Today’s another Friday with both major promotions in action, both in the same town this time. CMLL has a regular Arena Mexico show tonight, while AAA tapes in Gimnasio Juan de la Barrera.
The AAA show is clearly the bigger deal. AAA’s been hyping it as their last show in Mexico City prior to TripleMania, but the real anticipation is going to be with the Alvarado family. It would make sense for Maximo, La Mascara and others like Bobby Zavala to show up tonight, but we’ve got not firm indication they actually will. We expect AAA wants them, but we don’t know for sure if they’ll want to go, or even if they’ll want to go this soon. Rumors of people jumping to AAA in the past have been more often wrong than right, but this is a unusual situation and I really have no idea about how it’s going to turn out.
Other thing I have no idea how it’s going to turn out: AAA’s lineup. We know what they’ve announced, and we know that the only match that has stayed the same on the last two TV tapings was the La Llave de la Gloria probable dark match. AAA’s flirted with turning these shows into more of a US format, running the shows as they’ll air on TV, and that would require at least the card order changing tonight. There’s really only match that looks genuinely interesting from a match quality standpoint, an all flyers match with Drago, Aerostar, Bengala, Lanzleoth, Mascara de Bronce, Venum, the debuting Raptor and the recently turned rudo Australian Suicide. The rest of the matches are the sort of running in places matches you’d expect before a big show, with nothing much likely from storyline or match quality. It would be no great shame if those matches were changed, but would continue the trend in AAA promising matches they’re not planning to deliver and promises whatever negative effect which will come of that. (So far, we haven’t seen it.) Maybe they’ll do something to leave people thinking about TripleMania, but the Alvarado situation is going to be the thing people are talking about either way.
AAA’s show is listed as starting at 9, which means it’ll really get started past 9:30 (or about three matches into the CMLL show.) There is no live stream, though there’s sometimes fan livestreams which pop up; it’s a safe bet someone will be shooting video if Maximo or Mascara appear. They’re really backed up on TV and these tapings will not air until June 17 and June 24th.
CMLL goes on. The main event tonight is Caristico, Marco Corleone and Valiente against Pierroth, Rush and Barbaro Cavernario. Cavernario’s obviously a replacement for La Mascara. Valiente is possible one for Maximo. CMLL’s instead is billing this as a big opportunity for Barbaro, and he’s not wrong – he could bring something to that main event that his partners aren’t, and Mascara probably wouldn’t either.
The semimain returns Niebla Roja to the tecnico side for the first time since June 2011. He teams with his brother Angel de Oro & Caristico against the Guerreros in the first match based off the turn. The crowd seemed into the story last week, though a bit more into cheering Ultimo Guerrero than the actual tecnicos, and it’ll be a good sign if they react strongly tonight.
The rest of the card are random matches, though some look like they may be good. Stuka Jr. faces Polvora in the lightning match. There’s another round of Panthers versus Cats, with Rey Cometa & Sam Adonis rounding out the teams. Fuego, Star and Stigma face Misterioso, Sagrado and Virus. Virus’ actual partners are in the opener against Flyer & Oro.
The show starts at 8:30 pm CT on ClaroSports. It looks like Claro will be streaming an MMA show on the usual show link; CMLL itself is still linking to that. I do not believe I’m going to be around tonight until late, but will do my best to record and stream the show remotely.
Maximo posted a 15 minute Facebook live (captured by Box Y Lucha) where he watches his relatives play arcade games, talks up his soccer team, and eventually talks about his situation, slightly. You may want to skip ahead to about the 10 minute mark, but I think his point in walking around where he was at and showing all the family members is hanging out, is showing how united they are to build his point that they’re all for one and one for all. They take that musketeers slogan a bit seriously. The bit is a little bit played for the TV – I’m guessing they don’t wear masks (or shirts over their faces) at family gatherings normally. It seemed like Maximo was having a hard time deciding exactly what to say; he mentions lawyers so perhaps part of it was not being sure what it was OK to say.
I think they’re going with the family sticking together concept because they believe it, and because they don’t really have any stronger explanation. I do wonder how seriously they’re going to take that, at least professionally. La Mascara did showed up an the indie show on Wednesday, but Maximo wasn’t there with him. Robin, at least we knew, was still in CMLL (his match Tuesday in Guadalajara.) Do they all end up supporting Psycho Clown in AAA? Do they end up separate in workplaces but together elsewhere?
Ronnie Mendoza was part of the NXT tapings last night, back under his Raul Mendoza name from Crusierweight Classic. This is not a one time thing; my understanding is he’s reported to NXT as a new signee a while ago and that’s why he’s disappeared from Mexican rings. You can see when his Twitter turned into only WWE hashtags and mentions of people passing away to figure out when he knew he was going for sure. He’s a lot more on the WWE message than other people who’ve gone.
WWE still hasn’t acknowledged Mendoza signing as of this writing. It’s been so long in between him reporting and being acknowledged that I was a bit worried that there was a hang up, but I think now it’s more likely WWE is just waiting for more (international) names to filter in to announce them as a group. It’s probably going to be a longer road for Mendoza because he’s not coming in with the notoriety of La Sombra or Mascara Dorada, but that ultimately hasn’t seemed to help them. Hopefully it’ll go better for Mendoza. It’s possible he may end up on the 205 show, that seemed to be the original concept, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Speaking of WWE, they did finally put a date to their upcoming women’s tournament will begin taping on July 13 & 14th (with the final taped live at a later date.) We still don’t know for sure if Zeuxis or Chik Tormenta or anyone else will be included in this tournament, but WWE announced the CWC participants well in advance and could do the same here.
CMLL’s gone on & off with the Zeuxis/Sugehit feud, teasing that mask match. It’s never been clear if they’ve been holding it off because Zeuxis has an out date that keeps changing, or if someone decided to make it a match on the Anniversario show, or if CMLL is just being as flaky as usual. There’s usually a CMLL medium sized show in June, but I lean towards Zeuxis not actually having a mask loss any time soon. If she’s going to WWE (which we guess is the case but don’t know) and they wanted her unmasked, it probably would’ve happened by now since WWE would soon be promoting her as unmasked. If Zeuxis is going to WWE masked, then they’d encourage her not to lose her mask right now (or maybe lose much in general) so no match would be happening. If Zeuxis is not going to WWE at all, CMLL doesn’t have any great history of doing additional apuesta matches when not forced into it.
ESPN has a Lucha Underground piece; it looks like it was done at around C2E2, because it’s the same information given then (including the same Mundo/Mack preview we saw there.) LU is talked up as a great success, while dancing around the thorny issue of no one knowing for sure quite when/if they’ll be taping again. It’s nice press, anyway.
SuperLuchas recap of the Carpa Astro puts the turnout at 60% (so about 2,000 on a 3,200 capacity.) It’s not the sellout Alberto brags he does everywhere he goes, but 2,000 at inflated prices for a indie show is not a bad number and better than it looked in photos.
Obscure CMLL 2012/2013 rookie Genesis has resurfaced on the 06/04 Arena Azteca Budokan show with other CMLL wrestlers.
MDA says they’re running Regionmania on July 9th.
LuchaWorld has the latest news update. Alfredo notes in the recap that Nitro said he would like to be voted in as official leader of the union in December. It wasn’t clear if he wanted that role prior. Hope he doesn’t have a nice car.
RobViper has a music video of the last ever Elite TV show
CultIcon wrote his Lucha Underground 3 catchup. I can’t remember if I linked to it before but no one’s going to stop me from linking to it twice.
