CMLL (FRI) 02/04/2022 Arena México
1) Suicida vs Inquisidor
2) La Vaquerita, Marcela, Skadi vs Dalys, La Comandante, Tiffany
3) Dark Panther, Esfinge, Espíritu Negro vs Gemelo Diablo I, Gemelo Diablo II, Sagrado
4) Fugaz, Negro Casas, Niebla Roja vs Magnus, Rugido, Volador Jr. [Relevos Increíbles]
5) Atlantis Jr., Místico, Titán vs Euforia, Hechicero, Mephisto
This is a 99 pesos show. I’m not sure why. There’s some sense in just putting every show on Ticketmaster Live or even just every Friday – the overhead can’t be much if the only addition is sending a stream out to Ticketmaster of the show they’re taping already – but CMLL has tried this already multiple times and then given up on it. They’ll probably give up on it again.
Atlantis Jr. being back to a face makes no sense after ending last week as a big rudo feuding with Stuka. It turns out last week’s angle may have been unplanned. I was alerted to watch the video of the match once again, and it appears the match actually derailed in the closing minutes. Stuka Jr. did his usual suplex one guy (Atlantis Jr.) onto another guy (Gran Guerrero) bit, only they were misaligned just enough for Gran Guerrero to take a shot around the head/throat area. Gran Guerrero signals to referee Olimpico that he’s hurt and doesn’t move much until he’s pinned by Stuka’s torpedo splash moments later. There’s some clandestine communication between Stuka, Olimpico, and Atlantis leading to Atlantis quickly ripping off Stuka’s mask, CMLL normal way of getting out a match when there’s been an injury. Atlantis Jr.’s argument with Olimpico was a well-done job of distracting the fans from Gran Guerrero quickly getting taken away. Guerrero wrestled the next day in Arena Coliseo so he must be OK later, but that likely wasn’t the finish they intended – and the big conclusion I took from it (Stuka/Atlantis are having a mask match) seems very unlikely now. I think this may stick out if/when you watch the match, but I totally didn’t notice it live.
Things go wrong, and promotion can either take advantage of it or ignore it. CMLL has decided to ignore it. So We’ve got this. Hechicero’s return should set up a good main event. Magnus & Rugido suddenly working semi-mains on Friday is a great career achievement for them and a shocking lack of depth at the moment for CMLL.
CMLL (SAT) 02/05/2022 Arena Coliseo
1) Angelito & Último Dragóncito vs Pequeño Olímpico & Pequeño Violencia
2) Robin, Sangre Imperial, Volcano vs Akuma, Dark Magic, Espanto Jr.
3) Dulce Gardenia, Espíritu Negro, Hombre Bala Jr. vs Cancerbero, Luciferno, Virus
4) Hechicero, Titán, Volador Jr. vs Cavernario, Negro Casas, Sagrado [Relevos Increíbles]
5) Templario vs Último Guerrero
Templario gets his singles match. It’s hard to believe there’s an angle coming on a Saturday show but I guess we’ll find out.
CMLL (SUN) 02/06/2022 Arena México
1) Acero & Aéreo vs Fantasy & Kaligua
2) Enfermero Jr., Grako, Nitro vs Akuma, Espanto Jr., Raider
3) Audaz, Hombre Bala Jr., Stigma vs Dark Magic, Disturbio, Magnus
4) Atlantis, Esfinge, Panterita del Ring vs Hijo del Villano III, Pólvora, Rey Bucanero
5) Místico, Niebla Roja, Volador Jr. vs Atlantis Jr., Cavernario, Último Guerrero [Relevos Increíbles]5) Místico, Niebla Roja, Templario vs Cavernario, Último Guerrero, Volador Jr. [Relevos Increíbles]
The original main event was on CMLL’s website for about hours before is changed around. CMLL isn’t announcing people out but it’s hard to miss when one half of a tag team is on TV and the other is not. Niebla Roja sure is booked a lot this week.
There’s never been a shortage of 1st/2nd match wrestlers; there’s always been a Principe Odin Jr. or Apocalipsis or Nitro who could come in. Raider is no worse than most of them, but it’s unusual they have a need to bring someone in for that spot. Maybe it’s just a familiar favor to his mom Princesa Sugehit.
CMLL (MON) 02/07/2022 Arena Puebla
1) Asturiano & Fénix SO vs Black Tiger & Dark Soul
2) Arkalis & Suicida vs El Perverso & Prayer
3) Panterita del Ring, Panterita del Ring Jr., Stigma vs El Coyote, Magnus, Rugido
4) Dulce Gardenia, Fugaz, Titán vs Felino Jr., Niebla Roja, Pólvora
5) Atlantis Jr. vs Cavernario
Cavernario might be the tecnico in that feud, who knows.
