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Tecnico Virus: Virus vs Fuerza Guerrera, August 30 2002 The question of the day was "Virus: rudo or tecnico?" but I was wondering what got into Fuerza Guerrera. He brought out the hangman dominator, the top rope powerslam and a sick somersault bump to the floor. You're almost 50 years old Fuerza, Arena Mexico already knows who you are and what you can do. Is this just what happens when he matches up with someone he sees as a peer? He didn't do any of his trademark playing with the crowd either, although we got only the third fall here. Fuerza picked up the win when he orchestrated a ref bump so he could land a foul. That's how you do a low blow finish. Virus looked like a natural tecnico. Virus and Hombre sin Nombre vs Fuerza Guerrera and Juventud Guerrera, September 16, 2002 I love that when you start something with Fuerza, it means you also have to deal with his fuckup son, who shows up wearing baggy pants and a bandana with no shirt on. It's very white trash and I can appreciate that. Turning tecnico gave Virus a chance to show off his scrappy side, more than he ever really did as a rudo. It helped that he had Juvi selling those shots like Terry Funk or somebody. In the third fall the two of them were slugging it out and Fuerza was cheering his boy on, but Juvi got dropped so dad had to step in to finish the little punk tecnico off. Another fun family moment was when Fuerza kept telling Juvi to drag Virus farther and farther away for the big dive spot. Trying his best to be a good son, Juvi complied but you could tell from the look on his face that he knew what a fool his father was being. The match didn't reach another level in the third fall, so it never really approached greatness, but I liked it. Virus vs Rocky Romero, December 10 2004 This was too short (especially the second fall comeback) to be a Virus classic, but for a workrate title match it represented a big improvement over Virus vs Marvin from four years prior and came off as two quick, skilled guys fighting it out. I also got a better sense of each guy's personality and what they wanted to accomplish. Rocky Romero, aka Ricky Romero, aka Havana Brother Number One, was a Sonjay Dutt lookalike who didn't have much of a counter game, but he knew some good submissions and clearly wanted to catch Virus clean in the center with his cross armbreaker. He tried to punk out the champion and my favorite moment of the match came when Virus took control and started slapping him back. I can see why Virus was a rudo, he excelled at the bumping and basing that you need from that role, but I think his natural personality might have been more suited for working tecnico.

I will take this as my favorite wonderfully ridiculous Casas celebration.

Early Virus P2: Virus vs Ricky Marvin, December 12 2000 This was the same kind of match as the one Virus had with Oriental, but longer and with even more flips. Maybe if they hadn't clipped out much of the first fall I'd have an easier time seeing it as a continuation of the Damiancito title matches, and I'd just accept the flips as part of these two wrestling a match that no one else on the roster could. As it was presented, it just felt like Mexican wrestling had come too far along if that's what you had to do to be the best in the country. Virus, Mr. Mexico and Valentin Mayo vs Mascara Magica, Ricky Marvin and Solar, May 1 2001 Another first fall mostly lost to history. The rest of the match was pretty good. I liked Marvin a lot more here, as ran the ropes like the fastest wrestler in the world and had some nice brawling spots on the comeback. Virus did good work as his base and also continued developing as a rudo. He beat up Marvin on the floor, and I really haven't gotten to see many outside the ring beatdowns from Virus so far. Then he let Mr. Mexico know what a beautiful job the bugeyed bodybuilder had done with his winning submission hold in the second fall. I've always liked that guy, just for what a stereotypical pro wrestler he looked like. The only disappointment was Mascara Magica, who seemed miles away from his late '90s prime, but I guess that's not surprising when a talented worker gets neglected by his promotion. Virus, Averno and Zumbido vs Fiera, Ricky Marvin and Tony Rivera, January 18 2002 Fun, fast paced Arena Coliseo brawl with the rudo team, Zumbido in particular, looking really good. He did this one spot where he tried to do a badass Undertaker ropewalk but got dumped on his crotch, and it made me wonder why Virus didn't do spots like that. The guy's a talented worker, he does like to show off, why not work in some bits where he tries some fancy tecnico move and gets embarrassed? He didn't yet(?) have Zumbido's charisma either. At this point Zumbidowski looked like a Fuerza/Estrada level worker in terms of combining athleticism and wacky antics. Fiera was in the Ringo Mendoza Memorial "What is this old man doing in a match like this?" Spot, but he fit in better than Ringo usually did back in the '90s. I think this was part of a comeback after a being in prison-related absence, and then he disappeared again in the summer and never returned to CMLL rings.

