COVID shutdowns, upcoming tournaments, Vanguardia

Sunday will be the 100th day since CMLL shut down due to COVID-19. The normally scheduled 5pm Sunday Arena Mexico show will be the 100th show canceled or postponed, about half of them Arena Mexico shows. AAA’s missed somewhere around seven tapings and an unknown amount of spot shows; this has gone on long enough that shows which would’ve happened probably didn’t even reach the planning stage. There is no known return date for either promotion.

MicromanFever has a recap of Dorian Roldan’s interview on the Out of The Box podcast. I listened to part of it as well; please do not put music underneath your podcast conversation. Roldan mentions there was a plan to run shows in San Luis Potosi and Puebla, figuring those places would open up first, but does not feel it would be economically sound to run shows at reduced capacity. It reads as though AAA is not planning on running until they can run full shows, which may mean a long wait. A new traffic light update in Mexico is expected tonight.

The last two days have seen many men in the wrestling world being outed for sexual misbehavior and abuse under the hastag #SpeakingOut. The accusations range from simple statements (“everyone knows [X] is a pest”) to personal statements of abuse to photos of bruise marks. David Starr was the first person named, with many more mentioned on Thursday. Reddit has a long list of stories so far. Most of the names are from the European wrestling scene.

No stories have come out from Mexico. Please do not take that as some proof there are no similar situations in Mexico. There’s instead a lot less belief that victims speaking out will be listened to or be supported. I’m not entirely confident people in charge anywhere will make changes when needed, but there’s at least more public pressure for them to at least acknowledge the problem in the US or Europe. In Mexico, there have been situations as high profile as (then ex-AAA booker) Konnan outing AAA referee Copetes as a stalker of women, and Konnan’s since returned to AAA where Copetes’ position seems unchanged. Sofia Alonso removing Magnum from his position in running Arena Coliseo Guadalajara after Silueta revealed a pattern of sexual harassment is a rarity. There’s a lot of other Magnum’s out there preying on young women in lucha libre and there’s very few Sofia Alonso’s taking action about it. The Angel o Demonio situation also showed that there’s almost nothing that would get someone liked by others exiled from the Mexican wrestling community. The only hope is seeing these stories come to light elsewhere will help strengthen those in Mexico to take actions of their own, though I don’t expect to see a similar flood of reveals.

Lucha Libre Vanguardia has its “Tierra de Oportunidades” show Saturday at 8 pm airing on +LuchaTV. It’s said to be live, and I tend to hope that’s misleading since the shows which are taped have gone a lot better. It’s a show with a lot of shenanigans: Ciclope faces the Invisible Man (billed as from GCW, though appears to originally be a Titanes en el Ring concept.) Ciclope also defends the Black Mask Lucha Libre tag team championships with Miedo Extremo against a team not announced. Ciclope & Miedo are feuding with Vanguardia so that figures to either be a short match or one with a bad finish. There’s a royal rumble main event, a tag match with two locals versus two luchadors from Matamoros and a Draztick Boy vs Lobo Blanco vs Falcon Fire match for another title. Vanguardia have been announcing people for the show all week, though it’s unclear if they’re meant to be in the rumble or possible tag team title opponents. All are local names. The poster has the donation info; you can also donate via Draztick Boy’s Paypal.

Kaoz will have the second half of their PPV Sunday night at 8 pm. The same link as last week should work. They really should just start the show at 7 pm and repeat the first part prior, but I have no idea what they’re doing or why they’re doing. There was no real attempt to explain or justify why they split up their PPV in half, the people who brought are expected just to be content with what they’ve done.

+Lucha TV has changed all their social media avatars to indicate a second Torneo Suprema Mas Lucha, though they haven’t officially announced it as far as I’ve seen. (I still haven’t seen the Memes show, somehow.) The purple color and the “Suprema” name seems to indicate it’ll be a women’s tournament this time around.

Something generically called “Lucha Libre Asocaion” is running “Nuvea Normalidad” on Sunday June 28th. They’re going with a virtual ticket price ($50 pesos in advance, $70 day of the show) in exchange for a YouTube link. The link has three different bank accounts for information. It also requires you to take a photo of your donation to send to the promoter. There is no link to the promoter nor information about how one would be able to do that. Lucha libre wasn’t ready for this moment. The main event has a five of Oriental, Shun Skywalker, Drastik Boy, Oriental, and a surprise wrestler, which might be pretty good. In this case, “the new normal” does not appear to be running safe shows, but instead running the same shows they would’ve run before but not telling anyone where. Lucha libre shows running as illegal bars in the US during prohibition, basically.

