I love masked wrestlers. Always have, always will. There’s just something hokey and really amusing about all those jokers from Parts Unknown. And when it comes to the anonymous hooded ones, the darker, more mysterious and evil they are, the better. Therefore, when this week’s co-JOTW showed up in WCW in the spring of 1995 decked out in all black, I thought we might have something uh… special on our hands. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
It was just another ho-hum WCW Saturday Night, when all of a sudden two dark, masked menaces appeared. Being a total Black Scorpion mark, I couldn’t help but be exited about the debut of the shadowy Los Especialistas. However, it only took a few moments for my hopes to head south. Yeah, they were clad in all black, and they wore masks that looked like they were remotely inspired by Todd McFarlane’s Spawn comic book character, but that’s where all the evil stops.
“Los Especialistas?”
Upon first glance at both of their pot-bellies, it appeared the only thing they “specialized” in was stuffing their face with buttloads of Ranchero Chicken Soft Tacos from the local Taco Bell. Come on guys, if you’re gonna be dark and evil, you gotta be in shape. Visualize for a moment how intimidating Darth Vader would be if James Earl Jones not only did the voice, but wore the suit and portrayed him on screen. Everyone from Jar Jar Binks down to the local, undomesticated Tauntaun would be lining up to put a foot in his chubby ass.
Ok, so they may not look very menacing, but I’ll give our “Specialists” a chance. At least they’re from Parts Unknown, right? Nope, they go against the masked norm and announce their hometown being Mexico City, Mexico. Ugh.
Thank God they studied from their jobbing masked predecessors like Mr.X and the Green Shadow and were 100% cheating and despicable heels, right? They couldn’t even do that properly. At Slamboree 95, in their biggest match ever vs. the Blue Bloods, they tried to start a babyface, limp-wristed crowd clapfest that would probably make the American Males feel straight. After getting squashed in 82 seconds by Steven Regal and Booby Eaton, at least they never attempted to play to the crowd again.
A few more months of losses on Worldwide and Saturday Night would follow. In August of 1995, Number One and Two received an opportunity to redeem themselves as heels. At the Clash Of Champions XXXI, they faced off against the popular Nasty Boys. Would this be the start of Los Especialistas reign of terror? As it turned out, this was their last stand.
After, what else, a typical loss to the Nastys, Knobs and Sags would rip the masks off the “not so” especial ones, revealing them to be Fidel Sierra – the Cuban Assassin, and Ricky Santana, aka WWF jobber extreme Aldo Marino. To the delight of fans worldwide, they remained a team. Only this time around, everyone got to see their faces that only their mothers, and Stevie Wonder, could love.
Renamed the Barrio Brothers, Ricky and Fidel went on a funfilled, yearlong WCW misadventure. For you Crappers wondering how well things went for them in their stint as the Barrios, Senor’ Blade summarizes things up in five simple words: Jobberos futuro de la Semana.
ARRIBA!!!!!!!!!