Mistico/GG in Arena Mexico, Laredo survives in Exatlon, Impact, and a slap

CMLL (FRI) 01/17/2020 Arena México [CMLL, CMLL, Lucha Central, Marca, R de Rudoj, The Gladiatores, thecubsfan]
1) Akuma & Espanto Jr. b Retro & Robin 
11:12. Rudos took 1/3.
2) Avispa Dorada, Marcela, Princesa Sugehit DQ Amapola, Metálica, Tiffany 
15:33. Tecnicas took 2/3, the last by DQ when an elimianted Amapola came back in to attack Marcela. Metalica was in an out of the match with a leg injury.
3) Black Panther, Blue Panther, Blue Panther Jr. b Espíritu Negro, Pólvora, Vangellys 
15:56. Tencicos took 2/3.
4) Templario b Rey Cometa [lightning] 
6:58. Templario won with a super powerbomb
5) Atlantis Jr., Kráneo, Valiente b Ephesto, Mephisto, Rey Bucanero 
13:48. Tecnicos took 1/3.
6) Diamante Azul, Místico, Volador Jr. DQ Gran Guerrero, Shocker, Terrible 
9:48. Straight falls for a second straight week, this time the tecnicos winning. Gran Guerrero unmasked Mistico for the DQ, setting up a match next week.

CMLL promos: Gran Guerrero, Mistico, Templario, Espiritu Negro.

Press interviews: Espiritu Negro, Templario, Gran Guerrero, and Mistico.

The lightning match was fun and there’s nothing else you need to watch here. It was not immediately clear if Amapola vs Marcela was a real feud. Mistico/Gran Guerrero on the Niebla show seems like a bad idea, Mistico/Gran Guerrero twice in five days seems like a bad idea. CMLL is a promotion afraid to fail by doing something new and so does the same things ever and ever. No wonder I watch every show.

There are two FantasticaMania shows remaining. The first is early Sunday morning (3:30 am) and will have two title matches. We already know Ultimo Guerrero would defend the CMLL Heavyweight Championship match against Satoshi Kojima. Additionally, the Stuka/Okumura match is now a NWA Light Heavyweight championship match. Neither title is expected to change and neither match seems very promising, though Kojima/UG match is at least a unique match up.

The main event is the annual Black Cat/Kuroneko tribute match. Caristico, Hiroshi Tanahashi and Tiger Mask team against Barbary Cavernario, Euforia, and Negro Casas, in what has the names to be a pretty good match. This is Tiger Mask’s first match on the tour; he and Caristico were friends/rivals a decade ago. Panico & Skandalo are scheduled to appear as part of the presentation.

With Tanahashi in the main event, Dulce Gardenia instead teams with Fuego & Ryusuke Taguchi in his never-ending battles against LIJ. The Chavez team with Titan against NGD in a preview of tomorrow’s title match. Flyer, Guerrero Maya and Soberano face Douki, Kanemaru, and Tiger. Audaz & NJPW young lion Tsuji will wrestle Luciferno and Namajague in the opener.

This show will stream at 3:30 AM on NJPW World in Japanese and English and be available on VOD. I’m going to try to watch it live – who knows, maybe it’ll screw up my sleep enough that I’ll be able to watch the final night too.

Tonight is the second of two nights of Impact tapings in Mexico City. There was an incident between Konnan and Psicosis II outside of Fronton Mexico last night, prior to the start tapings. Back in December, the second Psicosis blamed Konnan for not getting AAA TV work. Konnan replied to him on Twitter, asking Psicosis why he wasn’t working somewhere else if he was such a big star. Konnan did so in a typically blunt fashion. Psicosis replied that they’d continue this discussion face to face in Leon, but apparently decided to do in Mexico City instead. Last night, an unmasked Psicosis yelled at Konnan to say the same to his face. Konnan said nothing – it’s possible he didn’t want to escalate the situation or just forgot the previous discussion. Psicosis did want to escalate, slapping Konnan and putting his hands up for a fight. Konnan backed away as Psicosis continued to yell at him, and eventually calmed down enough to be pulled away. AAA security people were there but never seemed to get involved.

