CMLL announced Tuesday that their alliance with Ring of Honor had come to an end. CMLL said they’d focus on continuing to provide the best lucha libre in the world and thanked Ring of Honor for their work together since 2016.
Ring of Honor, as of Wednesday morning, has said nothing. A source indicates Ring of Honor found out about CMLL’s decision on social media, the same as everyone else, and were caught off guard by the announcement.
ROH and CMLL’s relationship was a friendship of convenience. NJPW worked with both promotions individually and pushed them to work together as well. Neither side seemed at all familiar with the other group at first; ROH seemed to learn more about CMLL than CMLL seemed to figure out ROH. The relationship was a new path for CMLL to bring in foreign talent, most notably Matt Taven but others as well for events like the Gran Prix. CMLL wrestlers appeared in Ring of Honor; Dragon Lee seemed to make the most appearances before he was signed, though that might have been more due to his NJPW connection. Ring of Honor ran one combined ROH/CMLL tour in September 2019, “Global Wars Especatular“; it appeared a replacement for the usual ROH/NJPW Global Wars tour and didn’t draw nearly as well those had, though it did show some commitment to the relationship.
The fraying of that relationship seems to go back to Rush winning the ROH World Championship a few weeks after that tour, then announcing on social media that he was going to be in ROH primarily and was leaving CMLL. CMLL responded by publically firing both Rush and Dragon Lee, who had not planned to leave but had worked PWG shows after being ordered to pass on them. CMLL additionally wanted their partners NJPW and ROH to punish the Munoz brothers and not allow them to use their CMLL names. NJPW wasn’t using Rush anyway, did change Dragon Lee to Ryu Lee but that’s as far as it went. ROH wasn’t going to punish their new World champion. Ultimo Guerrero did appear on ROH shows past that point. ROH’s Flip Gordon was scheduled to appear on the 2020 Homenaje a Dos Leyendas show before that show got indefinitely postponed, so they were still working together pre-pandemic
As best as anyone can tell, Matt Taven being announced for the Federacion Wrestling June PPV caused CMLL to suddenly make the call announced they were done with Ring of Honor. Between Taven, Rush, Dragon Lee, Bestia del Ring, Bandido, and now Rey Horus announced, there’s a lot of Ring of Honor wrestlers announced for that show. CMLL may have blamed ROH, even though it doesn’t seem like ROH has anything to do with the show – these are just friends of Rush working a show with him. This move also seems like an impulse decision; it follows both the Rush/Dragon Lee separation and the recent Bandido dismissal as sudden news events made with no warning to the other affected parties (or thought about how it’s going to make CMLL look to their fans.)
I don’t think this affects ROH deeply; they seemed to want to grow the CMLL relationship, but it hadn’t reached a point where it was critical to their success. (Losing the NJPW relationship would a bigger deal to them, but I don’t think losing CMLL costs them NJPW.) ROH’s had greater success in signing Mexican wrestlers directly – Rush, Dragon Lee, and Bandido have particularly been assets to the promotion. My guess is ROH might have held back from bringing in more Mexican indie wrestlers out of deference to CMLL, and there’s now an opening for other luchadors to get a look.
Rush posted a goodbye to CMLL a second time with a photo of him wearing the Ring of Honor belt. Matt Taven seems to have not said anything; he’s not even promoted the Federacion appearance, though he was talking about wanting to go back to CMLL just ten days ago.
The next Federacion Wrestling story moved to Diamante Azul, who was identified as one of the shadows on their teasers. Those bits are sometimes intentionally misleading – I will never forget the time someone used a silhouette of Sexy Star to tease the debut of Big Mami in AAA – but Diamante Azul also removed mentions of CMLL on his Instagram bio and listed himself as an independent. That got noticed on Tuesday; by Wednesday, he’d removed the independent line. (He has not added back CMLL or fixed the spelling of “NWJP” yet) Azul has also vaguely posted about things ending and beginning and hinted at things on his series of YouTube videos. Diamante Azul is a close Rush friend and so likely has a spot in Federacion Wrestling waiting for him if he should want it. At the same time, Diamante Azul also posted that he’ll be wrestling in CMLL’s Arena Coliseo Guadalajara on Friday. Wait and see, I guess, but the people who pay attention to Azul seem pretty sure he’s leaving CMLL.
