CMLL suspensions reason for no tag title match?, Monterrey

Sin Cara, Cibernetico, Argos and Argenis defeated the Psycho Circus and Averno in Arena Coliseo Monterrey. Two questions: when Psycho Clown wins the AAA heavyweight championship, will that finally get the AAA house show booker to use the Psycho Circus as tecnicos? and what are going to call “La Mistica” when he gets a new name? Ultimo Ninja won the Copa Hector Garza in the semimain.

LA Park defeated Hernandez and Dr. Wagner Jr. in Arena Solidaridad. Attendance was not great, but fairly blamed on the venue of the show changing two days before it happened (at the direction of local authorities.)

It appears Rush, La Mascara, Negro Casas and Mr. Niebla (or some members of that foursome) were pulled from Friday’s show as punishment for their out of control brawl this Friday. This is more likely to be a CMLL internal suspension rather than a Mexico City commission one, and something that would allow them to continue their roles on En Busca de un Idolo and on spot shows will not working matches in Arena Mexico. CMLL routinely sends their internal recording of the Friday night main events – the matches which don’t air on Terra – to Tercera Caida to use on their program, but Tercera Caida was only able to show photos of last Friday’s nights weapon laden brawl. (It’ll likely be off Fox’s show as well.) CMLL’s done this before: with the LA Park/Dr. Wagner Jr. crazy brawl that ended up with both guys out of the company to this day, and a Volador/Niebla singles match in Puebla where a Volador chair shot to the back of Niebla’s head produced a lot of blood plus suspensions for both men. CMLL will allow some very limited usage of objects, but the photos of the main event indicated it was much out of the ordinary.

On their Facebook, CMLL said the tag team match was challenged for but never agreed upon. That’s weird fiction, since there was definitely a poster on CMLL’s site listing that as the main event for tomorrow’s show. It’s unclear how long any suspension would last; two weeks is normal, but this is a main event program and they may not want to keep it cold that long.

This is an over the top punishment that’s counter productive – and also why a full scale AAA/CMLL feud could never work without one of the promotions completely changing their mindset. About 70% of AAA luchadors would be suspended at any given moment under CMLL rules. We’d never see the Mexican Powers ever again! (It’s not an all bad idea.)

This week’s Observer raves about Flamita – that’s actually the important part, Flamita is awesome now – and has this line

AAA wanted him and was going to give him a mega push with the Octagon Jr. gimmick, but he said that he likes working in Japan and wants to stick with Dragon Gate.

I was very much struggling to figure out in what honest timeline this could actually be true. The best fitting scenario I could come up with was Flamita got the offer when he and Rocky Lobo returned home in December. Flamita had been trios champion, likely knew he had another lengthy run coming up, and generally knew Dragon Gate was really high on him.. Meanwhile, AAA previously had no particular interest in using him outside of an interchangeably opener, had barely moved most of his peers up the card, and was now offering him a character that had failed already. That probably wasn’t a hard decision, if it even it happened. Octagon was agitating to get out of AAA by that point, so it wasn’t a great situation to even debut an Octagon Jr. at that point – and AAA couldn’t have been really that interested in the Octagon Jr. character since they never gave it to anyone else.

Flamita was stuck in an extremely part time role once Fusion ended; he had to hustle for other jobs, and found a pretty good one. Flamita without Dragon Gate would be teaming with Ludxor and Venum as a third New Space Cadet member in the best case scenario. At least AAA would’ve used Flamita; please don’t forget CMLL had him in their school and didn’t graduate him to the main roster. This is a case where both promotions had someone talented and didn’t see that talent or didn’t get it out of them. The credit should go to Dragon Gate for seeing it – and helping him improve, because he’s gone a long way in six months (which again would not be expected in AAA or CMLL) – and for Flamita for making the move.

