AAA to Spain, Vaquer, Esfinge/Euforia

CMLL

CMLL (FRI) 07/05/2024 Arena México [CMLL, ESTO, FDDE, Fuego en el Ring, The Gladiatores, The Gladiatores (videos), thecubsfan]
1) Astral & Eléctrico b Inquisidor & Sangre Imperial  
10:13.
2) Espanto Jr., Okumura, Raider b Guerrero Maya Jr., Pegasso, Stigma   
14:29
3) Tessa Blanchard b Persephone [lightning]   
9:40
4) Felino & Felino Jr. b Hijo del Pantera & Pantera  
12:20. Felino 40th Anniversary match. He was given a plaque before the match by a group that included actress/singer/politician Rocio Banquells.
5) Gran Guerrero, Stuka Jr., Último Guerrero b Hijo del Villano III, Templario, Villano III Jr.   
10:47. UG snuck in a foul on Templario. Templario demanded a match next week against his old teacher and UG agreed, but warned him that he didn’t teach Templario all he knows.
6) Ángel de Oro, Averno, Euforia DQ Esfinge, Star Jr., Volador Jr.  
10:26. Straight falls. Euforia fouled Volador and tossed his mask to Esfinge, all unseen by the ref, to draw the DQ. Esfinge demanded a mask/mask match with Euforia at Aniversario. Euforia didn’t agree and attacked Esfinge again.

The trains keep on track. Esfinge is the first actually bring up the September date. CMLL fans on Facebook are starting to believe this is headed to a cage match. I’m going to have to cancel all of Mexican wrestling if both AAA and CMLL headline their biggest shows of the year with cage matches. Back in reality, it doesn’t seem like the fans in Arena Mexico thought the Euforia/Esfinge stuff was a big deal yet.

I thought for a moment that Ultimo Guerrero/Templario was going to be added to that Aniversario list. For now, it was just an angle to set up a singles match next Friday along side the cibernetico.

Villanos/Guerreros match was best of the night. Tessa/Persephone was laid out to showcase Persephone, surprisingly, and did that job well. Hijo del Pantera was working for four people in his first (and maybe only?) CMLL Arena Mexico appearance.

CMLL (SAT) 07/06/2024 Arena Coliseo [CMLL, thecubsfan]
1) Dr. Karonte I, Dr. Karonte II, Enfermero Jr. b Diamond, Leono, Retro 
13:59
2) Dark Magic b Capitán Suicida [lightning] 
9:44, win via elbow drop
3) Brillante Jr., El Audaz, Volcano b Pólvora, Rey Bucanero, Sagrado 
13:24
4) Lluvia, Skadi, Tessa Blanchard b Hera, Stephanie Vaquer, Zeuxis 
13:03. Hera was DQed for choking Skadi out (and not releasing by five.)
5) Flip Gordon b Bárbaro Cavernario 
12:15. Gordon won cleanly with a new move. Cavernario shook Flip’s hand after but motioned for a hair/hair match.
6) Averno, Euforia, Soberano Jr. b Atlantis, El Hijo de Octagón, Octagón 
12:20. Rudos unmasked Atlantis after the match.

Flip versus Cavernario was pretty good, maybe a little less than Niebla Roja but still another solid Flip outing as a singles. Flip wins a lot more of those singles match that I realise, but I was still surprised to see get the win (with a new finish) here. As always, if they were serious about doing a hair match, they wouldn’t be making the challenges in Arena Coliseo.

CMLL (SUN) 07/07/2024 Arena México [CMLL]
1) Chamuel & Periquito Sacaryas b Kemalito & Mije
2) Crixus, Dark Magic, Vegas b Fuego, Robin, Valiente Jr.
3) Blue Panther Jr., El Hijo De Blue Panther, Panterita del Ring b Cancerbero, El Coyote, Virus
4) Atlantis, Star Black, Valiente b Kráneo, Magnus, Mephisto
5) Gran Guerrero © b Terrible [CMLL HEAVY]
fourth defense, first this year
6) Ángel de Oro, Bárbaro Cavernario, Dragón Rojo Jr. b Flip Gordon, Máscara Dorada, Neón

No surprise in that title defense.

AMX aired matches from the 06/23 show, the Sunday show of the FantasticaMania week. (I’m trying to put the AMX Sunday stuff in this playlist, because they don’t always show up on my playlist.) Averno/Rocky Romero is worth checking out, a good three fall match where Romero is actually a tecnico. ZSJ/Magnus versus Mascara Dorada/Mistico is interesting for the novelty of the match.

(There’s a Puebla playlist too. Can’t stop repeating my mistakes, I guess.)