Video of the incident was all over Mexico quickly; the person who uploaded it first must’ve known it was Psicosis because they blurred out his face. Konnan is a polarizing guy with plenty of people who dislike him, but most people seem to be coming down on his side, feeling Psicosis was way over the line by attacking a man having health issues. Konnan was asked about it by the press and said it was nothing. He surprising came off as sympathetic to Psicosis – he’s just a guy upset about the lack of work.

I’ve got results from those Impact tapings here, as best as I could figure last night. The media covering the show is going back and forth between the matches and interviews with the wrestlers, which meant no one had all the results. I may be missing something. Hijo del Vikingo did get a big win over Josh Alexander, where money was thrown in after. Alexander is part of the North, the Impact Tag Team champions, so Vikingo (and sumo Fallah Bahh perhaps?) may be getting a title shot tonight.

Murder Clown & Pagano paid tribute to La Parka after their match, leading a La Parka chant. Dr. Landru points out the same Impact crowd that was honoring La Parka with a chant were also taunting La Parka with a LA Park chant last year.

Karis La Momia Jr. took over La Parka’s column in Record to say goodbye to his father. He mentions AAA will have a mass in La Parka’s honor on January 29th at 3 pm and that Psycho Clown will be taking over the column permanently going forward. I’ve always been suspicious that someone else ghostwrites these columns. The style and tone haven’t changed as it’s gone from Parka, to Psycho to Karis this week.

Space produced a short documentary on La Parka, mostly taken from two recent interviews with him.

Maximo seems to have changed his Twitter handle to “MaXiMo_Sioux” in the last couple of days. Sioux is a reference to his wife, India Sioux. He was MaXiMo_AAA. He was still is working AAA spot shows at last check, though he’s not on any announced TV tapings and wasn’t on them much last year; only one post TripleMania. Mamba going back rudo and feuding with Pimpinela ended the exotico trio they had going with Maximo.

Laredo Kid is still on Exatlon. Laredo has not done particularly well on the show. He’s in his 30s and going against 20-year-old Olympic athletes in obstacle course type events, it’s not something he should be doing well in. It’s a team (red) vs team (blue) overall competition, but most events are held as one person on each team against each other, and Laredo has a poor win/loss record. Friday nights are the elimination round, where the losing side of a team competition has to pick two of their team members to battle among themselves to see who stays. That didn’t happen this time around, the elimination team round strangely went to a draw, and the show simply picked the men who had the least successful weeks to face off in the elimination game. That was Laredo Kid for Team Red.

The elimination game is usually a best of 9 series on an obstacle course with a skill challenge at the end. Dragon Lee was part of a memorable one last year where the skill challenge was throwing rings onto a post from a distance. The elimination game with Laredo Kid went down to the ninth and deciding race around the same course. Reality shows always have weird twists and Exatlon is the same. Some of the competitions they run Monday thru Thursday award medals that can be used to save the holder or a teammate from elimination. Laredo Kid’s team was asked if anyone wanted to use one of their medals before the final race. One teammate offered theirs. Laredo Kid would’ve automatically survived at no cost to himself. Laredo Kid rejected the offer, waving his finger no, and later explaining he didn’t feel he deserved immunity because he had not done enough for his team. Laredo was behind pretty much the entire obstacle course but when they got the skills challenge – knocking small posts into a hole via thrown tennis balls – Laredo got all four of his in before his opponent got one. He won, he survived, and he didn’t need help to do it. The ending scene was Laredo’s team mobbing him in celebration and doing Laredo’s BUYAZZE yell and pose. You can see video of the last bit here.

Laredo Kid’s probably not going to win Exatlon. He’s probably not making a lot of money doing this; reality shows exist in such large numbers because they don’t have to pay the talent all that much. There is a strong case to be made that it wasn’t a great idea for Laredo Kid to leave wrestling in his best moment to do a reality show. People do these reality shows in hopes to make some money and raise your profile, and viewers need a reason to remember who you are if you’re going to raise your profile. This seems like that moment for Laredo – rejecting the easy way out and winning himself was that star moment. “Laredo” was trending on Twitter in Mexico for a while. It does go a long way to justify this four-month (and counting) break.

