My Lucha Journey: The Marco Corleone Experience 5: Dr. Wagner Jr. & Marco Corleone vs Atlantis & Último Guerrero

CMLL Guerreros del Ring on 52MX: 2007-05-26
taped 2007-05-18 @ Arena Mexico
Dr. Wagner Jr. & Marco Corleone vs Atlantis & Último Guerrero

I wanted to double down on rudo Atlantis. This match was a bounty of riches on top of that, though. It also let me see younger Ultimo and Wagner, who I've seen very little of actually. Weirdly enough, I also feel like I've seen very few straight up tags past in tournaments. Maybe they just do them less now?

Quite frankly, this was another match where Marco was mainly used by a number of talented wrestlers as a prop and/or plot device, and that's perfectly fine, because at that stage of his career and given his physical attributes, including the ridiculous vertical leap (which he used for a two-at-once leapfrog in this match), it was probably the right way TO be used. Therefore, it's more about how the other wrestlers interacted with him than what he did himself, between using him as a catalyst for momentum shifts with his reverse clothesline off the top (both hitting it AND missing it) or to end falls with the superman leap or even just how Wagner would do the eagle flap with him.

Atlantis as a rudo was really interesting, because he played it as a babyface role outside of the ring even more than Casas/Felino/Niebla do. They still called him the idol of the children. He still slapped hands and posed with posters. He's Atlantis, something special, and he let everyone know it. Inside the ring, however, it's still surreal to me to see him feeding tecnico offense. That said, he still did this crazy Thesz Press like dive from the ramp over the top rope into the ring, aping Marco. In some ways it's funny, because I think Ultimo is pretty good right now at being full on Rudo, yet for a while, he was part of this crazy hybrid act.

Wagner was incredibly fun to watch. He might be the most charismatic luchador I've ever seen and that's saying a lot. It's a bit too early to really tell though. There were a few kids in the crowd wearing his masks, and they didn't just show them off. No, they also would do the poses and mimic Wagner's gusto and braggadociousness. And he had that in spades. He was so good at drawing out his movements in order to squeeze the maximum amount of meaning from them, be it giving Marco a high five and walking slowly into position to set up a dive so that all eyes were on him or hanging in the air for what felt like a small eternity when doing a tornado ddt off the ropes. There's just something so earnest about his act. It's the sort of thing you couldn't take seriously anywhere else in the world because it'd be ironic and self-referential, but here it's absolutely pure.

The match was pretty formulaic, with a super short first primera caida, which the rudos won after Marco missed a huge dive. There's an argument to whether or not there's even any point to watching something like a three minute WWE Velocity match, and I do think there is. I'm pretty sure the same's true with these 30 second falls. It was incredibly quick: (rudos ambushed, tecnicos fought back, Marco missed a big move off the top, Rudos locked on some holds/moves for the win), but it also sort of set the sort of frenetic tone for the match and was about as good a scenario as you could manage in 30 seconds. I think there might be an art to it, even if is sort of an empty one. Anyway, from there it was elementary. Marco hit the top rope reversal this time to retake the momentum in the segunda caida, and things were fairly back and forth in the tercera with the rudos never really mounting a huge threat. It was all kind of light and airy with some mascot-related comedy and Wagner stooging in his super natural way as the crowd ate it up. Marco hit a kind of comical double chokeslam to set up Wagner's big knee drop and the win. This was a fun match but not one with a lot of substance. All of this made me really want to see some Wagner vs Niebla, and I do think there's some out there, so that's something on the eventual list, as is more Los Guerreros de la Atlantida.