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Virus


Grimmas

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His last several years are enough to get him a solid place on the list. The undisputed king of contemporary juniors-style lucha. No one even comes close to working the modern style as well, for me. That said I've seen very little of his work before the latter half of the 2000s. Other than those two incredible 1997 matches he had, the trios and vs. Cicloncito Ramirez. How much 90s stuff is out there?

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I want to say he's the best lucha worker of this century, but he's really only been given long singles match opportunities since the business down turn. I think he's been the best guy in Mexico for the past few years at least since we stopped getting so much IWRG stuff. What really needs to happen is an evaluation of the first decade of this century even if it's just a bunch of lightning matches.

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  • 1 year later...
  • 4 months later...

I want to say he's the best lucha worker of this century, but he's really only been given long singles match opportunities since the business down turn. I think he's been the best guy in Mexico for the past few years at least since we stopped getting so much IWRG stuff. What really needs to happen is an evaluation of the first decade of this century even if it's just a bunch of lightning matches.

 

And here, a year and a half later, we have some doubt. I want to go extremely high on Virus, extremely. Over Atlantis. Over Blue Panther. Over Charles and Dandy. Maybe over Santo, Jr. We're talking #3 luchador on my list high, with one and two currently in my top five.

 

The difference between him and people who I am trending far, far lower on like Solar I and Villano III is that we can watch him week to week very easily from 2010 or so on. I feel like I know exactly how good Virus is over the last six years or so. I feel like I have a very good sense of how good he was as a mini. The fact that he could play both roles is a huge deal to me. The fact that he has great high octane lightning matches, awesome indy maestro matches, excellent balanced title matches, is the glue in so many meaningless trios that are made considerably better by his presence, can coach and lead younger wrestlers like almost no one else... I'm extremely high on him.

 

What I'm lacking, however, is a sense of how good he was as a lower-mid card tecnico for those missing years in the 00s. The only indicator I have is some evidence that people thought his rudo turn was long overdue.

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Last chance for anyone to knock Virus down my list. He's stupidly high right now.

I originally had him off thinking he was too current, but he's been good since 97 and that's a long time. Especially when you compare him to someone like Ted DiBiase.

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Last chance for anyone to knock Virus down my list. He's stupidly high right now.

I originally had him off thinking he was too current, but he's been good since 97 and that's a long time. Especially when you compare him to someone like Ted DiBiase.

 

This is awesome for reasons explained in the PWSS pod to come.

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  • 5 years later...

 Virus is a guy I'm definitely interested on. I watched the Guerrero Maya Jr 2011 and 2013 matches, and the Dr Cerebro 2015 match, and I loved his performances. I know he has some high regarded stuff in late 90s, but I would thank more guidance with him.

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As with pretty much every highly tounted lucha guy, I was really impressed with the way Virus was able to execute basically every single thing he wanted to do in the ring. And when you add the fact that a lot of that was either very innovative or very complicated/high risk, I can completely see why people love him. Having said that, the only match that really had me invested was the Metalico one, and what made it so compelling was Metalico's urgency, knowing that he was no real match for Virus -the difference in how much effort Metalico put on everything he tried to do and how "easy" it came off for Virus was really glaring- and that he had to throw the kitchen sink to have a shot at winning. I'm by not means faulting Virus of anything, that last match was basically a last showcase for Metalico so it made sense that Virus kind of took a back seat and was just there to show flashes and establishing he was indeed better. But at the end of the day I did not leave the watch party wanting to seek out more stuff.

At this point I think I'll end up just watching more Casas (btw, really liked the trios match at the WP) because he's basically the one guy I legit wanna see more when it comes to Lucha. Felt that way in 2016 and continue to feel that way today.

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I don't mean to always be the blood soaked brawl guy, but is there a blood soaked brawl? Thats sort of the missing piece of the puzzle at this point for me. 

Edit:

Oh, can one of the Spanish speakers go over the amazing introduction Virus would get with the symptoms of wrestling him being listed? I never knew about that until the watch party and a lot of people weren't there for it. Thats the sort of thing that moves you up on my list :)

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46 minutes ago, elliott said:

Oh, can one of the Spanish speakers go over the amazing introduction Virus would get with the symptoms of wrestling him being listed? I never knew about that until the watch party and a lot of people weren't there for it. Thats the sort of thing that moves you up on my list :)

He didn't get the same introduction each time, in fact I got the impression he probably got that intro a few times or during a specific time period before being introduced as the "El pequeño Maestro" (The little Master). But the one I got from the WP, it was:

"He's more dangerous than Typhus,  a bigger destruction than AIDS,...Virus!".

 

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On 5/2/2021 at 6:30 PM, Jmare007 said:

 

He didn't get the same introduction each time, in fact I got the impression he probably got that intro a few times or during a specific time period before being introduced as the "El pequeño Maestro" (The little Master). But the one I got from the WP, it was:

"He's more dangerous than Typhus,  a bigger destruction than AIDS,...Virus!".

 

Yep, that's the intro he got when the late Armando Gaytan worked at CMLL as presentator, not sure of the exact years. He described Virus as more deadly than a lot of diseases, for example here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5SCUQpVKEY the presentation is literally as follows: "the wrestling bioterrorist, devastating like dengue, stormy like cholera, deadly like AIDS, now with his new allies, bird flu and the nile mosquito, the calamity...Virus!"

 

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I really enjoyed the watch party and will try join future ones.

Virus, like Regal, is someone that benefits from deep diving, though. His consistency is unreal. Unlike other workers, he had to carry rubbish (Fuego, Titan, Dragon Rojo) for 25+ minute title matches and most usually made these scrubs look, at minimum, passable. He can work magic in 5 minutes (check the early/mid-90s stuff in Japan and Puerto Rico) and build a coherent story (condensing his title match formula) to under 10 minutes for CMLL's lightning matches.

I'll go into more detail when I can, but he's very high on my list. I will also find a blood-letting brawl if it's the last thing I do.

On 5/2/2021 at 11:30 PM, elliott said:

I don't mean to always be the blood soaked brawl guy, but is there a blood soaked brawl? Thats sort of the missing piece of the puzzle at this point for me. 

Edit:

Oh, can one of the Spanish speakers go over the amazing introduction Virus would get with the symptoms of wrestling him being listed? I never knew about that until the watch party and a lot of people weren't there for it. Thats the sort of thing that moves you up on my list :)

I will also find a blood-letting brawl if it's the last thing I do. I know there's some more "violent" Virus out there (he ripped and gnawed at Fuerza's head in their match as well as busting open Judas hardway[?] and stabbing the splintered board into the back of his neck). Surely must be blood?

Found one!

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I kind of think that at least part of how I handled things in 2016 was that every wrestler in contention started tied for #1 and then I knocked them down based on flaws or things missing, etc. I'm not 100% sure that's how I handled things, but it's how I ended up treating Virus, where I just had a really hard time finding anything wrong with him other than a lack of easily accessible 2000-2010 footage. And then I desperately, in this thread, asked for someone to do a hatchet job on him and no one stepped up.

@ohtani's jacket kill the golden god that is Virus for us?

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13 hours ago, Rah said:

I will also find a blood-letting brawl if it's the last thing I do. 

Found one!

I don't have a clue how you even found this but my goodness it was badass. Where the hell did this even come from? Who is Fly Star?

It's not quite the blood- and mucus-filled riot you REALLY want, but it's as close as I've seen with him and for a mano a mano I thought this just about perfectly captured all that's great about Virus. You had the matwork, you had the brawling, you had the big finishing run and, fittingly, as this is Virus after all, he did it with some random dude I'd never heard of before. What a pro-wrestler. 

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