2025 Blue Panther Double Feature: Hechicero! Ultimo Guerrero!
MD: We've been sitting on this Panther vs Hechicero review since January. But now past Panther vs Ultimo Guerrero, we figured we'd drop them both together. Keep in mind I wrote the following 7 months ago though. Eric’s review is new though.
Blue Panther vs. Hechicero CMLL 1/10/25
MD: What a difference a decade makes. Ten years ago, we were just off of the RUSH vs. Negro Casas feud. Casas and Blue Panther were just around 55 (Casas half a year older than Panther). It seemed fairly clear that while Panther was still enjoyable in the occasional trios or maestro match, and, of course, when paired up against Casas himself, he was simply outpaced by his archrival.
It made sense. Panther was always charismatic in his own way and there was a sort of seasoned toughness and mastery to him even after he lost his mask. Casas had spent a career without one, however, and he was an absolutely singular talent when it came to expressiveness, body language, actions and reactions. Just by winding up the crowd, he could accomplish more than wrestlers thirty years younger than him who could do the most complex and amazing spots.
Yet here we are at the start of 2025, and it is Blue Panther, at the age of 64, who towers like some sort of wizened warrior king. To call his mask (allowed to him for this one night by the commission) a fountain of youth would be doing an injustice to his own daring and pluck, to Hechicero's ability to create motion and base, but maybe most of all, to the virtue of showing one's age. At times Blue Panther moved amazingly well, but it was those moments where the cracks showed, where he struggled to get from Point A to Point B that truly gave meaning to his efforts.
They were incredibly self-aware throughout. In the primera, Panther was put in a position to escape again and again, including a memorable headstand escape to headscissors. While he was able to showcase those escapes, he was working from underneath given Hechicero's superior youth and strength and his own technical mastery, and he got caught in the Conjuro. He evened things up in the segunda after a slick leap back body press. They were smart with these callbacks. In the tercera, Panther would finally get caught doing that one too many times. On the other hand, a rana that he attempted that got him caught early in the tercera (So that Hechicero could really take over) paid off later on.
Hechicero did control the first half of the tercera after catching Panther with a power bomb. Whereas he might bump through the ropes to set up a dive, he rolled Panther out and draped him over the guardrail instead, controlling and creating an illusion of motion (not that there wasn't a lot from Panther anyway, but every little bit helped). Panther's big comeback, getting the crowd going, standing tall, firing back, was as special as anything in the match and as special as anything we've seen this year so far.
He followed it up with a dive that didn't quite work but they covered so well, with Hechicero taking over until he let Panther sweep him off the apron so they could get back on track. And anyway, there's no point in remembering that dive considering the two or three other impressive ones Panther hit and Hechicero caught. As noted, a match like this is just a little more impressive for holding together despite the cracks than something that would be plastic and perfect instead.
And this was impressive from beginning to end, a notch on the belt not just of both wrestlers, but on the power of lucha libre and wrestling itself. Some of it was daring and athleticism and training. So much of it was the carefully crafted illusion of all those things and more. What is magic if not exactly that?
ER: I don't know where Blue Panther found the Fountain of Youth but he found it sometime at the end of 2024 and it's been something. I'm not going to say Panther has looked washed the last several years, he's just looked appropriately His Age. Great performances were more rare. We'd get a showoff spot in a trios, or a fun five minute lightning match, maybe one big singles match a year where he'd step up. Based on his work the last 5 (10?) years, Panther's 2025 has come out of nowhere. Going further, following the first two falls, the tercera also came out of nowhere. The primera and segunda felt like a Hechicero match, which makes sense. How would a 64 year old man show up any bigger in the tercera after a couple cool spots in their first two falls? Had you watched Panther's headstand escapes out of a floatover headscissors in the primera, or his gorgeous floating cannonball in the segunda, suspended in contact with Hechicero's upper torso until they crashed, you would not be expecting him to go insane in the tercera. But that's what happened.
Hechicero looked like a monster picking on an old man, and Arena Mexico treated him as such. Every trademark Hechicero punishment was altered to be more punishing. He got several rotations on his trapped arm backbreaker and loved the heat he would draw whenever he slugged the legend. When Panther finds back at the end of the segunda, it feels like a last gasp, not necessarily the jumping off point into our special tercera. Panther looks improbably lithe running up the turnbuckles into a crossbody, submitting Hechicero with a hold that looked like a Stu Hart Dungeon stretch punctuated and tightened by rolling. It felt like a triumph, and I guess I should never underestimate the power of a crowd behind a sympathetic old man, because again, this tercera could not have been anticipated.
