90s (despite El Dandy actually being a slightly better wrestler than Bret Hart). This trio led by Dr. Wagner Jr., which was a trio all dressed in white, was known as La Ola Blanca (the white wave). Dr. Wagner Jr. was easily the best worker of his team. This was a decent match with flashes of cool moments, but it never hit the level of it being actually good or very good overall. **½ 

CMLL 7/29/94 Mexico City Arena Mexico, CMLL World Tag Team Title #1 Contendership Tournament Final Quarter Final: Silver King & El Texano vs. Pegasus Kid & Vampiro Canadiense 17:00. After beating the Japanese team of Nobutaka Araya & Takashi Okano in a relatively uncompetitive first-round match, Los Cowboys would go on to face the Canadian team of Chris Benoit & Vampiro Canadiense in the quarter finals. Vampiro doesn’t have a lot of good matches on his resume, and he himself has admitted in interviews that he wasn’t much of a wrestler, but more a character. This was probably one of the best matches he had in his career, but that was obviously mostly due to the high quality work of the other three wrestlers in this match. Although, Vampiro really seemed to try harder to focus on trying to give the best in-ring performance he could give at the time, and he was less concerned about stealing the show or stealing the spotlight from the other three. Vampiro’s unorthodox style certainly made him unique. Chris Benoit was one of the very best wrestlers in the world at the time, and he brought that extra intensity and extra stiffness that he was known for, especially whenever he toured Japan. Benoit was definitely no stranger to Mexico, and the versatile Benoit was quite successful during his tours for LLI back in the early ‘90s. Texano was reliable, as always. Despite Silver King standing out more when you look at the overall careers of both members of Los Cowboys, it has to be mentioned that El Texano really deserves a good amount of credit too for making this tag team so successful. One of the most interesting things about this match was that there was a sense of struggle, as each team made the other team fight in order to get the upper hand in this match. Texano definitely came across as someone who wasn’t going to let anyone off easily against him. King and Benoit worked really well together, and their moments in the ring together were the true highlights of this match, which was a pretty good match overall. The combination of speed, agility and tenacity displayed by King and Benoit made them stand out in CMLL, a league that at the time was overshadowed by the success of rival league AAA. This match was almost on its way to potentially becoming very good, but the match seemed to lose steam a bit in the final minutes, which had a bit more of Vampiro in the ring, and then it was just kinda over somewhat abruptly. Los Cowboys would go on to beat the team of Atlantis & Rayo de Jalisco Jr. in the semi finals of the tournament in an okay match, and they would go on to beat the team of Ricky Santana & Miguel Perez Jr. in a mediocre final. *** 

CMLL 9/23/94 Mexico City Arena Mexico: Silver King & El Texano vs. Ricky Santana & Scorpio 6:24; 6:26; 1:22. It was good to see the tag team of Los Cowboys teaming up together again. Their opposition didn’t look too good on paper though, as they faced average Puerto Rican luchador Ricky Santana and below average Mexican luchador “the ugly king” Scorpio (Sr.), who was in his 50s at the time. Silver King clearly tried his best, and hit a big dive over the top rope to the floor onto Scorpio. El Texano hit a tope suicida onto Santana on the floor. Los Cowboys were definitely the ones who made this quite a watchable match. Santana & Scorpio somehow won the first fall, which probably only happened because they made Los Cowboys fall temporarily asleep with their dullness. In the second fall, Silver King juiced after Santana hit him with an illegal object. Santana was probably still upset for not being able to beat Silver King when they met on a tour for W*ING in Japan in 1993. Santana decided to also carve up El Texano, who started bleeding profusely. Los Cowboys sold the vicious attack well, which was not surprising, since they had wrestled the violent tag team of The Headhunters several times in battles that resembled the torture they endured here. However, Los Cowboys fought back heroically, and the referees decided to give the second fall to them, as the referees had enough of the tactics displayed by Santana & Scorpio. The third fall was short and randomly saw the rudo team of Santana & Scorpio get the quick third fall win. This was not a pretty match, but they managed to keep things interesting throughout the match. **½

CMLL 61st Anniversary Show 9/30/94 Mexico City Arena Mexico, Hair vs. Hair: Silver King vs. Scorpio 12:20. The pre-match vignette explained very well the difference between these two workers, as Silver King was working out in the gym, and the out-of-shape “ugly king” Scorpio showed up laughing at Silver King’s pre-match effort. Scorpio came down the aisle to Emerson, Lake & Powell’s “Touch and Go,” which apparently is a popular song among luchadores, as Cien Caras also used that song. Funnily enough, NJPW also used an ELPowell song (“The Score”) as the opening theme to their World Pro Wrestling TV show for years. In spite of Scorpio mostly displaying his below averageness here, he deserves credit for hitting a relatively impressive tope suicida. This not only caught me off guard, but it also seemed to surprise Silver King to such an extent that he almost lost the first fall. If we’re being kind and trying to come up with something nice to say about Scorpio, we could say that Scorpio’s unorthodox style makes him unpredictable and a tough opponent to fight because of that. Silver King juiced. What I really liked about this match is that I had forgotten this was a hair vs. hair match until the moment Silver King juiced, which perhaps means they somehow didn’t necessarily follow the cabellera contra cabellera (hair vs. hair) template, and kinda mixed things up. It’s a good thing King eventually juiced though, because it made things more dramatic, and you can’t really have a cabellera contra cabellera match without any blood. Although, I guess you technically could, but that would be frowned upon for sure. Silver King sold a lot for Scorpio, but he also knew when to take action. At some point, he did his signature springboard plancha off the second rope to the floor. As he realized he was being outclassed, Scorpio tried to execute a foul (low blow) on Silver King, which resulted in quite the reaction from the crowd and the referee. In the end, Silver King won the battle and he was able to keep his glorious mullet. Scorpio’s long locks got shaved off, as he was the loser of this match, which was another positive addition to Silver King’s lucha de apuestas record. Regardless of the hair and pride that was at stake, most importantly, this match should be remembered for Silver King carrying a below average worker to a decent singles match. **½  

CMLL 12/2/94 Mexico City Arena Mexico: Silver King & El Texano & Dos Caras vs. Negro Casas & Atlantis & Corazon de Leon 5:40; 4:30; 8:00. Corazon de Leon was Canadian-American wrestler Chris Jericho, who wasn’t very well known to the majority of wrestling fans at the time (with Smoky Mountain Wrestling fans and CMLL fans being the main exceptions), and he was just a middling performer and easily the least impressive wrestler in this match. Negro Casas was the best worker of the match, because he made everything he did seem important, which made the moments he was in the ring most intriguing. Silver King worked hard and brought energetic action whenever he was in the ring, and despite being very good whenever he was in the ring, he didn’t feel like a featured star in this match here. El Texano was solid and reliable, as usual, and he may have been the most impressive one on his team. As much as King is one of the most underrated wrestlers ever, sometimes it’s easy to forget that his tag team partner Texano was also a really good worker. Perhaps somewhat ironically for a Mexican lucha libre trios match, the two masked luchadores, Atlantis and Dos Caras, didn’t really stand out as much in this particular match, but they didn’t do anything wrong either. This match, which was a pretty good one, eventually came to an end when the finish saw Silver King being the one to score the pinfall victory over Chris Jericho. ***

CMLL 2/3/95 Mexico City Arena Coliseo: Silver King & La Fiera & Hector Garza vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. & Emilio Charles Jr. & Black Magic 5:30; 2:45; 6:04. This match exceeded expectations. La Fiera worked harder than he usually did in the 1990s. Emilio Charles Jr. wasn’t as annoying as he usually is. Black Magic was Northampton-born English-American wrestler Norman Smiley, and his effort fit right in with the rugged vibe of the match. Hector Garza, who had less than 2 and a half years of experience, played his role as the young up-and-comer quite well, and this was some good match experience for him for sure. Silver King was the best worker of the match, and his work was super smooth. It’s always a joy to see him wrestle his brother, and Wagner gave a solid performance, as usual. Later in the match, however, things started turning around quite a bit for King, as he started bleeding profusely. It wasn’t a pretty match, but it was a surprisingly good match. The work was pretty good overall, and they put this over very well as a heated battle with a good amount of intense action. **¾  

IWA Japan 3/7/95 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Silver King & El Texano vs. Yoshihiro Tajiri & Takashi Okano 16:32. This match featured a tremendous performance by Los Cowboys. One thing that’s really admirable about Silver King & El Texano is that they really gave strong efforts on these tours, despite IWA Japan being a garbage wrestling league that presented shows that were mediocre at best. They probably really enjoyed wrestling in Japan, as they showed that they understood they had to work a little stiffer than in Mexico. King had really reached a new level as a pure worker in 1995, as he moved around more explosively and more intensely than ever before, and it appeared he had reached true excellence in 1995. Takashi Okano, also known as The (Dragon) Winger, was an average Japanese wrestler, and he kinda was like a poor man’s version of Norio Honaga. His tag team partner was the future superstar TAJIRI. However, Tajiri was far from a star here, but he clearly was a talented young wrestler, as he moved around with great speed and showed excellent agility. Tajiri also threw quite a few nice kicks. When King and Tajiri wrestled each other, the action was quite impactful and of really good quality. As a matter of fact, Tajiri was a rookie with only less than six months of pro wrestling experience at the time. When you consider that, his performance here becomes all the more impressive. While Tajiri definitely made his presence known and was perhaps somewhat surprisingly strong, it was King who was the worker of the match. The dramatic final minutes showed that King truly understood how to enhance the quality of the match through well-executed near fall sequences. Okano hit an uncharacteristically crazy dive near the finish, and that’s also when things started to get more and more heated in this match. The match had a bit of a chaotic vibe, which was fitting with the league promoting this match, but the raw energy of this match helped make this match a very good one overall. While Los Cowboys were carrying the match, Tajiri clearly understood his potential and was eager to perform well, and Okano did the best he could within the context of his limited ability. If Los Cowboys’ opposition was a bit better and more experienced than they were, this probably would have been even better of a match. However, Tajiri & Okano gave the best performance they could at the time, and Los Cowboys took them seriously, which means this match reached its absolute fullest potential. ***¾     

CMLL 4/7/95 Mexico City Arena Mexico, Torneo Gran Alternativa Final: Silver King & Shocker vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. & Astro Rey Jr. 9:07. This was particularly interesting because of Silver King and Dr. Wagner Jr., two of the top Mexican luchadores ever, battling it out. Shocker did well for himself too, and he got to show his potential. His moves looked smooth. Astro Rey Jr. would eventually become known as Mephisto from 2001 onwards. All four worked hard,and made the most of the nine minutes they had. For a large portion of the match, all four workers were in the ring at the same time. They didn’t work it at a super high speed, but there was enough action happening consistently throughout the match. During the final minutes, we got to see some of the biggest moves. Silver King hit his springboard plancha off the second rope to the floor onto Wagner. Shocker hit a tope suicida on Astro Rey Jr. that sent Astro Rey Jr. into the chairs on the front row. Silver King and Shocker then threw Astro Rey Jr. into the crowd all the way into the third row. The team of Silver King and Shocker eventually got the deserving victory. ***¼  

