Is Sangre Chicana vs. MS-1 the Greatest Wrestling Match of All Time?

Is Sangre Chicana's mom the greatest wrestling fan of all time??

There’s something about the way the footage of this match drops you into the brief moment before Sangre Chicana makes his entrance. MS-1, hair perfectly coifed, meets Arena Mexico’s fevered chants of “CHICANA! CHICANA!” defiantly, beating his chest and talking shit the whole time. He and Chicana have been at this for awhile now, spilling each other’s blood over the course of several months, pushing the limits of acceptable brutality within an EMLL ring, never coming close to figuring out who the better man was. If MS-1 is interested in the answer to that question, it’s not in the spiritual sense. He’s here to break a man’s spirit, and the crowd’s along with it, so he jumps Sangre Chicana before the bell.

Outside the ring, Chicana finds himself at the feet of an older woman. Her presence in this match is pronounced – she physically interjects herself on his behalf, trying in vain to pull MS-1 away so Sangre Chicana can get away. It doesn’t work, of course, but when Chicana, back to the camera, reveals his bloodied face to the crowd, he’s looking right at her. 

EMLL

I am not immune to complaining about wrestling fans online, but the truth is that I love them and I love being one. Watch a WWF house show from 1986 or an AJW apuestas or a bit of Onita theater or even your most overproduced, overblown modern era WrestleMania Moment and look into the crowd. These are your people – the screaming children, the fawning women, the tryhard dudes with their custom airbrushed Cactus Jack hats, the nerds discussing workrate, the guy who will inevitably yell “Grab his dick and twist it!” – and at one point in time or another, every single one of them has been brought to their knees by the great sport of professional wrestling. 

The fans who showed up to Arena Mexico to watch Sangre Chicana exact his bloody revenge on MS-1 are our patron saints. 

We are still minutes into the match when another fan, near the woman who got between MS-1 and Chicana, wipes the blood from Sangre Chicana’s brow. Another fan, seconds later, pumps his fist in MS-1’s direction, cursing him as he pursues the technico. There are some things you lose with footage like this, one of which is that the sound of the crowd is decidedly compressed, but they are absolutely molten.

MS-1’s early strategy of ruling the ring, constantly battering Chicana when he tries to get back into the ring, is a psychologically brilliant one. He sends the bleeding hero out into the crowd, they push him back into the fight, he sends him right back, bleeding more and more profusely every time, as if to insinuate that Chicana’s blood is on their hands. In the instance of the fan who tried in vain to clean Chicana’s wound, it literally is. 

MS-1 picks up one of the easier first falls you’ll ever see, the fans baying for retribution as he taunts Chicana, once again at ringside. A fan waves his cowboy hat at Chicana to cool him down. The woman who wiped off his blood before returns to do so again. MS-1 kicks Chicana for that. She wipes the blood from his brow again. This sends MS-1 after Sangre Chicana with renewed vigor – he’s done toying around with the hopes of these people and it’s time to finish things. A massive “CHICANA” chant goes up, the man responding by trying to punch himself back into the fight, but things are bleak. MS-1 is throwing heaters. Sangre Chicana is leaking. Then the camera cuts back to the crowd, a full-on shot of the woman who tried to save Sangre Chicana from MS-1 early, taking a big drag from a cigarette. 

EMLL

“Aquí aparecen los familiares esta es la mamá de Andrés Richardson Sangre Chicana una señora que fuma nerviosa,” the commentator explains – the section Chicana’s been playing to is his family. His mom is watching him get his ass beat. The woman caring for his cut is also likely a relative. Then, in a minor miracle of scripted combat, we cut back to the ring, just in time for Sangre Chicana to land his first real punches of the match. 18,000 people erupt, and Sangre Chicana pays them back for their strength, throwing MS-1 out of the ring and landing a tope that nets him the second fall via countout. It’s a triumph, but with a touch of bitterness, as what Chicana managed to do in this second fall was less defeat MS-1 than survive him. 

But at its most basic, wrestling is about hope. Standing in the ring, sucking wind between falls, Sangre Chicana points at his prey. Arena Mexico screams in anticipation, and that hope propels him into the third and final fall. He gives MS-1 a taste of his own medicine, ramming him into the ring apron, busting him open. MS-1 fights back, trying to rally himself against the changing tide, and manages to score a gorgeous tope of his own, but this is ultimately a bad stratagem – if straight wrestling could beat Sangre Chicana, we wouldn’t have arrived here at the apuestas at all.

Still, it allows MS-1 moments of tremendous heat, as when he stretches Chicana out, he forces the assembled fans to admire his handiwork. The tope Chicana dodges is a beauty, as is the dart he takes from Chicana seconds later. The work they’ve put in, the gushers they’ve tapped into, it’s all worth it, as the crowd screams and whistles for Sangre Chicana’s moments of hope, roar when MS-1 slips his certain doom. Like the second fall, MS-1 loses due to his hubris, crashing to the mat on two failed dives. This time, though, Chicana has him in the middle of the ring, ties him in a submission, and forces him, at last, to quit.

Is this the greatest wrestling match of all time? I don’t know. My place in such arguments is always going to be to rally against the concept, to argue for the infinite eyes that have seen and hearts that have felt, however fleetingly, that whatever dumb little spectacle they’re swooning for in the moment is the greatest thing that’s ever happened inside the squared circle. On September 23, 1983, 18,000 people showed up for EMLL’s 50th Anniversary Show hoping to see MS-1 shaved bald. They got what they asked for, and all they had to endure was the thought that Sangre Chicana would be the one facing the razor, in front of his mother and family, to boot. Listen to the crowd roar – how can you go against them?

Rating: *****