I need to be clear up front: this post contains a lot of death, dying and bad situations. There is direct lucha libre content, but there’s a lot of stuff that’s more tangentially about it. I’m writing it because it feels worth including but, if you clicked over here looking for some escape from the real world today, this isn’t going to do it for you.
CMLL is up to 84 missed shows as of today. There’s no sign of that changing soon. The Mexico secretary of health says he expects the pandemic to last until October in his country. That article actually quotes him once as saying that’s the length and another saying that’s when he expects the curve to go down. Those are two different things; even October shouldn’t be considered a strict date. It’s also going differently in different areas; Mexico City and the surrounding areas is showing the highest increase in infections. Jalisco and Nuevo Leon haven’t been as hard which let people – like me – to believe that maybe those would be safe places to run shows. The Mexico government’s belief now is those regions are just getting the virus later and will be dealing with the same issues eventually.
That also doesn’t mean the country will be shut down until October; Mexico’s president is on a tour of the southern part of the country pushing the idea that industries can be safely restarted during the pandemic. It’s not immediately clear where lucha libre would be considered.
There’s no date for lucha libre returning in La Laguna, and fear some Torreon/Gomez Palacio arenas may have run their last show. That article says lucha libre has been declared a non-essential activity and is part of the last group of activities to be allowed to restart, though it’s unclear which authorities they’re referring towards. Local authorities making that call would be very bad for lucha libre in Torreon, national ones would be very bad for lucha libre everywhere.
CMLL Lady’s Rin announced the July shows with Mystique, Microman and Chamuel have been indefinitely postponed. Current travel restrictions make it tough to happen, but the bigger issue is Japan doesn’t seem to be offering visas to Mexicans. This happened back during the spread of H1N1, where a Mistico led NJPW visit was canceled because Japan wouldn’t let the Mexicans in the country for fear of passing the virus in their country. The COVID-19 virus cases are much higher in Mexico than in Japan at the moment, which may mean Mexicans (like Dragon Lee) aren’t allowed in Japan until the situation changes. It may be a long time before that situation changes.
Matematico II passed away on Thursday due to COVID-19. He’s the son of the original Matematico. Box Y Lucha lists his real name as Rodolfo Garcia Pedrosa. Matematico teamed with his father and his brother (Matematico III) as a trio during the last few years of LLI/UWA, then moved over for some AAA work. He largely retired after 1996, though there was someone using the name in the last year. SuperLuchas has an obituary.
Dragon Chino II’s wife also passed away Thursday, a day after her husband. She hasn’t specifically been reported as a COVID-19 death, but the situation suggests that’s probably the situation.
Even if there was lucha libre running in Mexico, there might not have been any in Jalisco this weekend due to civil unrest. There are intense protests and anger around the death of Giovanni Lopez. Local authorities enacted a law punishing anyone who does not wear a facemask with a fine or arrest. Police have violently enforced this law, with reports of beatings. Lopez was caught with a mask on the night of May 4th. A group of police pulled him off the street and took him to their police station. Lopez’s brother called to find out how they could retrieve Giovanni, and was told he could be picked up the next day. He wasn’t there the next day. Lopez’s brother was redirected to the hospital, where he was informed Giovanni Lopez had died of a head injury and a gunshot to the foot. The case had no public progress for about month until George Floyd’s death and the video of Giovanni Lopez arrest circulating on social media generated public pressure to do something. (The first attempt at doing something was the investigation claiming Lopez was not arrested for failure to wear a facemask and instead for aggressive behavior with police as if that explains a gunshot; the latest attempt is arresting three officers and investigating the mayor for covering this up.) People in Guadalajara, and all-around Mexico, staged protests to complain about chronic abusive behavior by police in the country. The demonstrations in Guadalajara went up to the head of government and then broke down that door to angrily destroy things inside. More protests are scheduled for the rest of the week; it’s as much about the pattern of unchecked actions by police and authorities as it is about one person now.
The Estrella Divina/Lady Black cyber-bullying issue got some attention and moved a little bit. Lady Black deleted most of her Facebook posts, including the one explaining her issues with Estrella Divina and Dragon de Orus. She did post something thanking people for their support. Estrella Divina hasn’t posted on Facebook since the situation became public. Furia de Titanes reports Estrella Divina is not an AAA contracted wrestler; the contract ended at the end of 2019 and wasn’t renewed.
Furia de Titanes goes on to say this means there’s no AAA involvement in it, which isn’t exactly true. AAA was still using an Estrella Divina Facebook profile to promote Lucha Capital. (There’s a bunch of social media seemingly set up in the names of AAA luchadors who never actually use it, existing to push out AAA content.) Estrella Divina is also in the pool of apparent non-contracted AAA luchadors used to fill on non-televised shows, like a Samoano or Raptor. It’s been about one booking a month this year, not a lot, and all on shows that no one outside of that town (or weird people on the internet) even know exist. AAA’s said nothing about the situation, keeping in normal practices.
DTU says their iPPV next Friday will be available to watch up to 24 hours later.
