Blue Panther and Villano V Take the Apuestas to Its Emotional Peak

I’ve been to a fair number of lucha libre shows in my life. Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta; big venues, street festivals, restaurant parking lots; good and bad. You know the thing that unifies all of them? There is always, always a kid or two there in a Blue Panther mask. This one. The classic one. I swore a solemn oath as a white wrestling critic far more suited to write at length about the Vince McMahon Kiss My Ass Club to never speak out of class about things like luchadors and their identity, but every time I see a kid wear an old man luchador’s mask, it’s basically the ultimate in everything that is right and good about this great sport: the the timeless appeal of the hero, the care that goes into building their legend, and the fierceness with which they are protected.

I know it doesn’t always work this way, but I’ve lived through a lot of American wrestling and have seen how it regards masks, legacies, and legendary wrestlers as they age, and compared “finishing the story” or “creating WrestleMania moments” or trying to hotshot a major, catastrophic, and yet ultimately meaningless loss by a Steve Austin or John Cena or Undertaker onto the first act that “needs” a big scalp that’ll be forgotten as quickly as the bumps from last year’s Money in the Bank ladder match, I will take this kind of thing – legitimate, surprising heartbreak – every single time. 

I don’t want to frame this essay as a response to the sort of wrestling I’m more experienced with, but I’ve been thinking about this in general, lately, as, juxtaposed against my recent idle watching of the end of Austin’s run as an in-ring competitor and the not insignificant number of people who freaked out about Bryan Danielson tapping Kazuchika Okada at Forbidden Door, laid bare just how big wrestling can feel when it’s allowed to lean more towards its natural narrative impulses instead of being shoehorned in by the urge to perpetually generate money.

Don’t get me wrong, I know that’s the purpose of professional wrestling, but matches like this are only possible when everyone involved understands and appreciates the people and mechanisms that draw money, as opposed to operating as if they can be broken and replaced at will. Villano V (whom I grew up loving as a staple of weekend WCW programming, and whose use of Twin Magic with Villano IV primed me to love the Bella Twins way before any of you pretenders did) doesn’t need Blue Panther’s mask. In fact, everything about this match suggests that he’ll be the one losing it. Hell, he does lose his mask six months later to Ultimo Guerrero, and is largely retired by 2013. Blue Panther still wrestles a regular schedule. He was just in a trios match chopping it up with Tiger Mask IV, Rocky Romero, and El Desperado the other day, looking real frustrated with Satanico for unmasking Tiger Mask and drawing a DQ.

I’m a little in the weeds here when what I’m trying to say is that I love it when professional wrestling has real, meaningful consequence, and it does not get more consequential than taking the mask of a man who has protected it for 30 years, whose every match for the past 15 years carries the mark of this particular loss. 

The fact that the match is so good is almost incidental to how much I enjoyed it. It helps, though. It’s a big victory for the notion of wrestlers entering into a contest with a true contrast of strategies. Panther is caught off-guard by Villano V here, perhaps thinking that his opponent will find himself awed by the magnitude of the occasion. He is a true prick here, unmasking Panther in the first fall and never letting up once it’s clear that Panther is on his heels. He takes his licks – I can only imagine the way the gash on his head that he gets from an early tope suicida looks under the mask – but there is never any real sense that Panther will establish control. He is wrestling in response to Villano V, and that is a recipe for disaster. 

Blue Panther knows it, too. A lesser man would complain more vigorously about the shots Perro Aguayo Jr. gets in, maybe raise a bigger fuss about Villano V stalling to swap out his bloodsoaked mask for a fresher one, and certainly protest that 2/3 of the falls here were disqualifications, but at the end of the day he’s been outmaneuvered, plain as that. Is it tragic? Ask the woman who picks up a Blue Panther replica mask from the ground to hurl it in dismay. But this is professional wrestling, and sometimes the hero shows up prepared for the wrong fight and has no recourse. They are, after all, only human, with a name and a face to prove it.

I don’t know what I’d think of this match were it not for its conclusion, where Panther celebrates his rival’s win, carrying him on his shoulders while a roughly even split of fans on camera look on in joy or disbelief. The significance of the moment is also written on Blue Panther’s face, the heavy breathing of a man trying not to weep as the ring announcer shouts his name and age into the public record. His mask comes off quickly, ripped from his face like a bandaid on a wound that hasn’t healed yet. It will, over time. It helps that after the shock of this loss, there is celebration, catharsis. The kinds of things wrestling is truly great at, felt here as deeply and beautifully as possible.