Monday’s CMLL Twitch upload was surprisingly important: it was the CMLL tag title match, Angel de Oro & Niebla Roja vs Titan & Volador Jr. There’s no atmosphere at all and it’s a match that would’ve been greatly helped by a loud Friday night crowd, but it still came off as Good if you can get past the lack of creativity.
Atlantis, in the usual media interviews, says he’ll support his son no matter if he’s a tecnico or rudo but has zero desire to be a rudo himself.
The lucha libre mural in Arena Mexico will appear on a Mexico lottery card beginning this Sunday. The artist, Miguel Valverde, says that mural changed his life – instead of his work being seen by a few people, thousands see it every week. The unveiling of this ticket was part of the tourism press conference last week, with Salvador Lutteroth and Gala Lutteroth representing CMLL. Both have been seen representing CMLL a lot in the last couple of years. Seeing them together made it sink in how Gala has essentially taken over Sofia Alonso’s previous spot as the young female leader-in-waiting of the promotion. I’m not sure if that’s the actual plan or if it’d work out any better for her, yet it’s definitely the image they’re trying to project for now.
I love this enjoy this interview with Rugido, which believes a large and rabid Rugido fanbase exists currently in this universe and doesn’t question his goal of being more famous than El Santo. Mas Lucha also has a highly complementary column on Rugido as a future breakout star. I hope they’re all correct, CMLL could use some more great stars, but it has not come through to me at all so far.
CMLL and NJPW wrestlers are booked on a show in Tijuana at the end of the month. That’s happened recently in San Diego with the same Baja Stars promotion. It’s weird that a third-party promoter is using both CMLL and NJPW wrestlers but those two groups aren’t using each other’s wrestlers, even on North American shows. But no weirder than the rest of this stuff.
The postponed January 18th CMLL/Tury show in Chiapas is now scheduled for May 1st.
AAA
Space lists as AAA back at its normal start time. The show description originally was “Rumbo A Rey de Reyes I”, meant to be the canceled Merida taping, and later became “Pepsi Center 1”, which are the just aired episodes. I presume it’ll actually be Best of episodes for two weeks and you should likely find other things to do on Saturday night.
AAA’s repeatedly pushed the idea that the 02/19 Rey de Reyes show is “100% confirmed.” I think this comes out of the local promoters holding a follow up press conference the last few days to hype the show and make it clear nothing’s changed. The only news from that press conference was Taya again implied to be the mystery woman on the show, which is only news in that AAA hasn’t gotten around to announcing it themselves. AAA already hinted she’d debut on the 01/30 show, that show got canceled, and that plot point is just unresolved along with the new Mercenario.
A 03/05 taping in Ciudad Madero has tickets on sale, though AAA has not officially announced the date. That seems like the next taping after Rey de Reyes, though Space would have to air it live to have a new TV show that week. Perhaps there’s another show in between.
AAA and mobile game Free Fight are doing a co-promotion on YouTube Friday night. I don’t know what it involves.
Other News
The final episode of MLW Azteca is up on their YouTube channel. This was definitely episode five not because they were building to a big conclusion but because this was the last choice stuff they had left to air. Extreme Tiger & Mecha Wolf try in their singles match, but neither are MLW regulars so it feels disconnected from anything else going on. There’s a typically crazy Vikingo performance in the main event forced into the margins of an angle about MLW regular Alex Kane not wanting to wrestle in the match. Vikingo got over anyway because 2021 Vikingo with any time is going to look impressive, but I don’t think even MLW could believe they made the best use of him. MLW returns to regular MLW Fusion shows starting next week, which usually means one prelim lucha libre match over a three or four week stretch.
The AAW show tonight has Laredo Kid versus Mat Fitchett, which is also a FITE PPV for 15 USD.
GCW this weekend is also on FIT this weekend. Each show is an 12 USD, both are 20.
02/04 Houston
- Mascara Dorada vs Blake Christian vs Gringo Loco vs ASF
- Matt Tremont vs La Sadika
02/05 Dallas
- Psycho Clown vs Gringo Loco
- Dr. Wagner Jr. vs Joey Janela
- Blake Christian vs Laredo Kid
That Houston show is Mascara Dorada’s first match since leaving WWE and there’s going to be a lot of interest in how he does there. Lucha Central writes about Mascara Dorada’s last few years.
Robles held a press conference to talk about their 02/18 Mexico City lineup, which they’d already announced. Highlights included a random tease of El Hijo del Santo versus Blue Demon Jr. (Santo previously said he has no interest in wrestling Demon again so that’s probably not happening), a random shot at the TripleMania mask tournament, and the reunion of twenty-year-old faction Los Guapos with Scorpio Jr. and Shocker coming in. La Mascara led the press conference and still seems to be running the promotion. Erika Canseco, who was the head of CMLL’s edecans, was at the press conference so I presume she’s finished up with CMLL. There were rumors a couple of months ago that CMLL cutting back the number of edecanes they were using also included Canseco being let go, but I hadn’t seen her or anyone else confirm it.