CMLL (TUE) 07/09/2024 Arena México
1) Acero & Aéreo vs Mercurio & Pequeño Olímpico
2) Diamond, Retro, Robin vs Grako, Inquisidor, Sangre Imperial
3) Capitán Suicida, Guerrero Maya Jr., Volcano vs Cancerbero, Kráneo, Okumura
4) Apocalipsis, Cholo, Disturbio © vs Futuro, Hombre Bala Jr., Max Star [MEX TRIOS]
2nd defense
5) Atlantis vs Blue Panther [lightning]
6) Máscara Dorada, Neón, Star Jr. vs Bárbaro Cavernario, Dragón Rojo Jr., Terrible

Los Indestructibles have no easy title defenses but that tecnico trio would be unexpected champions. The semi-main is Atlantis’ first singles match of the year; he and Blue Panther win to a time-limit draw in the most recent and only singles meeting (2021).

Record reports Stephanie Vaquer has offers from AEW and WWE. Her Forbidden Door performance made this the expected outcome. The only question was how long it would take until one group made an offer and the other group was compelled to counter as to be not left out. Record says Vaquer is expected to decide in “a few days”; that’s not always a literal unit of time.

A source tells me Vaquer is under contract to CMLL at the moment, and has significant time left on that contract. The length of her contract is also not expected to matter much. CMLL has let wrestlers out of their deals when they have a big US offer, as long as they’re kept in the loop about the situation. Mascara Dorada/Metalik handling his departure to WWE so CMLL could say goodybe was the good ending, Rush posting a video from ROH declaring he’d left CMLL was the bad ending. CMLL wants to avoid is the Mistico to WWE situation, where they came off publicly as foolish and unaware that he had left the promotion, but the leaving itself for a better deal is not going to cause any trouble. Vaquer has a lot of loyalty towards CMLL, but any serious offer from AEW and WWE will likely be more than CMLL is willing to pay.

Vaquer has not confirmed the story, nor given any indication of which company she might prefer. She has history with both WWE – a tryout many years ago – and AEW. Vaquer has compelling reasons to go each promotion,  We also have no idea what each company is offering her, if the story is correct. There are plenty of people on social media who will tell you she’s going to [X]; I’m going to tell you we don’t have near enough information to pretend that we know.

I would’ve liked to see Stephanie Vaquer remain full time in CMLL for longer. I would’ve also liked to see original Mascara Dorada, La Sombra, Dragon Lee, Fenix and others stay in Mexico. Mexico-based wrestlers have been getting scooped up by US groups who are spending more on wages for a long time now, and there’s no reason to expect that to change soon. (This disparity is not a recent phenomena; there’s stories of prominent Mexican wrestlers going to the US to work with shaky groups in the 1960s because of the pay difference.) The one recent change change is AEW exists, and so there’s two groups rushing to scoop up the next international star partly just to makes sure the other group doesn’t get them. Vaquer became the next person in that spotlight with her performance against Mercedes Mone at Forbidden Door.

My guess is this is going to remain a slow moving situation hanging in the background for a bit. Vaquer’s got a title defense against Lluvia on Saturday on the FantasticaMania US card, but I’d be surprised if that was any sort of title change. Even if Vaquer signed quickly, visas and paperwork always take a while. Dorada/Metalik was around for months after he signed, and those visas were moving a lot quicker then. I’d bet Vaquer will be still around and headlining Arena Mexico come women’s wrestling month in October.

Atlantis Jr. appeared on Saturday’s Ring of Honor tapings, facing Serpentico in a ROH TV title defense. It’s unclear if that match is airing this Thursday or next Thursday; ROH has no TV tapings this week so they’re going to split up some matches.

Fuego en el Ring mentions Guadalajara’s Barboza has been gone since February because “he was on a tour of the US.” I was unaware of him wrestling in Mexico, but Facebook page Entre Cuerdas noted Barboaza was wrestling on a California show this past June 30th. I barely see Los Angeles lucha libre lineups nowadays, so it’s possible he’s been there.

This may only affect me and the person who commented a few weeks ago, but MVS appeared to move Guerreros del Ring two hours later on Saturday, a 5 pm Mexico City start. Their schedule indicates this is permeant change. That show was airing around 1pm last year, and it keeps getting moved later and later in the day. (The show remains mostly airing Tuesday matches that are already in the CMLL subscription package.)

The July 20th show in Oaxaca that was billed as Mistico and local wrestler Rasputin in a mask versus hair match is now a tag match with Misitco & Futuro against Magnus & Rasputin.

AAA

AAA announced a tour of Spain for November

• 11/21 Madrid (Palacio Vistalegre, 15,000 seats)
• 11/22 Bilbao (Arena Miribilla, 10,000 seats)
• 11/30 Barcelona (Pabellon Olimpico, 12,760 seats)

Tickets go on sale tomorrow for pre-sale, for everyone else Wednesday. Ticketmaster hasn’t posted the prices, but someone else says they’re running between 35 to 220 Euros excluding fees. (That’s about 38 to 238USD.) There was no indication these shows were happening until today.

