Month: September 2019

CMLL continues down the road to the Aniversario show, with a few matches continuing towards the big matches on that show. It’s a lineup which has been shuffled around at least twice. Big Daddy being removed was removed from the show, La Bestia del Ring was added, and it took an additional day for CMLL to remember they’re not letting Bestia in the ring with his sons.

The most interesting match to come out of all of this is a Volador/Negro Casas lightning match. The two have faced many times before, including Volador taking Negro Casas’ hair at the 2016 Homenaje a Dos Leyendas. Casas can still go in under ten-minute matches. It’s probably the best format for Volador too at this moment. Volador is the only person on the tecnico side involved in this seven-man cage feud, though Casas is always cheered. He probably will be again the crowd favorite tonight. Those who are going to take a big loss at a major show tend to get wins going in, so the outcome of this match may be telling about who will lose their hair.

The actual main event is Cavernario, Ciber and Diamante Azul versus Gilbert, Ultimo Guerrero, and Sanson. It’s a match designed to fall apart, with Gilbert and UG both teaming and feuding. Sanson’s partners will be instead be teaming with Mephisto against Caristico, Dragon Lee and Titan, the best chance for a good trios match on the show. Mephisto’s partners team with La Bestia del Ring – adding him instead of any other rudo really messed with everything – and they face Angel de Oro, Niebla Roja, and Atlantis Jr. in the tercera. Disturbio, Sagrado and Tiger take on Dulce Gardenia, Fuego and Esfinge, in Esfinge’s first match in Arena Mexico since his father was apparently removed from power in Arena Coliseo Guadalajara. We haven’t seen Akuma in six weeks since he picked up a leg injury. He’s listed as teaming with Espanto Jr. tonight, facing Robin and the always fun Super Astro Junior.

This show streams on Marca and their YouTube channel. I’ll be streaming it on YouTube at well. The show begins on 8:30 pm.

Lucha Central has a preview of the show.

Big Daddy (Yum Yum) is doing a promotional tour today in Texas for a show he’s promoting Saturday, which likely made it very difficult for him to be on this Friday’s Arena Mexico show. I don’t think one Friday night is going to make much of a difference with the CMLL fans perception of him. It does become newsworthy if he’s also not on next Friday’s card.

Arena Queretaro’s 09/17 main event was a trios cage match with Cibernetico, Sharlie Rockstar, Mr. Electro vs Bestia 666, Mecha Wolf and Rey Horus. Ciber is now out and Penta is in. We may never see this show, so it’s meaningful if Ciber disappears from more shows and not so much if Ciber just got pulled to do some advertisements.

Ultimo Guerrero says his plan is to stay in the cage match at the end if Ciber and Gilbert are left, but take off if they’ve already escaped. He’s also considering his shoe choice, wanting to wear something that might give him better grip for climbing.

Planeta Wrestling wrestling has a story that the CMLL/WWE meeting which happened earlier this year were regarding WWE wanting to purchase CMLL’s video library as additional content for their premium tier. PW Insider had mentioned earlier this week that WWE was investigating getting lucha libre content for their network. I got a decent amount of “don’t trust Planeta Wrestling, they may just be speculating” feedback after posting this. Even Planeta’s report says it was a discussion and they don’t know if went any farther than that. I’m getting increasingly leery of posting any WWE related news on Twitter; anything “these two sides had a talk about [X]” instantly gets read and repeated as “it’s definitely happening, it’s the biggest version of the deal possible, and it’s all going down tomorrow” for reasons I don’t have a grasp on. (That’s why there was no WWE in the headline of this post.) You should take this story with a big grain of salt, as a thought experiment about what it would WWE trying to buy the CMLL library would mean rather than something that has any certain chance of happening.

A small shared licensing makes sense for both sides. Ring of Honor & Impact have given permission in the past to WWE for bits of their footage to be used in documentaries. There doesn’t seem like much harm in CMLL letting WWE do the same as long as they’re fairly compensated. A large scale library sell-off would seem bad for CMLL fans; some surprising stuff may squeeze thru, but it’s hard to see WWE having interest in formatting and sharing the vast majority of it. CMLL’s not doing anything with their old footage, but there at least exists a possibility they might do something with it someday. If WWE ever got all of it, most of it would never be seen again. The flip side is CMLL really is doing nothing with that old footage, doesn’t see it as something to make money out of, and seems to be even more profit conscious in this post-Paco era. You normally take the money if someone offers to take give it to you for something you have no interest in, and it’s never seemed like CMLL has that much interest in that old footage. The blue sky perfect world result is CMLL gains some interest once they realize being a revenue source for WWE means it could be one of them as well. The mitigating reality to all of this is no one seems sure what footage CMLL has and how far back it goes; it is possible all footage as recent as the mid-00s is actually Televisa property; that sort of fact-finding is probably what the WWE/CMLL conversation was actually about.