Early Virus: Virus, Rencor Latino and Ultimo Guerrero vs Angel Azteca, Ninja de Fuego and Oriental, June 19 1998 Damiancito got his promised matches in January of 1998, and then in February he went back to wrestling minis like nothing had happened. According to him, he couldn't get the feeling of working big out of his head and petitioned the commission and CMLL to let him stay that way. By the end of the month they saw things from his point of view. He was working untelevised opening matches against Mano Negra Jr. and Olimpus, but to him that represented progress. It seems to have been around the time of this match that he got his own identity, as that's when the luchadb stops listing him as Damiancito, and a prematch video shows him disappear into a cloud of smoke and emerge as Virus. The actual match wasn't anything special. Ultimo Guerrero carried Angel Azteca through some holds in his hamfisted way, and I lamented that it couldn't be the other way around. Virus's big highlight was an insane legdrop where I can't quite understand how it didn't leave Oriental stone dead. But live he did, so count this as a successful TV debut. Virus, Halcon Negro and Zumbido vs Olimpico, Oriental and Super Kendo, June 23 1998 Gimmick change for Ninja de Fuego/Super Kendo in this four day span. This is one of my favorite matches from the late '90s. Sacrilegious to Virus canon as it sounds, I thought it was wrestled at the same level as the famous 3v3 from October 1997. That match got more time and maybe had more skill on show, but this one had more focus. Looking only at Virus, I appreciated that by this point he's talking to opponents and individual members of the crowd rather than just yelling "callate" to no one in particular. Don't think he outshone either of his teammates but this was a match in which everyone looked really good. Virus vs Oriental, March 12 1999 Oriental was Virus's main rival around this time. Virus had beaten him for the national lightweight title and brought the belt to the ring, so Oriental countered by wearing his half of the CMLL Japan tag team titles(?). If this were three falls he'd be down 1-0 just from that. Instead it was a lightning match and they proceeded to have their own version of a WCW cruiser spotfest. To their credit, if this match had taken place on Nitro it would still be talked about today, but I already knew Virus could do all that stuff. The prematch video where he cut a promo and interrupted Oriental's meditation with a kendo stick to the head was more interesting.

Damiancito el Guerrero P2: DG, Felinito and Pierrothito vs Bracito de Oro, Cicloncito Ramirez and Orito, December 17 1996 One thing I've learned so far from doing these is that heading into his fantastic 1997 Virus was NOT a finished product waiting to explode on the promotion. Mechanically, no, he probably had nothing to learn. But he was still figuring out how much skill he should show as a rudo and how to work a more character driven match, like with the setup to his challenge against Mascarita Magica. This was a similar deal, building to the famous Cicloncito match, and it felt much more like something out of the minis' 1997, as everything clicked and they even experimented with the structure of the falls. Damiancito hammered Cicloncito with hard punches and stomps while ripping his man's mask up so that everyone could tell what the main issue was, and he held back on the wrestling until the final showdown. It wasn't the most inspired assault on a tecnico. There didn't seem to be anything that caused Damiancito to pick on Cicloncito in particular (which matters to me when the rudo is the defending champion--I like to see the challenger seeking out the champ). He spent a lot of time telling the Coliseo crowd to shut up. But I think this is a match where you can see that he's getting there. Damiancito el Guerrero vs Ultimo Dragoncito, May 13 1997 Damiancito steamrolls his challenger in two falls. It didn't look like it was supposed to happen. Damiancito was working Dragoncito over with elbowdrops to start the second fall and then got a three count off a nondescript pin attempt. It was Rangel again, and I wonder, was there a front office edict to avoid holding up on the count and exposing the business? Was the perpetually crusty Rangel growing even grouchier as he aged? I've always liked him, but that's shitty if he was actually sabotaging guys' matches, especially undercarders with scant opportunities. Dragoncito had more technical abilty than I gave him credit for BTW. Cibernetico, December 30 1997 In a year defined by its ciberneticos and its minis division, it's fitting that 1997 CMLL came to a close with a mini cibernetico, the winner getting three matches with wrestlers "de categoria normal." You'd think a cibernetico would be the craziest of all the mini matches, but there were a lot of rarely featured guys in there, so they didn't have intricate spots already worked out. It was still really fun. Damiancito held back on the flash until he had to come back against two guys at the finish, so this ended up as more of a chance to see him work as a base for the likes of Pequeño Sayama. That wonderful worker looked nothing like Sayama and instead seemed to go for a Pequeño Negro Casas con Bigote Mas Flaco que Sus Cejas gimmick. I also liked Tritoncito, who wore the cheapest, ugliest mask imaginable and hit a tope that landed at like seventy degrees. Some of the wrestlers stuck around to watch at the end and it felt like Damiancito's greatest triumph of the year.