The impression I get from fans in Spain is they’re happy to get AAA lives, but surprised and maybe a bit confused at picking those large venues. The first two are places WWE ran in the 2010s. AAA does not have TV or any other presence in Spain. This seems like, to be polite, a very ambitious concept that will be challenging to pull off.

These AAA international shows are typically sold shows, with a promoter in the local country taking the risk and AAA getting paid a pre-determined guarantee. Sometimes the shows work well, like the first time AAA went to Columbia. Sometimes they do not work well, like every other time AAA’s gone to Columbia. (They have stopped going to Columbia.) These shows are going to happen as long as the local promoter feels they’ve sold enough tickets to make it worthwhile, and running those large venues is part of trying to get to that needed ticket number. It’s a Ticketmaster show, so there may be a seat map – I don’t know if Mr. WrestleTix will be checking on this one but it’ll be something to stare on Wednesday. The wrestlers and the Spanish fans I’ve seen pretty excited about these shows and I hope they work out for them, but it’s hard to believe this is going to work for out for AAA exactly as announced on Day 2.

CMLL had a tour of shows in Spain in 2008; there was a quote from Panico saying CMLL was looking at running shows in “France, England, Germany, Turkey, Austria, Romania, Hungary and Israel.” CMLL did not end up going to all of those countries, of course, and never returned to Spain after this run. CMLL did make it to France; there was a engaging story about what a disaster that tour was on a long gone website.

An early version of the press release also had 11/29 in Valencia listed, but that seems to be removed from the final cities. The press release mentions Lady Shani appearing. Shani is currently pregnant and is unlikely to be in the ring by November.  (The press release also misspells Shani’s name.) Blue Demon Jr. and Psycho Clown are also listed as appearing but not in the poster. Hijo del Vikingo is pictured, and it’s likely he’ll be healthy by November. AAA annually runs a taping in Juarez in mid/late November, so either it’ll take place on 11/16 this year or it seemingly won’t include a lot of regulars.

AAA on Space wrapped up the Juarez taping. All the matches felt like the people were trying hard, but none of them really totally hit. There’s match construction issues with a lot of AAA matches; they don’t feel like they’re building to anything, they’re not saving the bigger stuff until last, they’re often just doing stuff until they hit their time cue. The Casas/Psycho versus Forastero/Sanson match wasn’t quite as good as their Saltillo match, though the crowd did react strong to the title change. The Dinamico, Drago and Laredo Kid still feels inorganic – we’re being told these guys have been friends but we haven’t seen it – but they did address Skalibur & Kamik-C being upset with Dinamico for ditching them. The new tecnico group – La Fraternidad – versus the Vipers was the best match, though I still didn’t think much of the new Taurus in this one. (AAA also did a quick Vipers promo really just to tease Fiscal and Abismo having problems; it seems like AAA feels like their fans won’t understand the context of that conflict until AAA sets it up themselves.) Kamik-C & Skalibur versus Colmillo de Plata & Garra de Oro had some good moves but wasn’t deeper than that. I was surprised the Money Machine guys lost (again); maybe AAA thought they couldn’t both take away Kamik-C & Skalibur’s trios partner and have them lose on the same show.

AAA on Unimas finished up the May Mexico City taping. They’re going to the Juarez taping next. That’s not the way it aired in Mexico (Tijuana aired first) but sort of makes more sense. As much as anything in AAA makes sense or is connected together.

Vampiro had his “last ever match in Arena Neza” on Saturday night, which appeared to be a sell out. That long retirement tour gimmick has drawn so well I hear Honda spokesperson John Cena has stolen it. The nerve of some people.

Konnan’s podcast had a lucha libre section to go over the TripleMania lineup. There’s a couple of nuggets in there. AAA billed the Vampiro match as “cinematic”, which has previously meant a pre-taped and edited. Konnan says the Vampiro match will instead be a live backstage bit. When asked why, he said “that’s just the way they want to do it.” Raj Dhesi & Satnam Singh being in the tag title match has seemed, but Konnan seem to explains it: AAA believes they have a chance to do something really big with India.

The podcast goes into lots of digressions, as always, including a discussion of Sammy Guevara and Tay Conti’s failed tag team title run. (It sounds like there’s some brief edits in this section, though maybe it’s just noise from all the different connections.) Konnan says Conti missed one show (12/28/2022) because AEW need Conti to fill in for someone. Konnan says Tony Khan asked him not to mention the name of the woman Conti was replacing on his podcast, so Konnan referred to her as “some chick”, and Khan ended up being offended by that. This leads into a discussion of if “chick” is offense or not. The 12/28 show is the “Dragon Lee beats FTR and then announces he’s going to WWE” show, so the “chick” comment was likely part of a long list of things Khan was upset with AAA at that moment.

