CMLL
CMLL (FRI) 06/07/2024 Arena México [CMLL, Esquina Caliente, Excelsior, Kaiser Sports, Mas Lucha, Telediario, The Gladiatores (video), thecubsfan]
1) Xelhua b Disturbio [lightning] 
9:10.
2) Futuro & Max Star b Espíritu Negro & Rey Cometa 
13:14
3) Akuma, El Hijo del Villano III, Villano III Jr. b Gemelo Diablo I, Gemelo Diablo II, Kráneo 
14:08. Villano III Jr. hit his head on the barricade attempting to springboard off Akuma’s shoulders on a dive and match ended abruptly.
4) Esfinge, Magia Blanca, Rugido b Difunto, Star Black, Zandokan Jr. [Relevos Increíbles]
12:21.
5) Máscara Dorada, Star Jr., Volador Jr. b Ángel de Oro, Euforia, Templario
10:42.
6) Místico b Magnus
14:35. Los Depredadores attacked Mistico as the match started but were taken away by security. Mistico won with La Mistica clean in the middle. Mistico told Magnus to either shake his hand and put the feud behind them or agree to a mask match. Magnus shook Mistico’s hand, tried to surprise attack him, and was sent packing – he left through the crowd.
Mistico/Magnus was the sort of feud CMLL should’ve been doing more often over the last two years. A midcard rudo annoys Mistico for a couple weeks, gets his big chance in a singles match, people show up to see it, the rudo gets a little bit something out of the being in the singles match, and Mistico completely vanquishes him at the end. Magnus interacted well with the crowd to get reactions, Mistico sold a lot for him, it felt like an earned win at the end.
Mistico/Magnus also in no way felt like it was going to be the main event of the Aniversario show. They teased it at the end enough to get the press (and Magnus) to keep talking about it like a possibility, but it’s not happening. Magnus didn’t come across as an important enough to force that match to happen, and Mistico was booked as definitely better than him at the him, there was no question to it. There is enough there to do random tag matches (though those will usually also include Volador, who will overshadow Magnus as a Mistico rival) and perhaps it’s strong enough for them to be a red herring tag team if CMLL runs another incredible pairs apuesta tournament, but I don’t think that’s the September match. We’re back to not having any idea what that might be yet.
A lot of “good but not great” on this show. Semimain was rushed and short on time. Match 4 was a weird mix but good. Villano III Jr.’s injury overshadowed a fun match. Viajeros Espacios versus Atrapasuenos had some great moments but also had Max Star & Futuro struggling to execute their big moves in third fall. Max Star has messed up his Phoenix Splash enough times that he really needs to reconsider that as a finish (or at least have a plan to do something else when he misses it.) Xelhua defeating Disturbio was surprising and a good sign for his progression.
CMLL (SAT) 06/08/2024 Arena Coliseo [CMLL, thecubsfan]
1) Kaligua & Pequeño Magía b Full Metal & Pequeño Polvora
9:20
2) Amapola & Olympia b La Vaquerita & Maligna
12:33
3) Dark Magic, Espanto Jr., Vegas b Fuego, Hombre Bala Jr., Legendario
14:42
4) Felino b Fugaz [lightning]
9:00
5) Hijo del Villano III, Mephisto, Villano III Jr. b Blue Panther Jr., Dark Panther, El Hijo De Blue Panther
15:33
6) Dragón Rojo Jr., Hechicero, Terrible b Blue Panther, Flip Gordon, Volador Jr.
14:16. Hechicero snuck in a foul on Blue Panther to win.
The minis opener was the best match here, and many others had some obvious errors. Fugaz accidentally unmasking himself is unique, but the Barbaros weren’t good in the main event (third fall especially) and Villano III Jr. and Espanto Jr. each had moments that would’ve gone attention if more people were watching this. Felino beating Fugaz was surprising to me; maybe it’s Felino getting a win before they honor him.