My YouTube channel, which may have broken 100,000 subscribers by the time you read this, is so dead if WWE buys that CMLL library. WWE channels have managed to stay up by carefully including only footage WWE hasn’t put on their network yet. I haven’t been that careful because it’s hasn’t been an issue. Anyway, 100K channels are supposed to get a silver trophy. I think my channel may be more liable to be canceled anyway.

ESPN has a video on Cain Velasquez’s TripleMania experience. It’s in Spanish now and will air in English later. It’s really well done, worth your time, and it’s a great promotional device for Sunday’s AAA show. If that English version airs before the show on Sunday and includes a plug for the PPV, AAA’s probably going to pick up a few extra buys.

Dr. Wagner Jr. is in New York today doing press for that show. I was writing a preview of the show last night and it finally occurred to me that, since Impact is co-producing the show, Josh Mathews is probably the other English announcer. He’s worked shows for AAA before when they were working closely with Impact. Matt Striker, who appears to be the other announcer, looks to be working a boxing show in Las Vegas on Saturday and then flying back to New York to work the AAA show. That’s a hard weekend.

Lucha Va Voom is running tonight in Las Vegas. Puma King, Rey Horus, Mariachi Loco and Lil’ Cholo are among those on the show.

10/05 The Crash in Auditorio de Tijuana

• LA Park, Bestia 666, Mecha Wolf vs Fatu, Josef Samael, Simon Gotch – new
• Rey Horus (c) vs Hammerstone [The Crash HEAVY]
• Dragon Lee, Barbaro Cavernario, Soberano vs Teddy Hart, Davey Boy Smith Jr., Brian Pillman Jr.
  • not to air on MLW
• Oraculo vs Minoru Tanaka – new

“The WWE might want to buy some lucha libraries” is where The Crash not investing in recording their shows costs them. The Garza & Ultimo Ninja footage might be valuable now.

LuchaWorld has the latest news update.

A corncob luchador.

Lineups

CMLL (TUE) 09/17/2019 Arena México
1) Leono & Retro vs Inquisidor & Yago
2) Fantasy, Shockercito, Último Dragóncito vs Pequeño Nitro, Pequeño Violencia, Pierrothito
3) Drone, Fuego, Star Jr. vs Cancerbero, Raziel, Virus
4) Black Panther, Blue Panther Jr., Guerrero Maya Jr. vs Misterioso, Sagrado, Tiger
5) Audaz, Soberano Jr., Stuka Jr. vs Cuatrero, Forastero, Sansón
6) Volador Jr. vs Cavernario

A weird CMLL Tuesday card in that it looks good and different. Volador/Cavernario should be interesting, even on a b-show. Semi-main looks good. The fourth match has happened so many times that it should be good. Virus gets to actually team with his partners, who get better people to work with. The minis are not working an opener. Yago is actually working an opener, his first appearance on a stream in two months.

There’s some AAA Invading NY news. It’s still not the full lineup. The show will air live on Space TV in Mexico, starting at 6 pm. It was already announced as airing on Azteca next Friday. Far more people are going to see this show on Space (and Azteca) than will on FITE.

The Space thing is interesting for me because there was a brief instant this morning where I thought I finally knew who was announcing this show in English. WON mentioned Hugo & Striker were announcing the show, which I thought meant in English since Striker doesn’t do Spanish commentary. Maybe the WON just meant they’d be there, but then there’s still no idea of who’s going to be working with Striker. Vampiro hasn’t indicated he’s part of this show as of yet.

