Dr. Cerebro Takes Ricky Marvin's Arm

There are people who say that selling isn't important to modern wrestling, and those people are pretty fuckin' dumb.

I don’t love this wrestling match. Don’t get me wrong, Ricky Marvin and Dr. Cerebro have themselves a good match, but I there are moments when my approach to matches we cover on BIG EGG probably does the match a disservice, and this is likely one of them, as I’m just randomly dipping in on the end of their 2018 feud in IWRG because I like what I saw from Cerebro at DEAN~! and like what I’ve seen from Marvin, who is a big favorite of several of my friends, and I find myself perilously close to using the word “anticlimactic” to describe what happens here without doing the legwork to back it up.

There is something dissatisfying about a cold watch of this hair match – I don’t know who the guy who clobbers Cerebro in the second fall is, don’t know his beef with Cerebro or connection to Marvin, don’t know the rhythms of IWRG well enough to know whether or not it’s normal for a lab-coated doctor to check on the condition of the technico after he takes a shot to the head, and none of this strikes me as unfair enough to bite into the tragedy of Dr. Cerebro ultimately losing his hair. This feels like a relatively low-stakes apuestas, all things considered. And yet there are stakes, particularly in the second fall, the fallout from which bleeds into the third, largely on the back of Marvin, who I found to be utterly captivating in this match. 

A couple of weeks ago, the Internet got big mad at Segunda Caida’s Matt D. for posting about how Will Ospreay’s selling during his hour long match against MJF felt a little perfunctory and box-checky in nature, as opposed to being truly immersive. It’s an impressive piece of criticism on a wrestling match I’ll probably never watch between two wrestlers I do not like, with a lot of thought going into the line between good selling and great selling, something too many people who watch wrestling in 2024 are beginning to insist does not matter to their enjoyment of a wrestling match. I don’t know that I’m 100% with Matt on his theory, especially on something so subjective, but I’ve had that aspect of pro wrestling in my head for a couple of weeks now, and Ricky Marvin is exceptional on the sell in this match.

After the first fall, which Dr. Cerebro picked up after a gnarly piledriver variation that came out of nowhere given how much ass Marvin whooped in the first four or so minutes of the match, the technico is quick to strike, not just nullifying the work Marvin put in on Cerebro’s leg (which is smooth and effective – if you’re a dragon screw enthusiast who hasn’t checked out Marvin’s work, he’s all about it in the first fall), but immediately making a target of Marvin’s right arm. After throwing Marvin over the guardrail, Cerebro punches, kicks, headbutts, and otherwise smashes that arm, working joints and muscles, really putting him at a disadvantage. When Cerebro slaps his bicep or stomps at his arm, Marvin bites down on his mouthpiece and howls. When Cerebro gets him in a cross armbreaker, he not only wriggles free, but he seeks the sanctuary of the ropes, which Cerebro uses to further torture the arm.

It’s simple stuff, mean and effective, and then Cerebro puts Marvin in a Fujiwara armbar. Marvin, for his part, doesn’t just scream, he takes out his mouthguard to do so.

IWRG

It’s at this point that I perked up. Why would Marvin take out his mouthpiece? Well, there’s a couple of reasons for it that I can think of: it makes the rictus of pain on his face clearer, and his screams louder. With the camera level to his face, his free left arm waving the mouthpiece around in the air, it’s an arresting image. A third reason I came up with for Marvin taking out his mouthpiece is that pain drives a person to do illogical things, to fidget and distract oneself from the signals firing from the pain receptors in his right arm just enough that he’s able to make it to the ropes. 

From this point forward, Marvin is fighting with one arm. He tries to punch some feeling back into it in the corner, but whatever gameplan he had at the start of this match is shot, and every time Cerebro attacks him, Marvin’s defense isn’t that of a long-tenured wrestler or a calculating rudo, but a man just trying to survive. He’s lucky to have friends, and luckier still that the referee assigned to the match moves at the speed of continental drift. 

Ricky Marvin is lucky to make it to the third fall, and that’s something he and Cerebro make abundantly clear – his sneak attack at the beginning of the fall fails, and Cerebro starts breaking out big, weighty sentons and slams. When Marvin gets his knees up on a flying nothing he immediately goes for the pin and can’t clasp his hands together when hooking the leg. On a cradle that follows a DDT shortly thereafter, he again has to give up some leverage because his right arm is useless – he starts out using both arms and has to shake the right one out. When Cerebro traps him in a double-arm submission, most of the leverage is on Marvin’s left arm, which again gives him just enough room to wiggle a foot under the rope.

Marvin wrestles the majority of the match with his right arm hanging limp, his whole being thrown into a game of keepaway with Cerebro. On a bridging hammerlock attempt, he positions his body so that Cerebro can’t arch his back against his. When he punches, it’s with his left hand, and there’s absolutely no zip to it because he can’t use his full range of motion to put some zip behind it. 

That punch initiates the match’s most spectacular sequence though, as Marvin uses that left arm to catch a Cerebro kick, which he quickly turns into a dragon screw and single leg crab. All of this control is accomplished with the left arm, the right as support, but when he has the crab in he has to adjust because his right arm can’t keep the leg in position. He adjusts, maneuvering Cerebro’s leg to his right side, trapping it in a grapevine and falling to the mat, making Cerebro deal with his bodyweight.It’s a desperation shot and it doesn’t work, as Cerebro makes it to the ropes, but from there Marvin works as quickly as he can to seal the match, knowing the clock is running, and he uses his weak arm as a feint twice – once to land an apron piledriver, and again to score a left-arm lariat that nearly wins the match. The package tombstone that follows it does, the strength necessary to trap Cerebro in it perhaps incongruous to the agony he’s experienced over the course of the past two falls, but adrenaline is adrenaline, baby, and as soon as the bell rings he’s back to selling the arm.

It’s an incredible performance, to the extent that you’d almost call it “heroic” except for, you know, Ricky Marvin is not the hero of this story. That’d be Dr. Cerebro, whose stoicism in the face of having his perfectly gelled hair shaved to the tune of the montage theme from The Karate Kid is admirable – with or without help, Marvin survived some of his best shots and kept coming back. While it’s not among my favorite matches we’ve covered on BIG EGG, it’s the sort of thing that keeps both wrestlers, Marvin especially, high on my list of guys to do a deep dive on sometime in the future, and that ain’t nothing.

Rating: *** & 3/4