Barba Producciones had a CMLL spot show in Saltillo. They’re the same group that partnered with CMLL on the musical festival shows earlier this year, using a mix of that CMLL talent and their own northern Mexican names. This show had the same scheduled, but one match notable changed. Mascara Dorada was supposed to face Prometeo in a singles match, and it instead became a three way match with AEW’s The Beast Mortos. (Atlantis Jr. is out after getting hurt on the ramp dive on Tuesday, CMLL sent Esfinge instead, Barba asked for and got permission to add Mortos as well to add a bigger name to the show overall.) The Beast Mortos and CMLL wrestlers are probably a one off and it mostly just means AEW will have no problem using Mortos on the same shows as CMLL people. We can safely assume that restriction only applies to Komander and Vikingo right now. The idea of Mortos mixing it up with CMLL wrestlers still is highly appealing, but it may not happen more than an indie show here or there.
(Mas Lucha was at this show so they’ll have that match up – but it could be tomorrow, could be three months from now, no one knows. Lucha Libre Ciudad Victoria was there too and sometimes posts stuff on their YouTube channel.)
(In other delayed injury news, Minos also left Tuesday’s Arena Mexico show hurt. Early word is it’s was a serious injury that we won’t be seeing him in the ring for some time.)
CMLL (SUN) 06/09/2024 Arena México [CMLL, thecubsfan]
1) Mercurio & Pequeño Violencia b Acero & Aéreo
9:49
2) Emperador Jr., Platino Kid, Rayo Metálico b Astral, Leono, Robin
13:29
3) El Coyote, Okumura, Pólvora b Dulce Gardenia, Fuego, Volcano
14:45
4) Hera, Reyna Isis, Zeuxis b Kira, Sanely, Skadi
12:48
5) Valiente b Zandokan Jr.
7:44
6) Atlantis, Máscara Dorada, Titán DQ Bárbaro Cavernario, Dragón Rojo Jr., Terrible
18:14. Dragon Rojo was pulling at Titan’s mask when Mascara Dorada did a springboard sunset flip on Dragon, which caused Titan’s mask to go flying and Dragon Rojo to be called for the DQ.
The women’s match was better than most. The main event finish was strange. Cavernario was hurt at the end of the match but I take no guesses about lengths of injuries. Villano III Jr. looked like he broke his head and then was back the next day.
Televisa Puebla aired their first episode of CMLL on Sunday night. It did air on their YouTube live stream and they indicated that’s the plan going forward. I honestly have no idea if anyone who reads this watches the streams of the weekly CMLL shows on AMX or MVS show. (Or the Heraldo TV show, but if you’ve found a way to watch that and haven’t told me for years, I will be annoyed with you if you start telling me now.) It’s the exact same presentation as those, it’s the basically the same presentation CMLL’s done for all their in-house produced TV for twenty years now. CMLL Puebla is a one hour show, the show has no particular name, there are three matches, the entrances are cut, there’s instead a quick twenty intro with highlights of the matches and all the wrestlers introduced, there may be some light editing to make all three matches fit the hour. This is a Televisa Puebla show so they’re airing matches from the previous Monday’s Puebla show. It was the top three this week, no idea if they’ll bounce around. I had no chance to actually watch the matches, but it was a CMLL show that looked like a CMLL show.
Ex-CMLL wrestler Ramstein appeared in person at the benefit show for him Sunday in Arena Azteca Budokan. No one seemed to explain what was going that resulted in needing a benefit show, but better that he was able to be there than not.
CMLL (TUE) 06/11/2024 Arena México
1) Astral & Leono vs Dr. Karonte I & Dr. Karonte II
2) El Audaz, Hombre Bala Jr., Legendario vs Espanto Jr., Nitro, Raider
3) Metálica & Reyna Isis vs Hera & Olympia
4) Fugaz, Guerrero Maya Jr., Star Black vs Gemelo Diablo I, Gemelo Diablo II, Kráneo
5) Blue Panther vs Hechicero
6) Atlantis, Flip Gordon, Máscara Dorada vs Ángel de Oro, Soberano Jr., Stuka Jr.
The quality of match 1 and the quality of match 5 are likely to be much different. The poster lists Hechicero/Panther as a singles match with no special rules; Panther asked for no rope breaks.
