CMLL has a show today, you might have heard. It’s their 83rd Anniversary show tonight in Arena Mexico. Dragon Lee and La Mascara wager their masks in the main event, Super Crazy and Rey Bucanero gamble their hairs, and the Sky team and Los Guerreros fight for the CMLL World Trios Championship. I wrote a (probably too) extensive preview over on Voices of Wrestling earlier this week, if you’ve missed any of the build up.
There is no official live video of the show tonight. CMLL, in a change of policy, will instead only upload the complete show on YouTube at 8AM tomorrow morning. I have not seen the price of the show posted anywhere, and expect to not find out until it’s posted for purchase (only to later to find they mentioned it in a Facebook comment or something.) You can probably avoid spoilers pretty easily if you get off the internet for the night, or you can find out the results without really seeing what’s happening if you stick around social media instead. I’m crossing my fingers people will be posting live video on Periscope tonight and will be RT-ing on Twitter if find working ones; CMLL doesn’t stop people from posting video, and live streams have been common on bigger shows, though it’s no guarantee.
My plan is to start watching the show as soon as it gets posted, and a recap should appear tomorrow afternoon. I think everyone is going to be watching at slightly different times, which is going to make it quite a bit less fun.
Dragon Lee & Rey Bucanero are the favorites in their matches. The hair match is more up in the air, because it doesn’t matter as much and really should be more about who would be a better opponent for someone else to come along and beat them. Still, Bucanero has taken the worst of it so far and is the home promotion guy facing a guy who was representing the promotion CMLL appears to no longer be working with. The math is not in Super Crazy’s favor. (What is and isn’t say about Crazy and Elite in post match interviews will be interesting.)
I’d be shocked if Dragon Lee lost. Like Psycho Clown, it would generally seem a dumb idea for his career to lose his mask at this point, and their opponents wouldn’t be the best choices to win. (Outside Atlantis, who would be a good choice to win? Anyone at the top wouldn’t get much out of it, and it’d be only about how much they could draw. Someone like Hechicero or Cavernario to make them forever?) La Mascara has turned up his performance and I have much more hope now than when it started. It’ll probably be an incredible scene postmatch if his family’s involved. We might even see Super Porky.
The trios title change is the least clear outcome of the actually important matches. Both apuesta matches will end with tecnicos winning, which may mean a rudo win for balance. On the other hand, getting Mistico over has been a priority on these shows and these title matches, and it’s gotta be tempting to have him win again in hopes of getting that reaction. It’s far from sure it’s going to happen, but it hasn’t stopped CMLL before.
Tickets have picked up a bit a little bit since Wednesday
Still plenty of blues (third row seats if you want to go alone!), but pretty good considering this is still most of the tickets sold on the day of the show. This doesn’t include the upper sections, which are really the difference between 8000 and 16000, but these are the most expensive tickets.
There’s plenty of previews of the show. CultIcon breaks down the show. Even CMLL’s own preview is a little confused as to how this match ended up La Mascara versus Dragon Lee and not La Mascara versus Rush. In an interview with ESTO, Mistico says he’s rooting for his brother, but knows Dragon Lee will be okay if he loses because he’s handsome and talented. That same interview has Valiente says he believes the Sky Team would actually stay together and challenge for a rematch should they lose tonight, despite rumors otherwise. CMLL took Marco Corleone, Valiente, Princesa Sugehit and Stuka Jr. on the Turiluchas bus to a park to promote the show. Sugehit continues to push for the mask match with Zeuxis. Stuka continues to want the title match and apuesta match with Ultimo Guerrero. These guys are so rarely given stories that they never let go to the ones they get. La Aficion has a generic preview. So does ESTO. 24-Horas has quick quotes with both. Record, who appeared to have a deal with AAA to cover TripleMania, has nothing about the CMLL show.
La Sombra is rooting for La Mascara but wishes good things for his ‘godson’ Dragon Lee. People have read Sombra saying “I am going with La Mascara” as a literal statement. NXT is off this weekend, so it’s not impossible for Sombra to be at the show, but I don’t think it’d be a great idea for him to be in front of the crowd.
That would be a change. Elite itself didn’t even say it wasn’t having a show this week, but changed their Facebook header to remove the “Todos Los Domingos” banner. Priorities! Elite switching to Sundays, then being kicked out right back out of Sundays, makes me wonder if Elite had decided the weekday shows were the problem but CMLL was no longer willing to give up Sundays, and that was the breaking point. I would not expect Elite to return to Wednesday or Thursday if they’re running Gimnasio Juan de la Barrera, which isn’t confirmed but is everyone’s working theory. Friday, Saturday and Sunday make the most sense, and Friday most of all because their indies guys are usually booked elsewhere on Saturday and Sunday. AAA’s TV tapings there (which would be a question going forward) have usually been on Fridays. TxT was usually on Saturdays.
