Lucha Capital debuts tonight, Ultima Lucha Cuatro begins tonight, also some CMLL stuff

CMLL (TUE) 10/30/2018 Arena México [CMLL, Lucha Central]
1) Shockercito & Stukita b Pequeño Nitro & Pequeño Olímpico 
2) La Guerrera, Lluvia, Marcela b La Comandante, La Seductora, Tiffany 
tecnicos took 1/3
3) Okumura b Stigma [lightning] 
4) Dragón Rojo Jr., Misterioso Jr., Sagrado b Drone, Pegasso, Tritón 
rudos took 1/3
5) Felino, Negro Casas, Nitro b Black Panther, Blue Panther Jr., Rey Cometa 
Nitro replaced Shocker. Rudos took 2/3.
6) Niebla Roja, Titán, Valiente b Cuatrero, Forastero, Sansón 
Titan beat Cuatrero to set up a title match.

Promos include Cuatrero & Titan agreeing to next week’s title match and Okumura talking about his singles win. They’ve cut these promos down to just the lightning match winner and whatever feud is going on, if CMLL is doing one. And they’re no longer doing them in Puebla. Cuatrero & Titan should be good next week; it sounds like itw as the best match tonight.

Nitro replacing Shocker seems to be happening a lot. It’s more concerning on a human level than a match level given Shocker’s admitted addiction battles, but he seems to be working stand up comedy appearance and that’s probably why he’s missing these matches. Nitro, as head of the CMLL union, getting all the extra bookings is a bit interesting. On the other hand, if Nitro also has to be the standby guy on all the shows he’s not working, that’s a relief to others.

CMLL (TUE) 10/30/2018 Arena Coliseo Guadalajara
1) El Alteño & Mágico b Carlo Roggi & Mr. Apolo
tecnicos took 1/3
2) Exterminador, Maléfico, Tigre Blanco b Explosivo, Mr. Samurai, Star Black
Tigre Blanco replaced Sadico.
3) Cancerbero, Difunto, Sangre Azteca b Arkalis, Robin, Vaquero Jr.
Rudos took 1/3.
4) Fuego, Guerrero Maya Jr., Star Jr. b Kawato San, Tiger, Universo 2000 Jr.
5) Esfinge, Kráneo, Volcano b Dark Magic, Rey Bucanero, Terrible
tecnicos took 2/3.
6) Cavernario, Euforia, Gran Guerrero b Ángel de Oro, Atlantis, Diamante Azul
rudos took 1/3, setting up an Atlantis/Cavernario title match

This was Guadalajara’s Dia de Muertos show, though it’s not played up as much as the Arena Mexico ones. Cavernario/Atlantis is out of nowhere but fits with CMLL having Cavernario challenge and fail for every tecnico held championship. At some point, I’m going to figure out if Mr. Samurai is the same wrestler as (Guerrero) Samurai (Jr.) or a new person. It hasn’t been much of a priority.

Negro Casas, talking about his career with Heraldo de Mexico, talks about how he jumped from El Toreo to Arena Mexico: he was waiting for a friend at the arena, Paco Alonso happened along him, and offered him a contract. (The WON of the time, in its infancy of covering lucha libre, suggested it was a lot more drawn out process.)

Diario Basta has posted another article of Fuego complaining he’s not given the same chances in CMLL as in Japan, but I suspect it’s from the same interview session a few weeks ago and just held off publishing until now. When you read the article, it’s clear all it would take to make Fuego happy is if he just got to be in the dumb Tuesday main events every so often. It’s not a big ask.

Volador Jr. & Soberano Jr. won their final Best of Super Juniors match, defeating Robbie Eagles & Taiji Ishimori. They finish 2-5, dead last.  I hope they got some good experience out of the trip, because there wasn’t much more to gain.

Ring of Honor has Guerrero Maya Jr. & Stuka Jr. challenging So Cal Uncensored (Frankie Kazarian & Scorpio Sky) for their tag team championship on 11/04 as part of their TV taping. There’s been a year long storyline that So Cal Uncensored may be fired from Ring of Honor if they don’t hold a championship at the end of the year, which makes it less likely than ever that Stuka & Maya are going to win. The preview does say the titles will be defended in Mexico if the CMLL team win, which is at least nice attention to detail.

