El Hijo del Santo vs Brazo de Oro
Mask vs Hair Match
01/13/1991
Like any type of wager, there are some things that are dead certs that you could put your house on and rest safe in the knowledge that you will wake up tomorrow with a roof over your head. Tiger Woods in his golfing heyday, Phil Taylor during his darting peak, Manchester United under Sir Alex Ferguson; chances are, when the pressure was on, they’d rise to the occasion.
Add El Hijo del Santo to the list. In a career that included sixty four separate occasions (as far as has been recorded) in which his mask was on the line, he never lost. A mixture of the great and good of Lucha LIbre sought the legendary silver mask, only to lose their own in the process, or leave the arena a shorn and embarrassed loser.
As El Hijo del Santo prepared for his forty first wager contest against Brazo de Oro, he had been defending his mask for almost a decade. Oro was no slouch himself, defending his own mask for many years before a feud between Los Brazos and Los Villanos saw all of Los Brazos lose their mask in a single contest (El Brazo and Brazo de Plata alongside their real life brother).
Thus, it was his hair that he put up against the mask of Santo.
Showing little respect for the mask, Brazo would use it in the first fall to drag Santo about the ring, before battering him with forearms, chokes and kneedrops. A comeback flurry would also be cut off by an unceremonious yank of the potential spoils of victory. A powerbomb after several struggles between the two men to use the ringpost as a weapon finally gave Brazo the opening fall, the finish almost casual in its nature. Santo would be fighting from behind the rest of the way.
The silver is quickly stained red as Brazo uses the opening to the second fall as a signal to bite his esteemed opponent. Each swing of a fist from Santo feels legitimate in its urgency, but nothing seems able to stop the bulldozing Brazo. A change of pace seems Santo’s only chance, and a suicide dive out of the ring after a dropkick finally gives him some respite shows his ability to make every opening count. The ringpost finally gets used, splitting Brazo open, blood gushing like a tap. The camel clutch that follows a diving headbutt almost feels merciful.
Brazo looks every bit the wounded warrior in the third fall, a pitiful piece of tape that is supposed to stop the bleeding ripped off with ease by Santo. However, a second camel clutch doesn’t do enough to finish the contest; it suddenly seems like it could go either way. Brazo nails a suicide dive, only to be topped moments later by a Santo dive off of the top turnbuckle to the outside. Santo gets a nearfall off of a roll-up, yet then gets dropped with another powerbomb for a close count. Duel rolling sentons off of the second rope saw Brazo miss, yet Santo landed his.
After such a vicious and violent brawl, it almost felt anticlimactic for Oro to lose to a cradle, but just as he sought a way to finally take out Santo, his slam was turned into a small package to lose him the match, and more importantly, his hair. Though the cradle perhaps felt incongruous to the rest of the match, the storyline was sold – Santo only just squeaked past Brazo. Forty one times is seemingly the charm, and the legend of El Hijo del Santo would continue to roll on.
Never bet against him.
