an empty arena TripleMania?, CMLL announces Leyenda de Azul lineup

AAA’s TripleMania will take place on Saturday, December 26th. The Lucha Central Espanol podcast reported the date on their episode yesterday, starting about 29th minutes in. This will be an empty arena show with no fans. The podcast did not have specific info on how it’ll be aired – noting PPV is an option along with the usual TV outlets – but believes the date was picked with the idea families would all be together and be looking for something to do.

EDIT: An AAA source says the 12/26 date is “dead wrong”. Here’s like six hundred words I already wrote about it because what else am I going to do:

Matches now announced for TripleMania

• Chessman vs Pagano in a hair versus hair match
• Laredo Kid vs Kenny Omega for the AAA Mega Championship
• Aracno & Leyenda Americana versus Terror Purpura & Venenoide in a Marvel Match
• Taya (c) vs Lady Shani for the AAA Reina de Reinas Championship.

Lucha Central also revealed the women’s title match. Lady Shani, La Hiedra, and Faby Apache had a #1 contenders match on one of the 10/18 Autolucha shows. It hasn’t aired yet. It’s possible Shani won that to set up the match, though AAA’s been trying to set Shani/Taya a lot longer than that. AAA’s first announced that match two years ago, back when it was Shani who women’s champ. Injuries, availability and the pandemic has held it off a long time. It was likely to be the TripleMania title match back when this was an August show. The two were training partners when Taya was Mexico based and still appear to be close friends; they’re going to want to make that match great. A title change is likely. It works thematically and it also may be necessary contractually. Taya’s Impact contract reportedly ends in January, and there’s a possibility she’d have some interest in joining her husband in WWE in 2021.

On his podcast, Konnan mentioned AAA had a date for TripleMania which was to be announced in a few days. Maybe AAA will confirm this in a few days. Konnan also has the Marvel reps worked out: two will be Americans, four will be Mexicans. He said six people; just four are announced.

AAA said TripleMania will be a seven-match card. I anticipate there will be one match to get a lot of people involved and a mixed tag match to include Big Mami & Nino Hamburguesa (and to find a spot for other women). That leaves one more spot. A Lucha Brothers match normally fits in that space, though the lack of ticket revenue at least opens the door to them being left off the card this year and AAA focusing on regular roster members. AAA will probably give the whole card at once, next time we hear from them.

I’ve got some ideas for TripleMania related projects and was unsure if I’d be able to figure them out in two weeks if the show was on. It made me unsure how AAA was going to promote a TripleMania in just a couple of weeks. Giving up hope of having fans is disappointing, but it seems highly unlikely any time soon. Better to have a month to promote what the show is going to be than waiting around for what it can’t be.

AEW has not yet mentioned the Laredo Kid/Kenny Omega TripleMania match, though they may be waiting for a date. It’d be a great help for AAA if Laredo Kid made an appearance on AEW Dynamite, ideally 12/02 for the Omega/Moxley title match, but I wouldn’t count on it. If AAA is doing TripleMania live on December 26th, that would seem to clinch Omega not appearing on NJPW’s Dome shows on 01/04 and 01/05, as he wouldn’t be able to quarantine for fourteen days. (It’s never seemed like a strong possibility he’d be there, but there’s always a rumor. And there’s also the chance Japan could change their two-week quarantine policy.)

Mexico City is staying in the orange health code this week, with hospitalizations on the rise. They’re on a pace where infections would be as bad in December as they were back in May. Which would mean a harder lockdown. (The rumor/speculation is Mexico City has only stayed open as much as it to allow Buen Fin/Black Friday-type sales to help businesses and will be locking down once those are over.) CMLL has aired their live shows actually live. AAA led fans to believe all of the Lucha Fighter shows were live but all but the first episode had taped matches. A taped TripleMania might be safer to accomplish and produced smoother (though the live Autoluchas shows have been better the camera cut heavy TV episodes.)

CMLL is running their PPV on the last Friday of the month in November. (Keep scrolling for that lineup.) If CMLL does the same next week, it would take place on Christmas and a day before TripleMania. CMLL has made a recent annual tradition of running notable shows on Christmas but I’m unsure if they’d try the same for a PPV. It’s hard to know what CMLL is thinking about much of anything and we probably won’t find out until the start of December.

