La Bestia Del Ring, Mistico, Rush beat Carístico, Diamante Azul, Último Guerreroin a relevos increíbles match (12:25 [3:03, 3:04, 6:18], 2/3, n/r, VideosOficialesCMLL)
What happened:
Rush fouled Carístico in the main event, seemingly setting up a singles match between them.
Joker and Espíritu Maligno have matching outfits and JCR talks about wanting to see them team more. This is CMLL for “they’ll never team again”.
The video stream is bumpy again, causing the very start of the second fall of the segunda to go missing. This matters to only people who are keeping track of the time.
Thoughts:
Hechicero seems to be the only person Mije trusts to do this right now
The semimain was a usual Dinamita match, not a bad thing. It needed a little more to stand out. Flyer’s third fall offense showcase consisted of a dropkick and a rebound double armdrag. That third fall didn’t go that long, but he needs to show a lot more to be taken well in this level. Stuka & Valiente, having their own normal matches, clearly outshined him. Cuatrero reversing out of Valiente’s move to his own inverted bearhug was a more thought than usually put into those matches and should pop back up in a big match one day.
The tercera features Templario and Hechicero standing around for 15 seconds waiting for Malayo to do something with Stigma, than Hechicero just doing it himself. Malayo was worse than usual and I don’t understand what someone sees in him to continually put him so high on the card. Templario and Stigma have an iffy third fall sequence, salvaged by Templario for the most part. It makes me grateful Tlaxcala’s Templario made the move to Mexico City and didn’t just commute to Puebla like Astro. Match wasn’t worthless but it was worse than the usual Kraneo led match.
AAA , CAPITAL (WED) 10/31/2018 Pinche Gringo Barbecue, Miguel Hidalgo, Distrito Federal [AAA, Lucha Central, MT, thecubsfan]
1) Vanilla b La Hiedra 8:17
2) Pagano b Taurus 7:39
3) Psycho Clown b Murder Clown 7:31
4) Pentagón Jr. b Puma King 12:37
First week of an eight week run. They drew decently well for a BBQ restaurant on a Wednesday night in Mexico City with one day’s notice, though there was obvious room for more people. Crowd seemed to be into most of the matches and kept their energy during a two hour show. The thing you need to know about the tournament standings is it’s better to win than lose and the person who wins the most will be the overall winner. This is all you need to know for the next couple episodes.
I wrote a lot about this show already one post down. The one really obvious thing I missed was there were four matches on this show, and four clean finishes with no interference. This was 180 degrees in presentation from Heroes Inmortales, where the screwy finishes and the interference seems to be the point of the matches. The closest to anything like that was Vampiro complaining about Copetes counting slow, which was no slower than the CMLL refs. Copetes got knocked down in the main event, but just got right back up and life moved on. It’s one week and who knows what this will evolve into by week 8, but at least for now this was a version of AAA without the bad drama. That’s a nice change.
Scarlett wasn’t listed in the big standings screen they did at the end. They said 24 people were in the tournament, and Scarlett would make 25. I’m completely confused again. Maybe she’ll be a surprise later on. If the most confusing this tournament gets is not being clear if Scarlett Bordeaux is it, it’ll be a pretty coherent tournament for Mexico.
Jose Manuel Guillen is part of so much lucha libre content that he was on a streaming show on Facebook while another (taped) show with him was streaming on YouTube. Lucha Capital came off as a loose show where the main demand of the announcers is more to keep the energy high – it seems like a place where AAA could experiment with other people (including active wrestlers) in either JMG or Vampiro’s spot to see if there’s any spark and to build a bigger bench in case a need arises. That’s not usually what AAA does and I’m not even sure if anyone who might be a candidate is interested. I did notice Vampiro mentioning the show would be in English and Spanish, and it turned out to be 99% in Spanish like the Twitch broadcasts.
La Pasala says Hijo del Tirantes was assaulted in Veracruz and the neck collar he was wearing at Heroes Inmortales was real. That sort of explains why he was replaced on the show, though it still made Vampiro look dumb for putting another rudo referee in the match.
Tonight is a much busier Thursday than usual, with a few extra show celebrating Dia de Muertos. There’s a busy Arena Neza show, and IWRG running it’s annual Castillo del Terror cage match, where one person will lose their mask. Comando Elite’s Spartan looks like the most likely loser, but minor surprises are possible – it’s really only Aramis & Dragon Bane who aren’t going to lose while they’re being booked in AAA (at least/until they get new characters.)
LuchaMania Monterrey has a recap of Sunday’s Kaoz show, which seems like a show that will show up on +LuchaTV eventually. A Ramses (Silver King) versus Mil Muertes match was said to be quite bad, enough that it killed the crowd for the main event. I can’t recall the last time I’ve seen Silver King in a good match Mil by any name has been a struggle this year. The NGD vs Rebelion Amarila match was said to be the best match of the night, and notable for Garza Jr. doing more flying than he has in many years. The finish set up Garza versus Rush, and it seems like Garza is back working a normal schedule now. That does put some doubt into the finish of Saturday’s Bestia/Garza hair match on The Crash anniversary show – I was figuring Garza was definitely losing, and his hair would grow back while he took time off. I’d still beat on Bestia winning because he’s the hometown guy and the one more likely to be around The Crash year from now.