Nitro hasn’t been wrestling much this year. This will be his first streaming appearance since December; when he works in CML, it’s the lesser important shows (Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday GDL.) He’s worked more on outside CMLL spot shows, which may be connected to his role as leader of the CMLL union.
Milenio has an interview with Hera.
AEW
Titan wrestled on the Ring of Honor tapings in Council Bluff, facing Aaron Solo. I believe that match airs next Thursday. (CMLL had teased it earlier in the week, but the real scoops are in the Instagram Stories, as always.) Titan working ROH is random but it’s probably just setting him up for something else. AEW often uses ROH the same way they use Rampage and Collision, giving someone a win before having them lose on Dynamite or another show. Titan’s LIJ teammate Naito is getting the IWGP title shot at Jon Moxley at Forbidden Door, so I wonder if AEW is setting up Titan versus Moxley or another BCC wrestler as a preview match in upcoming days. (AEW did something similar with DOUKI and Jack Perry last year.) It won’t be this week though; Titan is heading to Guadalajara on Tuesday and then back to Japan for the All Together show on Saturday.
AEW is doing a special Collision One Year Anniversary show next Saturday. One of the bits advertised is Christian Cage celebrating Father’s Day. In AEW, Christian’s the (kinda) adopted father of Nick Wayne, and it would probably help a Fathers’ Day bit to have the son involved. The son is currently listed as wrestling on TripleMania Tijuana that day. Maybe he will, maybe he won’t, who knows.
Reina Dorada mentioned the mask she won in AEW was an homage to Frida Kahlo. It’s a lot clearer in photos than it was in video. As a rule of thumb, I believe it’s always a better idea to weird the most iconic version of your normal gear when a wrestler shows up some place new, because the unfamiliar fans don’t know that wrestler well enough to appreciate a variation. Dorada was trying to project her Mexican-ness by representing a famous Mexican painter, but that may be making it too complicated.
AAA
AAA wrestlers performed in a soccer stadium in Monterrey. It wasn’t sold out for a wrestling show. The Kings League – a 7v7 real life soccer league where international famous internet streamers are the ‘team owners’ – has a tournament semifinal and final on Saturday in Rayado’s Stadium. La Fiscal, Lady Flammer, Dr. Wagner Jr. and Octagon Jr. were there for a match before the games started. The idea was each was representing a team and a team owner streamer, who’d manage them for the match. The twist was the streams got involved, doing some practiced spots (but maybe more risky ones than you’d expect.) Having a internet famous non-wrestler do an AAA wrestling match was shot down by the commission last year with Adrian Marcelo; he had to get licensed and didn’t pass the test. This year, AAA and Kings League hinted the streamers might get involved but were careful not to advertise them as actually being in matches. They didn’t wrestle a full match like AAA planned for Chessman/Marcelo, but it’s also something las year’s commission would’ve had big issues with if they knew it would happen. It’s a different year and the commission/Marcelo angle hasn’t come at all in the coverage, so I think it may just slide by.
For AAA, it was helpful promotion in front of an audience that may not see them much – they used to be streamer friendly pre-pandemic and now have pretty much abandoned that audience – and whatever residual attention they get from it nice. Attendance for the entire day was said to be 51,237 though it appeared as though the stadium was still filling in when the wrestling was taking place. Lady Flammer’s streamer won the tournament, and she was part of the championship presentation.
AAA TV this week was a “TripleMania Tijuana preview” in that they aired a bunch of old matches and then hastily ran down the lineup at the end. Whoever edits AAA TV did try to put together existing footage in way to explain why Bestia 666 and Mecha Wolf are feuding, but it’s impossible – the footage doesn’t exist. They desperately needed sit down interviews with each guy to try to get the story over (or even just come up with one), but that appears to be beyond AAA’s resources.
