For the sake of this post, I’m just reviewing the two matches as part of the VOD, offered for $3USD. I’ll add Hechicero/Cerbero to another post if/when it turns up, and I may do other matches from that show, but I wanted to write about it as the distinct product that’s been sold.
I really liked the atomicos match. It was the sort of action I was hoping for with the originally announced Ronnie/Laredo vs Kriminal Boyz match, but taken farther because of having so many people and probably helped out a little bit by spreading the more experienced guys on both sides. I don’t care for the Rush/Rowe match, which is consistent on where I’ve felt on Rush for the last few months. I would probably keep using him on my shows if I was promoter because he appeared to be the most over guy in the building, but it also felt like he was coasting. The other match, with guys wrestling like they had something to prove, is obviously going to appeal a little more to those looking to an alternative to the main promotions.
+LuchaTV handled the production of these matches, and they look at their usual high level we’re used to with them. You could put these matches on TV and they’d production looks as good or better than usual lucha libre TV. Besides the matches, there’s also highlights of the post-match interview from the night before, building up the Rowe/Rush match at Arena Mexico. The commentary, handled by Jose Manuel Guillen and Bernardo Guzman, was good.
The only criticism I’d have is more could’ve been done to identify the luchadors in the opening match. The appeal of the match was having unknowns or barely known guys get a spotlight shot, but it also meant most people didn’t know who those luchadors were before they all started moving 50km and hour. Those name and identities can and were communicated on commentary, but it still seemed like an obstacle to newer fans and non-Spanish speakers. I’m a bigger believer in a lot of information on screen than most people, but even something as small as a graphic indicating with each guy’s name on it the first time they come in goes a long way. Maybe some feature like the Rowe/Rush interview was prepared for the originally planned match and then couldn’t be done again for the replacement one, but it’s a thing to consider for the future.
I’m generally supportive of this sort of endeavors because it feels like Mexico wrestling is in the embryonic stages of this and even an interesting failure would still be pretty interesting at this point. Still, in a world with where these kind of offerings were the norm, I’d still thing the opener was worth the three dollars itself (and the Rush/Rowe match added a little bit too.) The only disappointing was not being able to spend a few more dollars to get the rest of the show.
Astrolux, Baby Star, Black Metal, Jack Evans vs Alas de Acero, Aramis, Iron Kid, Rey Horuz
Arena Naucalpan, 01/29/2017
Video: mluchatv
Winner: Team Rey Horuz (quadruple pin) Match Time: 13:50 Notes: everyone hit a top rope move at the same time at the end.
Review: [great] an insane spot fest from before the bell to the big finish. It wasn’t nonstop, there was a warmup sequence with Horuz and Jack Evans after the dive to kind of reset things, but they went at a crazy pace once the big dives started up again. Astrolux and Babe Star are both particularly tiny – the Kamikazes are not really big themselves but towered over these guys – but their small size helped them fly around great. Astrolux’s early headscissorsspot was crazy. The Kamikazes have really come along in the last couple year sand looked like the more steady team of the two trios, and Rey Horuz & Jack Evans felt like a big time battle when they did sequences. I have no idea how Horuz didn’t get knocked out again in Arena Naucalpan near the end on the German suplex spot. There were things that could’ve been cleaned up (Black Metal avoiding breaking up the Horuz pin to run to a new spot near the end frustrated me more than anything that looked a little off), but this was an amazing spectacle.
Astroluxdeath via kick to the headdouble divetriple diveRey Horuz lived
Rush vs Ray Rowe
Arena Naucalpan, 01/29/2017
Video: mluchatv
Winner: Rush (Rush Driver) Match Time: 12:49
Review: [ok] An alright match but nothing to get too excited about, never getting to a high level. It was a long stretch for Rowe with Rush playing dead, a long stretch for Rush, and a back and forth ending that was technically fine but didn’t pull me in all that match. This felt like it should’ve been two big guys hitting each other hard, and the chop fight they was disappointing. It was generally a match with much loud clapping on strikes that didn’t look like close to connecting. Some of this was Rush, because Rush seemed no more into this than a miscellaneous Puebla match. Still, the match up with Matt Taven last August was much better.
the fan on the right is entertainingdeath via fan support banner
Good to find out who the national trios champions are, three days later.
