Lucha Fighter finishes up Saturday at 8 pm. There are five matches scheduled:
- Lady Shani vs La Hiedra in the women’s final
- Dinastia vs Laredo Boy in the mini’s final
- LA Park vs Pentagon Jr. in a men’s semifinal
- Chessman vs Psycho Clown in a men’s semifinal
- the two winners in the men’s final
The other shows have had seven, seven, and six matches. Either AAA is quietly adding a match (why was Carta Brava Jr. there???) or this will be a little shorter.
This week’s Keepin’ It 100 had Konnan’s semi-annual deceleration about Dinastia being moved out of the minis division, so he remains the favorite to win out of the division. La Hiedra’s profile has been raised greatly in the last year, but she hasn’t gotten the wins to match; Los Mercenarios entirely could use a big victory. Los Ingobernables have not lost a match yet, and I’m not sure that’s changing.
Lucha Central has a preview of the show.
AAA’s Lucha Fighter press conference ended with a brief discussion of what’s next. Jesus Zuniga said AAA ownership would decide on the promotion’s major shows on May 30th. He also mentioned the possibility that TripleMania could happen behind closed doors, leading to a wrestler discussion about what that would be like. (It’s not the same without fans, but they’ll do their best to adapt.) A closed-door TripleMania would have to either be largely funded by the TV networks & digital content (mostly Azteca) or scaled down from usual.
At the same press AAA conference, LA Park criticized Pentagon Jr. for only trying in the US and not giving the same effort in matches in Mexico. The irony here is Pentagon has been criticized for taking it easy in the US for the last couple of years.
The Gladiatores reports that CMLL is getting close to an announcement about their timeline to resume.
Mexico’s president said he’ll have an announcement about when and where the country can start to reopen either Wednesday or Thursday next week. He’s also encouraging people to postpone their Mother’s day activities to June 10th.
+LuchaTV’s tournament also concludes this weekend. Demonio Infernal defeated Arez in the match, which premiered last night. Ricky Marvin and Aramis will meet tonight to decide the other spot in the final. That final is airing Sunday night; Saturday will be an all-day marathon instead of a new match.
If you’re jumping and don’t want to go through 15 video files, you may want to wait until that marathon. Or you may want to skip the first eight matches and just start with the second round. I’m through that second round, and it’s generally better than the first one.
Fuerza Guerrera Jr. is running another empty arena show on May 10th. He’s progressed to announcing matches this time, though it’s unclear how you can watch it. Veracruz’s Arena Union is also running an empty arena show.
Ancla, who in charge of the CAR The Crash, says they’ve shut down all training at the building. They’re looking at restarting training with small groups of people and renting out the building for closed-door shows (there’s always been one.) He seems more concerned about what happens next, thinking that fans won’t be able to afford to go to shows and promoters might not want to risk running them for a while.
Dr. Wagner Jr. owns Arena Campeons in Torreon, which includes a gym. He’s still using the gym; he says he’s the only person who’s been in it. The Torreon government says all gyms should be closed, so they’ve warned him to close the gym. Wagner is unhappy about it.
Dorian Roldan appeared in a video interview with the Sports Innovation Society on Thursday. He’s spoken on panel discussions with this group before, and it was a similar big picture discussion about their business. (Not that it could avoid the “would you work with CMLL?” question, which is akin to asking “would you accept this big bag of cash?”) Roldan said the biggest change for AAA in the last ten years has been going from focusing on live audience and sponsorships to adding on a focus to various digital platforms. TV, particularly over the air TV, is still the most important part, but there are other audiences accessible in different forms. (Even international ones; there was a digression about their YouTube channel where Roldan mentioned they’ve got a lot of viewers from Russia and India is third on the list of countries watching their shows. Maybe I need to start listing the Mumbai start time for Twitch streams.) Roldan talked about seeing even just the different TV networks as reaching different people; the Azteca show is produced for children watching because of the afternoon timeslot. Roldan sees AAA owning their content and their intellectual property as important going forward; we’ve seen that in action more via lawsuits over the last decade.