The show that +LuchaTV streamed on Thursday was the first show for a promotion who didn’t even have a Facebook page until the afternoon of the show airing. What a weird time to start a new promotion. There doesn’t appear to be a donation component. It’s all very strange. That show was taped in advance.

Monterrey’s Carnicero Aguilar (Julio Aguilar Yanez, 73 or 74) passed away due to a heart attack. He spent most of his career in northern Mexico – he shows up a lot in those Torrreon results I saw – but does turn up in the 1980 EMLL results we have. The article mentions Aguilar lost his sight many years ago, but was at Gym Mr. Lince just this past Saturday talking with fellow retired wrestlers. SuperLuchas has a much more detailed obit.

Box Y Lucha reports Kilowatito (Angel Luis Aduna Salas, 79) passed away Tuesday. The Kilowatito I have records on wrestled in smaller Mexico City arena in the 80s and ended up a mini for a time in CMLL, though I’m not sure if that’s the correct one.

The leader of the Rudos Neza fan club has also passed away. This is one of a number of porras/ultras wrestling fan clubs – I believe that’s how Zona 23 started out, if I’m remembering right. Rudos Neza promoted a couple of shows over the years.

Furia de Titanes says the recently deceased Estrella Blanca III is actually a relative of Estrella Blanca, a correction from earlier. There’s also the case of someone claiming to look for donations for the recently deceased Lady Maldad, despite Lady Maldad not being dead. It would be possible, with the wide duplication of lucha libre names, that this is some other Lady Maldad.

LuchaWorld has an obit for Herodes.

El Fantasma said the Mexico City commission knows of thirty lucha libre deaths between May and June. That would include active and retired wrestlers, though it’s less clear if it includes those outside of Mexico City. Fantasma believes 90% of them are COVID-19 related, though most causes of deaths have not been publicly released.

A series of interviews with those receiving handouts from the Mexico City lucha libre commission includes a mention of Skayde, who believes he’ll be back teaching classes soon. There are also people who talk about making a living off wrestling who do not show in my database as having a match in the last three years.

Astral is back in CMLL after about a year away. He announced his return on CMLL Informa. Astral had wrestled sparingly for ELITE during that break and mentioned he was also struggling with the loss of his wife during that period of time. He credited Valiente with helping him return to CMLL. I presume he’s back in the main division, and not as a mini, though that wasn’t stated.

CMLL held a press conference call with Caristico, Soberano Jr. and Pierrothito, which is more notable for CMLL holding those things virtually rather than in person. The usual Wednesday press availability was still happening in person last month. This is a change, though Soberano (and maybe Pierrothito) aren’t in Mexico City to do those now.

Arena Coliseo Guadalajara says they’re re-opening their gym soon. I’m under the impression the Arena Mexico gym has been open during the duration, which isn’t exactly fitting the governmental policy.

Daga wrote on Twitter that he’d like to defend his title in KAOZ if AAA won’t have him defend it. Daga is AAA Latin American champion. KAOZ works with AAA, so there’s a decent chance this has already been set for the next KAOZ show and will be announced Sunday night. The second half of KAOZ’s weird iPPV will air then.

Ring of Honor appears to be planning on running empty arena shows in July. The location is not announced and the statement given to the WON mentions they’re subject to change depending on the COVID-19 situation. It’s unclear if the Mexican ROH wrestlers will be able to be involved. Another WON news item mentions NJPW taped a match for ROH at a recent empty arena show in Los Angeles, a NJPW show that’s recently started hinting about. NJPW has gotten credit for how they’ve handled the pandemic in Japan, but running a show in the US right now should take away some of that credit.

It appears AAA’s has a new TV deal in Colombia. Their Colombia Facebook page, which has been dormant since November’s failed tour there, is promoting matches airing on CityTV Sunday nights. They appear to be late 2018 Space TV shows. (Space itself is carried in many South American countries.) This a different network than aired the AAA special that year. This might just be the local promotion getting a TV slot to build interest in a tour later this year, though touring anywhere seems unlikely at the moment.

Zocalo looks back at the Pierroth versus La Parka (LA Park) mask match. It’s hard to believe now, but I guess the thought at the time was LA Park would be losing his mask because of the legal fight with AAA. There’s a clip of that match online, but it’s one of the famous “a friend of a friend of a friend told me one of the guys had a tape, but no one’s ever seen it” type matches.