I was reading CultIcon preview of today’s CMLL show, and he makes a good if alarming point: the best show on tonight’s CMLL show might be Amapola, Dalys & Zeuxis vs Silueta, Princesa Sugehit and Esterllita. It’s one of the better CMLL women’s trios possible, but it’s not something that would be notable on most Friday nights, much less the best match. Welcome to the CMLL Parejas Increíbles Tournament, where there is no hope.
CMLL’s Parejas Increíbles tournament is an annual event teaming one tecnico and one rudo. CMLL started it back in 2010, when the idea was the teams would represent wrestling homebases. Atlantis & Mascara Dorada won the first two, representing Guadalajara. CMLL’s dropped the location part of the teams, but Atlantis has since won two more. The tournament has sometimes been used as a way to set up apuesta matches for later in the year, and can be useful in that structure. The final is usually pretty good. The rest of the tournament is usually pretty frustrating. The early rounds matches have the same problems in every other CMLL one night tournament – not much time, matches built around the one team getting 90% of the offense and then losing so their other team can save their moves for later, the dumb seeding battle royal! – with the added problems of lucahdors either wrestling out of character or betraying their partners. They will be rushing thru their usual matches, so there will be some excitement on what they can work in, but it’s usually a unsatisfying experience. CMLL is surely aware of the issues with the tournament and has little inclination of fixing them, which adds to the annoyance. Unless you’re a completest CMLL fan, you should skip all of these matches and simply watch the final on 02/24.
Adding to the issues this year is CMLL pushing the Diamante Azul & Pierroth feud strong, setting up the possibility they may wrestle three matches tonight to continue their terrible rivalry. There’s not many alternatives for winners. Cavernario & Volador Jr. teaming in a final would be great no matter who they faced and they have an outside chance. Caristico & Mephisto are partners after being on opposite sides of the final last year and just had a title match, giving them the best chance of advancing out of the this bracket besides Azul & Pierroth. The five other pairs (Kraneo/Marco, Angel de Oro/Rey Bucanero, Mascara 2000/Maximo, Puma/Cometa, Panther/Tiger) are classic CMLL filler teams.
The rest of the show are normal trios matches. The women’s match was already mentioned, maybe they’ll start a title match program tonight. Atlantis, Stuka & Valiente face Rush, La Mascara and Ripper in the tercera. Ripper’s feud with Blue Panther Jr. seems to have been dropped – we’ll really know it’s dead if they don’t team up next week – and the timing seemed to come after he was critical of CMLL’s use of the Invasors on Informa. The opener is Astral’s welcome to the main division. He goes from teaming with a short man who’s not really a mini in a tag match opener against rudos who may or may not want to do things that week to teaming with a short man who’s not really a mini in a tag match opener against rudos who may or may not want to do things that week. (It’s Astral & Principe Diamante vs Raziel & Cancerbero.)
Prior to the show, Janeth Guadalupe and her band will be performing, as part of a tie up with a radio station. This probably won’t air on the stream. I’ve been in Arena Mexico when they’ve had bands before shows and few people have cared about the band (much to the band’s frustration.) Maybe it’ll go different this time? Here is a song of theirs. The real hope is it brings people to the show who might have not thought to go.
Dragon Lee faces Hiromu Takahashi on the New Beginning show in Osaka early Saturday morning if you live in North America; you’ll have about a four hour break after the end of the CMLL Claro show. You can sleep an hour or two longer if you’re only watching that match live, since it’s the semimain. (Start time for your time zone here.) NJPW has posted the preview video that’ll air before the match, which pushed their rivalry as going around the globe. I’m excited for the match, even while not really believing Dragon Lee has a chance to win.
Lucha Underground, Netflix, and roster changes
Eric Van Wagenen was on the Masks, Mats, and Mayhem show last night, around 1 hour and 6 minutes in, talking about the recent Lucha Underground big topics. As always, I’ve got some quotes about it below but you’re always better off listening to the whole thing.