Damiancito el Guerrero: DG and Felinito vs Cicloncito Ramirez and Ultimo Dragoncito, August 4 1995 Not a lot of TV time for Virus in 1994, but let's see what this great match from 1993 looked like two years later. They got into the same kind of groove as they had in 1993, and this was the first time that Virus/Dragoncito looked like just as good a matchup as Virus/Cicloncito. Dragoncito isn't really a technically oriented worker, so Damiancito used the matwork to set up some crazy flip escapes, and off the ropes Dragoncito might have been the fastest worker in the world at this point. Then he did his trademark dive and got hurt again. The rudos didn't mess around and finished off Cicloncito fairly quickly, with Ramirez making Damiancito's handspring elbow look like some kind of decapitating move rather than pointless flash. DG, Pierrothito and Guerrerito del Futuro vs Bracito de Oro, Bracito de Plata and Mascarita Magica, February 9 1996 Virus looking like Marilyn Manson's mini. Kind of horrifying actually. This was a mess. In the first fall they did that spot where all three tecnicos dogpile all three rudos, but the rudos were late kicking out so Roberto Rangel counted three. But they kept wrestling and it turned out the rudos were supposed to win the fall. Each rudo had a tecnico covered or in a submission hold, and Rangel is telling them, "Let go, idiot, you already lost." I was looking forward to this, because it was a chance to see how Virus wrestled in a match that existed to build to a 1v1 (in this case him vs Mascarita). You couldn't really tell that though, other than maybe when he beat two guys in the third fall. There's an art to this kind of match that they just didn't touch on. A failure on multiple levels. Damiancito el Guerrero vs Mascarita Magica, February 27 1996 So I'd been wondering when Virus became the worker he's known as, the guy who's the most talented person in the ring and makes sure no one can miss that. I don't know what they were doing on the houses across Mexico, but as far as matches transmitted to a national audience, I think this is that moment. It reminded me of when Eddie Felson would drop the hustler act, and instead of carrying his opponent he put the entire breadth of his skills out there for the world to see (except that whenever Fast Eddie did that something bad always happened to him). It wasn't just the long stretch of matwork to start, which Virus hadn't done much to this point in his career. Look at this backflip armdrag. That's a man who wants to prove that he's the best in the division and maybe the best pound for pound. This didn't quite hit the levels of Damiancito vs Cicloncito, but it didn't trail too far behind either. Maybe they could have been a little more desperate in the third fall, and maybe Mascarita wasn't quite able to match up to the stuff Damiancito was doing. Somewhere in there Damiancito ruined an ice cream vendor's day by busting open the poor guy's crate. That was a Jerry Estrada level comedy spot but it probably wasn't intentional.

Piratita Morgan II P2: PM II and Felinito vs Cicloncito Ramirez and Ultimo Dragoncito, March 5 1993 Of all the minis, Felinito does the best impression of his maxi. He even has Felino's sense of humor down. I think this was the first time Cicloncito Ramirez made TV, and he and Piratita were doing some of their mindblowing 1997 spots but even faster and crisper here if that's possible. He looked every bit the phenom that Rey Jr. was at this point. Drangoncito hit the same crazy moonsault into the aisle that he did in that March 1997 match, and it too landed even better here than it did four years later. This could have been a CMLL MOTYC with a third fall, but the tecnicos smoked 'em in two straight. PM II, Pierrothito and Ultratumbita vs Broncecito, Cicloncito Ramirez and Ultimo Dragoncito, June 1 1993 Apparently I not only have seen this match before, but I uploaded it to Youtube years and years ago. When thecubsfan knows things about you that even you don't, that's probably a sign that the luchadb is a little bit too encompassing. Speaking of the luchadb, it lists Orito (Mike Segura) instead of Broncecito (a different guy) for this one. The announcers said it was Broncecito, so I'm going with them. There were some pretty ugly spots toward the end of the first fall, and matches like this that are more about the work than the characters can't really afford that. They did their best to make up for it when the rudos took over. My favorite part was when they had already eliminated two tecnicos to win the fall, but a grinning Piratita informed Dragoncito that he was still going to get the same punishment the other two did. Nice selling from him and Cicloncito. The match ended with everyone diving on top of everyone else, capped off with Dragoncito's tope con giro that sent him sailing halfway up the aisle. Can't think of anyone who did that move better. PM II and Felinito vs Orito and Ultimo Dragoncito, July 30 1993 Felinito has now gone beyond mimicking Felino's mannerisms and is now actually doing Felino spots. Look at this and then look at this. That's dedication to your gimmick. He was badass and had me thinking he was the most charismatic of the mini rudos at this stage. Piratita finally got an exchange of holds but I kind of thought Felinito looked better doing the same thing with Orito. Unfortunately they had grand plans for the first fall finish that didn't come within a mile of where they were supposed to, and then in the second fall Dragoncito took a crazy bump off the ropes and outside of ring that might have legitimately injured him. You can never tell, but refs and even Ray Mendoza were checking on him. Of course, the rudos immediately put him to the test by kicking the shit out of him the instant he entered the ring, and he either continued to sell the effects of that bump throughout the finishing sequence or was still hurt. Orito meanwhile tried to outdo him by making a backdrop bump look like a death blow. Virus was good here but this was the first time I was more impressed with one of his teammates. He didn't have much time left with the Piratita gimmick. Pirata Morgan had already jumped I think, and Piratita was regimmicked as Damiancito el Guerrero before the end of the year.