CMLL (FRI) 11/27/2020 Arena México
1) Reyna Isis vs Princesa Sugehit
2) Black Panther & Blue Panther vs Felino & Tiger
3) Diamante Azul vs Sansón, Blue Panther Jr., Forastero, Ángel de Oro, Niebla Roja, Valiente, Cuatrero, Kráneo, Blue Panther Jr., Rey Bucanero, Vangellys, Guerrero Maya Jr., Stuka Jr., Cancerbero, Ephesto [Leyenda de Azul]
4) Último Guerrero © vs Euforia [CMLL HEAVY]
8th defense

CMLL will do better with this show only because they’re asking people to buy one show a month and not four. It is not a strong card otherwise. Ultimo Guerrero and Euforia should be good, though they may have diminished excitement for waiting so long. The Leyenda de Azul is not especially meaningful in most years and there’s not anyone I’m excited to see. Panthers/Felinos and Isis/Sugehit should be fine but there’s no excitement there. There’s a lot of bigger names left off, which would be weird for any other promotion running one PPV a month except for CMLL. They’re still rotating talent when it long stopped making sense.

If you are interested in buying the show, buy it today. The price will go up 25% starting tomorrow.

Blue Panther Jr. saying he doesn’t know what it’ll mean for his career if he wins and he’s looking for a rivalry is a good summary of the importance of the Leyenda de Azul. Someone will win, CMLL will likely mention it for about two weeks, and then they’ll likely never reference it again until the next time they run one.

Niebla Roja teased helping Terrible in Leyenda de Azul. The Chavez and Terrible teamed on Televisa and they may be headed to something akin to a Los Ingobernables tweeners bit. Or it may just get dropped.

CMLL on AMX should have a Rey Cometa versus Raziel match tonight. It’s hard to be completely sure with CMLL TV, but they set up the match last week and continued talking about it on CMLL Informa today. That show streams free to the world at 7 pm CT. I’ll put it up on Google Drive this weekend. AMX started a Titan/

CMLL’s YouTube Sunday upload (last week’s Televisa show) will have

• Oro Jr. vs Hijo del Signo
• Dulce Garednia & Audaz vs Dark Magic & Okumura
• Atlantis Jr. & Flyer (c) vs Hijo del Villano III Jr. & Tiger for the Mexican National Tag Team championship
• Angel de Oro, Niebla Roja, Terrible vs Rey Bucanero, Shocker, Valiente

Atlantis and Atlantis Jr. appeared in a charity announcement, which is the first time we’ve seen Atlantis in months.

Show of note this weekend

• Estrellita is advertised on the Future Stars of Women’s Wrestling PPV tonight. She’s scheduled to face Katrina.
• Arena Lopez Mateos has a Freelance/Impulso title match. Mas Lucha will have the previous week’s show on their site Saturday and were very high on the Freelance/Segura/Yakuza vs Arashi/Belial/Impulso trios match.
• Two of the IWRG Lightweight Tournament matches will air on a Lucha Time special on Saturday night, also on Mas Lucha.
• The other two matches will air on Sunday from Arena Naucalpan, along with a three way tag match main event. That’ll air on Mas Lucha.
• Vanguardia has their monthly show in Pachuca; it’ll air on Mas Lucha later. The previous show begins streaming on Mas Lucha Premium’s service this weekend.
• Zona 23 returns on Sunday, should turn up on IWTV eventually.

Lucha Memes last two shows are now up on IWTV. The lineups look good but I heard next to thing about the shows. In my thinking, this means there’s totally an opening for someone around Mexico City who is already going to these shows just to write “esta lucha fue bien, esta lucha es MUY bien, y otro todo normal”. I get some of that on Whatsapp but I’d also probably pay like $2/month on Patreon for it if there was enough of it.

The other galaxy brain idea I have is if I was Memes – or MexaWrestling or the weird Arena Neza shows that were on PPV or whomever – I might offer people who came to a show a discount on the next show’s tickets if they posted what they liked or disliked. It would have clearly be more than a Facebook comment and I’d want to make it public so it doesn’t come off as astroturfing, but there’s value in that sort of marketing if you have a good product. Any promoter would prefer that sort of buzz build naturally, but sometimes you need a little stunt to get it started.

Anyway, I may get around to finally to signing up to IWTV to watch the four Lucha Memes shows they have on there. Part of the issue is I have an old beef that service that everyone else has long forgotten and it’s hard for me to get there. The other issue is the timing; the last Memes show seems to go up about two weeks before the next one, I’m always thinking I should just wait a little bit longer for the next show, and then the cycle repeats.

Fenix & Penta did interviews to promote AEW on Space, which debuts on Sunday. They were asked which side they would be on in a theoretical AAA versus AEW show and they say they’d just pick which ever side gives them the best opponents from the other company.