Lucha Underground is coming to Netflix. It just probably won’t be there on February 15. EVW could not officially official confirm it, not wanting to pre-emept whatever press release, but talks about it as if it is a done deal on their side. Lucha Underground expects to have delivered the episodes by February 15, but doesn’t know when they’re going up. EVW didn’t completely rule out the possibility of the episodes up on the 15th, but said it’s unlikely given what he knows about both the process it takes to roll out videos and the advanced marketing Netflix usually does prior to releasing a new series.
Everyone on the show made a point of not referencing them by name, but it’s came off as they believe MLW pulled the 02/15 date out of thin air and LU sees this as spreading bad info to make the promotion look bad. I wonder if it’s possible someone else in the LU structure saw that episodes were to be delivered to Netflix by the 15th, misunderstood that as the date it would go live. I am no defender of MLW by any means, but I’d at least leave open the possibility they got fed bad info themselves rather than were intentionally putting out bad info. (Of course, that info could only be coming from people associated with LU.)
At this point, you should assume everyone – wrestlers, news sites, even Netflix Twitter folks included – are all working off the original MLW story (though they may have heard it thru other people.) Those episodes will be up but not right away.
EVW said he did not know which places would get the episodes, only that it was cleared for multiple territories. The Spanish language versions of season 1 will also be included. EVW noted the long lead up to getting this deal done – “The Netflix deal is like giving birth to an elephant…it’s taken two years” – and cited the challenge of aligning the interests of the various different pars of management. There is no Netflix & Series 3 at this point. That’s more a LU issue than a Netflix one. LU is still working on editing season 3 as we speak (based on the hints, they’re on episode 31 – hi WON readers) and Netflix is just going to want a complete season. There’s also an element of LU betting on themselves here – “We’re more optimistic about our Netflix audience than Netflix. I think Netflix is skeptical about getting into the wrestling game, but I think they’ll be pleasantly surprised.”
The other big story is the future of those who’ve left AAA. Eric Van Wagenen was as definite as you can be: “I have zero reason to think those guys [Pentagon, Fenix, Sexy Star, etc] won’t be there for Season 4. We’re planning that they’re going to be there.” EVW sees his job description in part as ‘protect Lucha Underground’, and is also used to dealing with actors and crew who have multiple contracts with different groups at once. Everyone on Lucha Underground is under Lucha Underground contracts, and still is whatever else is going on with them. “As long as they’re honoring my contracts, I don’t get into the rest of it.”
EVW noted Prince Puma/Ricochet was an exception, and one he didn’t want to comment on, but was positive about the status of everyone else. “Johnny Mundo’s still got another year with us, and we’ve got some other people we’re excited to bring in.” EVW said he didn’t know anything about the patents, and found out the same way everyone else did. (Sorry!)
EVW talked about plans to improve the communication between the LU side and the Mexico side with yet to come announcements. He also pushed the idea of being more a full time promotion, recognizing that they need to help find work for the LU luchadors when they’re not taping. “It does us no good if people are starving in between seasons…we understand people need to work year round.” EVW said it make sense to go with Dorian as taking care of things like merchandise for Lucha Underground because he does a good job with those things in Mexico. (Uh.) Finally, we got an answer to the most important LU question of all: the GIFs disappeared because the old El Rey social media guy left, and the new person is just new at this point.
AAA’s next TV taping was originally planned today, but pushed back to Saturday weeks ago. They were in Aguascalientes last night, and Angelico says they sold out. That crowd was seemed hot on the TV taping last year.
Speaking of AAA, a couple of people pointed out that TNA promoting Nicho as “Psicosis” is a potential issue, since AAA owns that name. They filed a US trademark long ago under AAA directly, and again during the early days of Lucha Underground. I think Impact would be wise to change the name they list Nicho as next week, and I have no idea what happens if they don’t – if AAA’s going to threaten people for using the Pentagon/Fenix names, they’re kind of obligated to step in here. (Plus, Impact’s working with The Crash, another reason to get involved.)
