CMLL CAN52 #106, taped 12/02, aired 12/08
I’m sure it works out better for CMLL financially to run all their shows at Arena Mexico for this stretch, rather than rent out some place else. Long term, that might not be so much the case – it’s impossible to watch these shows without thinking about how empty the building looks. It’s the same size crowds which were bad for Arena Coliseo DF, but a 1/3rd filled building there is maybe a 1/9 filled building here. The TV gives you the impression you’re watching promotion in a lot trouble. In reality, things seem to be going better than that, but you wouldn’t know it.
They should’ve moved these shows to whatever 1000-2000 seat building they could get. Or they should’ve not made these shows the TV tapings, and taped from Arena Neza or anywhere else. This setup hurts the matches on this show and probably will continue to hurt the other Sunday shows for the rest of these tapings. A good match loses somehing if there’s no one around to react to it.
This setting really hurt the women’s title match. It was a good match, maybe very good, but when the noise from the people who are actually interested in the match is drowned out by the vacuum of emptiness that was Arena Mexico on this night, it loses some of it’s a potential. Wrestling, lucha libre, is all about getting people to react and working off those reactions. When your eyes and ears are drawn to the lack of reaction, it hurts even a well worked match. This match would’ve been much more memorable in front of a crowd that wasn’t outnumbered 10 to 1 by empty seats.
Since we’ve now convincingly proven Marcela and Amapola can have fun matches against each other, it’s time to move on to something else. It’s actually past time to the Dark Angel title match. Even if it’s not a title change, they need to move Sarah back into the title picture before people completely give up on it.
Main event had absolutely nothing to do with the main event of the End of the Year show five days later except the same people being involved. They didn’t tease tension, they didn’t set up anything to build to the changed lineup. Maybe they only decided it after they saw the crowd.
