AAA to Televisa/Unimas, many Mistico feuds

CMLL

CMLL (MON) 06/03/2024 Arena Puebla [Grada, Mano a Mano, Porra Fresa]
1) Espíritu Maligno & Sombra Diabólika b Amnesia & Blue Shark
2) Astro & Mercurio b Galaxy & Shockercito
Astro replaced Pierrothito
3) Lluvia & Sanely b Persephone & Zeuxis 
4) Crixus, Difunto, Raider © b Arkalis, Pegasso, Rey Samuray [OCCIDENTE TRIOS] 
first defense
5) Esfinge, Fugaz, Star Black b Averno, Euforia, Mephisto
Esfinge beat Averno and asked for a title match.
6) Ángel de Oro, Hechicero, Soberano Jr. b Gran Guerrero, Místico, Último Guerrero [Relevos Increíbles] 
Angel de Oro again pulled Mistico’s mask to pin him.

CMLL no longer airs these shows on YouTube (though they intentionally made it unclear; the local Puebla paper thinks they’re still on). They’re scheduled for Televisa Puebla on Sunday at 8 p.m. Televisa Puebla has a YouTube stream, but it typically only shows news programming. It’s also a live-only stream, with no VOD (though it’s easy enough to start recording).

Attendance seemed up. Maybe Fuerza Poblana in a title match was a draw? Maybe the answer is Mistico like always? Not sure if Esfinge/Averno or Mistico/Angel de Oro is next week, but it’s odd they’re setting up a singles match when Mistico’s got another singles match in two weeks.

CMLL (TUE) 06/04/2024 Arena México [CMLL, Kaiser Sports, Mas Lucha]
1) Angelito & Último Dragóncito b Minos & Pequeño Olímpico
Minos was stretchered out after the match
2) Dr. Karonte I, Dr. Karonte II, Grako b Capitán Suicida, Diamond, Valiente Jr.
3) Guerrero Maya Jr., Pegasso, Stigma b Cancerbero, Luciferno, Virus
4) La Catalina b Reyna Isis [lightning]
5) Felino Jr., Hechicero, Rey Bucanero b Atlantis, Blue Panther, Brillante Jr.
straight falls, Hechicero using the ropes to beat Blue Panther. Panther challenged Hechicero to a singles match next week – but one where neither man would be allowed to use the ropes.
6) Gran Guerrero, Stuka Jr., Último Guerrero b Atlantis Jr., Máscara Dorada, Neón
Atlantis Jr. suffered an injury on a spot went wrong, and Guerreros took advantage of the numbers to win.

Atlantis Jr.’s injury did not seem serious. Blue Panther/Hechicero in a no-touch-the-ropes match is a novel experiment (and more effort put into ideas for Tuesdays shows than CMLL had all of in 2019.) Minis opener sounds good.

CMLL (TUE) 06/04/2024 Arena Coliseo Guadalajara [CMLL, Mas Lucha]
1) Infierno, Mr. Trueno, Rey Trueno b El Malayo, Rey Apocalipsis, Siky Ozama
2) Gallo Jr. & Rafaga Jr. b Calavera Jr. I & Calavera Jr. II
3) Dark Magic, El Elemental, Yutani b Arlequín, Bestia Negra, Gallero
4) Kira DQ Persephone
Persephone unmasked Kira for the DQ.
5) Bárbaro Cavernario, Furia Roja, Zandokan Jr. b Flip Gordon, Halcón Negro Jr., Valiente Jr.
5) Bárbaro Cavernario, Furia Roja, Zandokan Jr. b Flip Gordon, Halcón Negro Jr., Star Black
Star Black replaced Valiente Jr.
6) Esfinge, Místico, Volador Jr. b Averno, Euforia, Soberano Jr.
Volador betrayed Mistico, unmasking him and saying he’d get the better of Mistico (they meet in a singles match here in two weeks)

Sounded like Volador did well to build up the title match.

AEW tonight has the full Blackpool Combat Club (Bryan Danielson, Claudio Castagnoli, Jon Moxley and Wheeler Yuta) versus Volador Jr., Rugido, Magnus, and Esfinge. That’s the most “Magia Blanca doesn’t have a US work visa” lineup possible. Wheeler Yuta hasn’t wrestled in months, including missing H2L, reportedly due to a concussion issue. It’s nice to see him healthy enough to get back in the ring. No idea if this is a match with a direction or just a reprise of the feud from the spring.