Piratita Morgan II: Piratita Morgan II and Espectrito Jr. vs Aguilita Solitaria and Saigoncito Dragon, August 12(?) 1992 This is very likely the first televised Virus match, not just in circulation but literally the first match he ever had that was taped for television. According to the luchadb, he had his first match as Piratita Morgan on July 31 in Cancun, whereas his Luchawiki bio pegs his debut with that gimmick as August 7 in Guadalajara. As far as I can tell, the dates listed on Roy Lucier's Guadalajara uploads are airdates, so this might be that August 7 match. In the prematch interviews, he did mention that he'd had his new name for only eight days. The very popular Tommy Sauer(?) also asked him if he had lost an eye just like his namesake, which seemed to amuse him. The actual match was decent, but everyone was still working out the kinks. There were some good spots in the first fall and a half, most notably when Dragoncito went flying a couple rows back after hitting Piratita with a tope. Dragoncito you probably know. Espectrito Jr. is listed in the Luchadb as either Espectrito I or Espectrito II. I don't think either of those is correct. Aguilita Solitaria stuck around but almost never made TV. Maybe the gimmick would have caught on more if he'd brought a kestrel to ring with him as a mini analog to the hawk that his namesake used to carry. It doesn't quite work, as kestrels and other falcons are more closely related to parrots than they are to hawks, but wrestling fans aren't gonna worry about that stuff. He could've gotten by. Piratita Morgan II, Felinito and Pequeño de Ultratumba vs Orito, Ultimo Dragoncito and Mascarita Magica, August 28 1992 After about a month's worth of getting a hang of their new gimmicks and learning to work together, the minis got their first crack at wrestling in the capital and on national TV. Pequeño de Ultratumba is listed on the luchadb as Ultratumbita, and I suspect that's who the guy from the last match was. His Luchawiki page has no information other than the day he died, which I guess makes him the Somerton Man of professional wrestling. Somehow he found his way into our world, but all we really know about him is how he left it. You could see how much more accustomed everyone was to working with each other by this point. Piratita and Dragoncito had a whole bunch of new spots to fly through, and they also had figured out how to better set up the ones they'd already done. Look at how they do the armdrag off the apron in this match vs in the Guadalajara one. Virus was clearly talented, but at this stage of his career he was more of a Psicosis type of rudo, acting as a base, doing some comedy and taking big bumps rather than brute forcing his way to respect by putting all of his skills out there for everyone to see. After the big dives from Dragoncito and Orito, Mascarita found himself alone with Ultratumbita and... gave up in a submission hold. Weird that they'd debut this division with a rudo win.

I can get why people would like it. I mean, I like it. What I don't get is what's getting them to watch it to begin with. The other matches on that list with high ratings had people reviewing an instant classic, or they're part of the established list of CMLL all timers. That match got its first rating in 2015. I know it's been highly praised here, but with the short thread on this site and the low viewcount on Youtube it wouldn't figure as something with much exposure elsewhere. I dunno. Virus classics P2: Damiancito el Guerrero, Pierrothito and Fierito vs Cicloncito Ramirez, Mascarita Magica and Bracito de Oro, October 3 1997 I really like that Pierrothito was still calling himself the pequeño intocable. The Intocables ceased to exist in 1993 and none of the members remained in the promotion by this point, but I guess he'd sprung for a hat and duster years back and wanted his money's worth. I have no problem with anyone who calls this a great match. They cut a ciberneticoesque pace and still hit all those crazy moves cleanly. It's just never hit me as the apex of 3 vs 3 wrestling like you'll sometimes see it called (the Youtube description gives it five stars, for instance). Even sticking only to technical matches, I think you can find other ones contested on this level, especially since... Damiancito el Guerrero and Pierrothito vs Cicloncito Ramirez and Ultimo Dragoncito, March 14 1997 ...I think the technical wrestling was even better here. This is the definitive battle of holds between Damiancito and Cicloncito, right up there with the time Blue Panther wrestled Huracan Sevilla for technical work buried in a random multiman. Insane creativity and athleticism. Dragoncito and Pierrothito had some incredible spots together as well. That sort of blocked sunset flip turned into an armdrag didn't even seem physically possible. But if somewhere out there Pierroth Big was watching this match, I bet he'd have been prouder of that faceplant or the way his man beat the shit out of Dragoncito and then stared at his hand like Booker T. And he wasn't even the best on his team. Virus was so good at this point that he made the headbutt to the stomach, which is usually just a thinly disguised shove, look like it actually hurt. Leobardo Magadan went as far as to call him the Michael Jordan of wrestling after a flying elbow. Watch him in this one and you can believe it.