CMLL 4/14/95 Mexico City Arena Coliseo: Silver King & Shocker & Corazon de Leon vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. & Astro Rey Jr. & Emilio Charles Jr. 3:16; 2:32; 4:00. The first fall was just the rudos beating up the tecnicos, and the second fall was just the tecnicos scoring a quick equalizing second fall. The third fall pretty much had all the good action. “Lion Heart” Chris Jericho showed a lot of fire and enthusiasm, and his work in 1995 was a bit better than his work in 1994. Even though it was nice to see Jericho’s improvement, he spent a bit too much time in the ring, as it would have been nice to see more of his tag team partners. We didn’t get to see too much of Silver King in this match, but what he showed looked very good and crisp. Many people seem to talk highly of Emilio Charles Jr., and while he was a somewhat okay luchador in the late 1980s, it appears he has been quite overrated in some corners of the interwebz, kinda like El Dandy. Astro Rey Jr. was fine, but he didn’t do anything outstanding. Dr. Wagner Jr. gave a solid performance, and he was the most consistent one on his team, and he consistently made Jericho look good. Near the end of the match, Shocker almost killed himself with a crazy dive where he hit the floor more than he hit Wagner, after Silver King helped launch Shocker into the air. Despite Jericho’s efforts to steal the show, Shocker’s crash landing onto the floor was more memorable. **¾  

CMLL 6/23/95 Mexico City Arena Mexico, CMLL World Heavyweight Title: Silver King vs. Apolo Dantes 3:00; 7:00; 3:20. Silver King had won the CMLL World Heavyweight Title on 7/28/94 by defeating Brazo de Plata. Apolo Dantes wasn’t the most spectacular luchador, but he was somewhat of a solid worker and quite experienced. It was interesting to see King in a singles match, after so many of his matches had been in tag team or trios matches. King hit some very nice moves in the first fall, including a standing moonsault, a top-rope dropkick and a Liger bomb. King won the first fall quite easily. The second fall was slower and more than twice as long as the first fall, but it was interesting to see them both get a bit more aggressive. When they were in submission holds, they’d put on the pressure aggressively. King executed a huracarrana, and as he was asking the ref why he wasn’t counting right away, Dantes countered and scored the pinfall. After now getting tied with King, Dantes seemed more confident and even smiled at the ladies sitting at ringside. Dantes hit a nice springboard dropkick, but he wasn’t able to put his strong opponent away that easily. He went for another springboard move, this time a plancha to the floor, which ended up seeing both workers fall into the second row and knocking over a few seats at ringside. King almost got the win via a couple of counters, as both were now trying to pin each other. In the end, King did the job and lost the championship. King’s performance was really good, and it was interesting to see him in a singles match in a year that saw him step up his work a level. Dantes also deserves credit for giving a surprisingly good performance during the final minutes, but despite Dantes’ exceeding performance in the final minutes, it’s kinda hard to consider this more than just good when most of the match could be seen as a one-man carry job by King. ***¼

CMLL 8/22/95 Mexico City Arena Coliseo: Silver King & El Texano & La Fiera vs. Felino & Kahoz & Mocho Cota 10:20; 4:20; 8:08. Felino is the brother of Negro Casas and Canelo Casas. He obviously wasn’t as great as Negro Casas, as very few workers are, but he was arguably a bit better than Canelo Casas (a.k.a. Heavy Metal), who was a very enjoyable worker to watch in his own right back in the 1990s. It was interesting to see Felino work against Silver King early in the match, and they showed some nice work. This was when Felino was still able to work at a high speed, and King’s work was excellent, as his speed and intensity was tremendous. El Texano’s tenacity made the portion of the match he worked against Mocho Cota quite interesting. Kahoz, the father of Astro Rey Jr., had a cool mask and was quite okay. La Fiera, obviously not close to the worker he was in the ‘80s, was alright and hit an Art Barr-esque frog splash at the end of the first fall. Silver King hit a nice superkick that enabled Texano to pin Cota to win the first fall. The third fall was the most action-packed fall, as it had more of Los Cowboys’ work. There was a clever little detailed moment where Los Cowboys were holding Kahoz’ legs down so that he wasn’t able to powerbomb La Fiera. Everyone seemed to genuinely try to add something to this match to the best of their ability. Los Cowboys were the workers of the match, and they added a lot of value to this interesting match. This match was a lot of fun to watch, and one of the main reasons for this was everyone seemingly being really into what they were doing, which helped a lot. They didn’t rush things, and they tried to give everything they did importance. Exactly a month after this show, King would do the job in a hair vs. hair match against overrated Puerto Rican wrestler Miguel Perez Jr. (a wrestler with a repertoire that mainly consisted of sloppy and basic offense combined with poor-looking overselling, who fittingly enough ended up in WWF in 1997) at the 62nd anniversary show of CMLL on 9/22/95. ***¾    

CMLL 12/15/95 Mexico City Arena Mexico, Elimination: Silver King & El Texano & El Dandy & El Pantera vs. Negro Casas & Felino & Dr. Wagner Jr. & Emilio Charles Jr. 28:16. It was interesting to see these guys in an eight-man elimination tag team match, since they usually wrestled in trios matches. Negro Casas and El Pantera were particularly impressive during the early parts of the match. Emilio Charles Jr. wasn’t impressive at all though. 11:52 into the match, Felino was the first to be eliminated after giving a pretty good showing during the brief moments he was in. Despite getting his shoulder up just before the ref counted three, Felino was pinned by El Texano. 15:34 into the match, after showing some more of his smooth work, El Pantera was the second one eliminated when he got pinned by Dr. Wagner Jr. 18:16 into the match, El Dandy pinned Negro Casas, which was unfortunate because of the fact that Casas could have added more quality to the remainder of the match. Plus, having Casas be the third one to be eliminated, even earlier than the far less impressive Emilio Charles Jr., seems an odd booking decision. 23:38 into the match, after giving a solid performance throughout the match, Texano was beaten via submission by Charles. 25:50 ino the match, Wagner pinned El Dandy after El Dandy had been okay in this match, but nothing special (apart from hitting a tope con giro). It was kinda odd that El Dandy was pinned almost immediately after Wagner was on the receiving-end of El Dandy’s tope con giro and a second-rope springboard plancha by King. 26:42 into the match, Charles finally was eliminated when he got pinned by King. Gradually, as the match had been progressing, King had gotten more opportunities to shine, and he was excellent whenever he was in, but it felt he should have been featured a bit more. It was nice to see him make it to the final two though. In the end, King was eliminated by his own brother, Dr. Wagner Jr., who was the sole survivor of this match. I think the match would have been quite a bit better if El Dandy would have been eliminated before El Pantera, and Charles should have been eliminated before Casas. Questionable booking aside, it was a pretty good match overall, but the match never really reached its potential. It felt like the more impressive segments of this match were random standalone parts that alternated the portions during which the match lacked fire and was kinda dragging on. ***      

CMLL 12/22/95 Mexico City Arena Coliseo: Silver King & El Dandy & La Fiera vs. Negro Casas & Felino & Black Panther 7:32; 5:00. It’s always interesting to see Silver King in action against the Casas brothers, Negro Casas and Felino. Black Panther, which was a gimmick that appeared to be an homage to Blue Panther, was Black Warrior before he started working as Black Warrior (and he had several other gimmicks prior to this one). Black Panther did fine here. His matwork against King in the early feeling out stage of the match was quite alright. El Dandy & La Fiera were okay, but their execution wasn’t as crisp as that of the others. However, they both hit a nice dive each. El Dandy executed a nice tope suicida, and Fiera surprisingly hit a huge dive over the top rope, which is something he only did occasionally at that stage of his career. This match didn’t end up being as good as it may have initially looked on paper. The match ended rather unexpectedly in the second fall when the rudos ended up losing two straight falls, as they got disqualified after Negro Casas hit a foul (low blow) on El Dandy. This match was pretty good overall, but it would have been better if it had a satisfying ending in a third fall. **¾  

CMLL 12/29/95 Mexico City Arena Coliseo: Silver King & Shocker & Atlantis vs. Negro Casas & Dr. Wagner Jr. & Emilio Charles Jr. 3:33; 4:44; 4:35. This started out as more of a brawling type match that entertained the fans, but didn’t necessarily showcase these workers at their best. However, halfway through the match, the action picked up quite a bit. Negro Casas was the worker of the match, as he worked hard to make this an enjoyable match. Emilio Charles Jr. relied more on character work and generic brawling, so he dragged the match down a little bit. Dr. Wagner Jr. was solid, as always. Silver King was excellent whenever he was in the match, which wasn’t as often as hoped for. Shocker did well, especially when he was in the ring with Casas, who made Shocker look even more impressive. Atlantis was just kinda there and wasn’t memorable, as he simply seemed to rely on his legendary status. Overall, this was pretty good and fun to watch. ***  

CMLL 1/9/96 Mexico City Arena Coliseo: Silver King & Dos Caras & Brazo de Plata vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. & Mano Negra & Satanico 7:22; 3:23; 5:46. The sons of Dr. Wagner (Sr.), Silver King and Dr. Wagner Jr., wrestled each other early in the match. Their interactions were the best parts of this match. Dos Caras showed some of his mat wrestling skills when he wrestled Mano Negra, who was an average luchador. Dos Caras was probably the third best worker behind the Wagner brothers. By this point in his career, “Super Porky” Brazo de Plata relied more on his character, which basically was that of a fat guy who can move quite well for his size and who is supposed to be funny. Satanico was an old luchador who merely relied on being a rudo and for having stayed around for many years. He’s kinda like a Jerry Lawler of Mexico. The second fall was just a short equalizing fall that showed the rudos getting their revenge. In the third fall, the rudos tried to play rough, but Satanico’s offense looked weak. Silver King showed some of his excellence, but he wasn’t in the match enough to really put his stamp on the match, which is a shame, since a bit more of King’s presence could have improved this match. At least we got to see him do his awesome springboard plancha off the second rope to the floor. Dos Caras pinned Satanico to win the match. This was a decent match, but it’s hardly a match that you should go out your way to look for right now, unless you’re interested in completing your knowledge about these workers and/or 1996 lucha libre in general. **½ 

CMLL 3/5/96 Mexico City Arena Coliseo: Silver King & Dos Caras & Lizmark vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. & Mano Negra & Hijo de Gladiator 10:35; 3:58; 4:10. One of the things that made this match stand out was that the two trio teams really put over the heat between the wrestlers. The tension shown between the two teams helped getting into this match more. Dos Caras and Dr. Wagner Jr. showed some neat lucha matwork to start the match off. Hijo de Gladiator, who was known as Talisman in the 1980s, was a solid rudo, but by 1996, he was no longer in his prime years. Lizmark was good, and he was a wrestler who had a really good run in AAA in the mid 90s, but there’s a big possibility that some of his most groundbreaking stuff took place in the late ‘70s, of which there is almost no footage available. The story goes that he was apparently quite influential and innovative back in the day. The main difference between Silver King and everyone else in this match is that King’s execution was a lot more crisp. ***