Sam Adonis is featured on BBC Mundo today, also on Vice and mentioned he’s filming something for CNN. Foreign media services love to write about the foreigner who goes to Mexico and plays the evil American, to play off immigration and other political issues. They went nuts for it when it was RJ Brewer and Lucha Libre USA – and all that media didn’t help Lucha Libre USA all that much. Hopefully Adonis and/or CMLL can get something more out of it.
Lucha Memes announced their 02/19 show will be on VOD. It’ll be the same deal as the previous show, with just two matches from the show being offered. This time, they’re going to wait until after the show, see which matches get the best reviews, and choose the two matches that way.
Tinieblas says the Alberto promotion will be in Arena Coliseo Monterrey on 05/28. He’s said they’re running Mexico City on 05/21.
I’ve done series of posts in the past deriving different sorts of records based on a year’s results. I’m going to combine some of the highlights in one post this year, just for brevity’s sake. (This could all just be called stupid database tricks.)
CMLL Appearances By Days Of The Week
Here’s the deal: Friday Arena Mexico is the show a CMLL luchador wants to be booked on. Everyone’s generally paid on the gate, that’s got the best turnout and usually the most expensive tickets. Tuesday Arena Mexico appears to be the polar opposite, with low crowd and low turnout. CMLL tends to split it up so people who work Fridays don’t work Tuesdays in that same building, so the Tuesday crew has increasingly become the dregs of the promotion, decent people CMLL doesn’t have a plan for at the moment, and a couple of names to make it not a total waste. Who’s working where the most?
Tuesday Arena Mexico: Guerrero Maya (31), Blue Panther Jr. & Blue Panther (26), Hombre Bala Jr./Drone, Fuego, Stuka (23)
Friday Arena Mexico: Volador Jr. (43), La Mascara (42), Ultimo Guerrero (39), Mistico (35), Marco Corleone (35)
Volador led Fridays last year too. Titan led Tuesday Arena Mexico, and that seems to fit the pattern of a near top tecnico who can fill a gap between the top and semimain spots and is over but isn’t given much to do on Fridays that’ll take him off the Tuesday shows.
Other tidbits
In Puebla, local star Stigma worked 33 shows. Black Tiger, who is just in Puebla, worked 31 (mostly boring) shows. Ultimo Guerrero wrestled on 29.
Esfinge worked the most Tuesday Guadalajara shows at 25. Maximo, Atlantis and Marco were right behind him at 24. Magnum (who’s in charge of programming for the arena) and Vaquero were the most of the GDL only group at 20.
Blue Panther worked the most Saturday Coliseo shows at 20. Valiente & Guerrero Maya worked 19, Hombre Bala/Drone and somehow Leono worked 18. Leono only had 47 matches, so over a 1/3rd were in this building alone.
Volador worked the most Sunday Arena Mexico shows at 23, with Maya & Marco behind him.
Jocker and Star Black, who seem like the top rudo and tecnico prospects of the moment in Guadalajara, each worked 26 Sunday Guadalajara shows (or half of ’em.)
Acero worked 22 shows Pequeno Universo worked 21 shows on the regular roster without ever getting booked on a Friday night. (That’s not changed this year.) Metatron actually worked 29 matches, but a lot of them were local Guadalajara matches.
Marco & Rush were never booked on a Saturday. Ripper worked no Sundays. Bengala, Sensei and Leono never made a Puebla trip.
Delta worked almost half his matches on Tuesday before he quit, which easily explains why he quit. (Super Halcon too, though we still don’t know if he actually quit.)
You can see other oddities, like Super Crazy only working Fridays nights, or Sharlie Rockstar only working Puebla and Fridays. 284 people worked at least one match in CMLL. If you throw all the Puebla and Guadalajara only guys, and those who only worked one show (like the 09/16 Legends show or the Arkangel tribute Coliseo show), there were 158 people who worked at least two matches for CMLL Mexico City in 2016.
