Day: March 21, 2018

CMLL (TUE) 03/20/2018 Arena México
1) Acero & Aéreo DQ Pequeño Olímpico & Pequeño Violencia 
Violencia replaced Acero
2) Cancerbero, Raziel, Universo 2000 Jr. b Oro Jr., Sensei, Star Jr. 
Rudos took 2/3. Universo 2000 Jr. used a martillo negro on Star Jr and Star Jr. was stretchered out.
3) Amapola, Dalys, Zeuxis b Kaho Kobayashi, Marcela, Princesa Sugehit 
Rudas took 2/3.
4) Rey Bucanero b Ephesto [lightning] 
Bucanero submitted Ephesto to his upside down STF.
5) Guerrero Maya Jr., Rey Cometa, Stuka Jr. b Johnny Idol, Kawato San, Okumura 
tecnicos took 1/3.
6) Mistico, Soberano Jr., Volador Jr. DQ Cavernario, Felino, Mr. Niebla 
Cavernario unmasked Soberano, setting up a singles match next week.

The main event was fine. Volador was amused by Mr. Niebla falling off the apron and losing the fall by countout. (It was a one man comedy spot.) Soberano & Cavernario was set up as non-title match.

Okumura says he’s going get Kawato in his Eje del Mal faction. Okumura also points out he, Rey Bucanero and Lyger are in Los Angeles last this weekend. Lyger’s booked for the NJPW show, which still has no official lineup. I wonder if Rey Bucanero & Okumura are booked there as well.

CMLL’s press conference announced a bunch of shows for the month of April.

• The Copa Nueva Valores returns on Tuesday shows next month. The sometimes annual tournament was won by Soberano Jr. last year. He beat Sanson, part of their many big matches in 2017. This year’s tournament will be held on April 3 & 10th (eight man ciberneticos) with a final on April 17th. The 16 luchadors involved: Magia Blanca, Flyer, Maquiavelo, Audaz, Grako, Templario, Yago, Sangre Imeprial, Coyote, George Kebrada, Retro, Principe Diamante, Principe Daniel (GDL), Reycko (GDL), Super Astro Jr. (debut), Fugaz (GDL)
  • Both Fugaz & Reycko were part of last year’s CMLL Minis tournament to determine a new champion.
• April 7th is the 75th Anniversary of Arena Coliseo. Atlantis, Mascara 2000, Negro Casas, Blue Panther, Fuerza Guerrera, Super Astro, Solar and Satanico will all be there and wrestling in a match. The show will air on 52MX.
  • I’ll attempt to get this show if it doesn’t just stream
• April 27th is the 62th Anniversary of Arena Mexico. They’re honoring the building, not the promotion on this one. Nothing yet announced.
• April 29th (in Arena Mexico) & April 30th (in Arena Puebla) will be Kids Day shows. It’s the first time they’re running official Kids Day shows in Arena Puebla. Again, nothing announced, but I would expect the Microstars to be involved. The 04/29 show is a Sunday show, which is not usually streamed except for some special shows like this one.

There’s no mention of Gran Alternativa, so that must not be happening in the next month.

CMLL’s book will be presented today at the Mexico national anthropological school for a panel discussion.

Today is the third anniversary of Perro Aguayo Jr.’s death. Aguayo broke three vertebra in his spine during a match with Maniak (TJP), Extreme Tiger and Rey Mysterio on a The Crash in Tijuana. The injury is believed to occur when he fell out of the ring and his neck hit an unpadded edge of the ring apron. Aguayo made it back in the ring and appeared to lose consciousness while leaning on the ropes for Mysterio’s 619 kick. Perro was taken to the hospital, where a stroke and then a heart attack caused by the originally injury took his life.

MedioTiempo’s Apolo Valdes writes about how things have changed after Perro Jr.’s death – or rather, how they really haven’t. Many regularly used wrestling rings remain in poor condition, and there is not adequate medical support for many independent shows. Talk of more regulation about who can go in the ring as luchadors ended up being just talk, with lucha libre commissions either being ineffective or non-existent. There were a lot of criticism of how Perro’s medical treatment was handled at the time. It would probably be handled similarly today in most places. The Crash themselves seem to have visible medical personal waiting at shows, but that’s rare.

There will be a lot of remembering Perro Aguyao Jr. today, as there should be every March 21st. There will be shows and t-shirts in his honor. The best way lucha libre can honor Perro Aguayo Jr. is to do what they can to make sure something like his death does not happen again. From the outside, it doesn’t feel like it’s been done.