I've always had a hard time getting a good grasp on the minis. They're cordoned off from the rest of the workers in their own division, so you aren't going to get a glimpse of any of them wrestling guys you already know and instead have to dive into matches where everyone's unfamiliar. Virus of course ended up breaking away from the rest of the minis, but that came after the period I'm most familiar with. Consider this my attempt to seriously familiarize myself with him and other minis even if some of these matches I've seen before. I realize that he no longer identifies as a mini, but you know what? Virus's Luchawiki page and my driver's license have the same height listed on them, so anything I say about him I also say about myself. I've long considered myself a miniposter here anyway. Virus classics: Damiancito el Guerrero vs Cicloncito Ramirez, January 7 1997 When I first became aware of lucha opinions, this was the classic Virus match and one of the classic title matches in general. Virus and Cicloncito were probably the two most gifted CMLL workers at this time, in terms of combination of athletic and technical ability, and they wrestled a match which was all about demonstrating that. No other pairing could have done what these two did together. The match didn't have any major plot points, so it wasn't as emotionally resonant as a title match could be, but the minis never really worked that way. They had the same job as the WCW cruisers, going out there to wow the fans and cement their spot with things that the bigger guys couldn't do. That's no easy task when it's just two guys with over twenty minutes to fill and no one to tag out to. To produce a match as competitive and serious as any other classic championship match through work alone took skill and it took guts, and I don't think I can name a better pure workrate match than this. Virus vs Guerrero Maya Jr., June 7 2011 Did you know that this is the highest rated 1 vs 1 CMLL match on Cagematch.com? It's true. That's kind of weird to me. I looked, and the thread for this match on THIS site has only two comments. The Youtube video for this match has a little over a thousand views. I wonder how that happened. Anyway. The matwork in the first fall, while very good, didn't quite feel like they went all the way with it and had a fall that could have been a match on its own. It reminded me of the opening fall of Atlantis vs Fiera, which isn't remembered as one of the classic title matches, if indeed it's remembered at all. Virus looked like a consummate rudo maestro working the arm in the second, but what was that comeback by Guerrero Maya? A headbutt off the ropes, that's the big transition? It wasn't BAD, but I wasn't really thinking classic after that. What got this over the hump was how GM actually did look like a badass technician in the third fall, just destroying Virus with impossibly complex slams. That shifted the match entirely, not just because Virus had to make a comeback of his own, but because GM was clearly on his level by that point. For two falls, GM had been trying to catch up to Virus technically and failing. Suddenly he was the one doing things that Virus was struggling to match. Virus's reversals and huge senton to the outside were the acts of a desperate man, but even if they didn't get him the victory they kept him alive for a few moments more. It was a bigtime third fall and it also kind of pieced together the first two falls for me, made them better retroactively. This was definitely more dramatic than the match from fourteen years before. Guerrero Maya even had fans from his hometown ("the only Maya from Puebla," joked the announcers) sitting front row cheering him on. Push comes to shove? I'd take the match from Virus's days as a mini. Him vs GM was worked more like the way I'd prefer my championship classics to be, but him vs Cicloncito was simply a better representative of its style.

This was for a shot at the lightheavyweight title the week after, so if you know 1996 CMLL then you know who wins. It also featured four guys who wrestled in the welterweight division around this time, perhaps a sign that they didn't worry so much about anyone's actual weight by this point. The first time I saw the listing for this match, my immediate reaction was something like, "Oh, get Ringo the fuck out of there." But I tell you he fit in perfectly. I wish he'd worked like this more often, this stooped over old grappler who can dish out some lessons on the mat to a young punk, instead of bouncing off the ropes with slow armdrags and spinkicks. Speaking of spinkicks, Fiera had a pretty excellent outing here. His style always worked better in brawls than in workrate matches like this, but even at 35 he could still move. I loved his reactions from the apron and how he'd stamp his foot like a bull before kicking off an exchange. The best part of the match came when Lagarde landed a spinkick of his own on someone and started pounding his chest in Fiera's direction. Fiera just pointed at Lagarde in acknowledgement. Sure enough, when they met up later on he made it clear that he remembered. Felino and Mascara Magica showed the excellent chemistry they had in their title match, although by the third time they squared off they started reusing spots from the earlier match, which was kind of disappointing. They went to another double countout, and wouldn't you know, Mascara Magica bitched about it again. His fatal flaw as a character. Anyway, not everyone in this cibernetico was a great worker, but they all wrestled like they wanted to be. I don't know why Warrior never reached that level. Mascara Magica of course fell victim to Angel Azteca Disease. They looked like they had all the potential in the world here, but this period probably represents the best either man ever was.

So while I was watching this, I had to ask myself, "Is this the best 3 vs 3 of 1996?" It ended up falling a bit short of the famous November 29 match, not quite as frenzied or heated, but still a great brawl, the kind that goes six deep with everyone chipping in. Black Warrior doesn't seem to have much of a reputation (good or bad) here, and Bronco was an inconsistent CMLL presence whose daughter might be more famous than he is, so that doesn't necessarily read like a must see central issue. They really went to war though. Warrior beat the shit out of Bronco, and even the mask ripping ended up looking badass, as by the second fall Bronco's mask was not just torn up but also painted red. I really didn't know he could brawl like that. Bronco kept trying to charge back from underneath, and you know that a guy from Monterrey can brawl. Meanwhile Bestia was the perfect third man, mixing up the brawling and the athletic bumping for Shocker, and Satanico was outstanding as the number two. That's not really a role that I associate with him, but he nailed it. For the first two falls it was mostly just solid henchman stuff, like after the first fall when Shocker tried to roll out of the ring and Satanico blocked his exit to deliver more punishment, before he and Lizmark decided that their rivalry was going to have the same intensity as Warrior-Bronco. My favorite part was when Satanico landed a sneak low blow, but Lizmark had the audacity to get his foot on the ropes. Satanico just snapped and started pummeling him in the back of the head. That rivalry has largely been deemed a disappointment, but here's a case of some excellent chemistry between them. I also thought that Lizmark was mostly washed up by this point. Not the case.

