I adored El Gayo in this. His character work was very subtle and smartly worked into the narrative of the match. He started well, staying one step ahead of Corn on every movement; hanging on to the hammerlock, escaping Corn’s headscissors attempts while busting out some awesomely innovative bearhug into move combos before losing the advantage to the craftly Corn and losing the fall. After that, he got more underhanded and while never fully cheating, he was more sneaky than the classy Jacky Corn, who replied with beastly hammer throws. Eat your heart out Tomohiro Ishii, this is how you throw an elbow. And his uppercuts were sublime, too. Luis El Gayo’s selling of the strikes was excellent as well. He’d fire some off himself but when he got rocked, we, the audience, knew it. The result of the second fall was surprising as Gayo fell once more to a Corn bridging pin. Obviously not every match is 50/50 and these results happen to establish hierarchy, which is valuable when exploring a time like this with seemingly no other data to give context, but it still shocked me. Corn offered his hand and Gayo shook it with grace. The great character work continued until the very end. And oh, before I forget, RIPDCORD TOMBSTONE! ****
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