Konnan’s Keepin it 100 also had some talk about the AAA Invading NY show. Kevin Kleinrock brought it up as AAA going to MSG and it was Konnan who shot that down. He noted they’re not going to the actual MSG, which meant the show is a personal disappointment. “There were a lot of factors why we couldn’t go there”, though none are specified. Moving it from MSG to the Hulu Theatre has scaled down the type of show they wanted to do. It’s also taken longer than they were expecting to get visas approved, so people who might have been on the show when it was originally conceived have been left off for one reason or another. Konnan said there are three wrestlers from Impact to be added, believing one of them was Sami Callihan. Callihan’s usual partners, Jake & Dave Crist, would make sense as the others but it’s not even hinted at.

The AAA in Puebla show was happier news. Konnan calls it a sellout. It seemed like the upper reaches of the building were a bit empty on Twitch. He feels the new Abismo & Octagon were nervous but got over well. He felt like those two and Bengala will big parts of the future of the company. Konnan expected to debut a couple of more new names and couple of minis as well.  AroLucha as comes up in passing. Konnan’s heard they’re still working on a deal, and has heard the same story for the last few months.

Shocker quietly disappeared from CMLL cards in May and hasn’t been on social media since around that time. He wasn’t seen around his food truck either, which led to a fair bit of wondering about what had happened to him now. Planchitas writes today that Shocker is in a rehab center and expected to stay for six months after falling off the wagon again. That would mean he’d be back out around Christmas. The rumors going around were “rehab” or “jail”, so ending up in rehab was the better option. Shocker’s battled alcoholism for years and had some strange public incidents which seem linked to it. He’s mentioned in interviews that his addiction issues grew around the short time he jumped to AAA, becoming so bad that he doesn’t even remember much from that year. It’s been a frequent issue since then, affecting him greatly professionally and personally. This isn’t his first trip to rehab and hopefully he’s able to learn enough to manage the situation better this time. I imagine it’s especially tough having an alcohol issue around lucha libre, where beer is everywhere.

CMLL’s Anniversario is a couple of Fridays away. CMLL’s been quiet on how it’ll stream live or if it’ll stream live at all. That’s typical for them; it sounds like they haven’t even told Claro yet about their plans. The Gran Prix was a delayed VOD and that’s still the best guess for the Aniversario. You will have another option: Ring of Honor is planning on adding the show to their Honor Club service on VOD. It’ll be a few day delay – ROH’s PPV and TV taping that weekend would take priority – but it is expected to be available early the following week. It will have English commentary, which seems like it’ll be the first time that’s been offered for a CMLL Aniversario card (but I need to research that; it’s aired in Japanese on both SamuraiTV & NJPW World.) The CMLL/ROH partnership seems to be growing. If Rush wins the Ring of Honor Championship on the upcoming PPV, expect CMLL to air footage of that title match.

In a minor note, Planchitas is critical of CMLL for not supporting Shocker and mentions he was offered a mystery spot on a July 2018 Gimnasio Juan de la Barrera show that he turned down. That was the first AAA vs ELITE show and the mystery spot was probably the main event ELITE spot that went to Puma King instead. It worked out for Puma great but I’m not sure Shocker would’ve had the same success. Shocker’s been one of the least mobile wrestlers in CMLL and the least mobile people in AAA have been weeded out over the last year and a half. I’m not sure working CMLL Tuesday shows is all that much better than ELITE barely running shows but it does seem like work.

CMLL’s been talking about Marcela defending the CMLL World Women’s Championship in Japan on 09/15 for a while, mostly in how it may affect the Aniversario card. They hadn’t named a challenger; AAA isn’t the only people apparently having trouble announcing matches. That challenger was announced today as Tsukushi, a 22-year-old wrestler who’s wrestled for Ice Ribbon in the past. She’s also worked in the past for REINA, and CMLL Lady’s Ring appears as if a restart of that promotion. I know nothing about her but people seem excited for her. Wikipedia also indicates she may have attempted to stab someone in the distant past, which sounds cool. It’s unlikely she’ll defeat Marcela but challenging for the CMLL’s Women’s Championship often leads to a CMLL visit. Tae Honma, who was in CMLL previously, faces Dalys on that show. Both Dalys & Marcela seem to be working for plenty of other promotions while they’re around Japan for about a week.

10/05 The Crash in Auditorio de Tijuana

• Rey Horus (c) vs Hammerstone [The Crash HEAVY]
• Dragon Lee, Barbaro Cavernario, Soberano vs Teddy Hart, Davey Boy Smith Jr., Brian Pillman Jr.

The CMLL vs Hart Foundation match will not air on MLW TV. The Crash should probably ask to release it themselves. (They probably won’t.)