Talk about Atlantis Jr. winning the ROH TV title leads into a discussion about Konnan complaining about the level of talent AEW offers to CMLL (top guys) compared to AAA (people on ROH), and the amount of AEW people who’ve no-showed AAA cards over years. (AAA in the past has said they don’t care about their own people missing shows.) He shifts to say they don’t actually need those AEW guys because they sell out everywhere and that they’ve done great with people like QT Marshall. Konnan wonders why AEW treats CMLL better than AAA, allowing that perhaps CMLL is easier to deal with, but also very much expressing the sentiment he’s been wronged and AEW screwed with AAA. The segment ends with Konnan ominously saying: “I’m going to be very vague – what comes around goes around, have your little fun while you can.”

IWRG

IWRG (SUN) 07/07/2024 Arena Naucalpan [IWRG]
1) Histeriosis b Sacro 
Histeriosis replaced Súper Boy
2) Diablo Jr. & Mike b Freelance & Tornado 
3) Estrella Divina, Keyra, Shamila b Danessa, Mary Caporal, Sádika 
Divina challenged Sadika to a match
4) Águila Roja, Hijo del Pirata Morgan, Puma de Oro b Luka, Noisy Boy, Spider Fly 
Toxin and Latigo appeared before the match to challenge the new Pirata Morgan trio.
5) Diablo Jr., Ivan Rokov, Vangellys b Gran Pandemónium, Hijo de Pandemónium, Pandemónium 
Diablo Jr. replaced Misterioso. Vangellys won via mask pull
6) Hell Boy & Hijo de Canis Lupus b Cerebro Negro & Cerebro Negro Jr. and Látigo & Toxin 
Hell Boy & Canis Lupus won and asked for a tag title shot. Cerberos said sure and did the match right then.
7) Cerebro Negro & Cerebro Negro Jr. b Hellboy & Hijo de Canis Lupus [IWRG IC TAG] 
7th defense. Mala Fama said they were still looking for a title match.

Other News

AEW aired a vignette teasing a mystery character, who may be named Hologram or Hologrm. Mas Lucha, who normally is not in the habit of reacting to AEW videos, made special note about that video along on their Twitter and Facebook. I said some things on Twitter about this bit and people tried to explain things back at me, sometimes using rather impolite language. How does that usually turn out?

Total nerd stuff of the weekend: Kevin Kleinrock sent me some lineup pages of a 1995 Box y Lucha he got last week. The issue he was right near the beginning of CMLL running that year’s Gran Alternativa. The 1995 and 1996 versions of those tournaments were the most complex versions: CMLL broke up the rookies in blocks, had them face each other in round robin matches, and the top two in each block would earn a spot in the eight team elimination tournament that everyone knows. CMLL’s since repeated this concept for competition like En Busca de Un Idolo and the diehards love it – it’d be a big deal nowadays with everything stream. Everything didn’t stream in 1995, of course. Almost none of the matches made TV, many of them happened at shows that weren’t taped. The only reason the luchawiki has any details on that tournament is because a poster on newsgroup RSPW (kids, ask your parents what a newsgroup was) happened to jot down the standings tables shown on the April 1st, 1995 CMLL TV episode. A few results came in from TV and magazines, but most of the tournament results were an actual mystery.

Except, inputting those “new” lineups Kevin had passed along, I realized there was just enough data to figure out pretty much all of the matches in three of the groups. It really was just a logic puzzle, just something to process through step by step. It was a fun way to kill a couple of hours, and it’s why you’ll see some 1995 results with oddly detailed explanations of outcomes. It’s also why I probably didn’t get back to your DMs or emails about very specific lists you wanted to create. Also I don’t like creating those lists.

(If people were smart and every really wanted to run me off, the way to do it isn’t complain about me on social media or a podcast, it’s to give me a good logic puzzle or a pages of old Mexican wrestling lineups that haven’t been put in a database. This was both! It was the best.)

Figuring out the results to a 1995 tournament got topped on Monday though. A Twitter user posted a photo of the lucha libre themed bathroom at the new-ish Mexico City airport. This lucha libre theme was new – there was a whole genre of daily article about how much people hated that this airport existed back a couple of years ago – but they seem to have made some slight changes so it was first unveiled. They’ve added giant sized lucha libre posters to the floor. I looked at the photo, a lightbulb went off, and sure enough – that poster closest to the camera is an IWRG show I didn’t have in the luchadb. It’s in there now, thanks to a bathroom floor. I would like a better shot of the Tijuana posters that seem to be farther away, but I generally do not endorse the idea of taking photos in a public bathroom.

Segunda Caida watches El Hijo del Santo versus El Dandy.

A story about a lucha libre duck maker. He doesn’t make real ducks (that would be odd), they’re small keepsakes that are apparently a thing in Mexico, he’s been doing lucha libre versions and sells them outside of Arena Mexico.