tonight’s Arena Mexico show is canceled

Various lucha reporters on twitter – Apolo Valdes, Enrique Yniesta, the Tercera Caida account – are stating tonight’s CMLL show at Arena Mexico has been canceled. The lineup would’ve been:

CMLL (FRI) 07/27/2012 Arena Mexico
1) Bengala & Leono vs Apocalipsis & Inquisidor
2) Hombre Bala Jr., Sensei, Super Halcon Jr. vs Cancerbero, Raziel, Skándalo
3) Eléctrico vs Demus 3:16 [lightning]
4) Diamante, Fuego, Triton vs Hijo del Signo, Misterioso Jr., Vangelis
5) La Sombra, Máscara Dorada, Shocker vs Mr. Niebla, Rey Bucanero, Terrible
6) Atlantis, Diamante Azul, Titán vs Dragón Rojo Jr., Negro Casas, Último Guerrero

The cancellation has no direct relationship to CMLL. There’s a 24 hour protest (Yo Soy 132) blockade taking place in front of the nearby headquarters of the Televisa network. In the recent election, Televisa was accused of using it’s overwhelming domination of Mexican TV to promote the eventually presidential winner thru it’s news coverage while  downplaying opposition or ignoring criticism. Televisa denies all of this. The evidence seems to point in the protesters favor (and Televisa is apparently not covering the protest in front of it’s offices.) You can read more about the protest here.

Arena Mexico is located two blocks away from Televisa’s offices. It’s close enough that Televisa uses Arena Mexico for parking (so much so that there have been occasional rumors over the years of Televisa buying Arena Mexico just for that parking lot.) It sounds like the arena is still accessible, but the police have closed off streets in the area to control the crowd. A lot of CMLL’s fans are literally walk up fans who wouldn’t be driving, but it’s possible someone decided they just didn’t want to add another 5 to 8,000 people to the scene.

This particular show has a lineup which could’ve produced some really fun matches, but does not seem like a critical show to the stories CMLL has been telling. Missing last week’s show would’ve been bad, because they wouldn’t be able to do the Terrible/Rush angle in front of their largest audience for another month. Missing next week’s show would’ve been tragic, screwing up a month worth’s of build to the new Mistico debut. The biggest thing that looked in the cards for tonight’s show is maybe Atlantis & Titan beating the Guerreros again and setting up a tag team title match in the near future.

It’s exceptionally rare for CMLL to cancel shows. CMLL hasn’t actually said anything put out anything themselves, but they have let the press know the show’s canceled. The last CMLL canceled shows were during the H1N1 epidemic in late April and early May 2009, and you have to go very far back to find ones before those.

This  is a 24 hour protest, so it should not affect any other show. CMLL’s not back in Arena Mexico until Tuesday. It will have no effect on CMLL’s television coverage this weekend, but it leaves the CMLL shows on Televisa and Fox Sports without new matches for next weekend. They could eliminate the one week delay between taping and airing, they could air matches from Puebla (pre-empted on TVC Deportes due to the Olympics) or they could just air old material. It’ll probably be the last option.

Update:

La funciòn de este viernes 27 de julio,serà cancelada para seguridad de toda nuestra aficiòn.Por su comprensiòn.Gracias

— Lucha Libre CMLL (@CMLL_OFICIAL) July 27, 2012