Santo has to fend off his three biggest rivals at the time. I love matches like that. It really stuck at the end of the first fall, when Guerrero superplexed him, Psicosis hit him with a senton and Santo Negro made him submit to a trademark Santo sequence. This wasn't one of the wildest, most violent wars of the 1990s or anything, but it was structured a lot more like a classic brawl than most of the praised 1995 AAA. Instead of running the ropes the rudos just focused on clearing the ring and tearing up Santo's mask, and man did they tear it up. He spent much of the second fall lying on the floor with his head under the ring before eventually running to the back to get a new one. It's an interesting way to make a wrestler look helpless. He took forever to find one, so Octagon and Park had to make a pretty good two on three comeback and actually got some good shots in for a while. The numbers caught up to them eventually, but then Santo came charging out from the back and kicked all three rudos' asses. Kind of surprising that they'd save his big comeback for after the tecnicos had already tied the match. Anyway, not one of the most insane brawls ever, but it hit the plot points that I wanted out of it, and there were a lot of good visuals of battered tecnicos on the outside. Plus it was a chance to see Espanto Jr. lead a rudo team against his archenemy, not something that we fans from the 2020s have gotten much of from the surviving videos.

There's something depressing about this match. I remember someone once saying that the best matches have a way of making whatever small trinket is on the line feel like it means everything, but that's a hard sell with these two heads of hair. Apolo Dantes had already destroyed Cruz's reputation as a bigtime hair match wrestler, and Ciclon Ramirez's career plainly fell apart the moment he lost his mask. I mean, obviously hindsight lets me know how little Ciclon accomplished after this, but even at the time, between his sad eyes, his Huracan Ramirez wannabe tights and the poor 3,500 person turnout here, a lot of fans could probably guess that every important event of Ciclon Ramirez's life had already happened by this stage. So without much for either man to win, they just went out and fought. There's a lot of flying, and I can certainly sympathize with those who don't like when a hair match ascends into a flashy athletic contest, but this was more like two guys just throwing themselves at each other. Cruz had his signature missile dropkick, and no wrestler was better than Ciclon Ramirez at making it look like his dives were done with the intent to cause harm. This was probably the best performance of Cruz's career. I loved how he swarmed Ciclon in the first fall, really setting the tone for the rest of the match, but he really impressed me with how he wrestled from underneath Ciclon's third fall onslaught. Maybe he went back to his tecnico roots with the way that he slipped off the apron to tease a countout and sell his fatigue, slugged away at Ciclon from his knees and punched his way out of a huracanrana nearfall. And as ever, in spite of all that it was Ciclon who was the more compelling presence to me. He's such a friendly looking guy and he had such a hard luck career, and this is his one of his few big main events. It's hard not to pull for him. He put everything into the match, not just with the dives but with the way he'd fling himself into the turnbuckle or spike Cruz with his backbreakers. Finally he caught Cruz with perhaps the most vicious tope suicida of all time, one that has been .gif'd multiple times and is remembered by anyone who's ever seen this match... and lost on the very next move. Fitting. But because of everything Ciclon had hit him with, and the violence behind all of it, Cruz came out looking like a real survivor rather than Ciclon looking like he'd blown another one. The only thing separating this from entering the mix for greatest of all time is the short second fall. But even then, they had twenty minutes to work with, I wouldn't shave anything off the first or third fall and it makes more sense to abbreviate the rudo's comeback than the tecnico's (as Villano III so often did). I can accept it, and I'm also fine calling it the best hair vs hair match of the '90s.

Praise for Maroñas! I don't know if I've seen anyone compliment that guy, ever. Obviously not here, but not even in Youtube comments or anything. So I guess I'll jump on the bandwagon. One, I thought he did a really good job in Felino vs Mascara Magica, which is one of my personal classics. Two, the way that he loved to bring up Emilio Charles's weight loss, even in matches that didn't have Charles in them, helped shape my image of Emilio as a guy who had to take a look at where his career was going and radically transform himself in his early thirties to reach the levels that he did. I don't think that I would have grasped that element of his career, that he wasn't a Hennig type of second generation worker who immediately looked like a future star, if not for the way Maroñas frequently marveled over how hard Charles worked to make that change.

In a year when the big CMLL stars rarely dug deep in their big matches, these four undercard workers had the promotion's most frenzied brawl third from the top on a half full Tuesday show. They'd fought just the week before, and despite the rudos' win in that match Gran Apache dismissed them as a pair of talkers. I guess that set them off, because they wrestled cleanly for about thirty seconds before deciding to just swarm the Indios Bravos and doubleteam the hell out of them. Escudero Rojo in particular whipped in some wicked right hands and headbutts like a sawed off version of Baby Face. I don't know what the strengths and weaknesses of Gran Apache are in terms of his GWE candidacy, but he was excellent here trying to fight back from underneath and on the comeback. Definitely looked every bit as tough as the rudos. By the middle of the third fall his chest was covered in blood, Reyes Veloz might have lost even more, and Escudero could barely move his right arm. Because this was a rare big chance for these guys, they made sure to throw in some dives and other athletic moves to make sure everyone recognized their talent. It must have worked. At the end of the video the ringside fans were sending their kids over to hand the tecnicos money, and one parent even held up their daughter for a kiss from the bloodied Apache. They had a good rematch the next week with everyone's hair on the line, but the weird layout meant that it would never reach the level this one did. Great match from some unheralded workers.