World Wrestling Peace Festival 6/1/96 Los Angeles Sports Arena: Silver King & Dr. Wagner Jr. & Gran Markus Jr. vs. Dos Caras & Atlantis & Hector Garza 10:33. World Wrestling Peace Festival was a show promoted by Antonio Inoki, and it featured wrestlers from NJPW, WCW, NWA, CMLL and AAA. This particular match featured six workers from CMLL. Everybody worked hard, and everybody clearly tried to deliver a spectacular match. Silver King in particular stood out as the excellent worker he was. He was flying around and bumping around like crazy. Dr. Wagner Jr. and Dos Caras also deserve a lot of credit for making this match as good as it was. Hector Garza did some cool moves, Atlantis brought a lot of energy, and Gran Markus Jr. was on the receiving-end of multiple quebradoras. This was a good match that never had a dull moment. ***¼ 

CMLL 7/9/96 Mexico City Arena Coliseo: Silver King & Dos Caras & Brazo de Plata vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. & Rey Bucanero & Emilio Charles Jr. 8:34; 3:28; 4:35. Rey Bucanero is the nephew of Pirata Morgan. He didn’t really stand out in any way here, apart from his cool-looking mask. “Super Porky” Brazo de Plata was in comedy mode throughout this match, as usual. Dos Caras and Dr. Wagner Jr. did some nice-looking matwork in the first fall, and they ended up being the two workers of the match after continuing their quality work in the subsequent falls. Silver King was stuck being paired with Charles as his main opponent again in the first and second fall. King sold a lot during this match, and he didn’t really get to show much of his exciting offense. However, during the final minutes, we finally got to see King show his moves, as he wrestled Wagner Jr. in a minute of high quality. **¾ 

CMLL 7/26/96 Silver King & El Dandy & Mascara Magica vs. Felino & Rey Bucanero & Guerrero de la Muerte 5:00; 5:00. Silver King and Felino worked fast sequences with each other in the first fall. Everybody showed a lot of intensity in the second fall. King executed some really good-looking moves on Felino, including a somersault version of his springboard plancha off the second rope to the floor. El Dandy hit a nice tope suicida on Rey Bucanero. It’s a shame this was a relatively short match, because it was on its way to being a good match. **¾

CMLL 9/6/96 Mexico City Arena Mexico: Silver King & El Dandy & Mr. Niebla vs. Negro Casas & Black Warrior & Emilio Charles Jr. 11:42; 2:54; 3:36. It’s a shame Silver King was mostly paired off with Emilio Charles Jr., the least impressive worker of this match. This was understandable though, as the two were booked in a feud that would culminate in a hair vs. hair match later that month. Despite not seeing King as much as hoped for, King ended up winning this match for his team by pinning Charles in the third fall. One of the highlights of the match was King landing on his feet after a moonsault attempt, which he then followed up with a superkick. This was a pretty good match, but they never got to take this match to the next level. However, it did serve as a pretty good preview for the upcoming singles match between King and Charles, with King showing a lot of fire. Negro Casas was excellent whenever he was in. El Dandy was perfectly fine. Mr. Niebla and Black Warrior showed some more flashy athletic stuff whenever they had the chance. The match ended when King pinned Charles in the third fall. This was a pretty good match overall, as we got to see some good action overall, and the build-up of King’s singles match with Charles continued. *** 

CMLL 9/27/96 Mexico City Arena Mexico, Hair vs. Hair: Silver King vs. Emilio Charles Jr. CMLL 63rd anniversary of CMLL. 0:16; 3:16; 7:26. Silver King started off with tremendous urgency and pinned Emilio Charles Jr. in 16 seconds to win the first fall. Silver King used a blade to juice from his forehead in plain sight, and he started bleeding profusely. The crowd looked on with concern. Charles scored the equalizing pin in the second fall. During the third fall, Charles also juiced. The blood certainly added drama to this match. King did a good job adjusting to the somewhat limited skills of his opponent, as Charles isn’t exactly the type of opponent King is able to work the faster type sequences he would normally be able to expect from opponents with more athletic ability than Charles. King did the thing where he landed on his feet after a moonsault attempt, and he then followed it up with a superkick. Charles was okay-ish, but he was very bread and butter for Mexican lucha standards. In the end, Charles got the win and King got his head shaved. King gave a really good showing, but this match was just decent overall. **¾ 

CMLL 11/15/96 Mexico City Arena Mexico: Silver King & Negro Casas & Hijo de Lizmark vs. Apolo Dantes & Scorpio Jr. & Bestia Salvaje 4:27; 5:03. This took place on the same show as Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. Jushin Thunder Liger. It was cool to see Silver King and Negro Casas on the same team. The first fall was mostly brawling with Apolo Dantes’ team in control until the ref called for the DQ. The action picked up in the second fall. King hit a nice swinging DDT on Dantes. Casas’ team ended up winning this match after winning two straight falls. This was decent, but it was mostly pretty generic lucha brawling, and it was a relatively short match. **½ 

CMLL 2/21/97 Mexico City Arena Mexico, CMLL World Tag Team Title Tournament Quarter Final: Silver King & Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. El Dandy & Lizmark 7:55. Silver King and Dr. Wagner Jr. were accompanied by their father, Dr. Wagner Sr. All three of them were wearing Dr. Wagner masks as they made their way to the ring. However, Silver King was forced to take the mask off, because he was a maskless wrestler who had lost his own mask in a mask vs. mask match a decade prior, and he couldn’t just start wrestling with a mask like it was nothing. The masks used to be a big deal in Mexican lucha libre tradition, and that’s why it was treated like something sacred. King eventually took off the Dr. Wagner mask, and the match finally started. Despite King focusing on his heel role, at least he was in there with workers who also were capable of having a good match with him. All four gave a good effort, but it’s a shame this was only a short one-fall match. **¾ 

CMLL 5/9/97 Mexico City Arena Coliseo: Silver King & Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. Negro Casas & Felino 10:54; 7:05. Back in the mid to late 1990s, when the information available on the Internet really started growing, a lot of wrestling fans first became aware of Silver King when they ordered the IWA Japan VHS featuring the 1995 King of the Death Match tournament, which was a show main evented by Terry Funk vs. Cactus Jack in a bloody death match, but it was Silver King & El Texano vs. The Headhunters in a non-death match that was for a lot of us the first glimpse we had of King’s greatness (despite the match only being okay-ish because of The Headhunters not being that good). Also around that time, for those who were following the Mexican lucha libre scene, AAA was generally the more hyped league on the interwebz back in the day, but those of us wrestling fanatics who were curious about Mexican lucha libre at the time would occasionally get a glimpse of CMLL as well (often by default of Galavision broadcasting both companies together), and for some fans that’s possibly how they got to see their first Silver King match. Of course, less than a month after this particular match we’re looking at here, King would join WCW, which is perhaps how most wrestling fans back in the day first became aware of King. This particular CMLL match featured La Ola Blanca vs. Los Casas, two brother teams against each other. The final moments of the first fall had quite some spectacular action, after most of the first fall had been about heat and tension. In the second fall, the Wagner brothers dominated, and it almost seemed they would have an easy time. However, the Casas brothers fought back. We briefly got a glimpse of Dr. Wagner Jr.’s face, as his mask came off for a second after Negro Casas had tried to remove it. The action went back and forth. There were several covers and near falls. It really looked like the Casas brothers were going to win the second fall, but the Wagner brothers ended up beating them in two falls straight. This was a pretty good match, and it featured four of the best workers in CMLL at the time. The focus seemed to be more on storytelling, crowd interaction and psychology, but not so much on pure workrate. Negro Casas showed that he was a worker who had an eye for detail, as he kinda had his own subplot going on of him selling the wound on his leg while everything else was going on during the match. This match was definitely pretty good and fun to watch. However, it never felt like they were out there to try to have a match that was anything beyond just a good and enjoyable match, but due to the quality of the workers involved, that’s still better than what most workers are capable of. ***

CMLL 5/16/97 Mexico City Arena Coliseo: Silver King & Violencia & Gran Markus Jr. vs. Ultimo Dragon & Negro Casas & Felino 6:35; 4:00. It took three minutes before the match really got underway, because everyone was very busy with acknowledging and playing to the crowd. I can’t blame the crowd for getting excited to watch this match though, because it featured three top workers, Ultimo Dragon, Negro Casas and Silver King. Felino also had proven himself to be quite a good worker, and he was particularly good against Silver King in this match. Felino executed some speedy headscissors. Violencia and Gran Markus Jr. weren’t nearly as remarkable as the others. In the second fall, Dragon beat King after hitting his signature top-rope huracarrana off of King’s shoulders. This was at least decent for a relatively short two-fall match. **¾ 

CMLL 5/23/97 Mexico City Arena Coliseo: Silver King & Arkangel de la Muerte & Violencia vs. TAKA Michinoku & Shocker & Mascara Magica 7:00; 3:45; 6:00. Mascara Magica was the nephew of Talisman and the former husband of Akira Hokuto. Magica and Violencia didn’t really do anything of note in this match. Arkangel was quite okay and he put a lot of emphasis on every move he did, but he wasn’t the most noteworthy worker of the match. Silver King, Shocker and TAKA Michinoku stood out the most. During the early stages, King mostly focused on being a rudo and getting heat from the crowd, but he would show some of his excellent ability eventually. In particular, the sequences King worked with Shocker and TAKA were fascinating. Shocker was quick and smooth whenever he was in there. It was interesting to see TAKA, who represented Michinoku Pro. He adapted well to the CMLL trios style here, and he executed some of the most spectacular moves of the later stages of the match. The third fall was best, as it had everybody going all out to make this a memorable match. After this match, King wouldn’t start wrestling for CMLL on a regular basis again until four years later in May 2001. ***¼  

CMLL 12/11/98 Mexico City Arena Mexico, CMLL World Trios Title Tournament Quarter Final: Silver King & Villano III & Villano IV vs. Negro Casas & Felino & El Hijo del Santo 10:15. Silver King, wearing a Latino World Order shirt, made a rare CMLL appearance here. It was a rare CMLL appearance because King had been working for WCW at the time, and he had also been working for Promo Azteca, a league that was folding around this time. It’s good to see a good 1998 Silver King match that took place in CMLL. He got lots of heel heat during this match, which was understandable since he was facing some of the most popular luchadores. King’s performance here was excellent, and arguably the best performance he gave since the last time he was in CMLL in May 1997. It’s good to see that his time in WCW and Promo Azteca hadn’t affected his ability to work at a high level. This was a good match, but I wish it would have gone longer and/or if they would have gotten more than just one fall. ***¼  

