MLJ: Virus Spotlight 2: Cicloncito Ramirez & Último Dragoncito b Felinito & Piratita Morgan

1993-03-05 @ Arena México
Cicloncito Ramirez & Último Dragoncito b Felinito & Piratita Morgan

So I'm moving backwards, not forwards. I was tempted to name this -1 but I'm sure my pointless and arbitrary numbering conventions are confusing enough as it is. Here's what happened. I wanted to really focus tightly on Virus, especially his singles' matches, and I wanted to start after he got the gimmick. There are obviously a lot of years to cover so I had to control it somehow.

Then, though, "Pogo" Pete Stein mentioned, offhandedly, that Cicloncito Ramirez vs Damiencito was his favorite minis match at all time. I was going to be veering too close to it to not stop. I don't like watching people's best/favorite matches without being more familiar with the genre that they're in. I like to build to them and not just jump right into the best before I can fully understand it. I haven't seen a lot of minis matches and even so, I was going to jump in on the idea I've seen a lot of Virus matches. Instead, I dug deeper and in digging deeper, I found this. So now we're going to do an extra week on Virus to catch up.

This is from 1993, which is cool, and thanks to Rob for posting it. Most of what we have out of Virus is ten to fifteen years later, so I'm glad we can see him at 24 or so. It's so far back that he's not even Damiencito, but instead Nuevo Piratita Morgan. I can't find a lot about Felinito easily. Apparently he ended up in AAA as a regular sized luchador as Mach-1 but with these guys you never know if it's the same guy in the gimmick or not. Apparently he was also called Punch Power at some point which is a ridiculous but awesome name. I think Ultimo Dragoncito is still going with that gimmick.

Cicloncito Ramirez, from what I can tell from a few scant matches, was really good. He's Pequeno Olimpico now. He, like Dragoncito, was only a few years into the business here but he stood out. Virus had been wrestling a while longer, and I need to try to track down a picture of him as his first gimmick "Bird Boy" later. Under that he beat "Super Archie" for the UWA Featherweight championship and because this is lucha libre, land of Thundercats and Ninja Turtles where a completely viable star is absolutely based on The Phantom, I half figure that Super Archie is exactly what it sounds like.

This was a bit more of what I expected out of a minis match, that preconceived notion. It's the sort of heavy tecnico shine match with some big spots and quick action to get the crowd going. Heat was kept to a minimum and quickly defused with miscommunication and comedy clowning.

Felinito and "Nuevo Piritia Morgan" were there to feed the babyfaces and they were more than competent at that role, but it was limited and I didn't really get to see much out of them, nothing unique at least. There was some opening matwork with Virus and he was smooth in moving his opponent around already, but I'm not sure there was a ton of meaning to it yet.

This was a pretty quick two fall affair. The first was a bit of evenness and comedy (like Felinito selling a foul after sliding across the ring and then rolling around the ring to the outside in a grapple) and then all shine, what you'd expect with quebadoras and armdrags. Ramirez hit a pretty jump back 'rana:

and the finish involved a nice reversal out of a back body drop into a flipping senton onto a standing Morgan.

The segunda had some attempts at heat (started by an ambush and then illegal double teaming), including this kickfest:

And they actually got the crowd going:

but this just lasted a minute or two before Dragoncito came back with the help of the aforementioned communication and the tecnicos hit big dives for the perfectly-acceptable-in-a-first-match countout win.

This was fun for what it was and I'm glad we have it easily available since it's an early piece of the Virus puzzle, but I'm ready to see something with a bit more substance to it.