Month: January 2009

01/02: Mexico, IWRG hair loss

thecubsfan

CMLL (FRI) 01/02 Arena Mexico [Ovaciones]
1) Camorra & Policeman vs Astro Boy & Tony Rivera
2) Marcela, Princesa Blanca, Sahori vs Amapola, Hiroka, La Nazi
3) Ángel Azteca Jr. vs Puma King [lightning]
4) Máximo, Mictlán, Stuka Jr. vs Euforia, Nosferatu, Shigeo Okumura
5) Dragon Rojo Jr., Negro Casas, Sangre Azteca vs La Máscara, Mascara Dorada, Sagrado
6) La Sombra, Shocker, Volador Jr. vs Black Warrior, Terrible, Texano Jr.

Haven’t seen ESTO or Notimex put up their general previews. I think everyone but me is off. Including half the guys here; they’ve done a lot with Terrible and Texano the last few weeks, but it’s still different to see them in the main event. This show is mostly marking time until things start ramping up again; Mistico will probably be back next week, but I think it might be 01/16 or 01/23 until anything huge of note.

There should be some sort of definite direction out of the Blanca/Marcela stuff after this third week of teaming (and failing.) The storyline makes it a clear 2 fall match, so there should be room for a third on next week’s FSE. Lightning match is different, just because they’ve tended to be one opening card guy and one lower mid guy who occasionally makes TV, and Puma and Azteca are both almost never on TV.

Ovaciones also has a short interview with Hijo de Fantasma, who wants to win a title this year. There’s also a small bit about Perro’s promotion, saying he will announce a second show, sometime soon.

Mr. Reyes posted photos from yesterday’s Neza show with Los Perros. As many (or impossible more) than CMLL’s Mistico show last week. Very weird that a local hair vs mask match gets set up on a CMLL show (with CMLL workers involved in the match!) and gets blown off on a different promotion’s show. Building > promotion I guess.

A post on LMdLL says IWRG’s big multistage cage match ended with Dr. Cerebro taking Cerebro Negro’s hair. I always think IWRG values their own guys less than they ought to; it should be a bigger deal when one of these guys loses their hair.

By the way, el Martiente is now disabling anonymous visits. You have to log into an account to read messages. If you have an account, they’re also asking you to post to prove you’re not an inactive user. While for them this means badly translated posts as I try to stay unbanned, for you this means probably less links there from here; it doesn’t make sense to link to something not everyone can read. I’ve long doing the same for Box Y Lucha, and it’s not like either board is bad (they’re good!), it’s just trying to make the links useful for anyone who might click on them.

ESPNDeportes writes about Vampiro’s work with the Guardian Angels

In Colima, local wrestler Angel Star is now sponsored by the government as Literato, who encourages children to read (by bringing books to the ring, apparently.)

Ohtani’s Jacket watches
* Negro Navarro & the Killer Family vs Angel Azteca Jr., Brazo de Platino, Mascara Ano 2000 Jr., Shu el Guerrero from AULL 11/06
* Space Cadets versus Exoticos from 1984 UWA
* Blue Panther & Sergio el Hermoso vs Solar & Super Astro from 1987

Roberto Acosta posted. Also, Guerreros del Ring covers for 169, 170, and 171.

AAA says the next taping is 01/18 in Guanajuato. The Observer previously had 01/17, but I believe that’s just a show for a retiring referee that happens to be packed.

LuchaWorld has KrisZ’s news update

Some CMLL stats

thecubsfan

Unlike AAA, I don’t have a near complete record of CMLL TV shows, so this is just based on all matches on Coliseo and Mexico shows.

Top CMLL DF 10 Appearances (regardless of TV)
1) Último Guerrero (80)
2) Blue Panther (76)
3) Volador Jr. (75)
4) Mark Corleone (74)
5) Rey Bucanero (73)
6) Héctor Garza (71)
7) La Máscara (68)
8) Negro Casas (67)
7) Atlantis (67)
10) Dos Caras Jr. (66) Read More

CMLL FSE #124 (12/21)

thecubsfan 1 Comment

The tag title match was in that good but not great area.

taped 12/12 and 12/14/08

I think they tried too long for the singles faceoff at the end. Flash got taken out with little problem, Nosferatu went down not long after, and I guess Stuka/Euforia was supposed to be their Mistico/Averno moment. What we learned is they’re not there yet. They may get there and it certainly wasn’t for a lack of trying (this wasn’t a paint by numbers FSE blow off match for sure), but there’s just some extra tension missing.

Stuka & Flash had more “look at each other and try to figure out who’s turn this is” moments than you’d expect at this time too.

Lluvia did three moves! She did them fine, but I hope I’m not supposed to give you an opinion on her based on that. I’m just going to ignore any implication of everything else being edited out.

download show

AAA #866 (12/27)

thecubsfan 2 Comments

taped 11/30, aired 12/27

Continuning my positive outlook on life AAA:

– The opener made me remember what it felt like to watch a good match on an AAA TV show

It’s a good feeling. I like it. I’m in favor of more of it!

– Uh…

– Elegido/Pirata was over with the crowd at least. And the part of the backstage fight where Pirata was breaking the wall with Elegido’s head was fun

– The Mesias super push is good for comedy

– The Super Fly big angle and the knowledge that he’ll be fine next week is good for comedy

– I can now vote Jack Evans for booker of the year!

– Kenzo’s jacket was sweet.

– Electro’s not a bad dresser either, and him using the rolling tapatia was a nice silver lining

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Happy 5th Anniversary (celebrated)

thecubsfan 10 Comments

Blog kinda got started around here, five years ago. And the lucha recaps go back about 6 1/3rd years and the other recaps go back almost 11.5 years now but I don’t like to think too much about the time sink that represents. 1/1 seems better for a birthday anyway.

I like to think little has changed:

Anyway, we got rolling earlier this week, sorta as a test to see how it all worked, and I’d check back every couple days to see if we’ve got anything to say. If we don’t, I’ll just steal KrisZ’s news and comment on it, which should be fun.

and I guess my thinking is correct. (Sorry Kris.) I eventually got the comments working, and we’re now up to over 15,000 of those on over 3,000 posts. I’m fairly certain at least 3 of them were worthwhile.

My hope for 2009, as far as the site, is to try to be less of an island. A lot of people end up here searching for some variation of  “lucha blog”, but not many click links to get here; it’s the same sites it’s always been (and the same very old pages on some of them.) It’d helped a bit by those who implicitly reference the blog actually acknowledging it’s existence in some way, but the bigger problem is that I’m a horrible promoter; every instinct I have runs away from it, which kinda makes me a failure at actually attracting a crowd. (My standard plan goes more “be awesome – > everyone realizes you’re awesome because you’re just that awesome” probably stopped working around the 4rd grade. ) I have no idea how to actually fix this, too, but maybe 2009 is the year of figuring that puzzle out.

Thanks to Joe and Tan for pushing me in this direction. It’s been worth doing. Thanks for everyone for reading.