Konnan made his debut on AEW Wednesday. It was a cameo in a Las Vegas skit and appeared to be a one-off appearance. Chris Jericho had previously mentioning Konnan pitching to manage Santana & Ortiz (but Jericho wanted them with him instead.)

MLW announced their Opera Cup will return over the upcoming weeks. It’s an eight-person single-elimination tournament. Laredo Kid faces ACH in the first round. I’d be surprised if Laredo Kid made it to the second round over the recent ex-WWE guy. (It’s not great for AAA trying to get people excited about a Laredo/Omega match, but that’s not MLW’s problem.) Daga is listed among the many alternates, so he seems to have landed in MLW for the time being. Hijo de LA Park is also among those alternates. This bunch of MLW episodes are already taped with the LA Parks in attendance, so they’ll be wrestling at some point. They may not tape again until 2021.

Pirata Morgan, in an interview with YouTube personality Escorpion Dorado, revealed luchadors get paid more for losing apuesta matches than winning. The payoffs were known though it is a little bit different with an old school guy like Morgan talking about, and Morgan still seems to be talking about it as if the matches are real but wrestlers throw them to get those payoffs. This is still enough to get Mexican websites and Facebook accounts into disarray. Morgan cites a match with Hector Garza in Puebla where the promoter promised 25K for the winner and 150K for the loser, then told Morgan it’d actually be 200K if he was the one who lost. Morgan says luchadors used to get paid a straight salary win or lose.

Octagon tells a story bout the day Undertaker asked him for a photo.

Tinieblas has also been named as a representative of Redes Sociales Progresistas.

Puma King has a new vlog up tomorrow.

Box Y Lucha is selling some digital editions of older magazines. It’s 2 USD or 40 Pesos, or 20/400 for 14 editions. Some have been bonuses as part of the year subscription or otherwise made available.

• New: 768, 793, 865, 868, 868-A, 869, 870, 871, 872, 873, 874, 875, 877, 937, 948
• Previously Available: 876, 878, 929, 934, 1000, 1609

It looks like you have to buy a number of magazines and then pick which ones but I’m not exactly sure. They sent me an email asking which ones I wanted after I bought 14.

ElSalvador.com has a history of lucha libre in that country. They describe the end of wrestling in the 60s coming due to issues between the wrestlers and the main promoter. The wrestlers formed a union and left to form their own promotion, and neither the wrestlers or the old promotion were successful without each other. There was an attempt to set up the country as a stop for Puerto Rican wrestling in the 70s that didn’t take.

Guatemala luchador Corsario II (Juanito Lopez) passed away.

Lineups

Legend (SAT) 11/28/2020 Arena Lopez Mateos
1) Príncipe Ranger vs Niño Águila
2) Little Ángel vs Blue Danger
3) Azgard vs Arashi vs Ángel Malavado
4) Manos De Seda Jr. & Raptor vs Epitafio & Leviatham
5) Bala De Plata Jr., Carta Brava Jr. (IWL), Tom Mix Jr. vs Oficial 911, Oficial AK47, Oficial Fierro
6) Toscano & Último Guerrero vs Joe Lider & Mr. Águila

Ultimo Guerrero wrestling on an indie show when a major plot point in CMLL is Ultimo Guerrero wrestling on indie shows against CMLL’s wishes makes this a bit of interest. Legend is actually selling this on a late 2000s dream match between Los Perros del Mal and Guerreros del Infierno. Ultimo Guerrero was also the man who unmasked Mr. Aguila before he left to be a WWE wrestler last century.

This is a show honoring luchador Tom Mix, with Tom Mix Jr. wrestling in the semi-main. I have not watched any Arashi but the booking suggests he’s the Arena Lopez Mateos guy everyone running the building is getting behind.

Lucha Memes (SUN) 11/29/2020 Coliseo Coacalco, Coacalco, Estado de México
1) Perro De Guerra Jr. vs Belial
2) Avisman vs Energía
3) Judas el Traidor vs Látigo
4) Aramis vs Black Terry
5) Arez vs Trauma II
6) Ricky Marvin vs Mr. Electro
7) Dr. Cerebro & Negro Navarro vs Aeroboy & Solar I

Full card for the Negro Navarro tribute show. I think there’s an attempt to do new match-ups on this card. It’s great on the surface but few of the matches seem exciting. Aramis versus Black Terry is interesting. Everything should be fine.