The Mecha/Bestia/Horus feud has been set up and locally on The Crash shows. Their May show had a cage match with all three men, where Bestia is definitely the rudo but Horus and Mecha fighting over who gets to beat them up. They all used about weapons and bled and worked hard and I still didn’t like it like I don’t like any lucha libre cage match. It did have the one good finish to a Mexican wrestling cage match, the one that every other promoter must use going forward: the Beast Mortos entering the cage and just destroying everyone (besides Bestia.) The angle they’re running for these shows is Bestia, Mortos, and Daga versus Horus, Mecha and whomever on The Crash shows – but Mortos and Daga are both not working with AAA, so Mecha Wolf had to strangely challenge for a three way rematch instead that could actually be booked on TripleMania. There was no story to see that three way match again, it’s instead something The Crash could fans could skip without really missing anything. If AAA had just booked the Mechawolf/Bestia match, it would’ve been different. I like Rey Horus matches but it’s unclear why he’s doing in Saturday’s match besides being “the other Tijuana guy who always works these shows.” There’s a better TripleMania card possible if AAA booked two matches differently
- Mecha Wolf versus Bestia as a 1v1, essentially becomes the Pagano stunt show match without Pagano
- Rey Horus takes Noisy Boy’s spot, teams with D-Luxe and Destiny against Laredo, Octagon and Komander
Nick Wayne, CIMA and Willie Mack now have the night off. I don’t know if Nick Wayne is making it, and obviously Willie Mack is at least the third choice for that spot so they’re easy guys not to book. If there are bigger reasons to book CIMA, maybe he gets D Luxe’s spot and D Luxe gets Anubis spot in the opener. Everything goes better with fewer people involved, but AAA always wants more more more.
(Aside 1: the bit at the end of the cage match had the locker room and security hitting the ring one by one to try to stop the Bestia/Daga/Mortos trio, and getting destroyed as soon as they step foot in the ring. The idea was Damian 666 ran in, almost got attacked, but was able to talk them down. Super Beast wasn’t booked on the show and somehow was in full gear to be one of the guys walking into the cage, the last guy before Damian. He was also not much interested in selling this heinous beating he was getting, grabbing a shoulder but just not wanting to go down when everyone else was selling like they’d been shot on first impact. Very hilarious. Gotta keep Super Beast strong, Nacion Lucha Libre might be back at any second.)
(Aside 2: I’m never going to have a reason to talk about this show again, so I’ll mention here that the three way tag team match was good – the Wagners came off as super impressive. Poder del Norte settled into doing close to their old AAA TV matches if you’re looking for that. The entire show is up on The Crash’s YouTube channel – but be aware they don’t have their cameras in sync and the announcers are seconds behind the action by the end of the show. They’re only a couple decades behind in production.)
As of Monday afternoon, Triller has not put up AAA Tijuana on their schedule. You can see (and buy) the bundle and the Monterrey show, but the Tijuana is not listed. I would bet large sums of money that this is an issue of Triller thinking AAA needed to do and AAA thinking Triller was handling it. Someone may see this message and get it done by the next news post and it’s not something to be concerned about yet.
(Also, there’s really no point in buying the Tijuana show as standalone show. You either got it as part of the bundle, or you should just wait a week for AAA to put it on YouTube for free. AAA booked nothing that has to be seen in the moment.)
AAA officially announced Verano de Escandalo will take place on 08/02 in Aguascalientes. They had mentioned the location earlier in the year, not the date. The upcoming AAA taping schedule stands at
- this Saturday in Tijuana for TripleMania
- this Tuesday in Ciudad Juarez – will air out of order
- 06/22 in Mexico City
- (no tapings all of July)
- 08/02 in Aguascalientes
- 08/17 in Mexico City
A Tuesday AAA TV taping would be a real treat back in the days of live Twitch streaming; now this is a show fans will see a month from now.