AULL announced their last show of the year is November 18th. AULL is the main Arena Lopez Mateos promotion that runs with trainees and unknowns and does not draw many fans. I presume that means other promotions are running the building frequently the last few weeks in the year. There hasn’t been an AULL branded show since September 1st, so they’re just not running many of them.
CMLL (SUN) 11/04/2018Arena Coliseo Guadalajara
1) Amperaje & Cosmos vs Frenético & Relámpago Azul
2) El Divino & Principe Daniel vs Demonio Maya & El Chakal
3) Explosivo, Mágico, Neutrón vs Difunto, Exterminador, Maléfico
4) El Rielero & Vaquero Jr. vs Gran Kenut & León Blanco
5) Tigre Blanco vs Thunder Boy, Fugaz, Paymon, Barón Blanco Jr., Quka, Avispón Negro Jr., Destructor, Reyko, Destello [cage, mask]
Ten man cage match was set up on this week’s show. Baron Blanco Jr. had not wrestled in this arena before two weeks ago, so.
IWRG (SUN) 11/04/2018Arena Naucalpan
1) Ángel Estrella & Chicanito vs Power Bull & Sairus
2) Dulce Luna & Lady Cat vs Chica Pantera & Lili Dark
3) Black Dragón & Eragón vs Death Metal & Picudo Jr.
4) Lunatik, Ovett, Toto vs Fantasma de la Ópera, Ra-Zhata, Shil-Ka
5) Aliado de Dios, Danny Casas, Metaleón vs Capo del Norte, Capo del Sur, Hijo de Canis Lupus
6) Dragón Bane, Hijo del Alebrije, Imposible, Mr. Electro, Relámpago, Rokambole Jr., Villano V vs Athoz Montanez, Cuervo (Puerto Rico), Demetrio El Gladiador, Heddi Karaoui, Hip Hop Man, Mosca (Argentina), Zumbi
Printed in Box Y Lucha but not published by IWRG yet. The main event is IWRG vs the World, which feels like something that might be more likely to change. Hip Hop Man, his brother La Mosca and their father Demeterio are all back in IWRG for this. HHM saying his last goal in Mexico is to team with his family makes it seem like he might not be staying in Mexico too much longer.
Lucha Capital for more like a late night variety show that had wrestling matches than a normal wrestling matches. La Griega was taking photos with fans between matches, they did a surprise arm wrestling bit with Máximo, they had a song break between a match – this was a pitch to someone who likes entertainment who might also be into lucha libre rather than a focused lucha libre show. The track record is people who are looking for general entertainment don’t watch these sort of hybrids, and all you get are wrestling fans who just want to see more wrestling, but I guess you’ve got to try it and see. The venue looked a lot different anything usual for AAA, a warehouse restaurant with maybe a couple hundred of fans standing just past the mats and watching the action. They stayed interested in the show the whole night, though I think this is going to work a lot better if it remains free attendance. It sounded like they may start charging next week, and we’ll see if there’s interest in that with more than a single day warning.
There’s no real need to watch this live. It ran about 1h50m total. You can cut that in half if you watch it later and skip thru the breaks between matches. You may be able to get your Facebook comment mentioned if you watch it live, but that’s about the only advantage.
the worst thing to happen to an animal in this building
Pentagon Jr. versus Puma King was just both guys doing their increasingly big stuff for a dozen minutes. It started off as if they were going to take it easy, do some comedy, and that was it, and it just kind of picked up intensity after a few minutes. There was a big slip by Pentagon on a springboard, and this lacked the creativity of the Son of Havoc/Killshot match over on Lucha Underground. It had more emotion to me; I’m not sure it was the crowd or because I was just looking forward to this match more. (The outcome really wasn’t in any more doubt that the mask match, so that wasn’t it.) There was nothing really unique about this match, and people who get bored of Penta doing similar stuff in every match probably should pass, but it just really was fun as a package to me. This was a match I hadn’t seen, wanted to see, and enjoyed seeing.
Psycho Clown and Murder Clown felt like the most complete of the first three matches. Murder Clown looked more impressive than usual, trying things we don’t see from normal and looking dominate enough that Psycho Clown had something meaningful to overcome. The top rope splash felt like Murder could’ve actually won, and Psycho did well to come back and win. The limitations of the setting were shown here though, with both guys seemingly afraid to knock people over by falling backward on impact for a dive, making neither those seem more impressive.
Murder Clown 619
The Taurus/Pagano match had good parts, though it didn’t really come together as more than an exhibition. Pagano looked better than usual and Taurus was still much sharper on everything he did. He was there to get Pagano over. Pagano was way over before it and the finish looked great because Taurus was there to make it work. This will look cooler in highlights.
The women’s match was just a match. I guess months ago, it would’ve been a sure bet to be not good, and so having a match that was just alright is a relief. They did some moves, but it never had a lot of momentum or direction. The rana reversal bit for the finish worked, but came along slowly. It was a solid but not a hot match.