That’s was really two unfortunate paragraphs of me fighting against reality distortion field around AAA in the Wrestling Observer* , but I’m also concerned for the next group of Flamitas to come thru. If you have seen indy names getting mentioned as having good matches here, you should figure AAA’s probably told someone they’re very interested in bringing them in. That’s great on the surface, more work for talented luchadors is a great thing, but having a plan on how to develop and use them. Wrestlers can get over by having good matches, but if they have good matches for months and that doesn’t take them anywhere, then it kills whatever value they have. Having a plan has got to be more than throwing a new mask on them – are Venum & Ludxor much more over than Lucky Boy and Nino de Ebano? – or giving them a new t-shirt – Daga was definitely less over for after being a Perros del Mal henchman. Heck, AAA’s done scarcely more with Fantasma than CMLL did, and CMLL absolutely wasted Fantasma his last few years there. Flamita, and Eita and his crew, got over because Dragon Gate had plan for them on Day 1 of their (re)debut; they didn’t let them linger around on shows for months while waiting for an idea or a major card to come up.

Don’t brag about your plans to bring in a whole bunch of great guys. AAA has a whole bunch of great guys already! Brag about your plans to get the guys over.

I could repeat this section and use “En Busca de un Idolo” in the same way. I much would prefer CMLL had a plan to get X, Y and Z young luchador over and just booked their tournament to go that long instead of leaving it up to the internet to book for them. The unscriptedness of the format is making it more interesting now, but how much is that going to help them two months after the tournament is over and they’re back to marking time in Tuesday segundas?

* – but also it’s just AAA trying to take some credit for Flamtia. They don’t get to take credit for Flamita. Super Crazy can. CIMA can. I’d even let DTU do it, though he probably should’ve gotten more out of him and genuinely seems to be wasting him in the upcoming tour with the played out multiman matches.

Back to actual news

Last night’s Tercera Caida included interviews with Drastick Boy and Kaleth, which sounded like Flamita might be defending the Brave Gate title in a trios match on DTU’s yet to be announced Arena Aficion card.

According to Enrique Yniesta, who has official ties to AAA but just generally Knows Things, Aerostar’s booking in the UK is a fake. That means he’ll be in the Tuxtla Guiterrez six way match, and we’ll all freak out about Axel lasting longer than him in the match that night.

CMLL promotes the Peste Negra defending the National Trios Championship today in Puebla. They don’t bother to mention who’s challenging them. I like you Puebla fans more than CMLL does, so I’ll tell you they revealed in their Facebook comments that it’ll be Atlantis, Valiente and Mascara Dorada. Dorada missed last week’s Puebla bullring show and makes up for it here by replacing the injured Mistico. This is the last show of the month long special Thursday shows at the Puebla fair.

Last’s night Tercera Caida had Averno is an in studio guest. They brought up the luchadora sorpresas on Chiapas, and Averno insisted he had not signed a contract with AAA. That may be technically true at the moment. He did not seem to be a big fan of Mistico II.

Oro Jr. talks up his feud with Metalico – he doesn’t want to feud, but he’ll fight Metalico is he has to. The only problem here is Oro Jr.’s forgotten which tournament he dove into Metailico. He thinks it was the Copa Jr., it was the En Busca de un Idolo qualifying tournament. Even if Oro Jr. actually said that (and he probably didn’t; quotes in these articles are generally worked), the interviewer should’ve known enough to fix it.

Rob has highlights of late April, early May 2001.

LuchaWorld has a recap of this past week’s En Busca de un Idolo matches and KrisZ’s news update.

Chessman’s under the impression his title match against Blue Demon will be 06/07 in Orizaba.

Friday night’s CMLL show will include a male luchador dance/strip number in honor of Mother’s Day.

Rafaga speaks about almost winning the Occidente Heavyweight Championship. He feels Diamante Azul’s superior size was a big issue and will study to find an effective hold to counter someone of a bigger size before they have a rematch. (These quotes are real.)

Demus is not challenged by the rookie tecnicos and would prefer to fight international luchadors or heavyweights. You had that chance! You blew it! (No surprise any one wants out of the CMLL minis division.) He’d like to go New Japan, but they’re not interested in someone of his size, but he’s hopeful someone else in Japan would use him.

Long bio of Quintana Roo luachador Silueta del Caribe.

Pequeno Cobra talks about his mask match with Pequeno Joker. It’s a Joker Promociones show, I don’t like Cobra’s odds.