MLJ: Virus Spotlight 4: Cicloncito Ramirez & Último Dragoncito b Damiancito El Guerrero & Pierrothito

1997-03-14 @Arena México
Cicloncito Ramirez & Último Dragoncito b Damiancito El Guerrero & Pierrothito

I found one more match with Nuevo Piratita Morgan from 93, so if I can make it through the VQ on it, we'll hit that Monday (and if not, I'll post it for you guys anyway), then, barring any surprises, it'll be back to GdI during the week, and moving forward with Virus on Mondays. This, though? This I really dug. The 93 tag from Monday was very first-match-on-the-card with a bit of heat, but just a bit. It was mostly shine and fun and the rudos were there to make the tecnicos look good without any real sense of drama.

This was more balanced and I have to wonder if it wasn't because it was a few years later and the wrestlers involved were more established. I know the title match between Damiancito and Cicloncito wasn't in front of a big crowd or anything (I think it was at Arena Coliseo) but it still had a ton of time and felt like a bigger deal than you'd expect. This was a month or so after that and it was the first match on a Friday Arena Mexico show which had an Ultimo Dragon vs Scorpio, Jr. title match as the main event. The video I'm linking too is an entire episode of CMLL TV (I think) and the pro to that is you'll get to see some other stuff if you watch it. The con is that I can't pull gifs through my usual means since it's just too long, so we'll have to go without.

I'd seen Pierrothito, but thirteen years later at Sin Salida 2010. Here, he was more impressive, hanging with Ramirez and Damiancito pretty well. Dragon, on offense, was pretty much what you'd expect (kicks), but he was underneath for a chunk of the match and, maybe due to his relative size, was very sympathetic in that role.

The primera was really worth watching, with some great sequence work between Damiancito and Cicloncito. Some of it, I think, was even better than what they did in their title match and very little overlapped; when it did, and this is huge to me, it felt like it was due to a kayfabe sort of familiarity. There was absolutely a sense of struggle and they weren't just running through rote spots. The things I wish I could gif are so simple, like Virus kicking out Cicloncito's leg when he was in a hold, or the way he gets out of another with a drop toe-hold sort of leverage move, or, likewise, how Cicloncito turns a leglock around by trapping Damiancito. Little bits of mat expertise that I loved. There were some great armdrag sequences too.

The primera came to a climax when they started to work on Ultimo Dragoncito's arm. Limbwork feels so novel in lucha because it just doesn't happen all that often. It's another tool in the storytelling arsenal more than an end in and of itself as it might be in something like a Southern Tag. In this match they have some fun armwork in the primera and they go back to it later with Dragoncito selling the arm but it really being used to fill time and build heat and to serve as a way to control him. For the primera, he came back after dodging a corner splash and got a bit of revenge on Pierrothito's arm before the tecnicos caught a flash submission (out of a Russian legsweep) and UD's inside the ring Asai Moonsault to take the fall.

The segunda started back and forth, with a slight tecnico advantage, including Damniancito taking a crazy corner bump to the outside that it's a shame I can't show you. Shortly thereafter, they start back on Dragoncito's arm though, wearing him down. It's deconstructed, used as an equalizer to cut him off and grind him down more than anything else. It led to a cool Damiancito handspring backflip headscissors flip into a pin, though. Virus had a lot of the small things down by this point in his career. He had a lot of the big ones down too, and on top of that, he had an agility that he obviously doesn't almost twenty years later and it made for a really impressive total package.

The tercera had Pierrothito and Damniancito really rudo-ing it up. They pulled on Dragoncito's mask to hold him in their corner, worked on his arm more (including a great springboard elbow drop in by Damiancito), and cut off Cicloncito from behind when he tried to intervene. In the end, though, the tecnicos fought their way back, Damiancito missed a corner shoulder and flew through the ropes, Dragoncito hit a massive moonsault from the top to the floor, and Cicloncito locked in a hold for a submission/countout win.

I haven't talked for a while about the emotion and the art in lucha that comes from building up and paying off but I think that was here much more than in the 1993 trios from Monday. There was more of a sense of the rudos bullying the tecnicos using rougher tactics and after the opening sportsmanship, The armwork stood out as somehow unnecessary from a kayfabe perspective, something over the top, maybe in part because we don't see it much, and all of that made the comeback matter more. More good stuff.