One more thing that happened last night:

Lucha Time (FRI) 01/17/2020 Arena Lucha Time, Monterrey, Nuevo Leon [@thekoko666, Lo Mejor de Lucha]
1) Mr. Warrior b Vértigo
2) Alex Black & Punk Clown b Insólito & Kratos
3) Epydemius vs Oro Negro, Charro Negro
money thrown in
4) Medico Brujo, Muerte Extrema, Sick Boy b Celta, Redemido, The Mummy
Azarel distracted the referee, allowing Medico to foul the Mummy
5) Hijo del Espectro b Baby Xtreme
main event of episode 1
6) T. Rex b Insólito, Kratos
start of episode 2
7) Punk Clown b Mr. Warrior
8) Black Raider & Hell Raider b Redimido & Vértigo
a squash
9) Medico Brujo, Muerte Extrema, Sick Boy b Baby Xtreme, Charro Negro, Oro Negro
Baby & Charro had problems leading to the loss.
10) Azrael, El Mafioso, Hijo del Espectro b Celta, Epydemius, The Mummy
ref stop, tecnicos unable to continue, rudos beat them more after (so maybe a DQ the other way?)

Monterrey’s Lucha Time has gone thru a few different concepts and names – this is a Roberto Figueroa project if you’ve lost track. A recent concept was to become their own version of +LuchaTV, putting up shows from various promotions on their La Esquina YouTube channel. It hasn’t gone anywhere yet, so the new idea seems to film their own content. These were matches in front of a standing crowd in a darkly lit warehouse, which were recorded and will be split into two episodes. I believe they had Spanish and English announcing. The shows will go up next week with the next taping on January 31st. It reads like fans were a little confused as to what to expect; the idea here is to concentrate on building local names. All Lucha Time ideas seem to exist for a couple of months and then go away. No idea if this will last longer or even be interesting, but a wrestling promotion making serialized content for the express purpose of putting it on YouTube is still unique in Mexico.

Bandido won the ECCW Championship last night over Artemis Spencer. Bandido is now the champion of Canada’s ECCW, Mexico’s The Crash and the US’s PWG, in addition to the ROH Trios Championship. Bandido defends the title again tonight, so he may not be champion for long.

Lucha shows pick a lot today up after a couple of quiet weekends. AAA is still off for a week, but plenty of others are running

Saturday

• The Crash kicks off their 2020 with Bestia, Damian and Mecha Wolf vs the Navarros. There’s also some international matches; Flamita & Oraculo take on Lindaman  T-Hawk, while Mesias, Angelico, CIMA and Ryu Lee are scheduled to meet in a four-way. It feels like the last eighteen months of The Crash has been “how is The Crash going to do now that [X] is no longer around?” stories and it still feels like it’s happening. Hope they give the fans something else to talk about..
• CMLL has a Volador/Mephisto match in Arena Coliseo
• MexaWresling has one of their Noches de San Juan shows with Apolo Estrada Jr. vs Caballero de Plata listed as the main. I think the card order may change.

Sunday

• IWRG has Stronghearts vs Toxin, Emperador Azteca and Super Nova.
• Gran Guerrero faces Diamante Azul in Arena Mexico. CMLL, who employs hundreds of wrestlers, will be main eventing three shows with Gran Guerrero in the next six days.
• In Puebla, La Liga de la Justica has a Demus/Tarahumara extreme match and is also advertising a Skayde/Prayer match. This is a +LuchaTV taped show.
• Zona 23 has a tournament.
• There are dueling lucha libre shows in my part of the world. Dragon Bane & Hijo de Canis Lupus are in Berwyn, while a Discovery benefit show takes place in Villa Park. Not sure if I’m going to make it to either – beyond everything else, the weather looks bad tomorrow.

Lineups