Everything jumps up to the next level in the tercera. Panther is thrown into a tree of woe and headscissors his way out of it, gets placed up top and loudly chopped. The crowd reacts as loud to Hechicero's chop as they do to anything he does all match. When Panther tries to leap off with a headscissors it is blocked, and it feels like a genuine stalemate that pushed things to a crazier place. The headscissors is fought for, the powerbomb is fought for, and when Hechicero's powerbomb wins out it feels more like a concession from Hechicero than winning a battle. A stalemate. Hechicero dropping him felt more like a man realizing he was fighting someone with more juice than he realized. And so, he dials up his inner asshole.
Hechicero hits a leaping elbow off the apron, kicks Panther in the head several times, then starts punching him in the side of the head. All it does is fire Panther up, and the more fired up Panther gets, the louder Arena Mexico gets. Panther builds to a tope that almost kills him. His head catches on the ropes, he goes down almost head first, and it's one of those fragile moments that makes me love old man wrestlers more than any other kind of wrestler. There is built in sympathy because their bodies do not work the same, even in those moments where their youth has been tapped into, and in moments like these we are collectively reminded that they - and we - are all closer to death. As Blue Panther is making me think about death, he is unafraid, and hits a plancha off the buckles that lands like an anchor, building to a crazy leaping huracanrana off the apron. Panther either trusts Hechicero with his life, or has put aside has already come to terms with his God.
When Panther tries running up the buckles for another crossbody, repeating what won him the segunda, Hechicero knows exactly what's coming and catches him with a big uranage, drops elbows on him, but takes too long attempting a moonsault. Panther rushes over on his knees for a pin attempt, seeing his shot, viewing the pin as a better chance at victory than locking in a sub, and manages to do so in a way that feels more capitalizing than desperate. His crossbody off the buckles that hit, was caught, but his leaping huracanrana off the buckles that was caught, now hits. Panther has Hechicero crossed up by his tenacity, and just as we seemed shocked at what Panther is suddenly capable of, that counts even more for Hechicero. They fight to the entrance ramp where Panther whips Hechicero into the tall staircase, and Panther hits a plancha off those stairs about 10 steps up, letting the crowd reaction grow with each step he takes, Arena Mexico urging him higher...wait but not that high!
Hechicero is fighting for his life to keep this spirit down, going to his surefire basics and doing them twice, two running knees that should surely end this all. But his slower submission application almost gets him caught by a tight Panther cradle, and that's when he finally has to get dirty. To stop this from happening again, he removes Panther's mask in one quick swipe as part of his next submission attempt, a sleight of hand to throw the legend for just a brief second, a surprise for the man who has spent 20 minutes surprising everyone, which is all he needs to complete the application and bridge through for a high leveraged pin. With his performance at DEAN~! and the Ultimo Guerrero match still to come, even after witnessing all of this, nobody could have predicted Panther's continued 2025 rise.
Blue Panther vs. Ultimo Guerrero CMLL 8/8/25
MD: The last thing I want to do is downplay the clips. I'm sure most of you saw them. Meltzer went nuts for them even. In this match, Panther did multiple dives of various sorts, be it a flip off the apron, lunging 'ranas, a trust fall from the stage, the over the post bound, and then the top rope electric chair twisting 'rana. Yes, on some of them he had help, be it from his son or Guerrero, but it was an insane stunt show by a man almost 65 years old. And while that's not what I want to talk about here (and if you know me, you know that's not what I want to talk about), the sheer abandon Panther showed in making this match work was remarkable.
What I want to talk about, however, is how they made it matter. Some of it was going to matter anyway. It would matter by its own nature. You do a dive and it matters, because there's an element of the real to it. There's an element of the daring. There's an element of the spectacular. You do a dive as an old man and it's going to matter even more because all of those things (save maybe for the spectacular) are compounded by an even further element of real, and realness is one of the most powerful forces in pro wrestling.
But it's not the most powerful. Artifice done well will always be more powerful than the real, and when the real that is manifested (be it a resounding chop, a hold with proper technique, or a bump that you can feel from the last row) is framed by the perfect invoking of artifice, that's when wrestling hits the very best.
And these two are masters of artifice. This was for the MLW Openweight Belt, and they had the pre-match photo. Usually that goes without a hitch, a last remnant of the 80s lucha title match, something held to a higher standard when it came to rules and behavior. Here though, it became a tug of war, with Guerrero the aggressor, hoarding his own belt and his moment to shine. All that got him was a trip to the mat and a bump onto his rear end. He rose enraged and leaped at Panther, ambushing him and tearing off his mask. Because Panther's mask is a ceremonial allowance, Guerrero was able to get all of the heat of the action with none of the penalty, the only time in a CMLL ring where that would be possible. It set the tone perfectly. Every trick in the book underpinned by real and actual substance. Every bump and move underpinned by all of those tricks.
