Continuing with our coverage of what happened in the fall and winter of 86, the big news in the month of October saw the debut of a new wrestler named TNT better known to the fans of the United States as Savio Vega.  Vega was managed by none other than The Profe (Angelo Rivera), who claimed TNT was the man to dethrone Carlos Colon from his Universal Title.  TNT impressively defeated everybody who was put against him and at a TV Taping in late October, he attacked Carlos Colon and put his finisher the Cobra Clutch which had been put over by the announcers as a big time move but instead of waking him up, TNT let Carlos lay unconscious and on him.  The other technical wrestlers looked for the so-called "Master of the Sleeper Hold" Victor Jovica to come to Carlos’ rescue and wake him up. 

This led to a series of matches where T.N.T was real close to winning the title but did not.  They signed a big match for the Thanksgiving Show where they faced each other in a no DQ fight with Profe in a cage 15 feet in the air in the Roberto Clemente Stadium and what a match it was.  Carlos Colon retained the title by defeating T.N.T and though they had a couple of rematches to packed houses, T.N.T was never able to defeat Colon for the title. 

In other big feuds during this time was he one between the Invader1 and Jason The Terrible who came from Canada's Stampede territory. Jason completely destroyed The Invader with his hockey mask after taking severe beatings thanks to that mask. Invader promised Jason that he had something that would take away the power of the mask and makes things even.  In a battle at the Stadium in Caguas, the Invader debuted the Red Boxing Glove mask that protected his face from the hockey mask. These two had, in my opinion, one of the bloodiest feuds in the history of Puerto Rico.  In one of their encounters, the ring collapsed while they where beating each other. They exchanged the Puerto Rican heavyweight Title on multiple occasions and this led to the Invader making the surprising decision to tag with Bruiser Brody to fight the army of Chicky Starr that we are going to be talking a little bit later. 

The tag team ranks continued to be a hotbed of action in the island in the fall and winter of 86 as the cousins Ron and Chicky Starr continued to dominate as they held both the North American and World Tag team Titles but during the next couple of months they faced a big-time challenge from the new tag team of Huracan Castillo Jr. and Miguel Perez Jr. who were calling themselves the Caribbean Express.  The feud started on a TV taping when the young tag team challenged the Starrs to a match for the titles but the veterans told them that they might be good, but they were not ready for a title shot and that they first had to defeat them in a non-title match on a later occasion.  The young tag team egged them on until finally the Starrs accepted the match and for the next 20 minutes both tag teams produced a hell of a match that to this day still looks good.  The best part of the match was the great announcing job of Hugo Savinovich and Joaquin Padin Hijo who put over the battle of young vs. veteran and how it would be a great upset if the young ones were to win something.  Miguel Perez surprised Ron Starr with a small package causing the young Lions to become the first contenders to the titles.  After a couple of matches the Caribbean Express defeated the Starrs for the North American Tag Titles but tragedy struck when in a TV taping Castillo Jr. doing a flying bodypress broke his arm and the feud was put on the backburner. 

This lead to a bigger angle where in the Thanksgiving Show, Commissioner Huracan Castillo Senior made a decision concerning the North American Tag Titles and instead of vacating the titles let Miguel Perez Jr. and Big Red who was tagging with Perez,  to become the champions which led to Chicky coming to the ring and complaining about a double-standard and attacked Castillo leaving him a bloody pulp.  This led to Castillo coming back from his retirement to teach Chicky Starr a lesson and that match was signed for the End of year Show. In a tag team, Castillo looked to his old partner Carlos Colon with whom he had a tag team with called The Atomic Team or La Pareja Atomica in the late 70s.  Chicky looked to an old enemy of Carlos’, Stan Hansen, and that match was a great match that saw Castillo and Colon beating Starr and Hansen from one end of the Hiram Bithorn Stadium to the other but at the end of the match Hansen used his Bull rope to attack both fan favorites and get the disqualification and that led to a Bull-rope Match that we are going to be discussing in the next column. 

In other matches at that End of the Year show, Bruiser Brody faced Abdullah the Butcher in a wild brawl that ended in a double disqualification and Invader 1 faced Jason The Terrible in a match that ended with Abdullah helping Jason and Brody making the save for the Invader which led to a great match on a 3 Kings Day card between the Invader 1 and Bruiser Brody vs. Jason and Abdullah that we’re also going to be discussing next time. 

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