Burn, baby, burn: blood and fire in Puerto Rico
As with so many things, it starts with the Wrestler of the Year award. At a ceremony given a lot of gravity and weight by the hosting of one Gordon Solie, current WWC Universal Champion Hercules Ayala preens for the camera in his gray tuxedo, ready to claim the award he believes to be his, only for the award to be announced for Carlos Colon. In a fit of jealousy, Ayala storms the stage, harasses Colon, then starts giving him a beating with Colon's wife getting caught in the crossfire. Solie does a brilliant job putting over the seriousness of this attack, apologizing to the attendees in the room as well as fans watching on the broadcast for being subjected to such a sight. The repercussions for Ayala are swift as well: as a direct consequence of the attack, he's fined $10,000 and stripped of the WWC Universal Title on the spot.
It's a classic pro wrestling angle built around professional jealousy taken to a deeply personal extreme. While Ayala never seems to directly strike Nancy Colon, his actions do put her in the line of fire, and even today in 2025, there's an element of shock around the whole thing that's hard to deny. In Puerto Rico too, where the blood and hatred runs hot, it's no shock then that things escalate incredibly quick. Forget titles, forget awards: it's time to set a motherfucker on fire.
Being a wrestler in this fire match feels almost unthinkable. Hell, I'd dread even being a referee for this bout. Unlike the carefully managed pyrotechnics of the WWF's inferno match, there's a seat-of-your-pants, almost DIY quality to this match's set up that foreshadows the very best of the deathmatch genre to come. Instead of a well-kept border of fire on the apron, multiple torch-like pads are strung up on two lines that surround the ring. At the start of the video, one can even see the ringside attendants pouring lighter fluid onto each pad from a red solo cup. It's an image that sticks in the mind--the fact that they didn't even have that squeeze bottle out there to soak the rags, they just poured some of it into a cup and said, "Soak that shit."
And when the fire gets going, it really is stunning. The Juan Ramón Loubriel Stadium is an open air venue and the wind really whips those flames high early on. Watching those flames rise, I'm struck by how miserable it must be between those ropes. Even with the nighttime wind, the wrestlers are slick with sweat immediately, not to mention having to get into close proximity to those flames multiple times. Add on to that the physical exertion of wrestling, bumping, emoting big for this crowd, all while those greedy flames suck on the oxygen. Perhaps its exaggeration in my own mind or even just being pure old worked, but god, does this feel like an awful, awful place to be.
That's exactly why it's impossible to look away from.
What strikes me more than anything is how ahead of its time this pace feels. One imagines that a good part of that is Colon and Ayala realizing just how difficult working in this environment really is, coming to turns in real time with just what's expected of them, but the spirited action suits the very personal stakes of the rivalry too. As opposed to many an environmental hazard matches--your barbed wire, inferno, and exploding cage matches--before this and since, there's very little time spent on anticipation and a lot of time spent getting right into the thick of this. Colon and Ayala shoot themselves into those flames early and fast and it's a thrill watching their bodies collide with the ring ropes and flirt with absolute disaster.
It's seconds into this match and both men are hitting those ropes hard, with no real guarantee of any safety from the flames just a few inches away. There's not much pretense of this being any sort of sporting contest, there's an immediate maliciousness and intent to hurt and maim. There's a real recklessness here too that's aided by the camerawork. At multiple points, a hand or a shoulder or even a face will crash against the unlit line stringing all the torches together. But with how the wind blows and the perfect angling of the cameras at basically every point of this, it always looks like the flames are blowing right into the flesh. It's a frankly mindblowing combination of classic pro wrestling pantomime and true honest to God psycho wildness to get even that close to the flame work or not.
The rest of the action is simplistic but perfect in tone. It's all big punches from both men, always moving towards the edges of the ring, never once looking too far away from the point of this whole thing. We get a good bout of heat (heh) from Ayala utilizing a can thrown into the ring as a weapon. Even the late match leg work Ayala resorts to is a fun additional twist to create further doubt as the lighter fluid starts to burn out and the wind that once stoked the flames begin to stifle them instead. The drama over the leg is a familiar one for Colon, and it sets up the beautiful karma of finally taking Ayala off his feet and getting that climactic figure four on.
This match feels like it casts a long shadow. One can see its fingerprints over things like the great deathmatch spectacles of Onita, for example. Where so often Onita can be prone to repetition, even at the height of his creative powers, Colon and Ayala find so much variety out of a simple idea and then take things home at exactly the right time lest anything start to fade in wonder and heat. The more I think about this match, the more that I love it. The more that I see, the more that I'm in awe. Whether it's your first time or your hundredth, watch this one again and get lost in it.
IS IT BETTER THAN 6/3/94? Ear blood vs. singed hair and fire to the face. It's an almost unfair comparison, but only in the sense that one of these things is so much cooler than the other. Sorry, Kawada and Misawa, love y'all, but Puerto Rico takes it today.
Rating: ****1/2