2015 Ongoing Match of the Year List

19. Titan v. Barbaro Cavernario CMLL 5/3

PAS: Excellent title match between two of the most exciting young wrestlers in the world.  Might be Titan's career performance as he is a true crazy lunatic in losing his title.  Cavernario just mauls him in the second fall crushing him with a tope, powerbombing him on the ramp and into the turnbuckles, before Titan catches him with a mistica into a roll up. Third falls has a surprising amount of matwork, with Titan focusing on Cavernarios taped up leg, and an awesome tapitia reversal. Then we move into the hot death section, including Titan crazily stealing Cavernario's superfly splash to the floor. The slower type of Virus/Casas title match is probably close to its end, but this style can be done well and these guys really delivered.

ER: I would second that this is IMO Titan's best career performance. We've written about a lot of Titan matches here, and he's popped up on several of our "Best of" lists, and while I would never say that any of the great matches he's been involved with have been "total carry jobs" or some other rude comment, but in those matches he was clearly a guy being lifted up to a higher standard than he had previously seen. Here he seemed very much worthy of the praise I've seen him get elsewhere. Cavernario has been one of my (and many others) favorite workers over the last couple years and as the match went on I found myself rooting more and more for Titan. Me, always the contrarian. Titan really put me in his brain, I really felt like he was trying every possible thing in his arsenal to retain his title, and it was epic. Some of his dives were among the best he's done, especially the one that just crushed Cavernario into the barrier. He ups the lunacy by breaking out Barbaro's giant splash to the floor and hitting it with every ounce of force that Barbaro himself normally does. I loved him going after Cavernario's leg in the tercera; that's something that's so out of character/match layout for him and that just added to the vibe of him breaking out all the stops. Cavernario is a wild caveman. He was unfrozen by scientists. Our world likely confuses and frightens him. Imagine how his primitive brain view television! Or cellular telephones! All his brain knows is that when he's being attacked, he needs to attack back, and so he is relentless, as so many cavemen (probably) were before him. Cavernario is always a Tazmanian devil, just windmilling punches and stomps. I love how he kind of responds to matwork the way a cat responds to getting its tail stepped on, and overall there was a nice sense that Cavernario outlasted Titan here. All made for a satisfying title match.


2015 MOTY MASTER LIST