AAA will hold a mass in Perro Aguyao Jr.’s memory today in San Luis Potosi.

They’re in San Luis Potosi for tonight’s AAA TV taping, which will air 9pm CT in Mexico and 10pm Central Daylight Time. (You can find your time here.) The main event of the show will be a Copa Perros del Mal in Perro Aguayo’s memory. No names are announced. AAA simply says eight luchadors will be involved, and we presume it’ll be people who are already on the card.

The top match with people announced is a trios match with Dr. Wagner Jr., Pagano and Vampiro against Blue Demon Jr., Dave the Clown and Hijo del Dr. Wagner Junior. That match sounds awful to be honest, but it’s still worth watching to see what Demon’s up to. Demon put together a faction with himself, Hijo del Wagner and Hernandez back on the 02/09 Aguascalietnes taping and has not been seen or mentioned in six weeks. Demon seems like an obvious inclusion for the four way mask match at TripleMania but, at least for the moment, he seems to be going after the older Wagner.

The fourth match has Los Alvarados against OGT. A long time ago, in a much different promotion, La Mascara was the one who unmasked Averno. Averno seems to have remembered that in a promo this week and perhaps the match will focus on that old issue. The third match returns people who’ve been busy in a Los Angeles based wrestling promotion, with Aerostar, Drago & Hijo del Fantasma taking on Mesias, Rey Escorpion and Texano. Texano & Fantasma haven’t been seen since the mask vs hair match, and many of these wrestlers are looking for new directions following Rey de Reyes.

The actual Perros del Mal, or what’s left of them at this point, team up against Cuervo, Scoria and La Parka in the second match. The Parka Negra who helped out Lider & Aguila a couple days ago appeared to be Angel Mortal Jr., but we didn’t get a long look at him. We will tonight. The show is scheduled to open with a rematch of Mamba & Pimpinela versus Ashley & Estrella Divina match from Cuernavaca.

Australian Suicide, Bengala, Lady Shani and Hades were officially eliminated from Televisa’s reality show Reto 4 Elementos on last night’s episode, the second of the series. They were truly done in the first episode; Bengala suffered a foot injury and they were unfairly forced to go 3 versus 4 in the final challenge. I think they’re going to deal with a lot of “you made lucha libre look bad!!!” comments and it doesn’t seem fair. They were not one of the stronger teams on the show, but they were still about 10 seconds away from winning the first challenge and everything would’ve progressed differently. Suicide was doing well with everything beside the swimming, and would’ve been one of the standout athletes on that show had he stuck around. Active wrestlers tend not to do well on these reality game shows but they’re also just game shows.

AAA left those four of their lineups for the next couple of months, not knowing when they’d be done filming the show. Now that they’ve finished up quickly, it’s possible they could be added to upcoming shows. Bengala is the exception; they may not know how bad his foot injury is until they get back from Quintana Roo where the show was being taped to Mexico City. I would not expect those four to appear on tonight’s show. They may show up any time after that, or AAA may stick with their plans and keep them on the sidelines for a while.

Zona Ruda had a segment on Hades, the former Hahastary. The name change seems to be an AAA call – they’ve filed a trademark for it – but the mask design seems to be her own. She shows her drawing skills in illustrating the new mask while talking about where she comes from and her family.

Fuerza Guerrera held a press conference yesterday to announce a 40th Anniversary show on 09/30. Blue Panther, Negro Casas, Octagon, Lady Apache and Caristico are scheduled to appear. I assumed the biggest lie told this press conference was Fuerza saying the mask match with Octagon was close happening. I was wrong. Fuerza was asked about Juventud Guerrera, and Fuerza said he was unsure if his son would be able to make the show due to international commitments. On Twitter, Juventud Guerrera said his father did not invite him to the show and has not talked to him for more than a year. Juventud goes onto accuse Fuerza of trying to block him from getting work from promoters.

Impact Wrestling vs Lucha Underground @ WrestleCon on 04/06 (free show on Twitch, night show)

• Dezmond Xavier, DJZ, and Andrew Everett vs Drago, Aerostar and King Cuerno
• Sami Callihan Jeremiah Crane vs Eddie Edwards on an I Quit match
• LAX (Santana & Ortiz) (c) vs the Mack & Killshot for the Impact Tag Team Championship
• Alberto el Patron & Pentagon Jr. vs Austin Aries & Fenix – new, main event

Teaming up Impact & LU wrestlers probably will make for a better match but seems to be counter to the idea. So does calling him “Pentagon Jr.” instead of “Pentagon Dark” but I can’t imagine the legal wrangling going on.