WCW 10/14/99 Silver King & Juventud Guerrera vs. Kaz Hayashi & Blitzkrieg 10:29. October 1999 was a month that had a couple of surprisingly good WCW matches, as this match took place ten days after a really good WCW Nitro match between Chris Benoit and Bret Hart. This tag team match from WCW Thunder is a rare example of a WCW cruiserweight match that got a decent amount of time and actually lived up to its potential. Silver King got to show more than he usually got to show in WCW. Juventud Guerrera and Kaz Hayashi were the most outstanding ones of this match though. Juventud had been wrestling for WCW for over three years at this point, so he understood what would get over with the WCW crowd without losing his ability to stay an exciting worker. Blitzkrieg deserves credit for being able to hang in there with these international stars. Blitzkrieg was an indy wrestler from California who really did well for himself in the WCW cruiserweight division, as his flashy style was exactly what made him fit in perfectly. This match got progressively more spectacular with some of the most spectacular moments happening during the final couple of minutes of the match. This was easily King’s best WCW match. ***½   

NJPW 2/11/01 Osaka Maishima Arena: Silver King & Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. Jushin Thunder Liger & Kendo Kashin 15:14. This match took place during Silver King’s first tour for NJPW. Kendo Kashin definitely wasn’t the most memorable New Japan junior heavyweight by any means, and his push always felt forced, but he wasn’t that bad, and his presence couldn’t prevent this match from being excellent. As the fans started chanting “Raigaa~!” to show their support of the great Jushin Thunder Liger, despite Liger being in “Black Liger” mode, as he was dressed in all black, Silver responded to the crowd’s enthusiasm for Liger with a moonsault off the top rope and landed on his feet. The crowd loved it. The crowd seemed to really enjoy pretty much everything the Mexican team did, and it’s hard to blame them, since Silver and his brother Dr. Wagner Jr. were certainly impressive. As a matter of fact, this match featured the best performance Silver had given in a long time, and this was probably the best match Silver had been in up until that point in his career, as this was pretty much 15 minutes of excellence. **** 

NJPW 2/14/01 Gifu Industrial Hall: Silver King vs. Shinya Makabe 8:06. They tried to keep this interesting at all times, with Silver King obviously being the far more resourceful of the two. Shinya Makabe tried his best though and even executed a German suplex quite well. Silver King did a really good job working around Makabe’s limitations and took this match seriously. Silver King really got to shine and show what he was truly capable of on this tour, even in an opening match like this. It was only a decent match overall though, because it was rather short, and Makabe wasn’t all that good. It would have been less than decent if it wasn’t for King carrying Makabe this well, as King almost made this a decent match all by himself. **½  

NJPW 2/18/01 Tokyo Ryogoku Kokugikan: Silver King & Dr. Wagner Jr. & El Samurai vs. Koji Kanemoto & Minoru Tanaka & Tatsuhito Takaiwa 14:55. Tatsuhito Takaiwa always was just another guy in these trios matches. He certainly wasn’t anything special, and not even close to the level of the others. Everything he did looked clunky, and his strength didn't make up for giving up so much speed, flexibility, and coordination. The moments he was in the ring were the least enjoyable. El Samurai was solid, even though his best days had passed by this point in his career. His selling was of particularly strong quality. His unselfishness always adds so much to his matches in ways that are not always obvious to most viewers. Dr. Wagner Jr. and Silver King were fun to watch. They showed some good teamwork here whenever they saw an opening to do so. Silver King hit several beautifully executed moonsault variations, including a beautiful springboard top-rope quebrada near the end of the match. King’s performance in this match wasn’t necessarily his most remarkable on this tour, but he was great whenever he was in. Koji Kanemoto and Minoru Tanaka were arguably the two best workers in this match. Tanaka’s moves were so smooth, and Kanemoto put a lot of intensity behind every move. It was a very good match overall, and it certainly was enjoyable, but it felt like they didn’t exceed expectations. That’s why it can’t really be considered more than very good. ***½ 

NJPW 4/19/01 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Silver King & Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. El Samurai & Kendo Kashin 15:43. This was the first night of Silver King’s second NJPW tour. It was good to see that King was once again booked by NJPW, as he seemed to mesh very well with the workers in their junior heavyweight division during his first tour. King showed a lot of intensity and determination. On these NJPW tours, we finally got to see what he was truly capable of. In many of his matches from the 1990s, it seemed he just got to do his spots, and that was it. Here in NJPW, it really felt like he came into his own. Kendo Kashin was good at getting beat up in this match, and that’s the only role he should have played here, so kudos to him for getting it. El Samurai was solid as always. For some reason, some kind of briefcase was introduced as an illegal object. This had no purpose at all, and it was totally random. It actually was so random that it kinda worked in an ironic way. The final minutes featured a lot of back-and-forth action. In the end, it was Dr. Wagner Jr. who pinned Samurai to get the win. It was a very good match, and Samurai deserves credit for carrying his team as well as he did. ***½ 

NJPW 5/5/01 Fukuoka Dome, IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Title: Jushin Thunder Liger & El Samurai vs. Silver King & Dr. Wagner Jr. 19:09. If Silver King had been able to create more opportunities to wrestle like he did in these 2001 NJPW tours, he would have been considered one of the all-time greats by many. Instead, most of these 2001 NJPW matches have gone unnoticed, as again they were mostly tag matches, and this was one of the few that even involved titles. King & Dr. Wagner Jr. had certainly been a breath of fresh air in NJPW’s junior heavyweight division, which was a division that needed a bit of extra flavor and spice, and Los Aztecas brothers did indeed provide the necessary ingredients. They were super motivated and ready to deliver a high quality match. Jushin Thunder Liger & El Samurai were the perfect opponents for them, since Liger and Samurai respectively had been two of the most reliable members of the NJPW junior heavyweight division for more than a decade. In the past, the feud between Liger and Samurai was a focal point in this division, but by this time, it was their loyalty to each other and to the company that made them fight for a common goal. What better way to give IWGP Junior Heavyweight Title more credibility than to have a great Mexican brother tag team challenge for the belts? All four workers added planchas and other impressive moves to the match. Everybody worked hard, but in the end, Liger & Samurai got the win. Despite this being a match of good length, the finish seemed to come a bit earlier than expected, based on how competitive this was. It felt like Liger & Samurai got the win a bit easier than they should have, based on how well King & Wagner did. Either way, this was an excellent match and one of the very best matches of the respective careers of King & Wagner. King’s athleticism was one of the most outstanding aspects of this match. **** 

NJPW 5/18/01 Tokyo Korakuen Hall, Best of the Super Juniors VIII Block A: Silver King vs. Chris Candido 7:40. What an interesting surprise it was when Chris Candido was chosen to participate in the 2001 edition of the Best of the Super Juniors. This prestigious annual tournament featured some of the top junior heavyweights of the world, and BOSJ VIII had one of the stronger line-ups for sure. This edition featured Jushin Thunder Liger, Minoru Tanaka, Silver King, Dr. Wagner Jr., El Samurai, Shocker, Akira Nogami, Chris Candido, Gran Naniwa, Shinya Makabe, Wataru Inoue and Katsuyori Shibata. Candido was a somewhat surprising choice, because he wasn’t a name that would come to mind immediately when trying to come up with names for this tournament, as he didn’t have an extensive reputation in Japan. However, he was a deserving choice, as he was one of the hardest working wrestlers in the United States during the 1990s, and he was a true student of the wrestling business. Silver King continued his impressive streak of impressive 2001 NJPW performances. His athletic ability was amazing, especially for someone who could have been finished as a credible international name after his run in WCW. These two worked really well together, and this was a really fun match. It’s just a shame it only lasted seven minutes. At least they made the most of the time they were given, which certainly wasn’t the case when King wrestled a different Chris (Jericho) on 1/21/99 on WCW Thunder. ***¼

NJPW 5/28/01 Sendai Miyagi-ken Sports Center: Silver King & Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. Chris Candido & Shinya Makabe 14:44. This match took place during the Best of the Super Juniors VIII tour. Silver King & Dr. Wagner Jr. did particularly well during the tournament, but this was an opportunity to keep their tag team win-loss record strong. Chris Candido & Shinya Makabe were a random team that was thrown together. Candido did quite well for himself in the BOSJ tournament, but he wasn’t a big favorite to win the tournament, as he was in the same block as Jushin Thunder Liger, El Samurai and Silver King, who were all three strong favorites to win. This tag match obviously had nothing to do with any points scored in the BOSJ, but Candido & Makabe probably didn’t want to lose here in order to keep some faith in feeling satisfied about their respective results during this tour. What was particularly remarkable about this match is that King wore a Dr. Wagner mask, similar to the one of his brother, Dr. Wagner Jr. King had tried to do this before in Mexico, but in Mexico they wouldn’t allow this, as the Mexican officials treated it like blasphemy. Those who watched King’s 2/21/97 CMLL match will know about this. However, in Japan, they certainly respect and enjoy Mexican lucha libre, but they don’t worship it. This meant that King was allowed to wrestle with the mask here. As a matter of fact, during a tour for IWA Japan in May 1995, King wrestled an entire trios match with his King mask on, and only after the match did he take it off. Again, that’s something that would not have been able to happen in Mexico City. Anyway, in this NJPW tag team match, Candido hit a nice top-rope huracarrana on King, and he followed it up with a diving headbutt. Makabe tried his best, and that’s all there really is to say about his performance. The Wagner brothers definitely stole the show, and they must have been a very strong candidate for the best male tag team in the wrestling business in 2001, judging from their performances in NJPW that year. This was a really fun match, but quite one-sided, since the Wagner brothers won this easily. ***

NJPW 6/1/01 Takamatsu-shi Taiikukan, Best of the Super Juniors VIII Block A: Silver King vs. Jushin Thunder Liger 12:32. This was certainly a dream match on paper, and this was certainly a very good match. However, it wasn’t quite the excellent match many would probably have hoped for. Liger wasn’t hungry enough, and King was being a bit too respectful toward Liger. This type of match that Liger was going for, isn’t necessarily the type of match King is best at. King is best at a match where the opponent is going at full speed, and Liger was more in his storytelling mode. King isn’t necessarily a strong storytelling worker, but he’s at his best when he’s being more of a high energy athletic highspot worker. The wrestling in this match was generally really good, but it just lacked that extra little bit of energy that would have made it a 4-star match. That being said, this should still be considered as one of King’s better singles matches. Liger’s selling was phenomenal, as always. Also, it was nice to see King in a different type of match. Despite this being really good, in the end, this kinda felt like win #975 or so for Liger. This is probably one of the reasons that kept it from being a truly excellent match. King ended up finishing second in Block A (along with El Samurai) at 6 points. Liger was the winner of this block with 10 points, and he ended up beating Minoru Tanaka in the final, which meant Liger became the first person to win the BOSJ for a third time. Liger also became the first person to not lose a single match during a BOSJ tournament. King came close to preventing all of that from happening, but Liger once again proved he is #1. ***¾ 