Title matches often get treated as rare opportunities to see extended high level technical wrestling in the Mexican style. They really are, but there's a lot more to them than that, and this match provides a good example of the dramatic opportunities that the title match presents. The exchanges of holds in the first fall didn't have any wizardry to them, but they established Lizmark as the superior wrestler with an answer for everything Estrada threw at him, giving us multiple shots of Estrada standing across the ring wondering what he could try next. It wasn't about how beat up Estrada was, but when the essence of the match is to find out who is better, you can build to something just by having him repeatedly looking and feeling inferior. He finally got an opening and tied the score, and it surprised me how even through the break between falls Lizmark made a two second submission hold seem like a big enough move to override all of his prior offense and put Estrada in control. That was good selling. Then Estrada laid into him, took out all his frustrations on him with borderline moves like an attack from behind right on the bell and tosses into the turnbuckle, violating the spirit of the match if not quite breaking the actual rules. In a mano a mano or apuestas match, Lizmark could have fired back with some of the same, but here he had to dig down into the reserves of his ability to get back into it. All those reversals, all that skill on display in the first fall was nice, but did it actually mean anything when the chips were down and the match was on the line? That's not the kind of question the third fall of a hair match will have you asking. Lizmark managed to worm his way out of Estrada's submissions like in the opening fall, but he couldn't hang back like before. He was taking bigger and bigger gambles and time was clearly running out on him. In an apuestas match, there's often something downbeat about the postmatch, with a focus on the person who just lost as they surrender their hair or mask to the victor. Here we did get some nice acting from Estrada while Heavy Metal consoled him, but it was largely a celebration. Solar ran around the ring with Lizmark over his shoulder and almost dropped him, before the champ went over to kiss the middle aged women who brought a Lizmark banner with them to the show. Estrada was probably the least imposing of Lizmark's challengers in 1993, but I don't think that the triumphs over Satanico or Parka felt as joyous as the one here.

Look at that Dandy-killing unit assembled by Fiera. When you want to put the hurt on El Dandy, Satanico and Charles are the guys you call. Dandy brought some pretty good teammates with him too, as Atlantis in particular had one of those outings that made him the best backup tecnico ever. This felt like a post-AAA split version of the famous match from earlier in the year with Perro Aguayo, Rayo Jr. and Konnan. That was a chaotic brawl with a bright arena, a packed house and the hottest TV acts in all of Mexican wrestling chasing each other all around the ring. This brawl came in a darker arena and a snowy and grayed out video, and it wasn't quite as frenetic, but it also had a much more ominous mood from the sneak attack at the start to the DQ for attempted murder. Fiera looked like the scariest rudo going with the way he mugged Dandy throughout the first fall. Dandy was great trying to fight back (I loved when he pulled himself off the floor to slug it out with Fiera, only to get sent crashing into the front row by a spinkick), but he might have been even better getting his revenge. He busted Fiera open and even dropped a row of chairs on him (you can barely see it in the corner of the video, but it's there), and things somehow got worse for Fiera from there. 1992 was one of the best years for CMLL brawls, and even in that environment this match stands out as one of the best.

It doesn't look like they were even related, just two guys with the same last name. I haven't seen a Rudy Reyna biography mention a brother. Reyna is a fairly common family name. You might remember that MS-1 was Pablo Fuentes Reyna.

I don't see it as an either-or thing. To me a classic, alltime great championship match combines the two, with enough skillful wrestling that it seems like it's the two most talented wrestlers alive right there in the same ring, and then backs it up with riveting drama to produce a contest that feeks like the most important thing in the world while it's happening. By drama I don't mean blood, visuals, or other apuestas staples, but excitement and the sense that the match has come a long, long way from where it started, and that the wrestlers' positions vis-a-vis each other have changed over the course of the match. Mocho Cota is a memorable character, but when I think of his matches with Rocca I think of his dogged onslaughts to tie the score more than facial expressions or poses to the crowd. The April 2000 Panther vs Santo has a great image of Santo, his arm badly hurt, put in the unfamiliar position of having to back off from an unusually aggressive Panther. Virus vs Guerrero Maya had GM turn the match on its head and make Virus the underdog when he started blowing him away with big offense in the third fall. Those matches all had brilliant technical performances as well but managed to feel like there had been a major shift over the course of the action. The most you could say about this one is that the moves got bigger as the match got longer. And if a match trades on skill and execution, it really hurts to have a spot set up this shoddily. I can forgive a blown or poorly executed spot, but it's harder to do in a match whose selling point is aesthetics.

