Day: January 22, 2003

At least it wasn’t Benoit and Angle beating Rey and Ultimo. I would have about died. I think it’d take Ultimo and Rey making a few more trips to Japan – probably in higher profile places than Tory and The PPV That Made The WWE Look Good – for them to get the Observer love. I’m more concerned about keeping them together another year.

While there’s plenty of Wrestler A + Wrestler B possible combos that would rule, there’s not one out there right now as a logical challenger. And since you’d like to have something for them to do, and it’s tempting to put them against each other, I wonder if they’ll start thinking about a turn. Then again, it’s not like we were thinking about Damien/Halloween or Shocker/Vampiro last Spring, so who knows what’s around the corner. I’m probably over thinking it.

Anyway, considering the visbility of CMLL (from discussion) appears to be no better than seventh in the world (I’m just making this up with little thought, but WWE, AJ, NJ, NOAH, ZERO, TNA probably all are ahead), getting the votes they did get is a pretty neat achievment.

It sounds like Dragon/Dragon vs Ultimo/Rey was the best possible matchup of the tour, so at least we get this. You know, the only reason they kept losing all those against the Ultimo/anyone combos had to be because it was only one fall. They were totally out of their element, that’s all. I was heartened to see this result (from the Toryumon USA site): “5. Ultimo Dragon (12:20-DQ by groin attack) Rey Buccanero” – he’s keeping it real! I wonder how much of Rey’s hair will be grown back in by the time we see him again.

Hooligan may have had that one TV match, but Sangre made PPV in ’01, so I think there’s a “one match on TV” limit. Either that, or there all sorts of stable and alliances going on between people we never see on TV. Let us not even speak of the fued between Sicodelico and Alan Stone.

Oh yea, Lucha TV time is up – we’ve got split feeds for both shows this week. Anyone who can correctly predict exactly what matches will air this Sunday before the broadcast deserves some sort of an award.

No CMLL TV to talk about this week, but we have a few ends and odds to hit upon.

They wuz robbed: Rey and Ultimo finished second in the Tag Team of the Year catagory in the Wrestling Observer Awards. They were beaten out by Eddie and Chavo Guerrero, who beat the GdI by 2 (yes, two) points. Ultimo and Bucky even got the most first place votes, but apparently Los
Guerreros received a lot more second and third place votes. This is the second consecutive year the GdI finished in the runner-up slot (last year they were beat out by Kojima and Tenzan).

My expert analysis: this sucks, but it’s not surprising. Pretty much everyone gets Smackdown, but how many people get lucha television, and how many actually follow it? I’m guessing a lot less. If everyone knew about the GdI, they’d win easily. I can’t imagine anyone voting Los Guerreros over the GdI, since Rey and Ultimo were around all year having great matches, and I’d stack their best matches over Eddie and Chavo’s.

You know, I didn’t vote this year, but man, I wish I had now.

GdI in Japan:The only available match from the best tag team in the world is on a new Toryumon tape spotlighting Ultimo Dragon’s comeback. The match is Ultimo Dragon & Dragon Kid vs. Ultimo & Rey from 12/20/02. Looks like we only see 15 of about 19 minutes. No word if other Toryumon matches will see the light of day. Of course, their Wrestle-2 match will be readily available, but the rest of the card was junk. Anyone making a comp tape?

End Notes: Hooligan, Ramstein, and Sangre Azteca have formed a stable called “La Alianza” (I probably butchered that spelling), which translates to the “Alliance.” Sounds like a fun group, but they need a better name.

“We’ve formed an Alliance.”
“What are you called?”
“The Alliance.”

You know? And we all know what happened to the last group calling themselves the Alliance.

And isn’t Hooligan disqualified since we saw him wrestle a full match on TV? Isn’t that like having Goldberg in the JOB Squad?