NJPW 6/4/01 Osaka Furitsu Taiikukaikan: Silver King & Dr. Wagner Jr. & Super Shocker vs. El Samurai & Chris Candido & Gran Naniwa 9:28. Mexican luchador Shocker was billed as Super Shocker during his NJPW tours. It’s not hard to understand why, since Shocker was definitely impressive during these tours. Gran Naniwa was pretty good, but it seemed his magic was lost without his Michinoku Pro buddies being there. Despite this being a random trios match thrown together, featuring workers who didn’t make it to the final of the BOSJ VIII tournament, El Samurai worked this like it was a match to be taken seriously, and he deserves credit for that. Chris Candido worked hard, and this tour has really been a good reminder for wrestling fans of how talented he really was. Silver King & Dr. Wagner Jr. worked very well, but this wasn’t their best match on this tour. This was pretty good, and a lot of fun to watch, but it’s not necessarily essential viewing. If you like the idea of these six workers being in one match, then it’s worth checking this out though. *** 

NJPW 9/16/01 Nagoya Sogo Taiikukan Rainbow Hall: Silver King & Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. Jushin Thunder Liger & Gran Naniwa 10:27. This may seem like a somewhat random tag team match on paper, and it probably was intended that way when it was booked. However, the work displayed by the participants made this very good. Silver King & Dr. Wagner Jr. were such a success in NJPW in 2001 that they were invited back again. Their performance here once again proved that the Wagner brothers were arguably the best tag team around at the time. Liger is one of the all-time greats, and it’s amazing to see him contribute so much to a somewhat random tag team match in his 18th year as a pro wrestler at age 36, which meant he had been a pro wrestler for half his life at this point. Gran Naniwa didn’t play much of a role here, which makes Liger’s performance here even more impressive, as it was clear that Liger carried the team. Naniwa was pretty good, and he didn’t really do anything that would drag things down, but he was easily the least impressive worker in this match (which is somewhat understandable, since the other three are all top talent). King worked hard and displayed his amazing athleticism once again. His ability to react quickly, and his speed in general, made him stand out. Dr. Wagner Jr., was also at the peak of his career. Wagner’s ability to lead, and be a solid base for his opposition, and simply his overall work really makes him a top luchador. Wagner mocked Naniwa’s crab walk and showed that he also had a strong charismatic side to his work. In the end, this was only a 10-minute match, but it was an enjoyable one. ***½  

CMLL 9/28/01 Black Tiger III & Negro Casas & Lizmark Jr. & Villano IV vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. & Fuerza Guerrera & Juventud Guerrera & Universo 2000 11:00; 4:16; 9:41. This was part of a show that celebrated the 68th anniversary of CMLL. Villano IV and Universo 2000 spent a good amount of time on the mat trading holds, which was a nice old school way to start this match. They pretty much became invisible after that though. The action was more fast-paced after the initial slower paced matwork. The first fall was of good length, and even the second fall had a lot of action. Lizmark Jr., who is the son of the well-known luchador Lizmark, was a somewhat generic luchador, but he certainly wasn’t bad and managed to add some good moves to this match. The third fall had the most high flying action, including Tiger hitting a nice somersault plancha. It was a pretty good match overall, but it feels like that could have had a slightly better match than this, as it seemed they were a bit too relaxed throughout this match. ***   

CMLL 11/2/01 Mexico City Arena Mexico: Black Tiger III & Virus & Juventud Guerrera & Nicho El Millonario vs. Rey Misterio Jr. & Felino & Black Warrior & Antifaz 6:04; 1:49; 8:10. Silver King was the third Black Tiger. The first two workers who portrayed the Black Tiger gimmick in NJPW were Mark Rocco (in the 1980s and early 1990s) and Eddy Guerrero (in the mid 1990s). King had been using the Black Tiger gimmick in CMLL since June 2001, and he would bring the gimmick back to NJPW in mid November 2001. From May 2001, King had been wrestling regularly in CMLL for the first time since May 1997, which was when his first long run in CMLL (1993-1997) came to an end. His first run in CMLL was hit-and-miss, but this second CMLL run started promising with this exciting atomicos (eight-man tag) match. The CMLL ring announcer messed up Black Tiger’s introduction, as he initially introduced him as Black Warrior (but then corrected himself). Juventud Guerrera and Nicho El Millonario (formerly known as Psicosis), were two of Rey Misterio Jr.’s old rivals, so it was interesting to see them all in one match again. All three showed that they still had it in them to work exciting sequences together. Black Warrior hit a tremendous tope suicida that sent Tiger into the ringside chairs. The first fall was six minutes of action-packed lucha. The second fall was short, as Tiger didn’t take long to get revenge for the rudo (heel) team against the tecnico (babyface) team. Tiger certainly was put over as a force to be reckoned with. Virus was a hard worker, and this was the type of match that fit his style well, but it wasn’t until the third fall that we really got a good look at him here. Felino wasn’t quite the worker he was in the 1990s, but he was still useful. Antifaz del Norte was okay, but he stood out the least of these eight workers, although he did execute a nice twisting top con giro. The final minutes of the third fall were most exciting with everyone going all out. This match was pretty much all action and all about the highspots, but it was well-worked and everyone hit their moves excellently. In particular, the third fall, the longest fall, was really good. ****  

CMLL 11/9/01 Mexico City Arena Mexico: Black Tiger III & Fuerza Guerrera & Juventud Guerrera & Nicho El Millonario vs. Negro Casas & El Hijo del Santo & Rey Misterio Jr. & Atlantis 3:00; 4:00; 4:33. These are eight of the most well-known names in Mexican lucha libre history all in one match. The first fall was all action with everyone beating each other up. This fall was pretty good, but short and one-sided. It turns out the editing was really poor, as the part where Tiger and Negro Casas wrestled each other was cut out for some mysterious reason. Why would you cut out arguably the most intriguing part? Nicho botched a moonsault off the apron to the floor. If they are going to edit stuff, why not edit that out? For some reason, it seemed most of Casas’ work was edited instead. Nicho made up for it in the third fall when he took a big shoulder-first bump into the ringpost that sent him to the floor. El Hijo del Santo hit a beautiful tope suicida on Fuerza Guerrera. The third fall was definitely the best fall. This was not nearly as good as the previous week’s match that also involved some of the same wrestlers, including Tiger. The match really didn’t live up to its potential, as it felt rushed. The weird editing also didn’t help matters (which is rare for CMLL TV, and it’s more something we’re used to seeing in WAVE or OZ Academy). The match had a lot of potential, but it never really reached the level it should have reached, given the names involved. It was still a decent match and worth a view though. **¾ 

CMLL 1/4/02 Mexico City Arena Coliseo: Black Tiger III & Fuerza Guerrera & Rey Bucanero vs. Negro Casas & Felino & Atlantis 3:36; 2:00; 2:27. Rey Bucanero, the nephew of Pirata Morgan, was the one that “didn’t belong” in this match, if you’d just look at the line-up. He also ended up being the one who had the least impact on this match. A camera was held by an attractive girl (she was probably just one of the random girls who were there to escort wrestlers to the ring and/or hold up the signs that would let people know which fall was next). This was an unnecessary distraction to a match that didn’t need distractions like this. This would probably have been better for a match that wouldn’t have been that interesting otherwise. Speaking of distractions, at some point in this match, the second rope broke and Felino plummeted to the floor. Something very similar once happened to Pierroth Jr. in the early 1990s. As Felino got stretchered away, Tiger, the rudo that he was, shook the stretcher Felino was on, making Felino fall off the stretcher. With all these distractions, it was hard to focus on the actual match. There wasn’t really much of an actual match to begin with, since all three falls were under four minutes long. Fuerza Guerrera wasn’t the worker he was in the early 1990s, but he was still Fuerza Guerrera, which meant he was still a useful rudo brawler, despite no longer being able to be the fast-paced bumper he once was. Negro Casas didn’t really get to have too much of an impact on this match. Felino did well and ended up being one of the main performers in this match, perhaps inadvertently though. Atlantis’ mask got removed by the cheating rudo Black Tiger III, who was truly the star of this match. All things considered, it’s hard to really consider this a good match. **½    

CMLL 2/8/02 Mexico City Arena Mexico: Black Tiger III & Dr. Wagner Jr. & Blue Panther vs. Atlantis & Black Warrior & Mr. Niebla 2:41; 2:47; 4:08. The first fall saw the rudos dominating. Blue Panther hit a tope suicida, and Black Tiger III hit a beautiful moonsault. The second fall also had good action, but this time it was the tecnicos who were victorious. Everyone worked hard, and this was fun to watch from start to finish. Tiger bumped huge after a monkey flip by Atlantis, who really showed that he was still interested in working hard when the time is right and the opponents are right. It’s a shame this wasn’t a bit longer, because these six were really putting on a good in-ring show for the viewers. ***  

NJPW 3/14/02 Black Tiger III & Koji Kanemoto & Eddy Guerrero & Jado & Gedo vs. Jushin Thunder Liger & El Samurai & Masahito Kakihara & Minoru Tanaka & Masayuki Naruse 0:42; 21:36; 5:28. This tour took place during the four months that Eddy Guerrero had to sober up before returning to WWE in April. In these months, Guerrero wrestled in several smaller leagues in the United States, Puerto Rico, Canada and England, but he also made a stop in NJPW. Guerrero hadn’t been in NJPW since 9/23/98, and he hadn’t been touring NJPW on a regular basis since 9/23/96. One of his tag team partners here on this March 2002 tour was Black Tiger III (Silver King), which was a gimmick Guerrero knew very well, since Guerrero was Black Tiger II in the mid 1990s. This match was very disappointing when you consider the line-up. Minoru Tanaka beat Gedo in 42 seconds to win the first fall. The early stages of the second fall was kinda promising with El Samurai hitting a tope suicida. However, after that, things really slowed down, and everyone appeared to be lacking energy. Black Tiger III did some nice things, including hitting a superkick after landing on his feet after a moonsault. In the third fall, some of the workers seemed to get a bit more energetic, but it was a bit late to fix things. Jado made Tanaka submit to win the 21-minute second fall. Tiger, Koji Kanemoto and Masahito Kakihara probably stood out most in this match. Considering this was a 27-minute match featuring ten NJPW junior heavyweights, not much interesting stuff happened at all. The second fall seemed to really drag on. There were some cool moments here and there, and the wrestling wasn’t bad by any means, but these workers could have done so much more than what they did here. ***

NJPW 3/17/02 Nagoya Aichi-ken Taiikukan: Black Tiger III & Koji Kanemoto & Eddy Guerrero & Jado vs. Jushin Thunder Liger & El Samurai & Katsuyori Shibata & Wataru Inoue 16:53. Eddy Guerrero showed some good intensity when he was in the match, but his work overall was quite a step down from his work in the 1990s. This was understandable though, since he had spent most of the previous four years in the two big American leagues. Black Tiger III and Koji Kanemoto stood out as the best workers of this match. Liger and Samurai were the best on their team. Samurai spent a lot of time getting beat up by his opponents. Katsuyori Shibata & Wataru Inoue were the youngest and least experienced workers in this match, but they tried their best and did quite well for themselves. In an upset, Shibata scored the win for his team by pinning Tiger. The storyline here was that Shibata & Inoue really wanted to prove themselves and this win certainly helped their momentum a lot. Five days later, Shibata & Inoue would beat Tiger & Guerrero in a tag match that was okay. Overall, this 8-man tag was a good one. ***½

