This was super fun. There's actually a decent amount of early 2000s Virus on YouTube now and looking through all of it last night was pretty exciting. I don't have a clue when I'll have time to get to everything, but more Virus is a gift horse you don't look in the mouth. I don't think I've seen O'Borman Jr. before. That's really one of the beauties of lucha, though. You can fire up a random 10-minute trios featuring an absolute all-timer teaming with some guy you've never heard of and the latter will have an amazing mask and you may even feel compelled to hunt down not only everything HE has ever done, but everything his Sr. has ever done because how did you manage to blank on two fucking generations of O'Borman? I liked all of the O'Borman/Neutron exchanges and O'Borman's bump off a surprise dropkick ruled. This was at its best when the rudos were cleaning house with double- and triple-teams, some of which were truly preposterous. The tombstone/Codebreaker thing was ridiculous and yet another reason why lucha libre is the best of all the pro-wrestling. Also Ricky Marvin was a lunatic and I guess I'd forgotten that. The exchanges with Virus were great and I'm immediately hyped to watch that singles match from later in the year that I've been meaning to watch for about a decade.
Virus v Fly Star (Lucha Memes, 6/29/19) - EPIC
Well fuck me. Where did this come from? I think by now everybody who's familiar with Virus knows what his bread and butter is. He's one of the best mat workers ever and for a while there we were getting a string of amazing title defences against guys who otherwise haven't done much of anything (with a few exceptions, like Dragon Lee). He's one of the best ever at leading young and unimpressive mat workers to impressive matwork without making it obvious that he's leading them. I really don't know enough about Fly Star to say with confidence whether this was another example of that. He looked fine during the mat section, honestly. But this was Virus at his very best, and not only that, it was Virus getting to stretch out on the mat AND attempt to mutilate someone. We've never really seen Virus in a proper blood-and-guts-fest. There are glimpses of it and I know it's unfair to expect some kind of Pirata Morgan/El Faraon in our current climate anyway, but it's hard not to wish something like that was out there (even just to see what he would do in the situation). This gave us about as good a look as we've ever gotten, even if he never did any of the bleeding and the brawling was mostly a destruction. It's mano a mano so everything is contained to the one fall, but structurally it was more or less three and that was reflected in how the match was segmented. The first third was on the level, nothing particularly tetchy, all very respectable. Again, I don't have much of a handle on how good Fly Star is as a mat worker but this was pretty great stuff. Virus is just incredible at feeding in subtle ways, then throwing a wrench into something and reminding you that he's not about to be schooled by anyone. Fly Star will take a second too long to grab a hold or move from one thing to the next, so Virus will wrap his legs around one of Fly Star's and drag him to the mat with a toe hold. It was all pretty even, but you knew Virus had another couple gears and I think Fly Star knew it too. Maybe he figured it would be a good idea to turn this into a fight then. There's no footage of Virus brawling so how good at it can he be? The bit where Virus checked to make sure the kid really wanted to do this before battering his brains out was unbelievable. There was a group of elderly women in the front row cheering for Star, so Virus purposely dragged him over there and beat on him while he was sprawled on their laps. He even tried stealing one of their walking sticks to use as a weapon (and in true lucha fashion the old lady refused to give it up)! He smashed a wooden board over Flay Star's head, stabbed him with a piece of broken plastic, punched him in the cut, bit him, lapped up the blood, revelled in all of it. It was a relatively brief segment, but it was amazing and there's not a single chance Virus wouldn't be a killer if he started engaging in seedy brawls across Mexico. Maybe when he reaches his 60s, who knows. After Fly Star makes his comeback they have a great dramatic run to the finish, really your high end Virus title match finishing stretch only worked in front of fifty people in a warehouse basement. It had the massive dive, the nearfalls and the perfect finish to tie it all together. And when the audience throw money in the ring at the end you know you've seen a humdinger. This was outstanding.
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