Events/Matches by States
Which states are running the most shows? I dunno. These numbers are sort of bogus, since they’re driven by which locations are more likely to put up posters some place where one of us can find them. Still fun!
Location
Events
Top Luchador
Matches
Estado de México
921
Judas el Traidor
80
Coahuila
564
Antrax Jr. (Laguna)
80
Veracruz
551
Cronos (Veracruz)
76
Distrito Federal
512
Volador Jr.
123
Tamaulipas
500
Rey Ónix
58
Nuevo León
421
Mini Hator
81
Jalisco
417
Black Golden (Jalisco)
86
Chihuahua
340
Guerrero Escarlata Jr.
104
Hidalgo
272
Poético
54
Puebla
271
Black Tiger (Puebla)
49
Texas
248
Angelix
39
Durango
202
Piloto Suicida (Laguna)
45
San Luis Potosí
187
Steel Ángel
52
Baja California
176
Rey Cobra (Baja California)
44
Guerrero
159
Kid Silver (Guerrero)
51
Guanajuato
156
Black Evil
37
California
155
Rocket Boy Wilson
25
Quintana Roo
101
Caballero Galáctico
43
Guatemala
97
Rayo de Oro (Guatemala)
49
Morelos
89
Elecktro (Morelos)
30
Illinois
67
Skayde Jr.
26
Arizona
54
Psycho (Arizona)
42
Michoacán
53
Hades (Michoacán)
13
Querétaro
52
Lince (Querétaro)
21
Chiapas
48
Vértigo (Chiapas), Asgard, Lluvia de Estrellas
17
Sonora
48
Aztec
15
Oaxaca
47
Súper Águila (Oaxaca)
17
Yucatán
45
Halcón Rojo Jr.
19
Sinaloa
40
Relámpago (Sinaloa)
19
Tlaxcala
36
Merack, Juventud Azteca
10
Zacatecas
28
Serpiente India Jr.
15
Tabasco
26
Kiss
11
Colorado
19
La Puma, Zeven, Rayo Plateado
6
Nayarit
17
Loco González
10
Aguascalientes
13
Mamba/Pentagón Jr.
6
Campeche
13
Drackull, Necro Mysterio, Dr. Blood, Rayo de Plata
4
Colima
13
Ángel Star, Prodigy
5
These numbers give me many questions. I don’t have many answers. Guerrero Escarlata Jr. wrestling twice a week in Ciudad Juarez alone – not even counting any matches in El Paso! – is kind of amazing for a person who’s name I’ve never really noticed. That’s 1 out of 3 shows from the entire state. Black Golden is a non-descript on a week to week basis but seems to get himself booked twice every weekend. Rocket Boy Wilson is surely not the most prolific luchador in all of California, or even Los Angeles, but tends to work shows where full cards are actually listed on the poster (and that isn’t the norm.) Everyone who has “(state name)” probably has it because someone else is or was using the same name elsewhere, but they’re all important enough people to be booked a lot in their home area.
I’ve only included States without at least 10 events. If someone’s running in Baja California Sur on a regular basis, they’re keeping it very quiet.
AAA TV Win Loss Records
The shows that really matter for AAA are the TV ones, so the results from them might be more useful than including the spot shows and other appearances. There were 28 AAA TV tapings last year, including the Lucha World Cup shows.
Most Matches: Psycho Clown (27) – he wrestled twice sometimes, but he almost made every single TV taping. Texano was right behind him at 23, and Pentagon, Faby and Wagner had 21.
Most Wins: Faby Apache (15). Weirdly, that entire feud is at the top: Chessman & Averno had 13 each, Mary is in a group with 12.
Most Losses: Psycho Clown (19), but you knew that if you’ve been paying any attention. He’s a useful argument for wins/losses alone not mattering on getting a guy over, I guess. Daga, Wagner, Mamba and Parka are behind him.
Best Win %: Lanzeloth win the year without losing (6-0), but Faby would be the best of those with at least 10 TV matches (74%).
Wort Win%: Mamba went 3-14 for a woeful 17% winning record. Of note, Daga went 5-15.