Dorian Roldan mentioned that his dream show would’ve been in the US a few years ago, but now it is to run in Estadio Azteca. AAA is interested in having its performance center, explained as for international people. Roldan mentioned wrestlers from the rest of the world coming to Mexico to train and wants to have a central location to offer that for AAA. (There are other obvious advantages to having a training center; AEW & WWE were greatly helped in producing TV recently because they had buildings they owned.)
The most amusing part of the conversation that the interviewer didn’t know was amusing was when he asked Dorian Roldan for his favorite wrestler. Roldan diplomatically said it’s changed from various ones over time, then told a story about being a big Octagon fan when he was a child. It seems a pretty safe bet he’s not as much of one now. It is one of those things that’s hard to grasp if come to Mexican wrestling much later in life like me: Octagon seems like an out of shape guy who hasn’t had a good match in two decades, may never have had a great match outside of being along for the ride with Santo, Guerrero, and Barr. It’s so weird that people defend him on anything. He was just a lot of childhood hero for a lot of Mexican kids, and those feelings are tough to shake. (This may be rerun content, but it’s slow.)
Mohicano II mentioned Wednesday that Fernando Puentes passed away. The name comes up as one of the trainers of Oscar Sevilla/el Angel. Promociones Cantu also mentions him as the person who made the first gear for several people who came through Nuevo Laredo, including Laredo Kid & La Hiedra. He mentions Puentes wrestled as Magnum and Mascara Sagrada. (He’d know better, but I can’t figure out when he’d be Mascara Sagrada.)
El Fantasma announced a deal between the Mexico City commission and a local funereal parlor, should wrestlers or their families have that need.
Brazo de Oro Jr., Emperador Azteca, Hijo del Octagon, Galeno del Mal, Atlantis Jr., Bandido, and Hijo del Pirata Morgan will be participating in Hijo del Dr. Wagner Jr.’s FIFA tournament. Wagner credits Bandido with helping recruit people; it feels like he called a lot of his old ELITE friends. Atlantis Jr. is the only Big 2 promotion guy in this; I wonder if CMLL’s veto of being on the same show as AAA guys extends to YouTube FIFA tournaments?
07/03 Lucha Memes in Arena Lopez Mateos
It seems presumptuous to be advertising a show at this point, but Memes ended up running their last show with no one there and presumably will just do the same again should it be required.
There’s also the issue that the Arena Lopez Mateos fundraiser has reached only one-sixth of their funding goal. It’s got 12 days left and will not come close to meeting even their revised down target. I don’t know what happens next. (It does seem like the promoters who’ve used the building could’ve done more to promote the fundraiser since they have to look elsewhere if Arena Lopez Mateos shuts down, but I’m not sure it would’ve made a difference.)
Crazy Boy talks about the symbols on his mask.
LuchaTalk starts a look back at the top 15 luchadors of the decade.
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I kinda hate Octagon now. He seems like a jerk and a dirtbag. But when I was younger, I thought he was so cool. Just him standing alongside Hijo del Santo, like this ninja assassin partner of this Silver God. I was just amazed by them both. THEN you grow up and see how selfish they were and how they weren’t really that good, and the adult in you realizes that the greatness was from Guerrero and Love Machine. Not that I hate hijo del Santo, but his daddy he ain’t. But yeah, you are not alone in your dislike of old Nopetagon.
Octagon has definitely turned into a real dirtbag in many fan’s eyes in the last several years. It’s hard to sympathize with him now when it comes to his name litigation with AAA.
As far as Hijo del Santo goes, I disagree on his wrestling merits. He was actually really good in his prime and still is better than many of his contemporaries. However, I’ll also acknowledge that he hasn’t accumulated as many injuries as those guys, other than his back. What I do agree, is that Hijo del Santo has shown to be selfish many times, unlike his father, who you hear was good to his colleagues, including under-carders.