Tonight’s Lucha Underground is airing the penultimate episode of Season 4, Ultimo Lucha Cuatro Part 1

• Kobra Moon, Daga and Jeremiah Crane versus The White Rabbit, el Bunny, and Paul London versus XO Lishius, Sammy Guevera and Ivelisse for the Lucha Underground Trios Championship
• Taya Mundo versus Ricky Mundo
• Killshot versus Son of Havoc, mask vs mask

It appears the loser of the main event is finishing up with the show, so it’d be nice if any dangling relationship were also addressed on this show. There’s a couple of vignettes not yet seen from the trailer which seems to be relevant.

Tonight also kicks off the first episode of Lucha Capital. It’ll be an 8:30 pm CT start time on Facebook, where you will likely need a Facebook account to watch. DST pushes the start back an hour in the US. It starts an hour and a half after Lucha Underground ends if you’re watching both live. Also, this is chronically late AAA we’re talking about and starting on the half hour is strange, so don’t be surprised if the in-ring is a bit later.

Matches advertised

• Murder Clown vs Psycho Clown
• Taurus vs Pagano
• Puma King vs Pentagon Jr.
• Vanilla vs La Hiedra

The in-ring is the big question. The tournament format is a bit to process, the announcing probably will cause eye rolls, there will definitely be a lot of social media stuff as a distraction, but that all can be survived if the matches are good. There’s lots of talent in Lucha Capital – including Fenix & Pentagon who are not working normal TV tapings right now. It feels an obvious gap in AAA, running a tournament of mostly singles match in a promotion which is not putting those on its Twitch tapings. There’s just no way of knowing how seriously the people in the matches will take them until they’re a few episodes in, and how much time they’re going to be given. Puma King/Pentagon will at least be a good guide for expectations going forwards.

I have no expectations for how well this is going to do with viewership. Twitch streams seem to run between 3-10K viewers, so maybe that’s a reasonable area to guess for this? (CMLL/Marca streams do much less on Facebook, peaking around 3K, though that’s with other ways to view those shows.) Having one day notice of a show is a lot less than ideal, though either Facebook or AAA or a marketing company working for the two has gotten the tournament mentioned in a lot of media sites today. I think the numbers here don’t matter as much to AAA as much as they do to Facebook, though AAA would surely like this to do well enough to get brought back for a second season.

AAA has been working on ideas for Lucha Capital for a while. They trademarked the name back in 2014. Different formats and lengths have been mentioned too. Scarlett Bordeaux is not on the poster, but I’m told she is indeed in the tournament. That probably means there’s some three-way matches to come to get everyone two matches.

My aim is to have recaps for both Lucha Underground and Lucha Capital tonight, and we’ll find out if that’s actually possible.

The Crash announced Saturday’s women’s title match is now Tessa Blanchard vs Kiera Hogan vs Lluvia vs Lady Flammer. Lady Flammer is being added to the show after escaping her reality show island, while Lluvia is replacing Reina Isis.

Diamante and Super Ciudadano (Sangre Imperial) have left for their AJPW tour. Sam Adonis and Ultimo Panda seem to be flying out today based on Twitter.

Yucatan.com.mx has an article about local luchador Eterno Alcander.

Lucha Talk has a new episode.

+LuchaTV has a sit down interview Hijo de Canis Lupus & Hijo de Alebrije.

Lineups

CMLL (MON) 11/05/2018 Arena Puebla
1) Astral, Lestat, Pantera Blanca vs Gemelo Pantera I, Gemelo Pantera II, Policeman
2) Lluvia, Marcela, Skadi vs Dalys, La Comandante, Tiffany
3) Drone, Kráneo, Stigma vs Dragón Rojo Jr., Pólvora, Tyson La Bestia
4) Euforia, Gran Guerrero, Último Guerrero vs Cuatrero, Forastero, Sansón
5) Carístico vs Rush

Caristico beat Rush by DQ when they had that singles match here last year. Guerreros versus NGD is the feud I think most everyone would’ve rather seen than Guerreros versus Cl4n, and it’s interesting to see it pop up here. The Panteras and Tyson La Bestia all make their once in a while appearances here.

Five matches with a singles main event is a little light. Lighter still when considering how many ‘guest’ wrestlers there are. I wonder how the wrestlers get paid for being in Dia de Muertos costumes – they may be making up their bookings in other ways this way.