Informa has

• not announced anything yet

CMLL (FRI) 06/07/2024 Arena México
1) Xelhua vs Disturbio [lightning]
2) Futuro & Max Star vs Espíritu Negro & Rey Cometa
3) Akuma, El Hijo del Villano III, Villano III Jr. vs Gemelo Diablo I, Gemelo Diablo II, Kráneo
4) Esfinge, Magia Blanca, Rugido vs Difunto, Star Black, Zandokan Jr. [Relevos Increíbles]
5) Máscara Dorada, Star Jr., Volador Jr. vs Ángel de Oro, Euforia, Templario
6) Místico vs Magnus

A bit weird card. The Gemelo Diablos (big versions) haven’t been on a Friday show since March 2023. Magnus’ last Arena Mexico singles match was against Blue Panther Jr. (His last Arena Mexico singles loss was against Misterioso Jr.) Villanos are teaming with Akuma even though Zandokan’s booked. An Xelhua singles match!

Mistico’s current singles schedule is

• 06/07: vs Magnus
• 06/10: vs Angel de Oro, maybe?
• 06/17: vs Averno
• 06/18: vs Volador Jr.
• 06/22: vs Hiromu Takahashi

Mistico did press in Guadalajara (video) and Puebla to promote his 20th Anniversary shows. El Sol del Puebla also did an email contest where 15 people who sent in letters would win a chance to meet Mistico, and are publishing some of the letters.

Guadalajara’s Fantastico is wrestling in San Diego on Sunday. That’s a random appearance.

Amapola will wrestle in Big Japan Pro Wrestling on June 23rd. This is the normal miscellaneous booking that CMLL luchadoras pick up on trips of Japan. It’s notable here because BJPW mentions this is actually Amapola’s return to the promotion after more than 20 years. I couldn’t find a record of her previous appearance looking around this morning, but I would guess it was when she was wrestling as Lady Pentagon and spent time in Arison.

Box y Lucha #3606 has Star Jr. on the cover.

AAA returning to Televisa

AAA appears to be getting back onto the Televisa networks, including onto US’s Unimas network. An AAA episode is listed airing the afternoon of June 15th. I believe it’s 3pm eastern, and it’s a one hour episode. CombateMX first reported AAA was returning to the Televisa networks, mentioning the same June 15th date and saying it would include “the original announcers.” ComabteMX says AAA will also appear on Televisa’s VIX streaming platform. Neither AAA nor Televisa has announced anything official yet; I’m under the impression there will be an announcement on Thursday.

Unimas is around a top 20 network 18-49 viewers, and a near top 30 overall viewership. That means AAA should have high visibility, but some network expectation for results. If Unimas rings a bell for wrestling fans, it’s probably because it was the network that carried the Spanish-language version of Lucha Underground Season 1. It did not Season 2-4; my impression was it didn’t hit those numbers.

Unimas is an over the air network – it’s not Telemundo, it’s not Univision, it’s the third one. It is also not cable network Galavision, which used to be the home of US lucha libre broadcasts.

ComabtesMX mentioned AAA bringing back “the original announcers.” Two of the original announcers were Dr. Alfonso Morales and Arturo Rivera, who are currently dead. I think what it means is Televisa will be using the AAA announce crew, rather than using a separate Televisa-specific announce crew as they’ve do with CMLL.

AAA has been doing some co-promotional with gimmicky soccer league The Kings League, including

a history of AAA TV for context (you may want to skip it if you just want to find out who beat who)

AAA started as promotion at least partially owned by Televisa, though they divested their ownership a few years into the promotion. The previous AAA TV relationship was complicated by Televisa’s relationship with US media company Univision. Televisa and Univision had a content sharing agreement; as I understand it, Univision got a big bucket of Televisa programming to air on their networks as they wanted, whenever they wanted, and if they wanted. This worked fine for AAA (and CMLL) for many years, but became a problem in the 2000s when Univision became less interested in putting lucha libre on Univision’s Galavision network. The shows got pushed to worse timeslots, weird schedules and finally dropped completely in 2011. Univision deal with Televisa meant they still had the rights to the US TV show, even if it they weren’t airing it, and AAA could not shop it around to other networks. CMLL got around this by slicing their other weekly events into more and more TV shows. AAA could not get Univison to air their show in the US or give the rights back. Their choice was to either leave Televisa to get their US rights, or try to find their own workaround. They stayed with Televisa through 2018, and ideas like Lucha Underground and even Lucha Libre USA have a bit of their origin in AAA trying to find solutions to being locked out of the US. Even when Galavision was airing AAA, the promotion tried to get around the exclusivity by selling a TV show named after heel invasion group “LLL” and selling it to a US network. None of these ideas worked out for the long term.

