Vanguardia/DTU, why Santo/Demon hasn’t happened

Friday is the next coronoavirus update day for Mexico. Mexico City typically has a press conference at noon to announce their status. There’s a country-wide press conference to announce the health status for all the states at 6 pm, though there was no update last time. A Yellow traffic light means closed-door shows can be approved. A Yellow traffic light for Mexico City would be surprising; the mayor says the number of patients in hospitals is rising, and it needs to actually fall under a certain limit to reach that Yellow status.

There’s no definite conclusion to the Vanguardia shut down show saga. Crazy Boy appeared on CuadrilateroTV Facebook video show, saying he and DTU had nothing to do with it. Crazy Boy’s position is he’s so focused on his own work that he doesn’t even know what else is going on; he was contacted by someone asking if he was running a show but didn’t even know it was happening or who was running it. (This story also helpfully fits into the DTU narrative of the Vanguardia guys still seen by normal people as DTU stars and Vanguardia not having succeeded on their own.)

The Crazy Boy interview doesn’t seem to change anyone’s mind. The fanbases of those two promotions are polarized to see each other as the enemy, even while the promotions are making the case there’s room for both of them. (There is, because no one’s really making much money on all of this; if the business was the real concern, both would be making more out of their older content or working on any other way to make money outside of running shows.) The people who are publicly staying neutral are Mas Lucha, who avoided talking about the situation until late in their podcast and suggested many other possibilities for who could’ve called the authorities on Vanguardia. DTU & Vanguardia are two of the only Mas Lucha promotions left running at the moment, so the production outlet isn’t really in a position to take sides.

I suspect Vanguardia will quietly try to run that show again sometime in the next couple of weekends; probably whatever weekend DTU isn’t running since they’ll need Mas Lucha to film it.

El Hijo del Santo told digitalmex (probably reprinted from elsewhere) why a mask match between himself and Blue Demon Jr. could never happen. Is it the money? The ego? The lack of a sturdy promotion to support it? No, it is none of these things. El Hijo del Santo explains that the mask match between them has never and will never happen because the fans would be too depressed if one of them no longer had a mask. He believes that’s why their fathers never faced off either. Strangely, this does not stop Santo from wanting to do that mask match with Atlantis, “because at least I lose it toa g great luchador if I lost.” He would absolutely not be losing.

Veracruz luchador/promoter Rayo Vengador’s death this past Saturday is now reported as COVID-19 related.

While not listed on the card under that name, one of the Generacion XXI wrestlers worked under the name (and mask) of Coronavirus on their recent secret show.

Xalapa luchador Tigre Cosmico says empty arena shows are stopped in the city. A recent wave of infections and three deaths (Pitufo, Anticristo, and Gabriel o Gabriela) convinced the wrestlers they’d be better off in quarantine. Pitufo & Anticristo had not previously been acknowledged as It’s unclear if those cases came from those shows; I think Gabriel o Gabriela’s case is suspected as occurring at another outing.

There was another round of sign-ups for loans at the Mexico City lucha libre commission’s office. There are 25,000 peso loans, to be paid back within 33 months. The sign-ups included wrestlers, referees, advertisers, mask makers, vendors. It also included wrestlers from Mexico State (IWRG) and Hidalgo. All of this is an expansion from the original Mexico City luchador only focus, though the wrestlers are still required to be licensed.

NVI Noticias has a nice bio of Oaxaca luchador Increíble (Silverio Miguel Jiménez Orozco). It’s a sign of the time that I had to keep checking to see if he had died recently. Instead, it’s a different reason a luchador might be profiled at the moment: Increible lost the lower half of his left arm in a childhood accident and still was able to become a luchador.

Terrible, Reyna Isis, Tiger, and Hijo del Villano III will appear on CMLL Informa this week. That’s less than usual, though they’ve also been adding some of the non-Julio Cesar Rivera announced as guests.

Arena Guatemala Mexico says they’ll be announcing a return date soon. Shopping malls and restaurants started to re-open in the country on Monday. Mexican name wrestlers usually cross the border south to work in that arena a few times a year. That border is currently closed but I wonder if we might see more names than usual if wrestling does open up there first.

Murder Clown wants a shot at the AAA Megachampionship. I wish wrestling could still be a thing so there Kenny Omega versus Murder Clown would be a thing to dream about. (Note that Murder Clown refers to the champion as “whoever has it”, so maybe he’s not dreaming about it.)

LuchaTalk returns with the first part of a discussion about the Mistico boom.