What happened: Volador cheated to defeat Negro Casas after Casas had done the same. Volador still wants that hair match, but Casas refuses to even discuss it.
Mascara Dorada made his first appearance in Arena Mexico in a year.
Kamaitachi also returned, losing again to Dragon Lee in the semimain. No title match was teased.
What was good: Most of the card. The first couple matches didn’t quite make the cut for me, but weren’t that far off and everything else was enjoyable. There’s no MOTYC on this show but it was one of the better Arena Mexico shows from top to bottom in a while.
CMLL (TUE) 02/02/2016Arena Coliseo Guadalajara [CMLL]
1) Akuma & Bengala COR Demonio Rojo & Mr. Trueno Akuma was listed a surprise tecnico, though he was there in the original poster and not a sub. Tecnicos took 2/3, the last when Trueno couldn’t return after an Akuma tope.
2) Mercurio, Pierrothito, Relampago b Cosmos, Shockercito, Stukita Rudos took 1/3.
3) Esfinge, Rey Cometa, Stuka Jr. b Fujin, Okumura, Raijin Tecnicos took 1/3, Stuka beating Okumura. Debuts for Fujin and Raijin.
4) Rush b Kráneo Rush beat Kraneo (and Mije), taking falls 2/3 clean.
5) Máscara Dorada, Máximo Sexy, Volador Jr. DQ Ephesto, Euforia, Mephisto Tecnicos took 1/3. Rudos dominated the first fall, but Maximo snuck in a kiss on Euforia to set up the win. Euforia fouled Maximo in the third.
Maximo & Euforia are matched up again this week, so that might be a program. Really hope Rush/Kraneo turns up. Really hope Mije is still in one piece.
Mascara Dorada’s return tour comes to Arena Mexico tonight. He teams with Mistico & Volador against Cavernario, Mephisto and Negro Casas. That match should continue the Casas/Volador issues. Volador was teasing a big surprise, while Casas had Puma & Tiger helping him out last week – neither seems involved this week, but perhaps there will be something notable at the end of the show. Dragon Lee and Kamaitachi are back at in the semimain, with Maximo, Marco, Terrible and Ultimo Guerrero rounding on the trios. The rest of the card looks solid if not extraordinary. There’s no Thunder, thankfully. There’s five Fridays after this show and before Dos Leyendas, and things will probably be advancing towards the matches for that show.
This show will air on Clarosports.com at 8:30pm CT. CMLL was previously airing their Friday shows on about a week delay. If that’s still the plan, this is the first TDN show (and then it’s a good sign it’s still airing on the internet as far as that is concerned.)
“I renounce the [Mixed Tag Championship], to me it’s worthless, I’ve had it for so many years and never have defended it, the only result is mismatched pairs will fight in an eliminator to face Pentagon and me, I’m not interested in this belt, so I will not fight anyone to defend it, I’ll gift it, end statement.”
Sexy Star later emphasized that she’s not quitting AAA. Pentagon Jr. posted a message last night along the lines of “I’ll still defend it!” and then deleted it soon after. AAA hasn’t said anything about this publicly.
The mixed tag title was supposed to be part of the two AAA TV tapings this month. The eliminator on Saturday has Fantasma & Taya vs Bengala & Fabi vs Shani & Pirata, and the winner would have faced on February 19th. The most likely outcome is Sexy Star is going to do exactly what she says, and hand over the titles to the winners – that’s about what AAA just did with the men’s tag titles.
Sexy Star’s statement doesn’t make complete sense: she seems upset they’ve never done anything with the belt but, now that they want to do something with the belt, she even more upset now and wants nothing to do with it. We don’t know that Sexy Star & Pentagon Jr. were going to lose the championships on the 19th, but that’s definitely the implication from this: Sexy was aware she was going to lose, she didn’t want to, maybe she’s even annoyed about never getting that chance to do something with the titles, and so she’ll give up the title rather take loss on screen.
If I was AAA (and assuming this isn’t some weird shoot angle), I’d be very upset with Sexy Star for airing her issues in this unprofessional manner and messing up the next two weeks of TV, to the point of wondering if this is a person you can put in any more storylines if she’s just going to blow them up. I’m not sure the actual loss was going to be that meaningful – Averno or Chessman costing Pentagon the match to build the other tag title match is the most likely AAA result and there are other ways to accomplish that – but the relationship between AAA & Sexy Star has some serious problems for this to be aired publicly.
Sexy Star is 100% correct that the AAA mixed tag belt has no value. AAA is and has done a terrible job with all their championships. They exist as something to fill out the card if they have room, but it’s nothing anyone talks about trying to win or seems concerned about when those rare title programs aren’t happening. Four of them (Mega/Heavyweight, trios, tag, mixed tag) now have had the champions giving the belts up in recent months. Taya defended her title last four months ago, which is pretty good for an AAA title. Psycho Clown won his belt in August and hasn’t ever defended it. Fantasma hasn’t defended the cruiserweight title on TV since last March, and they’ve started and stopped title feuds for it at least twice. Those three are all people AAA seems to like and wants to feature, but there’s no energy being put into the championship belts they have.
Maybe she eventually is? If Elite talked to La Jarochita about jumping from AAA, they must have talked to literally every single person in AAA. But I don’t think that’s necessarily the issue here. There’s clearly some level of turmoil going on in AAA. Konnan being removed as booker told us that (and Konnan supported Sexy Star’s decision on Twitter.) Creative changes usually led to different people being featured, and unhappiness when those changes are made. There are hints of issues beyond that going on as well, and some new level of unhappiness within AAA at on it. Sexy Star might have just been the first one act on her feelings publicly, and this seems like it may have just been the tip of an iceberg.
The LA Times has a nice article about Lucha Underground. There are spoilers (or at least there are if you know what to look for) and Vampiro makes an appearance as unidentified man in black. Of note, it’s said their most viewed show had 250,000 viewers. No El Rey airing has ever reached that number. Is that a El Rey + Unimas number? Is that just Unimas? (Both would suggest the Unimas viewership was lower than figured; the guess was 250-300K as an average not a peak.) Is that – like calling AAA “Asistencia Asesoria y Administracion” – just something randomly plucked from the internet? I dunno.
Magno has been released from his WWE/NXT deal. He always seemed like a long shot given his age, and there was the weirdness of him wrestling under his mask while they were announcing him under what appeared to be his real name. He rarely was used on their live events, only turning up recently after being there for months. WWE seems to have a “half Noah” policy where they only one of each variety of diversity in NXT at a time, so Sombra coming aboard probably was the beginning of the end for Magno. He’ll probably resume main eventing shows in Ciudad Juarez should be want to continue wrestling. (Although, someone else has been using the Magno name there of late.)
This is the stupidly most important story of the day to me: remember when I was posting ancient Guadalajara results, and I was completely confused by this weird match type called relevos uruguayos? It’s a 2v2 match one person being listed as a wild card, but they never explained the rules or why it’s named after Uruguay. Well, Arena Jalisco is running an honest to goodness relevos uruguayos match this weekend! They even explained the rules: whoever wins the first fall gets the wildcard on their team for the next two falls. That makes the first fall really important! I still don’t know why Uruguay but I at least have part of the mystery solved.