AAA moved their Mexican AAA TV from Televisa to Azteca in 2019. Azteca told the press it was a two year deal with an option for an additional two years. The US rights limitation was a factor, but the Mexican station had also followed the US partner in treating its lucha libre content terribly in the last few years; it moved around a lot, it was loaded with commercial breaks, and it was sometimes strangely re-edited. Azteca promised a bright new start and willingness to treat AAA prominently. Azteca appeared to have success at times with the Lucha Libre Elite promotion, and was likely just looking for a more stable partner than that group. Azteca promised live TripleMania live specials; the Psycho Clown/Dr. Wagner Jr. mask match aired the night of a Canelo Alvarez fight. Most importantly, AAA said they would be getting a rights fee from Azteca, where Televisa had been paying nothing.

Azteca did not take AAA’s US rights. AAA instead tried to market them on their own. They had limited success. Televisa’s TUDN network aired a series of taped TripleMania specials. EstrellaTV aired the three TripleManias on delay in 2023; it was so forgettable that everyone forgot they were doing it by episode two. AAA’s big hope has been to get a significant US rights deal – any US deal would be many times larger than Mexico media companies offer for content – and use that money to expand their business and compete for the wrestlers who’ve left the promotion in the last few years. It’s likely AAA could’ve taken a smaller deal just to get back on US TV sometime between 2019 and 2024, but didn’t want to set their market value low or get stuck in a contract when the right one finally came along.

Azteca7 originally aired AAA on Friday afternoons, originally talking up their high viewership among kids. They moved it to late night Saturday in October 2020. This seemed intended as a way to help ratings – pair the lucha libre show with boxing figuring a similar audience. The problems is the boxing show started late, and ended indiscriminately; it was going to go as long as the boxing matches happened to go that night, which meant the AAA show could start as late as 1 AM. No more kid’s audience, and it didn’t seem like there was much of an audience. Azteca would also re-edit the original AAA footage, airing matches in different orders or skipping them entirely. They used their own announce crew for the first couple of years, who were not as in tune with AAA. It was an worse version of the AAA show, and easy to miss once it became a late night show. Azteca moved the show again, to digital subchannel A Mas, in September 2023. It had a better time – Sundays at 4pm – but at much smaller outlet. The TripleMania specials were also mostly dumped; a delayed version aired of TripleMania Mexico shows the last two years.

(What TV Azteca has been was interesting from a business sense but irrelevant as a attentive fan with internet access. This was the period where AAA was airing every taping live on Twitch, so there was no compelling need to jump around geoblocks or sketchy internet video feeds to see the same matches airing a few weeks later. AAA would sometimes air backstage segments on the TV show that weren’t included on live broadcast, but those would also show up on social media later. It was only the start of the pandemic – ending AAA’s Twitch deal and starting empty arena tapings – where keeping track of the TV mattered. Even though, AAA airs their programming first on cable network Space, and would post the episodes on YouTube within a day of it airing on Azteca. It’s probably more people saw AAA on Azteca during those years, but it’s not something I watched weekly or wrote much about because AAA’s setup made it irrelevant.)

There were rumors earlier this year of AAA working out a deal with Televisa, but no news source reported it until Monday night. There’s still a lot of questions to answer, like

• Is this a long term agreement to air in the US? How long?
• Is Televisa now paying AAA? Are they paying AAA a business changing amount of money?
• Will Televisa (or Unimas?) promote AAA past the first few episodes?
  • Adrian Mendoza, who does work for AAA and also fills in on the CMLL Televisa, had a running Twitter joke for years about how the Televisa social media accounts would absolutely refuse to mention the existence of CMLL on their network. Televisa wasn’t much better with the AAA show last time it was around?
• Does this affect CMLL’s status with Televisa? Will the network air both shows?
  • Televisa brought CMLL back to their network in response to AAA jumping to Azteca in 2019. Will they want to have around four hours of lucha libre every weekend?
• Will AEW wrestlers be able to appear on a show that now has US TV?
  • My understand is AEW contracts restrict their wrestlers from appearing on any other US TV show, though it’s up to AEW to decide if they want to enforce that on AAA.
• Will Space still air the new episodes first? Will Unimas/Televisa be one week behind?
• Will there be any specials for TripleMania or other events?
• Does “original announcers” mean Jesus Zuniga is back to announcing? Was Hugo Savinovich missing the May Mexico City taping just a one off or a permanent change?