NJPW 3/24/02 Hyogo Amagasaki-shi Kinen Koen Sogo Taiikukan, Shin Ni Jr. vs. T2000 Jr. Sanbon Shobu Saishusen 5 vs. 5 Single Kachinogisen: Jushin Thunder Liger & Minoru Tanaka & El Samurai & Masahito Kakihara & Masayuki Naruse vs. Black Tiger III & Koji Kanemoto & Eddy Guerrero & Jado & Gedo 45:40. ***½ 

a) Jushin Thunder Liger vs. Jado 9:29. Liger was the most experienced wrestler on his team, and he was the leader of the New Japan juniors. Team 2000 was a heel stable that feuded with the New Japan army, and here we got to see the junior heavyweights that represented T2000 fighting the NJPW babyfaces. Jado (along with Gedo) was the veteran for the heel team, so it was fitting he would start this match off to battle Liger. The wrestling was very good and it was a strong foundation for what they were trying to build towards in this 5 vs. 5 match. They were teasing a draw in the middle of this match, as Jado was trying to prevent Liger from re-entering the ring after they both had ended up on the floor. The match continued as they made it back into the ring on time. Jado really put over very well how all he had on his mind was to take Liger out of this match. Finally, Jado was able to prevent Liger from re-entering the match just before the 10-minute time limit, as Jado was holding onto Liger’s legs with all his strength. Jado did what he had to do, and both were now eliminated from this match. This segment had done a really good job of setting the right tone for this match.

b) Masayuki Naruse vs. Black Tiger III (Silver King) 7:59. Naruse’s moves lacked intensity, but Tiger did an excellent job of trying to make Naruse look good. Naruse was a former shoot style wrestler who had a rough time trying to adapt to regular worked style puroresu. This is the type of performance that showed Silver King was still a top worker. He knew exactly how to time his moves and how to react to what Naruse was doing. When he was on offense, Tiger was quite explosive. Tiger got the deserving win here in this decent segment. NJPW 0-1 T2000.

c) Masahito Kakihara vs. Black Tiger III 3:56. Kakihara showed a lot of energy, but his broken fingers were preventing him from being able to work to full capacity. Tiger did an excellent job of making the most out of this situation, but this segment, while good overall, was quite short. It did help add more drama to this match. NJPW 1-1 T2000.

 d) Masahito Kakihara vs. Eddy Guerrero 5:12. In what was a pleasant surprise, Guerrero’s work here resembled the intensity of his work from the 1990s. He showed more energy and explosiveness here than he had done in any of his other matches on this tour. Kakihara was still mostly selling his broken fingers, but he reacted well to everything Guerrero did. This was a relatively short segment, but it was good. NJPW 1-2 T2000.

e) El Samurai vs. Eddy Guerrero 6:28. This was one of the best parts of the match. The work was really crisp, but it’s a shame it was only six minutes long. It would have been interesting to see these two get closer to the 10-minute mark. What they showed here was really good junior heavyweight wrestling that resembled the high quality work they were capable of delivering in the mid 1990s. Guerrero really was on a roll in this match, and managed to pin Samurai in this very good segment to give his team a 2-fall lead. NJPW 1-3 T2000.

f) Minoru Tanaka vs. Eddy Guerrero 4:48. This didn’t quite have the quality of the previous segment, but it was decent. Tanaka acted like he was more tired than Guerrero, despite Guerrero just having gone through two opponents and Tanaka being fresh. After dominating pretty much this entire portion of the match, Tanaka eventually scored a flashy submission win. NJPW 2-3 T2000.

g) Minoru Tanaka vs. Koji Kanemoto 7:48. Inspired by Tanaka’s selling of fatigue, Kanemoto seemed really tired real fast. It’s almost like these two guys were more tired from standing at ringside watching the entire match than actually having a good reason to sell like this. Either way, this was the final chance for Liger’s team to survive in this match, so there was a lot of pressure on Tanaka. It would have been nice if Tanaka showed a bit more desperation to really put this over. Instead, he seemed more annoyed than actually interested in keeping his team alive in this. Despite Kanemoto uncharacteristically selling like he had been in a long battle, Kanemoto did a good job of acting cocky and confident, and he put it over well that his mission here was to finish things off. This segment was good overall, and the final minute had some extra heat. In the end, Kanemoto pinned Tanaka to get T2000 the win without Gedo even having to get into the ring, as all members of Liger’s team were eliminated before it was Gedo’s turn. This was probably a good thing, as Gedo would probably have just dragged things down. NJPW 2-4 T2000.

NJPW 5/23/02 Numazu Kira Messe, Best Of The Super Juniors IX Block A: Black Tiger III vs. Koji Kanemoto 10:15 of 13:35. It was interesting to see these two battle in a one-on-one match, especially considering they usually teamed together in six, eight, or ten-man tag team matches, as they were part of the T2000 heel stable. Black Tiger III and the former Tiger Mask III had a pretty decent match against each other here, but it felt like they never really went all out. It started off promising when they exchanged blows, but they seem to lose that intensity during the middle portion of the match. It seemed their mindset going into this match was that they could rely on the fact that this would be okay enough regardless of them trying or not. They kinda did a bit of this and a bit of that without really sticking to a game plan, giving this the feel of a disjointed match. Perhaps the editing didn’t do the match any favors either, but you’d think over 10 minutes of footage of a match between these two would be more compelling. Tiger’s strategy for a little while seemed to be that of working over Kanemoto’s legs, but he eventually favored a few more spectacular moves. At some point, Tiger lifted Kanemoto up on his shoulders and Kanemoto went for a reverse huracarrana, which resulted in Tiger hitting a brutal-looking bump that looked dangerous. Kanemoto couldn’t put Tiger away though. Kanemoto stayed on offense for a little bit longer, but Tiger then got the flashy pinfall win after surprising Kanemoto with an inside cradle variation. This wasn’t a bad match, and some of the stuff they did looked good, but it was very disappointing overall, especially when you consider it’s Silver King vs. Kanemoto. **½  

NJPW 5/24/02 Tokyo Korakuen Hall, Best of the Super Juniors IX Koshiki Leagusen Block A: Black Tiger III vs. Curry Man 8:46. American wrestler Christopher Daniels wrestled as Curry Man, a character that was initially introduced when he wrestled in Michinoku Pro in 1999. Even though Daniels put a lot of effort into putting his gimmick over during the intro, once the bell rang, he was all business in the ring. Both workers displayed their amazing athleticism, and it was an exciting match that saw them still being able to keep things interesting during the slower parts. Despite Tiger losing here, he ended up finishing third in Block A, just below Jushin Thunder Liger and Koji Kanemoto (and Kanemoto ended up winning the tournament). ***

NJPW 5/26/02 Fukushima Big Palette, Best Of The Super Juniors IX Block A: Black Tiger III vs. Jushin Thunder Liger 7:45 of 13:30. Of course, almost any Best of the Super Juniors match involving Jushin Thunder Liger is interesting, because his track record of memorable BOSJ matches is superb. These two had a really good match against each other in the 2001 edition of the Best of the Super Juniors. Black Tiger III (Silver King) was motivated to make this another memorable match. They did a really good job of keeping this match going, and the work was really good. It’s a shame we only got to see just a little over half the match, because this was clearly a pretty good match at the least. This didn’t appear to be as good as their 6/1/01 match. However, perhaps the feeling of something missing and incompleteness in this 5/26/02 match is mostly to blame on the editing. ***¼ 

NJPW 5/30/02 Miyako City Gym, Best Of The Super Juniors IX Block A: Black Tiger III vs. Masahito Kakihara 5:38 of 8:20. Masahito Kakihara is an underrated worker who stood out due to his effort. He had a particularly interesting match against Jushin Thunder Liger on 5/19/02. Black Tiger III also appeared to be quite motivated in this match. It turned into quite a heated battle, as they both showed they wanted to beat the other. It’s a shame the finish involved referee Norio Honaga taking a ref bump and Gedo, who was in Tiger’s corner, tripping Kakihara. Other than the crappy finish, which seemed to be just another one of Gedo’s many not-so-great booking ideas, this relatively short match had some pretty good action. **½   

NJPW 6/5/02 Osaka Furitsu Taiikukaikan: Black Tiger III & Gedo & GOKU-DO vs. Jushin Thunder Liger & Tiger Mask IV & Curry Man 13:29. GOKU-DO was Hawaiian wrestler Pat Tanaka. Back in the early 1990s, some of his matches were among the more watchable matches the WWF had to offer at the time when he was a member of the tag team known as the Orient Express. However, in 2002 NJPW, he did feel a bit out of place, especially considering he was now an older and slower version of the worker he used to be. The match was at its best whenever Black Tiger III (Silver King) was in the ring. We got to see Jushin Thunder Liger work a good amount during this match, and that’s always a good thing. Gedo ended up doing the job for Curry Man. It was a fun junior heavyweight 6-man tag that’s not necessarily essential viewing, but certainly worthwhile. Unfortunately, the tour this match was a part of was the final tour Silver King worked for NJPW. **¾ 

NJPW 6/7/02 Tokyo Nippon Budokan: Black Tiger III & Koji Kanemoto & AKIRA & Gedo vs. Jushin Thunder Liger & Minoru Tanaka & Tiger Mask IV & Curry Man 12:36. This was the final match Silver King worked in NJPW. That year and a half he went on tours for NJPW was arguably the best part of his career. It was also the final time he was in the ring with Jushin Thunder Liger, and it was a joy watching these two work against each other one more time. Black Tiger III (Silver King) was excellent whenever he was in, and Liger was Liger. Koji Kanemoto and Minoru Tanaka had particularly good chemistry in this match, and their sequences together looked very smooth. Two days prior to this match, Kanemoto had beaten Tanaka to win the Best of the Super Juniors IX tournament. Tiger Mask IV and Curry Man did quite well for themselves. Curry Man deserves credit for being one of the few Americans who doesn’t look out of place in the NJPW junior heavyweight division. Akira Nogami was solid, but he didn’t play a big role. Gedo didn’t have a chance to ruin things. This was quite the decent junior 8-man tag that was fun to watch. **¾  

AJPW 10/26/03 Tokyo Nippon Budokan: Silver King vs. Low Ki 13:33. Silver King was no longer Black Tiger, and was now working as Silver King again. Another big change in his career was that he was now touring All Japan instead of New Japan. This event was the culmination of this AJPW tour, which had started for King on 10/10/03. King and American wrestler Low Ki performed intriguing fast-paced sequences. Both workers had a very athletic style, so their work naturally meshed well together. They had only worked against each other once before, which was in a tag team match 6 days prior to this match. These two weren’t all about flashiness though, as they both also were quite hard-hitting, especially for junior heavyweights. They really put over well that this was a hard-fought effort they had to give to try to get the upper hand. The selling was very good, yet they also made sure to keep things going and keep things exciting. While the match was generally very competitive, it felt that Low Ki managed to put King away a bit too easily. It was a really good match overall, but it would have been nice if King would have come close to beating Low Ki before Low Ki managed to hit the Phoenix splash seemingly out of nowhere without a really good build-up to the finish. Maybe it wasn’t completely out of nowhere, but it would have been useful to have a bit more back-and-forth action before the finish, instead of the match gradually kinda losing steam. Either way, this was an excellent match, and it was probably King’s best singles match of his entire career. ****  