Not that any title seems to mean anything in CMLL, but Diamante Azul is the current Mexican heavyweight champion. That was the title CMLL only (relatively) recently brought back, and it’s one that Azul could keep if he left the promotion. It’s sanctioned by the commission, not CMLL.
Random legal note that may or may mean anything in the next few days. (Not being coy, just don’t know.) The Diamante Azul gimmick is a CMLL creation – they came up with the look to evoke the image and name of Blue Demon without getting violating his trademarks. CMLL did file their own trademarks, as they’ve generally done for new characters and top wrestlers since around 2011. However, those trademarks generally were filled directly under Paco Alonso’s name, not as CMLL corporate policy or the general Lutteroth family. This always seemed really odd but didn’t seem to be accidental. When Sofia Alonso took over CMLL in 2019, she re-filled for many of those trademarks, also in her own name instead of CMLL. If you look up in IMPI online search for “Diamante Azul” trademarks, Paco Alonso and Sofia Alonso are listed as those who filed the trademarks, not by the Luttertoths’ who currently operate CMLL. (Most of them seem to be stuck in a status of filed but never approved for unclear reasons.) It reads like Diamante Azul can keep being Diamante Azul elsewhere if Sofia Alonso permits it and CMLL is powerless to stop it, though I’m far from a Mexican legal expert and I have no idea how it would hold up. Diamante Azul is not the only wrestler in this situation; the Lutteroths filed their own trademarks for “CMLL”, logos and other items, but the wrestler names generally seem to be an oversight. Diamante Azul might also better decide to be take a name he owns to be free from issues going forward
Federacion Wrestling’s press conference is Friday – except, there’s no indication of when Friday. The people behind Federacion Wrestling haven’t stepped forward, but the talk is it’s a concert promoter moving into wrestling for the first time. What they’re doing sort of makes sense for a concert promoter – why not run a festival with all the biggest names available – but I’m skeptical it’ll work for wrestling. It’s already clear it doesn’t need to work to cause other people to make moves.
AAA Rey de Reyes Lineup
AAA TV (SAT) 05/01/2021 unknown location, unknown state
1) Dinastía vs Toxin, Aramis, Látigo, Arez
2) Octagón Jr. vs Taurus, ? [AAA LA]
vacant title
3) Faby Apache vs Lady Shani, Flammer, Chik Tormenta, Lady Maravilla, ? [Reina De Reinas]
vacant title
4) Laredo Kid vs Texano Jr., Murder Clown, Aerostar, Drago, Abismo Negro Jr., Hijo Del Vikingo, Myzteziz Jr. [Rey de Reyes]
5) Pagano & Psycho Clown vs ? & Chessman
Matches 1/3/5 are new (and I’m guessing at the card order.) Space has four and half hours blocked off for this show, though the card is clearly not going that. This thing card is probably another product of pandemic economics and no tickets to sell.
This is the full card, though it doesn’t feel full without knowing who will be in those three mystery spots. It is possible some of those spots were hoped to be foreign wrestlers and that’s not currently possible; I would keep expectations in check as always with AAA surprises. The main event seems fine, though also the same sort of match we could’ve seen at AutoLuchas; it doesn’t feel like a big show main event. The rest of card is taking care of some of the dangling title issues; it’s not as great as feuds actually progressing, but it’s something.
La Hiedra, Big Mami, and Hades are noticeably missing from the Reina de Reinas match. I wouldn’t have guessed Mami or Hades to win, but Hiedra seems like she’d be a reasonable choice if she was included. There’s no indication her missing this match is related to the recent allegations against her and her brother. It’s always possible she wasn’t planned to win so they just gave her the weekend off, because a lot of people seem to be getting the weekend off. I have a sneaking suspicion something weird is going to happen with the mystery woman in this match.
Toxin makes his first appearance since pre-pandemic in the oepner. It doesn’t seem like those guys are progressing towards anything in AAA but I’m not sure I mine as long as they have good matches. That should be a pretty good match.
The Twitch stream that was broadcasting Space seems to be off-line permanently. There is a different Twitch stream. It’s not hard to find, but I’m leery about putting it out there before Saturday to risk it getting taken down before then. The people doing these Twitch streams aren’t doing them for AAA, they’re doing them because they embed them in pages with a billon of ugly/invasive/possible malware ads. Giving a direct link to the video messy with their business model and discourages them from continuing to do it. I’m not sure I care about their business model but I do want to avoid antagonizing them before Sunday.