(Amusing sub plot: because distinguishing the on-screen roles and the behind-the-scenes one are intentionally hard to do, the AAA fan base is crediting new director of talent Latin Lover for making this happen. I’m skeptical that’s the case.)

Back to Other AAA News

I did catch up on the AAA TV show from Saturday. (I think I’ve got all the files labeled wrong in the drive; they didn’t air in the order I was expecting.)

• Tiffany made an effort in her return but didn’t magically get any better moving from CMLL to AAA. Centella and Adelicious didn’t make a strong impression but there’s no real shot for them to do with the rudas they had to work with.
• The five way cruiserweight match was a lot of one guy doing all their moves for a long time, and then another guy, and then another guy.  It didn’t have great flow or rhythm. Australian Suicide had what I would describe as Bad Vibes when he came out for the match and I couldn’t figure out why someone who looked like they didn’t want to be there ended up jumping off a balcony. It appeared he just needed another move for his run of offense, so why not jump off the balcony. Dinamico continues to get fatured the most of the other rudos, though AAA isn’t committing to actually doing something with him. I didn’t care much for the match, but they did well enough that they got a Taurus chant. (This match also had Zuniga exclaim Taurus was eliminated when Belcegor got pinned.)
• Scoria spent the entire trios title match not getting along with Ozz and Cuervo, though he waited eight minutes to actually betray them. Maybe he thought the fans were owed a eight minute match.
• Electroshock broke out his old shock gun to use on his brother for the win. Sometimes it feels he and Zorro are getting booked primarily so Zorro can do the prophetic vignettes.

Laredo Kid defends the TNA Digital Media championship against AJ Francis on Thursday’s edition of Impact.

IWRG

IWRG (THU) 06/06/2024 Arena Naucalpan
1) Ajolotl & Golden Power vs Fauno & Histeriosis
2) Águila Roja & Halcón Suriano Jr. vs Rey Halcón & Sol
3) Keyra vs Sexy Star
4) Noisy Boy vs Spider Fly [IWRG REY DEL AIRE]
5) Cerebro Negro & Cerebro Negro Jr. vs Látigo & Toxin [TLC]

Maybe a good show? A random TLC match makes it feel like the Mala Fama guys are getting a lot of their ideas in. Halcon Suriano showing up in a second match in IWRG isn’t great for him.

Other News

Monclova lucahdor Demonio Negro (Abdel Eduardo Garcia Medellin, 35) was shot and killed at his home Wednesday night. A co-worker arrived at his home drunk and with a revolver, and ended up shooting Garcia Medellin in the heart. The alleged shooter was captured and is being held in jail.

Luis Mante lost the Dragon Gate Open the Dream Gate to Ben-K on Tuesday. The former Diamante had made three successful defenses of Dragon Gate’s most important championship before losing it. My impression is Mante did OK as champion, not an issue but definitely didn’t have a strong enough personality or performances to become the center of the promotion. On Wednesday, Flamita lost in his challenge for Open the Brave Gate Championship against Hyo. That was the expected outcome. The promising news is the reviews for Flamita’s work since returning to Dragon Gate are strongly positive.

I’ve been wondering if Black Generation was still a thing in Big Lucha. A notice for a training session at Bandido’s Gym today mentions Emperador Azteca & Oni el Bendito representing Black Generation, so that seems like a Yes.

06/15 RIOT

• Hijo de Canis Lupus vs Demonio del Aire
• Zuzu Divine vs Dulce Tormenta
• Erik Ortiz (c) vs Travis Banks vs Rene Rocks – new match

There’s a story that Fray Tormenta, needing money to pay for medical bills, has opened a car wash. I do not believe a wheelchair bound 79 year old priest has opened a car wash; he’s probably lended his image to a project.

Tu Plan De Juego writes about the Noche de Rivalidades show in Orizaba.

A cultural show in Chile including Bolivia’s Cholita luchadoras was said to draw 3,000 people.

A catch up with the stars of Argentina’s 100% Lucha. We have Heddi Karaoui to thank/blame for Hip Hop Man moving to Mexico.