06/17 Lucha Memes/TWE Chato in “San Casteabro Stadium”
This is another Lucha Memes charity show coming on less than two weeks of notice, airing on a Wednesday night at 9 pm. I don’t understand any of that. I assume this is being taped in advance, I assume this is airing on +LuchaTV and they’ll be taking money through super chat as well as the bank account, but I assume things that turn out to be incorrect. There’s no Paypal information and the promotion will never say how much money was raised or who got it, these are just ground rules of the operation at this point.
I have trouble believing CMLL will allow Guerrero Maya to appear on a show with AAA TV talent (even if they’re not under contract.) CMLL wrestlers were pulled from a previous Lucha Memes show with Arez. The policy of CMLL wrestlers not being able to appear with AAA wrestlers is a pretty poor one, especially during a pandemic.
Arez versus Hahastary sounds like a very fun match. It does occur to me that if I wanted to throw coins at Arez for having a good match, I could just Paypal money directly to the contact email address he’s got pinned on his Twitter account. Hahastary doesn’t appear to have the same. (Though she is one of many luchadors now selling shirts on Pmart and MercadoLibre, and apparently launched a YouTube channel.) It’s been two and a half months of quartine suspended wrestling; it’s not easy to get things done during this time, but I feel like “get a Paypal or even just publically accessible bank account for donations/payments” should’ve been something most every serious Mexican wrestler could’ve gotten done by this point. There’s a case to just send it all the money to the promoter and let them figure it out when everyone’s scrambling to figure out what’s going, but there’s been time to figure it out. I think the Mexican wrestler default thinking is “I’m just a wrestler, I’ll let the person in charge figure it out”, and they need to grasp that they need to be in charge of themselves. It’s more work, but those who go that direction tend to end up happier.
Arez’s latest video has him battling Toxin.
AOZA Promotions in Saltillo says they’ll be running their own empty arena show sometime in the next few weeks, to be transmitted on Facebook. No card is announced.
Welcome to Mi Barrio announced they’ll be adding a singles championship (Campeonato Calavera) when they resume. The first season of the promotion featured the creation of tag team titles; maybe this title would’ve already debuted had they been able to run. The promotion and +LuchaTV put up an hour interview yesterday; +LuchaTV probably could grind out a few articles by summarizing the highlights for people who do not have an hour to watch an interview about Welcome to Mi Barrio or some of the other many interviews they’re doing.
Box Y Lucha reposts a story on Raul Reyes as Mexico City small arena promoter and a semi-famous one where Felino calls his stint in AAA the worst decision he made in his life.
El Universal has an interview with Super Comando, who starting as a trainer at CAR The Crash today.
the current Huracan Ramirez said he had a tour in India canceled, talks up a feud with Rene Guajardo III.
Lineups
KAOZ (???) (airing June 14) Monterrey, Nuevo León
1) Baby Love & Komander vs Lady Puma & Origen
2) Sexy Dulce © vs Diosa Quetzal, Dulce Kanela [KAOZ WOMEN]
3) Charro Negro vs Oro Negro, Origen, Puma de Oro, Komander [KAOZ JCRUISER]
4) Rico Rodríguez & Vazco Jr. vs Charro Negro & Oro Negro and Cuervo & Dark Scoria [KAOZ TAG]
5) Galeno del Mal & Hijo del Dr. Wagner Jr. vs Fresero Jr. & Mr. 450
6) Baby Love & Dark Cuervo vs Ayako Hamada & El Divo [KAOZ MIXED TAG]
7) Blue Demon Jr. vs Dr. Wagner Jr. vs Daga
This is a 100 peso ($4.50 USD and dropping) iPPV airing on June 14th at 8 pm CT. It’s airing on Arena.mx, which appears to be a ticket seller pivoting to streaming iPPV for the moment. The site does appear to allow Visa/Mastercard payments along with the usual more popular Oxxo/card payments, though not Paypal. They’ll mail you a link to the show that day. I have no idea if there will be VOD, or if it’ll turn up on +LuchaTV later like the other KAOZ shows. It’s fair to be cautious on these things and let other people figure out if it actually works, but hopefully, it goes well. This is just one more thing that Mexican wrestling wasn’t trying before the pandemic and has to figure it out how to make it work just at the second they needed it to work efficiently
I think the odd bit of people being listed twice (Komander, Charo Negro, Oro Negro, Cuervo, Baby Love) means this is a real lineup. I’m lead to believe by social media that this was taped last week, and so the double appearances are people filling in for others who didn’t make it. That’s also a good sign for this iPPV coming off if it’s just a video file that needs to be uploaded and not a live stream from a venue to get right.
Speaking of social media: I probably would’ve figured out Mr. 450/MechaWolf is in Tijuana (not in the US) if I paid more attention to social media. He’s got no problem of getting to Monterrey from Florida because he’s not in Florida.
KAOZ hasn’t looked promising so far; this is a show where I might just catch a match much later on if it was going up on +LuchaTV during more normal times. I probably will give it a try to watch now, though it’d be helpful if it wasn’t right the same time as something else I wanted to see.
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>Samoano or Raptor
Was I missing something or were they not even on the normal indie cams on youtube much?
They were not on indie cams much, though they tended to be on shows far away from Mexico City without much fancams.