Other News
Grafico interviews Silueta about her ruda turn in Guadalajara. Her match with Mystique last night ended in DQ when local luchadora Soberbia interfered.
CMLL has Terrible, Cuatrero, Princesa Sugehit, Felino Jr. and Los Cancerberos del Infierno on as guests. Cuatrero and Felino might be there to announce their involvement in Copa Dinastia.
CMLL posted a series of Salvador Lutteroth Camou (Salvador II) talking about the history of Arena Mexico. There’s talk about the opening, ghost stories, and wrestlers. This was not well-timed to roll out right after the ROH announcement.
Atlantis, in his media tour last week, said he’s accomplished more than Blue Demon & El Santo. Atlantis has not accomplished more than Blue Demon or El Santo but good on him in believing in himself.
I feel like I’m getting into something on a daily basis on Twitter lately. It’s not great! It’s often something I could’ve avoided. I know enough to know that, at the moment, the best tweets you can do are ones where you barely say anything at all, or you just repeat what someone else said or you say nothing and let the people fill in the blanks. Letting people fill in those blanks can absolutely backfire too though. I was noticing other people posting photos of wrestlers who had won multiple championships in celebration of Kenny Omega becoming a four-belt champion. Those photos did not include Mexican wrestlers, as always, so I decided to put up the photo of Mascara Dorada as a four-belt champion with a pithy comment. Mark Jindrak understood that as yet another complaint about Mascara Dorada’s usage in WWE, and fairly claimed that Dorada wasn’t making a 100 USD a match in CMLL when he had all those belts. He also wrote AAA, when he was working there, would actually use the belts as an excuse to pay people less (to the point where they couldn’t afford a 12 pack to celebrate after a win.) The AAA & CMLL wrestler pay scale isn’t great, and Jindrak was working in CMLL & AAA at a lot better time than right now.
(For my part, I’ve reasonably given up on Gran Metalik ever being pushed in WWE or Metalik caring about it – it’s not happening, everyone understands it. It is fun to joke about on Twitter from time to time.)
Alberto el Patron, appearing on a California show, said he would be wrestling Andrade in McAllen, Texas in June or July. He did not name a promotion; my guess it’s Salinas Promotions backing it as they run McAllen with names most often, though it appears to be a Nacion Lucha branded Libre event based on Andrade screenshot. Mas Lucha says the match will actually be Alberto, Andrade and Carlito on July 31st in a triangle match, which makes sense in giving them someone who will actually take a pin. They write Blue Demon Jr., Cinta de Oro, Kalisto/Samuray del Sol, and Toscano are also booked for the show.
Alberto and Andrade appeared to be friends in their WWE days – Alberto told a story about convincing Andrade to stay in WWE at one point – but Alberto is a rightfully loathed individual for his multiple allegations of partner abuse. (Alberto continues to deny those allegations.) Alberto still occasionally gets booked on US lucha libre shows, as they’ve got enough money to pay for Alberto and those promotions tend to care nothing about out of the ring. Andrade seems like a guy planning on wrestling everywhere and anyone working with Alberto at this point is going to be treated as condoning his destructive behavior. It’s a bad reading of the room.
On the same note, Roberto Figueroa teased an Andrade & Cinta de Oro vs Alberto el Patron & Hijo de Dos Caras match for Monterrey during the summer. Figueroa also mentioned he’s going to Alberto’s place to film a video this weekend, so we’re probably getting the 8th iteration of “Alberto talks to friendly press about how he’s really a good guy who’s just been horribly mistreated by the mean press.” That bit stopped working a while ago but they’re going to keep trying it.
Rey Bucanero is running a PPV Saturday with Demonio Infernal versus Hijo del Pirata Morgan for a random championship. The PPV page, last I checked, is not set up to sell tickets for the show, so I can’t tell you how much it costs. This seems like an easier set-up than most of these efforts, but most of these efforts offering the same level of matches that can be seen for free haven’t been working and I’m not sure why people are still trying this a year plus into the pandemic. Mas Lucha had Rey Bucanero on En+Carados for a while to talk about the show, though it meant an awkward transition from talking about a show you could pay for to or you could watch Rey de Reyes on cable for free.
Houston group LokoWrestling says Psycho Clown was pulled off their May 22nd show due to an AAA date. AAA hasn’t announced anything for May 22nd, though it would fit if they’re sending people out to spot shows again. Ultimo Guerrero is the replacement.