AJPW 3/28/04 Kurakata Dome, AJPW All Asia Tag Team Title: Shiryu & Great Kosuke vs. Silver King & Dr. Wagner Jr. 9:24 of 18:04. The Great Kosuke was Satoshi Kojima doing a Great Sasuke tribute gimmick, but other than wearing a mask with a somewhat similar type of design, there wasn’t anything he did that resembled The Great Sasuke in any way, shape or form. He was easily the least impressive performer in the match. Silver King & Dr. Wagner Jr., sometimes known as Los Aztecas brothers, showed a lot more teamwork than the champions. King’s work on this show wasn’t quite on the level of his excellent 2003 work. He was a bit slower and a bit less flexible, compared to his spectacular work in 2003, which was the last time he was in AJPW. Still, both brothers were definitely very good workers, with King being the slightly more impressive brother. Of course, we have to keep in mind that the AJPW tag team division wasn’t as strong as the NJPW junior heavyweight tag team division, and it was on their NJPW tours in 2001 that we saw some of the best performances of the Aztecas brothers. Also, King and Wagner were 36 and 38 respectively in 2004, and they had been working a very athletic style for years, so it’s not a huge surprise to see them slowing down a bit. Despite having lost his mask in 1987, Silver King wore a mask in this match. Of course, this wasn’t Mexico City, so it wasn’t a big deal here in AJPW. Half the match was shown, and what was shown was pretty good, but it is hard to say how good the rest of the match would have been. Shiryu (Kaz Hayashi) was easily the worker of the match, and the match was significantly better whenever he was in the ring. **½  

CMLL 11/16/04 Mexico City Arena Coliseo: Black Tiger III vs. Blue Panther 1:50; 1:00; 6:30. Blue Panther was a wily veteran, a maestro, and a respected technical wrestler in Mexican lucha libre. The fact that one of the first things he did was hit a tope suicida says something about how this was a heated fight, not just another match. Black Tiger III won the first fall really fast after hitting a foul on Blue Panther, and the referee didn’t see it, so Tiger got away with it. The second fall was also really short, because the Tiger abused the referee and got disqualified. You know you’re a great rudo when there’s an older lady on the front row holding her purse that’s yelling at you, and that’s exactly the top rudo status that Tiger had achieved here. Tiger became more vicious as this brawl progressed. Tiger hit a sliding kick, which sent Panther into the seats on the front row, and Panther’s arm got stuck in a chair for a while. This was a particularly interesting match, because here we saw Tiger focusing more on psychology and storytelling, and not as much on his athletic skills, which he would normally be focusing on. Tiger did hit a spectacular moonsault off the second-rope though. Panther’s technical skills and tenacity eventually got him the win, as he overcame Tiger’s evil tactics by applying a Fujiwara armbar and making Tiger tap out. It was a very well-worked brawl, but it was rather short. While it was entertaining, it felt like this wasn't necessarily a match that really showed what these were truly capable of. Still, this was one of the better singles matches featuring Black Tiger III (Silver King). ***¼   

CMLL 4/1/05 Mexico City Arena Mexico: Black Tiger III & Halloween & Damian 666 vs. Felino & Heavy Metal & Safari 3:24; 4:53; 3:16. Halloween was a luchador you may remember from his WCW days as Ciclope. He was more of a brawling-type wrestler by the mid 2000s, and he watched a bit too much sports-entertainment, judging from his moveset here. Damian 666 was basically a comedy brawler who specialized in imitations and used to hit some cool-looking moves once in a while in the 1990s, but he was easily the one who contributed least to this match. Safari appeared to be quite a decent worker, and he would be known as Ephesto from late 2007 onwards. Felino and Heavy Metal are Negro Cassas’ brothers, and they did quite well for themselves, considering this was the mid 2000s, and not the 1990s. Felino hit a huracarrana on Halloween on the apron, which sent Halloween to the floor. Black Tiger III (Silver King) was still a very good worker in 2005, but we didn’t get to see him in the ring too often in this match, unfortunately. **½ 

Promociones Wagner 2/4/06 Torreon Auditorio Municipal, Mask vs. Mask: Black Tiger III vs. L.A. ParK 5:00; 8:40; 20:40. Torreon, Coahuila, Mexico was the hometown of both these famous luchadores, and both workers put their mask on the line in this big match-up. This was a classic lucha brawl, the type L.A. ParK (La Autentica Parka/The Original La Parka) excels at. ParK juiced and his mask was ripped in half, which helped to visualize the rawness of this match. This match attracted quite a lot of people, since it was a huge deal that ParK was potentially going to lose his mask in his hometown against a mysterious and villainous opponent who had claimed to be from Japan in kayfabe. Perhaps most of the local Mexican fans didn’t realize that Silver King’s days Black Tiger III were numbered, as NJPW had made the decision to pass on the legendary Black Tiger gimmick to Cuban wrestler Rocky Romero (Black Tiger IV) in Japan. Tiger III and ParK gave a very good performance. ParK is one of the best brawlers in lucha libre, and despite no longer being the agile worker he was in the 1990s, he still knew how to put over the importance of a match like this. ParK showed a lot of passion, and the way he brawled made it clear this was a true war that was only going to have one survivor. The match became more dramatic as it progressed. ParK hit three dives in this match, emphasizing that he was truly desperate to destroy Tiger. The tough and bitter ParK eventually managed to put away his opponent, and Silver King’s run as Black Tiger III officially came to an end. It felt like this was more ParK’s match than King’s match, but King certainly deserves credit for making this match work as well as it did. Especially in the final portion of the match, Tiger truly showed he was a tough challenger for ParK, and this really helped put doubt in the minds of the fans in attendance what the outcome of this match would be. Since this wasn’t a match promoted by CMLL, despite both workers being affiliated with CMLL, they were able to have a match of much greater length than if this was a televised CMLL event. They fought for more than 34 minutes. In the end, it was revealed that Black Tiger III was indeed Torreon’s own Silver King, and it was the climax of a dramatic battle. This wasn’t a very technical match, but those who enjoy lucha brawls and dramatic lucha de apuestas matches will really enjoy this. ***½      

AJPW 10/18/07 Tokyo Yoyogi National Stadium Gymnasium #2, AJPW World Junior Heavyweight Title: Katsuhiko Nakajima vs. Silver King 11:00 of 19:12. Silver King showed that he could still go, and he gave a very good performance here. He randomly took his mask off, which he randomly had started wearing again, despite having lost it 20 years earlier in Mexico. It was nice to see King wrestle a more high-impact style again, as opposed to what we usually see from him in his Mexican matches. Kastuhiko Nakajima, protege of Kensuke Sasaki and Akira Hokuto, gave a very strong performance. The match was on its way to be at least really good, but then the crappy booking ruined things. Nakajima pinned King while King’s feet were on the ropes. The match was restarted. Then a few minutes later, the match ended in a double knock-out that really felt like it came out of nowhere. During all of the shenanigans, we briefly got to see puroresu legends Akira Hokuto and Hiroshi Hase (PWF chairman), who were at ringside. *** 

AJPW 3/1/08 Tokyo Ryogoku Kokugikan, AJPW World Junior Heavyweight Title: Katsuhiko Nakajima vs. Silver King 12:29. For his ring entrance, Silver King did the old Mil Mascaras trick where he pretended to show his face while unmasking himself, only to reveal another mask underneath the mask. While this makes for a cool ring entrance, it hardly means anything when Silver King seemingly couldn’t decide whether or not to be a masked wrestler or an unmasked wrestler in those days. Akira Hokuto was in Katsuhiko Nakajima’s corner. King’s performance in this match was excellent. He wrestled like in the early 2000s. He was more speedy and appeared to be more enthusiastic than we’d seen him in a while. Katsuhiko Nakajima was really good, but he fought more from underneath in this match, with King being the aggressor. I guess in the kayfabe storyline, we could say that King was now more prepared and more confident after having wrestled Nakajima before. It was cool to see how King has been able to adapt so well to the type of match that fitted AJPW so well here, while still staying true to his own character. He was just more vicious and more hard-hitting than we had seen him in a long time, making this match feel like a big battle. Despite this being a junior heavyweight title match, King wrestled more like a heavyweight, focusing on hard-hitting and high-impact devastating offense, with less focus on flashiness. However, in the end, Silver King simply destroyed Nakajima. It would probably have been slightly better if Nakajima was more competitive. However, this was a very good match overall, and this was much more satisfying than their battle on 10/18/07 that was ruined by crappy overbooking. It was good to see King could still work at a level this high in 2008. It turns out that this match from 2008 was the last match of his career that was really memorable. ***½   

AJPW 4/29/08 Nagoya Aichi-ken Taiikukan, AJPW World Junior Heavyweight Title: Silver King vs. Ryuji Hijikata 10:50 of 17:41. This was like a “lite” version of the match King had with Katsuhiko Nakajima on 3/1/08. “Lite” because of Ryuji Hijikata not being on the same level as Nakajima. Even though the 3/1/08 match vs. Nakajima wasn’t as competitive as hoped, at least it felt like Nakajima had a chance of winning, and it felt like the two workers involved were somewhat on the same level ability-wise. Here in this match with Hijikata, however, it kinda felt like an extended squash with King dominating, and Hijikata not really doing anything to make us believe he’d have a chance of winning and not really doing anything that would make us believe he’d deserve to win. It was quite a one-sided match, with King doing pretty much everything. But, seemingly out of nowhere, Hijikata managed to counter King’s Death Valley Driver attempt into a submission hold, and King had no choice but to tap out. It was a pretty good match, but it just felt like the finish came out of nowhere and didn’t make any real sense in the overall story this match was telling. King deserves credit for his really good performance though. **¾ 

AJPW 8/3/08 Ishikawa-ken Sangyo Tenjikan 3, 2008 Junior Heavyweight League Final: Silver King vs. KAI 10:47 of 13:00. This was on its way to be a very good match, but then it kinda ended a bit too early. King was the far more experienced of the two, and he did a really good job of guiding KAI through the match. KAI’s performance was pretty good as well. King moved around and bumped well, and he worked stiff. The moves he executed looked very impactful. All of this would start changing a bit during the next year when he would start working for AAA. While they were brawling in the crowd, King enjoyed the “Kingu!” chant. KAI would occasionally be able to fight back, but it was mostly King on offense. It’s a good thing KAI was really good at selling King’s offense, but KAI also managed to get some impressive-looking offense in. Despite King being a dominating force here, it was KAI who scored the upset win. This was a good match overall, but it felt more like a league match than a final. *** 

