Santito and Parka Have a White and (Mostly) Red Christmas

Some time in the second fall, La Parka has a bloodied El Hijo del Santo tied up in a tree of woe. Not only does this leave Santito vulnerable to some stomps to the head from the rudo, but it has the added effect of sending whatever blood Santito still has in his body rushing all the way down to his head. In one of the most disgusting shows of physics and biology meeting in a single moment, when Santito finally gets pulled down from the tree of woe, a stream of blood visibly pours out of his ripped mask into a puddle on the mat.

That's the level of grotesqueness that awaits in this Christmastime bout between El Hijo del Santo and La Parka.

This match features an absolute all-timer of a bladejob from our hero El Hijo del Santo. The moment I described above is just one of many, many horrifying images that can be found throughout this bout. It's a bloodletting up there with the likes of Sangre Chicana in 1983 or even Jay Briscoe inside a steel cage just three years after this. In a remarkable amount of foresight, La Parka opts for an ashy white variant of his usual skeleton gear, and that allows his mostly white outfit to get progressively stained with Santito's blood. One of the ways it becomes clear just how much Santito has lost here in blood is that not only are his own silver tights covered in gore, but La Parka's full chest becomes a solid red by the end of this match, as if he had worn a red shirt to the ring.

Beyond just the fantastic display of blading we get here though, it's everything these two do to get to that moment as well as maximize it once they're there that allows this to function so well.

Santito spends much of the first fall being incredibly rough with Parka, so much so that I wondered if maybe he was working as the rudo in this match. Santito's no stranger to brawling, but he really takes it to Parka here, brawling with him on the floor, ripping up his mask, and throwing some nasty punches right to a potential cut over Parka's eye. Santito's attack here is an ambush too, jumping Parka before the bell even rings and never once relenting throughout the entire first fall. Parka spends much of the primera on his ass, bumping like crazy for this very ugly beating that Santito's laying in on him. It is meanspirited enough that I couldn't help but question if maybe I'd misjudged the default alignments coming into this match. Of course, Santito's attack means that he also handily takes the first fall with La de a Caballo.

But then, La Parka finally makes his comeback in the segunda.

Good fucking lord. Once Parka gets going, he is relentless, and he pays back Santito's aggression in the primera tenfold. It's these spirited stomps that gets him started but then he drags Santito into the crowd as well, tossing our hero into the chairs, ripping at his mask, and biting at him. Even with the obscured view we get of the attack in the stands, the sheer intensity of it comes through. At one point, you can see Parka just ramming Santito's face into some chairs and notably never once releasing the back of his head. It's full control, full force, and it's ugly.

We never quite see just which part of Parka's onslaught causes it, but by the time Santito gets back into the bright lights of the ring, he's already absolutely covered in blood.

Parka's an absolute monster in control too. He's doing all the classics here--punching at the wound, ripping at the mask, and biting at it. But he just crowds in so relentlessly that one can barely get a breath. The blood pours so thick that it marks everything that these two touch as well. At multiple points, Santito gets thrown into the chairs at ringside, and more than once, he leaves a gory splat all over the chairs too.

Everyone in the moment is fully aware of the weight of the fight too. Throughout much of the second fall, the camera gazes lovingly at the full puddles of blood that Santito's leaving all over the canvas. That's puddles plural, by the way, a thick pool towards the middle of the ring perhaps to contrast with a sloppy spray of blood by the canvas. More than once, when the match moves towards more traditional lucha libre offense, the men find themselves bumping into Santito's blood and that's just another added layer of wonder to this whole thing.

It isn't all the brawling and bleeding though. Through all of it, they both find moments for great character and classic wrestling morality still. Perhaps my favorite comes in the tercera when Parka hits an emphatic tope suicida that drives Santito right onto his ass into the front row. Parka's the first back to the ring and celebrates a little prematurely, which allows Santito to catch him from behind and lock in a Cavernaria. A perhaps smaller example of how far these two have dragged each other down comes when they're trading punches on the top turnbuckle in a truly precarious position that only ends with both men crashing balls-first into the top rope, a cosmic punishment for the recklessness and violence they've enacted upon each other.

As great as this all is, this still suffers from some classic issues. The third fall moving towards the more traditional lucha libre exchanges of holds, pinfalls, and dives does feel like something of a tonal shift that doesn't entirely work. A few matches in Mexico have managed this a little more seamlessly, but this has the same feeling of MS-1/Chicana of being so brutal and vicious in the build that when it's time to wrestle, it never quite fits with everything that came before. To Santito and Parka's credit though, they do a fantastic job of adding a sense of desperation to all those holds and pinfalls towards the end. My god, they're practically slipping all over each other with how blood drenched they've become, and that does a lot to hold up the tercera. Another issue is that we are denied any real catharsis in the end with some signature La Parka referee shenanigans. There's a low blow, two referees, a fake out pin, you watch enough La Parka and you know the deal.

These are minor quibbles though in the face of a true, bonafide, fucking horror show. Blood on the canvas, blood on the bodies, blood everywhere you can see. Happy fucking holidays, it's a beautiful thing.

IS IT BETTER THAN 6/3/94? They're pretty close actually. They're both in wildly different genres of match type--the Japanese title epic against the Mexican bloodbath--and on most days, I'd be inclined to lean it towards the gore. However, given the issues I've laid out above, I think this match has a much greater tendency to release pressure on the gas whereas for all its problems, 6/3/94 truly does ramp all the way up by the time you get to the finish. Misawa/Kawada takes the win on this go around.

Rating: ****1/2