AAA TV (TUE) 06/11/2024 Plaza de la Mexicanidad, Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua
1) ?, Miss Kath, Ráfaga Jr., Sakura vs Felina, Samuray VIP, Steven Juárez, Venus
2) Aéreo vs Kempo Jr. [JUAREZ ABSOLUTO]
3) Colmillo de Plata & Garra de Oro vs Kamik-C & Skalibur
4) Faby Apache, Pimpinela Escarlata, Sexy Star vs Dalys, Flammer, La Hiedra
5) Dinámico, Drago, Laredo Kid vs Abismo Negro, El Fiscal, Taurus
6) Dave The Clown, Murder Clown, Octagón Jr. vs CIMA, Sam Adonis, Satnam Singh
7) Negro Casas & Psycho Clown vs Forastero & Sansón [AAA TAG]
AAA’s trained fans not to expect results or info about their tapings until the show airs. This one is five days before a TripleMania with some of the same special guests. It’ll be tempting to run an angle anyway, but I’m know sure anyone outside of Juarez will be aware of anything that happened on this show. Even if AAA taped something to push it on social media, I’m not sure their fans expect to see social media angles at this point.
The Ciudad Juarez main event was surprisingly good back in Saltillo. Psycho & Casas winning would make for an easy to put together TripleMania Mexico match against Dr. Wagner Jr. and whichever of his sons is available that day. It protects Casas by putting him in tag matches, and it gives Psycho something to do that he’ll probably be happy with. The flipside is AAA seems to like NGD and wants to do something with them, they never get around to actually doing anything, and so they’re in this loop of being forever undefeated champions (who never defend them against important people) to keep them from going elsewhere. I’m not sure AAA can bring themselves to move on from those guys, so they’re all stuck doing nothing. (This is a common AAA problem.)
Nothing else here jumps out; maybe matches three and five can be good.
AAA starts on Unimas this Saturday. I’m having difficulty in figuring out what ratings number would be “good”. USTVDB has some ratings data; of the three May Saturdays that are listed, Unimas averages around 299,000 total viewers and around 103,000 viewers between 18-49. Those numbers are likely skewed upwards by soccer coverage; those are the highest rating shows. AAA is airing between Chinese action movie Ip Man (a favorite of Space as well) and year old repeat of “Nosotros Los Guapos.” That’s seems about as low expectation spot as it gets. Maybe AAA would be doing great if they got 200K viewers and 65 in the demo, well below station average, because that’s not a timeslot Unimas normally expects to do well in.
Unimas’s already signaling this AAA show is not important to them. Unimas’s website lists the show in a generic fashion; like someone clearly saw “wrestling” and pulled a stock photo of guys in headgear wrestling on yellow, red and blue mat. Not quite the correct kind of wrestling. There’s been no Unimas social media promotion of AAA yet (and not much from AAA either past that original press conference.) I haven’t watched Unimas, maybe that’s the project for tonight, so perhaps there’s some promotion on the channel itself. AAA going to Unimas is a big deal for the people who run AAA but it hasn’t come across as a big deal to anyone else as of yet.
(TUDN, which will air a repeat of this AAA shows on Tuesdays, has ratings around the same level of AXS where TNA or El Rey had for Lucha Underground if you’ve been around this blog long enough: so low that I believe the week to week variances are more a story about sampling variations and error bars than actual changes in viewership. I have no doubt that AAA could do well enough to stick on TUDN, but I would also assume TUDN isn’t offering much for non-sports programming and that’s why AAA is airing on Unimas first.)
Konnan discussed the Unimas TV deal on his sixth podcast of this past week. Konnan says the target is to do well in the 12-34 demo, and the goal is to get moved from Unimas to Univision, which he believes will allow AAA to compete with AEW and WWE. They are getting paid to be on the Unimas deal. Konnan’s asked if there will be English commentators on SAP; he doesn’t know. Konnan’s ask about how up to date the shows air; he doesn’t know. Konnan doesn’t believe there will be a live specials until they do ratings.
(I’m sure there will be no English commentary. I think Konnan would be sure too if he reflected on it – part of his job is to work with the English commentators, so he would know if English has been done. He doesn’t know, so it hasn’t been done. AAA is spending as little as they can get by on English language outreach as possible and you’d think Konnan might pick up on that as well.)
