MLJ: Chilanga Mask X-Mas in August 1: Virus vs Dr. Cerebro

2015-8-16 @ Arena Naucalpan
Virus vs Dr. Cerebro

(match starts at 27:20)

Negro Casas is my favorite active luchador. To me, the most exciting are Cavernario and Rush. The best, though? It has to be Virus. He's amazing at everything he tries to do, seasoned and experienced but dynamic as well. He's hugely versatile, able to perpetrate a brutal rudo beatdown, have a fast-paced lightning match, or most especially hit the mat with meaningful, logical matwork full of twists and turns you've never seen. Part of that range is necessary considering the main CMLL audiences only have so much patience for long and complex mat seqeuences. That's why it's great we get to see him on the indies where he can really stretch out (and stretch people) too.

Sunday, August 23, was an exciting day for pro wrestling and it had absolutely nothing to do with a WWE PPV booked by someone doing an impression of CMLL's drunk and apathetic booking monkeys. It's because Chilanga Mask graciously posted the entirety of their Arena Naucalpan show from August 16. Usually with a lucha indy show, you have one or two matches that look good on paper and a bunch of noise. This has FOUR. I'm going to go through them in order and check in afterwards. Knowing Phil and Eric they'll probably chime in at some point as well.

The second match on the card was Virus vs Dr. Cerebro. Cerebro is someone I feel like we heard about more in the last decade than we do in this one. He's also someone I want to go back and see more of after seeing this match. The short verdict here was that this had absolutely amazing matwork that was layered and nuanced and never felt gratuitous but that I wish the ramp up to the finish had a bit more meat. That could have been a side effect of being second on a very stacked card however.

I'm not going to mention too many specifics because I want people to see and enjoy this on their own, but I think it was the use of leverage that I enjoyed the most. Both luchadores constantly were using their feet to jockey for position, to press down upon a knee to bring his opponent, or to move a leg just out of place to break a hold. Or maybe it was the snappiness. One complaint about maestro-style matches (and that means different things to different people) is that they're often done at half the speed that the people wrestling were once able to hit. Maybe it's because these two are in their forties and not fifties but there was a real zing to things. Both of them utilized quick wraparounds with their legs that were just lightning fast.

Maybe it was just the little things. I loved how Virus would go back to the front facelock anytime he needed a breather or to just contain Cerebro for a moment before going to the next move. Then there were the resets. The first one was something of an even exchange out of a knucklelock. The next time, Virus immediately twisted the arm instead of going in equal, and then the one after that had Cerebro returning the favor. They cycled from one hold to a next, grabbing open limbs, trying and failing holds before they were able to get their positioning just right, and selling emotively both while in holds and while executing them.

There was a sense of escalation and increasing competitiveness and emotion, and things picked up at the end with whips, move attempts, and and a tope before they went home, but the match needed another few minutes in the end there (relative to something like the Avisman vs Virus I watched a few weeks ago, even if the matwork here was superior to that), and I think was a victim, in part, of its card placement. Ultimately, though, it's something everyone should see because what they were able to give us was just that good.