In the Hechicero review, I had suggested that it was the mask that hid Panther's age and gave him some sort of primordial strength, serving as a fountain of youth in its own way. In this match, he more than proved me wrong.
Still, what sticks with me now a week later and what will stick with me months down the line was that way that they framed every move, the way that they appealed to the crowd. If Panther was going to do a dive, he was going to go out of his way to let every person in that audience (and there were many) know that he was about to do it. He built up their anticipation, churned them into a furor, and then paid it off to their delight. When Guerrero turned things around on him, he did so as theatrically as possible. It wasn't enough to hit a suplex. It wasn't even enough to hit a suplex on the floor. He had to dump Panther back over the guardrail and suplex him back over that.
And of course, when Panther came back, he made sure to channel the most powerful crowd interaction of the last fifteen years, fingers up in the air to combat Guerrero's roof-raising, Danielson's Yes Chant in full force.
There's always an element of ritual to watching an Ultimo Guerrero match. Ten years ago, I likened it to going to church on a Sunday (just on a Friday night), some of the same spots (and here there was the power bomb counter off the top), but in this match, it was Panther who was guiding the congregation.
There was escalation and build and sense to all of it too. When Panther tried an early comeback, ref Edgar held the arm to stop a punch in the corner, because while Guerrero could get away with it, in a title match, the tecnico is to be held to a higher standard. Instead of being a hindrance and distraction, Panther used it as a way to build pressure, first for when he finally got shots on Guerrero in the corner later (once again pulled off but here not a hope spot cut off) and then finally when he mounted the turnbuckle defiantly, no... triumphantly, so that the fans could count along with him.
In the end, tasting glory as he did, feeling power that defied age and world-weariness, he flew just a bit too close to the sun. He dove one too many times, a relatively simple back cross body off the ropes. Guerrero rolled through it and won the day, retaining his title. But both men celebrated after the fact, because together they won far more than a simple match.
ER: He wore blue velvet, my god. Would you look at this beautiful man in the most perfect mask in lucha history. Believe it or not, I went into this match without seeing a single highlight. Every single crazy thing that Panther did was unexpected and every single thing got a bigger reaction from me. When I saw Sleepaway Camp for the first time a decade or so ago, I didn't know anything about it. None of my friends did, either, so the reaction by the end of the movie was a room full of humans jumping off their seats screaming. I don't know if I reached the point of screaming during this match, but Blue Panther's Continued Youth Revival did inspire me to shout at my TV no less than five times. Blue Panther was aged for a decade but now he is ageless, but he is ageless in a way that shows his age. His selling, to me, means more than ever, and his selling is better than it's ever been.
He has this comedic babyface energy that people respond to, and it's amplified by his kind old man visage. Look at him quietly shaking out the cobwebs whenever Guerrero would kick him in the side of the head. He's doing like Milton Berle double takes within a pro wrestling selling framework. Panther's humanity is beautiful. Watching him get kicked around is like seeing somebody fight Mel Brooks. He draws sympathy in ways that would have been impossible 15+ years ago, but his selling didn't just naturally improve because he got old man sympathy, he works to connect with the crowd in ways he never used to. It's in the eyes, it's in his stumble steps, it's in the way he slowly fires up his arms. The selling alone would help him connect with these crowds to huge reaction...but the sudden moveset insanity puts it all over the top.
Panther's clotheslines and ability to fire up a crowd makes him come off like wrestling's most powerful Rusher Kimura. His cannonball off the apron has surpassed and outlived Negro Casas's Thesz Press as the greatest crazy fired up old man crazy peak. But remember when Panther spent most of his career not doing headscissors and huracanranas and now does crazier huracanranas than ever? Is it the ultimate testament to Ultimo Guerrero's accolades as a lucha base that a 64 year old man trusts him to catch the most highflying he's done in his long career? Blue Panther's leaping huracanrana is my favorite spot of 2025. It's like if Terry Funk had added a moonsault in the 90s but if his moonsault was as great as 2 Cold Scorpio's. I gasp as Panther's head scrapes 1" over the mat, then yelled when his head does the same thing swinging over concrete. I don't think I ever anticipated Blue Panther evolving into a crazy old man Terry Funk persona, but doing it with the old man sympathies combined with youthful adventurousness. Seeing all of Panther's flying is surreal, even more surreal than seeing Panther and Guerrero do a tug of war with a fucking MLW title. A plancha over the ringpost? You've got to be kidding me. I can barely take watching this man take these risks, and I honestly don't know how he does it.
Labels: 2025 MOTY, Blue Panther, CMLL, Hechicero, Rey Hechicero, Ultimo Guerrero
posted by Matt D @ 1:00 PM
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