MLW announced Septimo Dragon has signed to a multi-year deal. Septimo worked on their most recent taping and Konnan talked about him as someone he’d wanted to work for a while. Dragon started out in Guanajuato, which has not been a hot bed of wrestling in recent years, and did what looks like a good of making connections to work in wider and wider areas. He’s been a regular for Mucha Lucha Atlanta that last couple of years and turns up on a lot of smaller US lucha libre shows.

Magnus & Black Danger (returning to his MLW name of Mega Danger) also worked the most recent MLW show. There is no mention of their status with the promotion. Magnus may be on break from CMLL. There was a story he was relocating to Texas for family reasons earlier this summer, but then he just kept on appearing on CMLL cards. He hasn’t been on a CMLL lineup since mid-August, so he might have made that move.

Ultimo Guerrero says the Aniversario final he wants to see is Negro Casas vs Big Daddy, with Casas winning. Casas would like to face Guerrero in the final.

Microman wants Guapito as the referee for his mask match and KeMonito as his second. Microman’s talked about KeMonito seconding him so often that it’s going to be weird if it doesn’t happen.

Karis La Momia Jr. says he’s focused on forging his own story right now, not following his father or getting into a feud with the LA Park kids.

Lineups

CMLL (SUN) 09/15/2019 Arena Coliseo Guadalajara
1) Kristal & Silueta vs Aradia Bartok & Valkyria
2) Fugaz, Johnny Dinamo, Principe Daniel vs Bobby Black, Demonio Maya, Mr. Apolo
3) Explosivo, Joker, Reycko vs Difunto, Rey Trueno, Sádico
4) Neutrón vs León Blanco [super libre]
5) Atlantis Jr., Gallo, Omar Brunetti vs Exterminador, Hijo del Villano III, Maléfico

Gallo & Brunetti are back under new (still unknown) management. I thought the Neutron/Leon Blanco mask match would be on this show but maybe they’re saving it for later in the month.

I may be getting names confused, but I believe Aradia Bartok is one of a couple of Arena Coliseo Guadalajara edecanes who trained to wrestle and have been working indie shows the last few months. Going from being an edecan in an arena to making your wrestling debut feels like it should be a big story (or a good way to do angle.) Women’s matches have been a rarity on these Sunday shows.

CMLL (MON) 09/16/2019 Arena Puebla
1) Hijo de Centella Roja, Meyer, Tigre Rojo Jr. vs Ares, Black Tiger, Policeman
2) Lluvia, Sanely, Skadi vs Amapola, La Metálica, Tiffany
3) Rey Cometa, Stigma, Tritón vs Okumura, Olímpico, Perverso
4) Atlantis, Atlantis Jr., Flyer vs Hijo del Villano III, Templario, Vangellys
5) Carístico, Místico, Terrible vs Mr. Niebla, Negro Casas, Soberano Jr. [Relevos Increíbles]

Last week, this feud was Dragon Lee/Volador. This week, this feud was Casas/Terrible. Maybe it’ll end up back as Mistico/Soberano next week.

Triton is listed. He won’t be there and CMLL knows he won’t be there. They probably should send someone else, they probably won’t send someone else.

AAA , ELITE (FRI) 10/04/2019 Arena Naucalpan
1) Faby Apache & La Hiedra vs Diosa Quetzal & Rossy Moreno
2) Niño Hamburguesa & Pimpinela Escarlata vs Chico Che & Diva Salvaje
3) Carta Brava Jr. & Mocho Cota Jr. vs Imposible & Tritón
4) Joe Lider & Pagano vs Drako & Wotan
5) Argenis, Máscara de Bronce, Myzteziz vs Dr. Karonte, King Balam, Verdugo
6) Murder Clown & Psycho Clown vs Trauma I & Trauma II

AAA started posting the matches from the August Zumpango ELITE show on their YouTube channel. It probably should’ve been a clear indication they were going to keep running, as this lineup followed a bit after. There’s a lot of indie shows in Arena Naucalpan. This doesn’t seem particularly strong, but it does have Psycho Clown. The Lider/Pagano vs Drako/Wotan match is going to be something. Triton makes his debut as an “ELITE” luchador; I’m surprised Sangre Azteca isn’t there as well. I’m not sure if this is a new Mascara de Bronce or the old guy returned after a short departure.