Arolucha’s funding campaign is up to 9 investors at $51k at last check. They were at 8 investors at close to $2k, then someone placed $50K in it. $50K happens to be exactly the minimum they need to reach to get any money at all. WeFunder does not show the names of those funding the project. That amount seems like someone already involved with the company placed money in to hit the minimum. There seemed to be no chance of that happening unless someone put in a big number, there wasn’t much support for this project. Now they can talk about how they were successfully funded with TV people who’ve got better things to do than to check in on funding campaigns. For people who are looking at them, this all looks shady.

EDIT: if you hit the Investors button at the top of the WeFunder page, it does list all (nine) investors.

El Rey got around to announcing they’re reairing Season 3 about five hours before the episodes will be on. It’s a Greatest Hits bit, which sounds like they won’t be airing all 40.

The Crash says PJ Black is coming in soon.

Dragon Gate is launching it’s own video service on 04/01. The IWRG spin off promotion is not something I normally cover, but it’s primary worth noting that means the new Flamita & friends matches which turn up on free video services will probably no longer be available past that date. There has been plenty of luchador involvement in Dragon Gate (and Toryumon) over the years, which might mean this service would be worth checking out if the back catalog is deep. There’s no way of knowing for sure for now.

Philadelphia’s Beyond Wrestling announced Puma King on 04/28. CHIKARA also announced Puma as coming in, which is probably for their show the same day.

Dragon Rojo, La Seductora and Arkangel de la Muerte tried out for Master Chef. It sounds like Arkangel did the best.

Notus has a brief article of old lucha libre arena Arena Irapuato.

The Mummy and six other Titanes en el Ring wrestlers are suing the company for retirements benefits they believe were part of their contracts. The articles says this has been going on for ten years.

+LuchaTV has their latest podcast.

Lineup

CMLL (SUN) 03/25/2018 Arena Coliseo Guadalajara
1) Amperaje & Eclipse Jr. vs Destructor & Paymon
2) Cosmos & El Yaqui vs Demonio Rojo & Linterna
3) El Alteño & El Divino vs Carlo Roggi & León Blanco
4) Black Sugar, Mágico, Omar Brunetti vs Joker, Ráfaga, Sádico
5) El Rielero, Magnum, Star Black vs Frezzer, Guerrero de la Muerte, Rey Trueno

Just here to mention Rielero took Guerrero de la Muerte’s hair this past Sunday.

IWRG (SUN) 03/25/2018 Arena Naucalpan
1) Toto vs Dragón Bane
2) Dulce Luna & Lady Pink vs Lilith Dark & Star Fire
3) Emperador Azteca & Imposible vs Gallo Frances & Séptimo Dragón
4) Mike, Rafy, Teelo vs Factor, Spartan, Spector and Capo Del Norte, Capo Del Sur, El Hijo del Medico Asesino and Ovett, Trauma I, Trauma II
5) Máscara Año 2000 Jr. © vs Hijo del Alebrije [IWRG JUNIORS]
first defense (won title in September)
6) Dr. Cerebro vs Ricky Marvin [hair]

That should be a really good hair match.

All these feuding factions caused me wonder who is the current IWRG Trios champions. It’s still Los Traumas & Negro Navarro, having won the championship in April 2017. Navarro still isn’t wrestling much, which is why Ovett is a Trauma, but did wrestle last weekend.

CMLL (MON) 03/26/2018 Arena Puebla
1) Black Tiger, Centella Roja, Meyer vs Espíritu Maligno, Fuerza Chicana, Sombra Diabólika
2) Eléctrico, Millenium, Rey Samuray vs Hijo del Signo, Metálico, Policeman
3) Ángel de Oro, Esfinge, Stigma vs Máscara Año 2000, Pólvora, Universo 2000 Jr.
4) Dragón Lee, Matt Taven, Niebla Roja vs Rey Bucanero, Shocker, Terrible
5) Carístico, Gran Guerrero, Último Guerrero vs Mistico, Valiente, Volador Jr. [Relevos Increíbles]

CMLL accidentally teamed up their trios champions, but it’s probably setting up Gran Guerrero/Mistico and not and actual title defense.

Look, Terrible is teaming with Rey Bucanero & Shocker, totally ignoring their break up. I am so shocked.