I waited out this Robles press conference in hopes of updates about Arturo Rivera and Fenix. Rivera works as a master of ceremonies in this promotion; they only said he was stable. They actually forgot to talk about the main at the press conference until someone asked about in the Q&A, and even then La Mascara couldn’t remember who was actually in the match. It had been listed as Fénix, Penta 0M, Scott Steiner versus ?, Gran Apolo, La Máscara and it sounded like Dralistico was in Fenix’s spot and Pagano on in the mystery person spot. (I couldn’t tell if Mascara said Scott Steiner’s name or something else, but it wasn’t Fenix.) This Robles show is one day before Rey de Reyes, so Fenix still keeping this booking would’ve been a good sign for him to be back quick. It’s still possible Fenix could work only Rey de Reyes – that’s the one he’s going to pick if he can only work once – but February 17th always seemed like an optimistic timeline. AAA may wait until very late to announce a change but I expect to the Lucha Brothers versus Hermanos Lee match to be announced.
LuchaManiaks announced Laredo Kid versus ACH for WrestleMania weekend. No date announced; I think Laredo is going to be one of the busier people those days.
IWRG (SUN) 02/06/2022 Arena Naucalpan
1) Kunay & Spider Fly vs Kenji & X-Devil
2) Jessy Jackson & Sagitarius vs Baronessa & Lolita
3) Bengalee vs Satania
4) Alpha Wolf & Dragón Bane vs Accion Jackson & Travis Banks [super libre]
5) Big Mike vs Black Dragón, Tortuga Leo, Hell Boy [hair]
6) Hijo del Fishman & Tonalli vs Noisy Boy & Relámpago and Hijo del Pirata Morgan & Puma de Oro and Aster Boy & Hijo del Alebrije and Black Terry & Legendario and Dick Angelo 3G & Hijo del Dr. Wagner Jr. and Caballero de Plata & Veneno and Galeno del Mal & Limbo [El Protector]
This is as Mas Lucha premium show. El Protector is their Gran Alternativa tournament and had been a normal single elimination deal in past years. This time, it’s going to be an eight-way match where you can only eliminate a team by beating the rookie.
Mas Lucha has started to upload Travis Banks matches individually after not doing so earlier. I’m guessing just no one cares.
Mas Lucha posted a video from Misterioso Sr. and the California/NJPW Misterioso. It’s presented as an interview though the host is there mostly to summarize and re-enforce the points the Misterioso are making. It’s a 50-minute video but you can skip to around 30:30 to get to the meat of it: they’re (again) upset the CMLL Misterioso is using that name and says he has no legal right to do so. The story seems to be he was given permission to use “Misterioso II”, started using Mistieroso Jr., and Misterioso Sr. found that as breaking their deal. The California two are going through again because they’re upset CMLL Misterioso has given his children similar names: Misterioso Negro, Misterioso Blanco, and La Misteriosa, feeling that’s way over the line.
There are a couple of issues. The biggest is those are not actually the names the kids are using. The boys are Misterio Negro & Misterio Blanco. They’ve wrestled on shows under those names, they’re on Facebook under those names, it’s not hard to get that correct, and it’s hard to imagine Misterioso has all the rights to “Misterio” too. Or to female version “La Misteriosa”. The second issue is CMLL Misterioso clearly doesn’t care what the California guys saying – he joked on Facebook about this video giving his family more publicity. This disagreement is about money, which doesn’t up come up at all in the video. This is a situation Misterioso Sr. created by selling his name rights to many people and there are no amount of videos that are going to ever fix it. Maybe he could fix it legally, but that probably would cost much more than it’s worth, so we’ll continue to get these videos every 18 months.
A son of Super Muneco says his father is back home, still isolated because of COVID-19 but said not to be in the hospital. Super Muneco is said to have received three vaccine doses and is on oxygen. The Super Muneco Jr. Facebook account also says Super Muneco is doing fine and they’re not soliciting financial help.
Dragon Lee said he caught COVID. No more details beyond that.
Arturo Rivera is apparently looking for blood donors, which first was reported by Teleformula report and then spread everywhere. It’s one of those stories that got picked up in a ton of places with zero information outside of the original Twitter post. I’m not sure what the situation is beyond the need for blood even a day later. The Robles press conference today mentioned Arturo Rivera is stable, so I guess it’s not too serious.
Diamante is back in Dragon Gate, as part of the new rudo group Z-Brats. I mistakenly had hopes of Diamante turning up someplace interesting while he was in Mexico, but he worked a very low-level show and was gone.
LuchaWorld has the latest Lucha Report, including the missing Guadalajara results.