Storytelling within a title match doesn't necessarily mean playing into larger angles surrounding the match like in AAA. It's more like how the match could come off as described in a story for Sports Illustrated or some publication like that. Think of things like momentum swings, or strategy, or interplay between the characters. Surely you don't think that acclaimed classics like Rocca vs Cota, Cochisse vs Satanico, Casas vs Dandy, Santo vs Panther, Virus vs Guerrero Maya reached that status solely because of how technically good the wrestling was. If someone watched any of those matches and all they did was praise the technical work I'd feel like they missed something. If someone watched this match and all they did was praise the technical work I'd understand. The title match style is one that lends itself to displays of beautiful wrestling, and you can have a great one focusing on just that one aspect. There's also a lot more that can be done with the conventions of that style, and if the workers neglect everything else then it's hard to get past that 4.25 star level into bonafide classic territory, at least to me. If I weren't able to appreciate beauty in a match like this, I might not have praised it at all. There's also some rather obvious slop on display, and it goes beyond nitpicking how well two men can pull off a preplanned spot in a worked sport. Damiancito vs Cicloncito is the same kind of match as this one, and that one is pulled off much more seamlessly despite possibly having a higher degree of difficulty.

I feel like even people who see Blue Panther as a well rounded worker would say that he's at his best in title matches. I'd say that too, but there's always such a duality to his work and it's all on display here. The technical work is brilliant, so much that it becomes apparent early on that this match isn't just for the middleweight title but for the title of best technical wrestler in the company. They manage to get an Arena Mexico crowd excited over small victories, like the test of strength early on or some of the fights over leg holds, so they know a lot more than just how to apply the moves. It's extremely competitive all the way though. Yet for all Panther's skill, I've never thought much of his storytelling within the title match conventions. I thought they were going somewhere when Atlantis was pressing his advantage after winning the first fall, but instead of pulling off some genius reversal Panther just kicked out of a cover, whipped Atlantis into the ropes, caught him with a clothesline, and from there went on to even the score. I'm not of the belief that whoever is in control needs to stay in control until they counter or their opponent misses a move, but this was a flat way to tie it up and left me thinking that maybe those knees to the temple weren't as painful as Panther's spasms made them out to be. And for all the thought they put into the battles over individual holds, they didn't really worry about how to get to some of the other crowd popping spots. Panther at one point drops Atlantis, walks more than halfway across the ring and climbs the ropes with his ass sticking out for his famous Blue Panther Moonsault, which unsurprisingly gets him knocked to the outside. There's another time when he plops down on the top turnbuckle and has a rest, while Atlantis strolls over and superplexes him. So continuing the half and half theme, I agree with the consensus here that this isn't an alltime great match, even within the championship style. It's more like Angle vs. Benoit, skillful, action packed and competitive but without a real reason for the swings in momentum. And that can be enough. This time I came away thinking it was a great match that I'd probably underrated in my head for a bit there. It had a real big fight atmosphere and lived up to it, not an easy thing to do.

If you see Felino vs Santo as an alltime super classic, there's no way either of those matches will surpass it. Number one is one of those matches where you get a little bit of everything, technical work, comedy, violence, dives, all built around the Halcon Negro vs Olimpico rivalry. I think it's been on Youtube for well over ten years at this point in terrible quality. Number two is a pure technical match where Santo and Felino let some of the potential next generation workers eat at the table with them. That was a fairly recent Roy Lucier upload.

Usually the way that you work a fake foul into a match is at the end. Here they did it in the first fall, and I really can't express how well it worked. If Dandy was furious after being suckered in the first fall, he was ready to have the hair match right then and there after Satanico did one better and outwrestled him in the second. It takes some guts to put your all into a match built around your getting shown up, and Dandy couldn't have done a better job showing his humiliation here. Not just in smacking the turnbuckle with his head in frustration, but also in the way he let his behavior cross the line after each fall, trying to get Satanico worse than Satanico had given to him. I always think of Dandy as the kind of guy who's never willing to let himself get oneupped by a rudo and occasionally willing to give a rudo a taste of his own medicine, but repeated fouls and postmatch attacks are hard to justify from a tecnico. Rather than having Dandy look like a brat, it worked, I think because the indignities got worse as the match progressed, and because Satanico certainly doesn't make himself difficult to hate. There was some great brawling between the two and even a fast exchange off the ropes to show off their skill, and Atlantis is one of the best at the backup role in this kind of match, so the action is excellent too. I just really liked the mind games here and the way they paid off in the eventual apuestas match.

In Mexico: 1. El Hijo del Santo 2. Felino 3. Maybe Zumbido There is not a lot of 1998 lucha on Youtube, okay? There's not a lot of discussion over what the best 1998 matches from Mexico are, either. I don't know that I've ever heard anyone call 1998 a standout year for Hijo del Santo (oops, my mistake, Microstatistics did it several posts up), but you can basically follow the CMLL plotline by watching his matches until he finally turns in September. I also don't remember rudo Santo doing stuff like challenging up and comer Tony Rivera to a mat contest in 1997. Felino was probably the best CMLL technical wrestler at this point, or at least he was the one giving the best technical displays. Those two were the guys who stood out to me. For third, I dunno, I went with Zumbido. Maybe he wasn't the third best wrestler in the country in 1997, but I do think that he, at least briefly, surpassed Virus as the most exciting short guy with a mullet, quite an achievement in itself. On resume I probably should have gone with Karloff Lagarde Jr., a pasty gormless faced man who really tried hard to be a good technical worker. As ever, pleading ignorance on Japan. Who was the best US worker, Benoit? I'd take 1998 Santo or Felino over him. Ten of them: