AAA TV , 2030 (SUN) 11/01/2020 Autodromo Hermano Rodriguez, Magdalena Mixiuhca, Distrito Federal [AAA, Furia de Titanes, Lucha Central, thecubsfan]
1) Hades & La Parkita b La Parkita Negra & Lady Maravilla 
12:02. Hades beat Parkita Negra, as a prelude to Hiedra running out and the rudas beating up the tecnicas. Parkita Negra have Parkita a jumping piledriver and he was strechered out.
2) Lady Shani b La Hiedra, Big Mami
8:06. Shani submitted Hiedra. Maravilla and Hiedra attacked post match, with Big Mami trying to help.
3) Carta Brava Jr. & La Parka Negra b Dinastía & Máximo
10:23. Parka Negra pinned Maximo after a moonsault.
4) Laredo Kid b Octagón Jr., Myzteziz Jr.
10:52. Laredo Kid beat Octagon with a 450 splash. Both Octagon and Myzteziz needed stretchers.
5) Chessman b Texano Jr., Psycho Clown
12:54. Texano fouled and unmasked Psycho Clown, only to get fouled by Chessman. Laredo saved Psycho after the match. Chessman said he’d beat Pagano at TripleMania, with Pagano responding in a taped promo (while wearing a neck brace.)
The closing AutoLuchas show was as fun as the one that aired four weeks ago. The Dia del Muertos theme felt fresher with AAA, maybe because we don’t see it every year with CMLL (and CMLL scaled down instead of doing something new or different.) AAA wrestlers are generally working much harder than CMLL ones too. I wonder how much being in front of people helps with that.
Laredo Kid versus Octagon versus Myzteziz was the best of the night. They had a lot of ideas integrating all three people, not just having one person sell on the outside. Everyone looks better wrestling Laredo Kid, but Octagon & Myzteziz seem like they’re improving despite not working much. The stretcher stuff at the end (and in the opener) seemed like a work – Laredo is so dangerous going into face Omega – and was a bit overdone on the show.
Hades had a run in the middle of the opener where things didn’t go well at all, but she did so much before and after which she still came off as a star. Hades being on the tecnica side of a mixed tag let her work with the underrated Parkita Negra. I’m not sure if she can reliably do the same things working only against women. Lady Maravilla seems like she has so much confidence (and she had her tag belt still.) A Hiedra/Maravilla partnership was teased before the pandemic and might be leading to a tag match for TripleMania.
Psycho Clown worked absurdly hard in the main event for a match that was going to end with two fouls and a mask pull. It made the match stick out a little bit more than the Carta Brava/Parka Negra vs Dinastia/Maximo match. Wins and losses never mean all that much and yet it was still surprising to see Parka Negra beat Maximo cleanly on a show that didn’t otherwise seem to mean much.
Pagano sent in a promo to respond to Chessman while wearing a neck brace. He was the surprise wrestler on a Lucha Libre Boom show the night before, teaming with Joe Lider against LA Park & Hijo de LA Park in the main event. Pagano’s attempt at a tope con giro over a barricade came up short, he hit the barricade legs first and dropped on his head. There was concern at the moment but it does not appear to be a serious injury.
TripleMania, unofficially on December 5, is the only other announced AAA show. That means at least a month until the next show, maybe longer if it gets postponed. There’s been no hint of a show between now and TripleMania. AAA probably could run a taping in Arena Naucalpan or elsewhere Mexico State if they wanted, but they’ve talked about wanting to protect the talent from COVID-19 and it’s tough to tape TV in those situations and protect everyone.
AAA also put up a second AutoLuchas TV show covering more matches from October 3rd and 4th. The TV presentation is harder to watch. There seems to be an intention to film the TV shows WWE style, with camera cuts every few seconds and a lot of shaking and zooming. It’s distracting and I found it hard to concentrate on the action for the first episode.
IWRG (SUN) 11/01/2020 Arena Naucalpan [ESTO, Mas Lucha, Ovaciones, The Gladiatores]
1) Diosa Quetzal & Lady Cat b Diosa Atenea & Hija de Gatubela 
2) Oficial 911 & Oficial AK47 b Jessy Ventura & Pasion Kristal
911 fouled Kristal to win
3) Dragón Bane & Hijo de Canis Lupus b Demonio Infernal & Fresero Jr.
Bloody match. Canis pinned Fresero to win.
4) Capo Mayor & Súper Beast b Dr. Wagner Jr. & Hijo De Dos Caras
Super Beast got hurt, Capo Mayor (ex-Mascara 2000 Jr.) beat both Hijo de Dos Caras and Wagner to win. Hair challenges followed.
5) Capo del Sur L Hijo del Alebrije, Capo del Norte, Galeno del Mal, The Tiger, Emperador Azteca, Hijo del Dr. Wagner Jr., Hijo del Espectro (Laguna), Toxin, Eragón [cage, mask]
Order of escape: Eragon, Galeno del Mal, Hijo del Espectro, Capo del Sur, Emperador Azteca, Hijo del Dr. Wagner, Toxin, the Tiger, but then Capo del Sur & Eragon came back in to join Hijo del Alebrije & Capo del Norte. Norte, Eragon and Alebrije escpaed, leaving Sur as the loser. Capo del Sur gave his name as Jose Luis Hernandez Hernandez, 15 years a wrestler, from Tijuana. That data may not be accurate.
The cage match went broadly as expected, with Eragon as the prelim guy teased as losing so they Capos wouldn’t seem like the least important person. Capo del Sur said he previously Makabro Rojo Jr. previously; his Facebook page is still under that name. There’s some suspicion he may have wrestled under a previous mask in IWRG – it is IWRG after all – but I don’t know that anyone has proved it yet.
Dr. Wagner Jr. and Capo Mayor (Mascara 2000 Jr/Omar Reyes) continue to push for a hair match. IWRG typically has a big apuesta match at the end of the year. This year is not typical but that seems plausible; IWRG seems to be selling as many tickets as they were before the pandemic at this point. It’s unlikely Capo Mayor is going to get a bigger payoff elsewhere in the near future, and he keeps talking about wanting to retire soon.
The IWRG Castillo del Terror was a Mas Lucha Premium show. It appears to going up for free on Estrellas del Ring today.
It appears CMLL has abandoned weekly PPVs. Ticketmaster lists only the Friday 11/27 show as airing. It’s at 201.25 pesos, which is down from 288 for major shows in October. CMLL has not made any announcement as to the future of their shows on Friday nights; it is unclear if this means Friday nights go back on YouTube or Marca or just don’t exist at all. They typically wait until Informa for the lineups but start promoting the existence of a show sooner. No PPV purchase numbers are known. The discussion of the shows appeared to drop off a cliff after the Aniversario show, with maybe a slight rebound for Dia del Muertos. There are no annual themed shows in November, so it was always going to be a harder month. CMLL announced the Leyenda de Azul taking place sometime in November, perhaps that’s the 11/27 show.
I was really not looking forward to paying for another month of lackluster CMLL shows, but the problem there was the quality of the shows more than paying. Weekly PPVs are a rough concept in 2020 and there’s a fair argument that no promotion can actually make that work. I would’ve liked to see CMLL at least try, but either they’re choosing not to improve the cards or what they did in November is the best they believe they have to offer. it increasingly seems like it’s that second choice, that CMLL thinks they’re doing a great job, and nothing will change until management does. The inability to sell (virtual) tickets normally causes shakeups in wrestling, but there’s no sign of any change coming with CMLL. If this failure won’t change CMLL thinking, it is hard to imagine what it will take.
Shocker, Pegasso, and Stigma made their first appearance on post-hiatus CMLL shows as part of the YouTube show posted Sunday. I am told Misterioso appeared on the Televisa show this week, which airs on YouTube next week.
That leaves Atlantis & Fuego as the two biggest names who have yet to return. Atlantis last wrestled in October 2019, underwent another knee operation, appeared on CMLL Informa during the break saying he was ready to go if matches started tomorrow, but hasn’t wrestled at all. The discussion of a Psycho Clown/Atlantis mask match as if it was a possible thing suggests lucha libre fans are not ready to accept Atlantis’ career may be over, but that’s looking like a reasonable possibility. Fuego said negative things about CMLL around two years ago while threatening to leave, so he may have just left. He hasn’t posted publicly on Facebook since the start of the pandemic.
CMLL weekend TV included matches with La Magnifica & Silueta and Estrellita & Stephanie Vaquer, two teams who haven’t appeared since the women’s tag tournament the first couple of Fridays of October. I don’t have good taping dates for shows, but that suggests the matches airing on TV are currently three to four weeks old.
No CMLL wrestlers are included in NJPW’s Best of Super Juniors this year. Neither is Dragon Lee. That was the expected outcome: it’s a small field (10 people), traveling is tough, and Dragon Lee appears to be headed to Ring of Honor tapings in December instead. It’s the first BOSJ tournament since 2009 with no CMLL representation; there’s a lot of “it’s the first time since [X]” in 2020.
The surprise is NJPW also announcing a Super J Cup, which will be taped in Los Angeles and include North American wrestlers who might have been in the BOSJ in a normal year. That tournament is listed as airing live on December 12, which conflicts with the reported ROH taping dates. That means no Dragon Lee either. CMLL has no obvious conflicts, but no representative will be there either. Rey Horus will travel from Tijuana to represent Ring of Honor, wrestlers will represent Impact Wrestling and GCW, but not one from CMLL. Maybe that’s a travel issue, maybe it’s a testing one, I’m not sure. The Best of Super Juniors snub had been an expected disappointment, and the Super J Cup was a refreshing unexpected one.
Hugo Savinovich repeatedly mentioned on AAA’s show that Lio Rush and the Colon Family (ex-WWE’s Carlito, Primo, and Epico) will be coming to AAA soon. (His account repeated the news on Twitter, though “he” framed it like it was now an AAA report. Weird.) AAA only has one future show announced, so these names must be booked for TripleMania. That broadly fits with the usual TripleMania pattern of bringing in a bunch of foreign talent to sell the show as an international event, even if they don’t have a specific intended role. Konnan’s been positive about all these guys in the past. He’s got a long history with the Colons; if they had been released without a pandemic, I think they would’ve appeared in AAA already.
The Lio Rush name has a slight issue. He’s listed as working in that Super J Cup on 12/12, said to be airing live. It’s been a while since I listened to NJPW’s Misterioso talk about this on a podcast, but I believe he said NJPW’s USA branch was asking people to quarantine for a week prior to appearing on their tapings. A week prior to Super J Cup would be the currently planned date for TripleMania, December 5th. You can’t quarantine if you’re also flying back and forth from Mexico. It’s possible NJPW is fibbing about the tournament being live. I would assume someone’s worked this all out already and it makes more sense to them than me.
(I’m also surprised Misterioso is not in the Super J Cup, now that I think about it, but he may be considered a heavyweight.)
On DTU’s early Sunday morning show, Dinastia Wagner attacked Crazy Boy until Super Crazy made the save. That sets up a match for an 11/15 DTU Drive-In show in Tulancingo. Super Crazy is also appearing on an 11/14 show at Arena Mama Lucha.
Lucha Memes posted results of their two shows; the second show results are here, I’ve put the first one here. Mas Lucha didn’t appear to be covering Memes but it still looks to be filmed for IWTV. Not many notes on the matches themselves, though I was told Calibus was good among the younger wrestlers.
Sunday’s Wrestling Resurrection show was turned into a no fans show, vaguely implied to be because of regulations by the authorities.
Ciudad Juarez luchador El Engimatico passed away on Sunday, according to Box Y Lucha.
This week’s Box Y Lucha #3446 has the Rey del Inframundo champ.
Mil Muertes, Aerostar, Drago, Aero Boy, and Aramis are listed as coming for the 11/15 GALLI show. Aerostar had previously said he believed he’d be out until December.