AAA 6/17/09 Ecatepec: Silver King & Teddy Hart & Electro Shock vs. El Mesias & La Parka Jr. & Jack Evans 12:12. 2009 wasn’t Silver King’s best year by any means, but that was because he spent pretty much all year wrestling in AAA, a league that no longer resembled the league it used to be in the mid 1990s. This particular match was probably the only decent match of all the 2009 AAA matches King had. King, who was wrestling with his mask on during his AAA run, was still a pretty good worker, and the other five were quite okay themselves. Teddy Hart and Jack Evans were very familiar with each other’s work, since they had been wrestling each other for over seven years. There was a spectacular spot where Hart threw Evans into the air and Evans flipped backwards while in mid-air just before Hart then proceeded to powerbomb him. At this stage of Evans’ career, his work was fun to watch but still kinda fluffy. Hart seemed more interested in being a spectacular performer than anything else, but his work with Evans were some of the best moments of the match. Mesias’ performance was adequate, but nothing to write home about. La Parka Jr. (not to be confused with the original La Parka) was his usual self, which means he was just kinda there, not really adding or subtracting too much here. Electro Shock wasn’t that great, but he was alright as a base for Evans’ flying. It’s a shame we barely got to see King in this match, but the Silver King we saw here in AAA certainly didn’t resemble the one we saw in AJPW in 2008. It’s hard to fully blame King for this though, since AAA had the vibe of a messy sports-entertainment league, not quite the environment that encouraged the type of matches King was working in AJPW. Also, it seemed that the aging King’s work started declining a bit from 2009 onwards, and the fact that AAA was now the main league he was working in probably had quite a bit to do with that. **½ 

AAA 2/3/13 Pachuca: Silver King & Pentagon Jr. & Toscano vs. Fenix & Drago & Octagon. Silver King was solid, but the ones who stole the show were Fenix and Drago. Pentagon Jr. and Toscano gave solid contributions to this match, but Octagon was clearly many years past his prime. It was nice to see King in a Triple A match involving people who can work, instead of seeing him being saddled with some of the usual middling performers. **¾    

AAA 10/18/13 Puebla: Silver King vs. Fenix vs. Mesias vs. Monster Clown 10:00. Monster Clown was eliminated early, and he didn’t really do anything of note here. Mesias was quite okay, but he was the second one eliminated after King executed a moonsault on him. Silver King was still a useful veteran rudo in matches like these, despite now being in the post-prime era of his career. Fenix was the best worker in this match. His athleticism and high flying skills were truly amazing. It was nice to see that Fenix and King were the final two remaining in this match, and the final two minutes of this match were two of the best minutes we’ve seen in a King match in a long time. King gave a pretty good showing, but Fenix was the real star of this match. Of course, King was twice Fenix’s age at the time, and Fenix had a bright future ahead of him. **½  

AAA 11/22/13 Aguascalientes: Silver King & Texano Jr. & El Hijo del Fantasma vs. Fenix & Angelico & Jack Evans 11:26. Fenix’s team provided a lot of exciting moves. Silver King gave a solid rudo performance. King’s tag team partners were okay, but certainly not on the level of the opposition. Texano Jr., son of King’s former tag team partner El Texano, didn’t really show much here. El Hijo del Fantasma (a.k.a. King Cuerno/Santos Escobar) executed a nice tope con giro. American worker Jack Evans once again showed his ability to execute impressive high flying moves. Angelico, the South African-born luchador from Spain, worked together very well with his teammates and was definitely one of the best in the match. Fenix was excellent, as expected, but this wasn’t a match where he had to carry everything to make it interesting, since the other workers did their fair share of providing good work. This was a fun match with plenty of good action. King was a lot older than the other workers, but his experience mixed well with the young energy of the rest, and it never felt like he was really out of place, especially considering he was in a leadership role for his team. ***    

1985-1986: N/A (hoping to find footage)

1987: Decent

1988: N/A (hoping to find footage)

1989: Decent

1990: N/A (hoping to find footage)

1991-1994: Very Good

1995: Great

1996: Excellent

1997-2000: Very Good

2001: Great

2002-2003: Excellent

2004-2008: Very Good

2009-2013: Pretty Good

2014-2019: Decent

While there were years The Effective One was maybe less interesting to watch and less impressive compared to the peak times of his career, it’s important to acknowledge Silver King’s overall career. 1995 was his best year in the 1990s, but his career truly peaked in 2001-2003. His work in the 1990s was always at least very good, but it felt that in 2001-2003, he got better opportunities to show what he was capable of in more complete matches, instead of seemingly just getting to show some cool-looking moves here and there, which was the case in a lot of his matches from the 1990s. Whenever Silver King didn’t have an excellent year, it wasn’t necessarily his fault, because when he wasn’t excellent, it was usually because of being booked in certain leagues that weren’t the best environment for King to display his ability to its fullest potential and/or he was booked in matches with workers that weren’t able to keep up with his high-quality work. After 2008, his work gradually became less interesting, not only because of his aging, but probably more so because of him working in AAA on a regular basis from late 2008 onwards. King was a very talented wrestler, and he deserves some attention the next time anyone thinks of discussing, rating or ranking great pro wrestlers.  

Universal 11/14/91 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Silver King & El Texano & Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. Gran Hamada & MASA Michinoku & Monkey Magic Wakita 9:52; 4:18; 5:02 ***½

Universal 1/19/92 Tokyo Korakuen Hall, UWA Tag Team Title: Gran Hamada & Kendo vs. Silver King & El Texano 10:54 of 15:00 ***¼

Universal 1/23/92 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Silver King & El Texano & Dos Caras vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. & Villano IV & Villano V 5:14 (3:47 shown), 4:11, 3:41 ***½ 

LLI 2/16/92 Naucalpan El Toreo: Silver King & El Texano & Gran Hamada vs. Negro Casas & Dr. Wagner Jr. & Tigre Canadiense 4:30; 2:30; 3:25. ***¼ 

Universal 3/14/92 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Silver King & El Texano & Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. Gran Hamada & El Hijo del Santo & Dos Caras 11:00 of 13:48 ***½

LLI 6/26/92 Silver King & El Texano vs. CanAm Express I & CanAm Express II 15:02 ***¼  

IWA Japan 5/23/94 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Silver King vs. El Texano 13:11 ***¼ 

IWA Japan 3/7/95 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Silver King & El Texano vs. Yoshihiro Tajiri & Takashi Okano 16:32 ***¾   

CMLL 4/7/95 Mexico City Arena Mexico, Torneo Gran Alternativa Final: Silver King & Shocker vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. & Astro Rey Jr. 9:07 ***¼ 

CMLL 6/23/95 Mexico City Arena Mexico, CMLL World Heavyweight Title: Silver King vs. Apolo Dantes 3:00; 7:00; 3:20 ***¼

CMLL 8/22/95 Mexico City Arena Coliseo: Silver King & El Texano & La Fiera vs. Felino & Kahoz & Mocho Cota 10:20; 4:20; 8:08 ***¾  

World Wrestling Peace Festival 6/1/96 Los Angeles Sports Arena: Silver King & Dr. Wagner Jr. & Gran Markus Jr. vs. Dos Caras & Atlantis & Hector Garza 10:33 ***¼ 

CMLL 5/23/97 Mexico City Arena Coliseo: Silver King & Arkangel de la Muerte & Violencia vs. TAKA Michinoku & Shocker & Mascara Magica 7:00; 3:45; 6:00 ***¼

CMLL 12/11/98 Mexico City Arena Mexico, CMLL World Trios Title Tournament Quarter Final: Silver King & Villano III & Villano IV vs. Negro Casas & Felino & El Hijo del Santo 10:15 ***¼  

WCW 10/14/99 Silver King & Juventud Guerrera vs. Kaz Hayashi & Blitzkrieg 10:29 ***½

NJPW 2/11/01 Osaka Maishima Arena: Silver King & Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. Jushin Thunder Liger & Kendo Kashin 15:14 ****

NJPW 2/18/01 Tokyo Ryogoku Kokugikan: Silver King & Dr. Wagner Jr. & El Samurai vs. Koji Kanemoto & Minoru Tanaka & Tatsuhito Takaiwa 14:55 ***½

NJPW 4/19/01 Tokyo Korakuen Hall: Silver King & Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. El Samurai & Kendo Kashin 15:43 ***½ 

NJPW 5/5/01 Fukuoka Dome, IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Title: Jushin Thunder Liger & El Samurai vs. Silver King & Dr. Wagner Jr. 19:09 **** 

NJPW 5/18/01 Tokyo Korakuen Hall, Best of the Super Juniors VIII Block A: Silver King vs. Chris Candido 7:40 ***¼ 

NJPW 6/1/01 Takamatsu-shi Taiikukan, Best of the Super Juniors VIII Block A: Silver King vs. Jushin Thunder Liger 12:32 ***¾

NJPW 9/16/01 Nagoya Sogo Taiikukan Rainbow Hall: Silver King & Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. Jushin Thunder Liger & Gran Naniwa 10:27 ***½ 

CMLL 11/2/01 Mexico City Arena Mexico: Black Tiger III & Virus & Juventud Guerrera & Nicho El Millonario vs. Rey Misterio Jr. & Felino & Black Warrior & Antifaz 6:04; 1:49; 8:10 ****

NJPW 3/17/02 Nagoya Aichi-ken Taiikukan: Black Tiger III & Koji Kanemoto & Eddy Guerrero & Jado vs. Jushin Thunder Liger & El Samurai & Katsuyori Shibata & Wataru Inoue 16:53 ***½  

NJPW 3/24/02  Hyogo Amagasaki-shi Kinen Koen Sogo Taiikukan, Shin Ni Jr. vs. T2000 Jr. Sanbon Shobu Saishusen 5 vs. 5 Single Kachinogisen: Jushin Thunder Liger & Minoru Tanaka & El Samurai & Masahito Kakihara & Masayuki Naruse vs. Black Tiger III & Koji Kanemoto & Eddy Guerrero & Jado & Gedo 45:40 ***½

NJPW 5/26/02 Fukushima Big Palette, Best Of The Super Juniors IX Block A: Black Tiger III vs. Jushin Thunder Liger 7:45 of 13:30 ***¼ 

AJPW 10/26/03 Tokyo Nippon Budokan: Silver King vs. Low Ki 13:33 **** 

CMLL 11/16/04 Mexico City Arena Coliseo: Black Tiger III vs. Blue Panther 1:50; 1:00; 6:30 ***¼ 

Promociones Wagner 2/4/06 Torreon Auditorio Municipal, Mask vs. Mask: Black Tiger III vs. L.A. ParK 5:00; 8:40; 20:40 ***½    

AJPW 3/1/08 Tokyo Ryogoku Kokugikan, AJPW World Junior Heavyweight Title: Katsuhiko Nakajima vs. Silver King 12:29 ***½

Honorable mentions:

LLI 2/23/92 Naucalpan El Toreo: Silver King & El Texano & Gran Hamada vs. Negro Casas & Dr. Wagner Jr. & Rambo 3:00; 4:10; 10:00 ***¼

Universal 3/12/92 Tokyo Korakuen Hall, Universal Strongest Trio Decision League: Silver King & El Texano & Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. El Hijo del Santo & Coolie SZ & Bulldog KT 5:15 of 20:12 ***¼