Sololuchas is selling tickets for the AAA in Japan show, and says “15” wrestlers will be coming, which is lower (and a bit more saner) than the 20 mentioned previously.
If you don’t know the deal with CMLL Friday by now: no live video, VOD on YouTube at 8am central the next day, we have no idea what it’ll cost.
Elite is still listed on the Azteca schedule despite not taping anything (and not answer questions.) Really, if they keep the time slot, it’s a pretty good sign for their future, but they can’t expect to keep it forever if they don’t get new episodes taped.
Lucha Underground returns this week. They’re airing last season’s Ultima Lucha leading up to the new episode. Like last year, it appears El Rey will only repeat the show once, directly after it airs. You’ll need to check your on-demand service or iTunes if you want to see it after that point.
I listened to Lee & Casas on the internet radio feed. They were interviewing fans during it, so it was tough to get a total sense of the match, but it seemed to be the usual quick first two falls and a longer third fall. Maybe around 10 minutes total, Dragon Lee winning with the German suplex.
If you recall, La Sombra lost his title to Ultimo Guerrero in Puebla before his mask mask. That seemed totally absurd to me in the moment, but later made more sense when it turned out Sombra was leaving and they were just trying to get his title off him as quietly as they could. If you think Dragon Lee might also be losing his mask on Friday before going to WWE, you should note CMLL passed up the opportunity to do the same with his title.
El Grafico interviews Dragon Lee about the Anniversary show, as does MedioTiempo. Mas Lucha has interviews with both La Mascara and Dragon Lee, on opposite sides of Arena Mexico. The fun thing about these last two weeks is it’s really easy to figure out which newspapers have alliances with which promotions, and which ones just cover everyone.
Dorian Roldan & Hijo del Fantamsa are headed to Colombia today for a panel discussion about lucha libre. AAA had a couple shows in Colombia last year and have said they’d like to do more.
Gran Metalik/Mascara Dorada won his CWC quarterfinal over Akira Tozawa, as shown last night on the WWE Network. He advances to the final to winner of the Zack Sabre Jr. versus Noam Dar match, which has already been taped and will air as part of next week’s broadcast. That semifinal, and the final, will air live on September 14th as part of a two hour final. I’m skeptical Dorada will win – the winner will likely start wrestling full time on RAW the following Monday, and Dorada still getting booked into October suggests he’s not leaving for WWE full time quite yet – but he’s done very well for himself and his match with Tozawa is something you should go out of your way to see.
This week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter says Lucha Underground has reached out to Alberto el Patron (or an intermediary) about coming back to Season 4, but also says they’ll deny it. I’ve been skeptical they would, so I’m wrong to start, but I’m not sure it’d be a big difference maker. I do think he’d get a big reaction in the Temple, though much more as a heel given the way he left and his public persona since, but it’s not clear he’d be a big factor in the ratings or making deals (he didn’t appear to be last time) above what they already have in Misterio. The return on investment isn’t obvious there. Lucha Underground’s finances also seem heavily illogical from the outside too, so maybe there’s some way it’d make sense to them that just doesn’t make sense to me.
The only way Alberto is not going to AAA, on a schedule similar to what we’ve seen with Rey this year, is if Elite pays him more to go there. If Elite has broken up with CMLL and has top places to fill, then they should obviously be going hard after Alberto. There’s been rumors about Alberto ending up Elite since June (and MLW said that’s when Alberto indicated he was opting out.)
In general, I think Alberto’s best move would be to show up as a surprise somewhere, or with a big angle right away. When people start asking him “What just happened?”, it’d be better for him if they were asking that about a wrestling angle, and not about his suspension or his WWE run entirely.
The WON says Dragon Lee versus Kamaitachi is the plan on the 09/30 PPV. I wish Dragon Lee got a strong introduction before he appears on PPV (and maybe he still will someway), but I also think those guys are capable of getting over cold if they wrestle like they did in CMLL & NJPW.
Also, the Crash is said to be trying to get Ricochet or Flamita as Mascara Dorada’s opponent on their 09/24 show, though no one’s quite sure about the politics of Lucha Underground and CMLL guys on the same show. (Elite seemed to get away with it.) I would also suggest that Fenix is a possibility as well, but there’s probably even more things to work out for that to happen (enough so that they’d probably leave it as an unknown until the match happens if it’s him.) When I saw the match listed as a Dream Match, I thought back to the Fenix interview that LigerFever translated, where Fenix specifically named Mascara Dorada as one of the people he’d pick for a dream match.
What happened: Volador & UG picked up 3 points. I assume, I turned the show off before the scoreboard in annoyance about how little sense it makes. Edgar played into the Rush finish again, which is probably more about one referee doing almost all the Liga Elite matches than a storyline, but I guess we see.
What was good: I liked the Rush/UG main event, and the others just didn’t click for me.
Where can I watch it: Some of it’s on my channel, most of it’s in the unofficial Liga Elite channel.Read More
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