Konnan’s also asked on he podcast about the Latin Lover Director of Talent announcement, and he says Latin Lover’s job is exactly and only that, “talent”. Latin Lover is working on managing the wrestlers, letting them know when they’re doing things right or wrong, stuff that Konnan says he hasn’t enough time to do himself. Konnan has no problem using any good ideas Latin Lover – or anyone else – has, but he insists he’s still completely in control of AAA creative and nothing has changed there.
Konnan heard, but doesn’t know if it’s true, that AEW had to pay CMLL to lift the prohibition on non-CMLL wrestlers appearing on the same AEW shows as CMLL ones.
Lady Shani and Hijo del Vikingo both did autograph signings at a show produced by Psycho Clown. They’re both sidelined from AAA right now, though it’s Shani having a kid and Vikingo (surprisingly) having a knee injury and not having a kid. Vikingo says his next check up on his knee is July 15th and he hopes to get good news. He’s been doing some light bicycle work. He’s also been going to a bunch of lucha libre shows as a fan, because he just loves lucha libre that much and misses participating it. Lady Shani also seems like she misses lucha libre once. She doesn’t give a timeline for her possible return – she still hasn’t had the baby yet, remember – she just wants to be 100% ready when she does come back. She is taking advantage of the ‘break’ to rehab and take care of injuries she’d been working through.
Stopping to think about it, it’s kind of pointless for AAA to have stripped Vikingo of the megachampionship given what little they’ve done with it. There’s just been the one match in Monterrey where Nic Nemeth won the title. He’s probably losing it to Alberto in Mexico City. The second most likely outcome isn’t Nemeth keeping it, it’s Vikingo getting totally cleared on that July date and winning it himself in Mexico City. The Monterrey match didn’t mean a lot and it’s hard to believe the Mexico City one will either. The AAA diehards would be loudly complaining about not having a the title defended for months if AAA had just left it on Vikingo, but that’s basically what happened anyway.
NJPW rookie (Young Lion) Masatora Yasuda debuts in NJPW on June 16th. NJPW’s preview mentions that he is actually Zumbido’s son, born in Mexico and then moving to Japan at age three. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of Zumbido having a half Japanese son prior, but that’s too random to not be true. I totally forget that Zumbido’s supposed to be back in AAA on the June 22nd Mexico City taping; assuming he shows up, I hope someone asks him about his NJPW son.
Vampiro will have his farewell tour match in Arena Neza on 07/06.
Frontera TV interviews Mr. Iguana about TripleMania Tijuana.
The Under the Ring podcast has Larry Dallas on as a guest.
IWRG
IWRG (SUN) 06/09/2024 Arena Naucalpan [IWRG]
1) Drakula Ng b Histeriosis 
2) Sol b Águila Roja
3) Halcón Suriano Jr., Multifacetico Jr., Tornado b Pequeño Centauro, Puma de Oro, Rey Aztaroth
4) Bengalee & Shamila b Diosa Quetzal & Mary Caporal
5) Arez b Hijo de Canis Lupus
win via foul
6) Hell Boy, Máscara Sagrada, Noisy Boy, Spider Fly b Hijo del Fishman, Imposible, Puma de Oro, Vangellys and Bugambilia, Caballero de Plata, Shocko, Veneno and Estrella Divina, Jessy Ventura, Paymon, Zoy Raymunda
Attendance looks good for this. Arez/Canis sounds like it was worth watching.
I thought the Spider Fly/Noisy Boy match on Thursday was Great. A lot of young guys doing young guy lucha, but with different enough ideas (and better execution) that it felt fresh. Keyra/Sexy Star was good; I wanted more from Sexy Star in that match, both on offense and showing more fight when Keyra was dominating the match.
Did you know: this new Sexy Star has been in AAA for four years now and never had a singles match as Sexy Star? She had a couple under her Marvel lucha libre gimmick. She has now also had two in IWRG under this name. There’s not many opportunities with the relatively small amount of matches AAA runs, but also AAA has little interest in booking women in singles matches.
Other News
Box y Lucha 3607 has El Signo (and Latin Lover) on the cover. CMLL put out a remembers on Saturday.
06/15 RIOT