Leyenda de Azul tonight, Lucha x el Barrio, lucha libre Rampage

CMLL

CMLL (FRI) 11/22/2024 Arena México
1) Pequeño Olímpico, Pequeño Violencia, Pierrothito vs Full Metal, Pequeño Polvora, Rostro De Acero
2) Capitán Suicida, Futuro, Max Star vs Dark Magic, Espanto Jr., Raider
3) Tessa Blanchard vs Persephone
4) Dragón Rojo Jr., Templario, Volador Jr. vs Bárbaro Cavernario, Stuka Jr., Terrible
5) Místico vs Soberano Jr., Esfinge, Hechicero, Blue Panther, Euforia, Star Black, Averno, Ángel de Oro, Gran Guerrero [Leyenda de Azul, semifinal]

Mistico will be in the final three, or he will give up his title for no reason. Averno could cost him the match, but I think he’ll probably get to the final against someone. The semi-main has the Cavernarios against Dragon Rojo. I assumed Tessa was getting a win back when this was announced; now I assume Persephone isn’t losing before she goes into a tournament. I could be wrong twice. Raider has a lot of work to do in match two. Match one will end with challenges, and it’s about time for them to have a match. (Maybe not this week since the next Informa will be bodybuilding heavy.) I don’t think I’m watching this one live due to other plans.

Soberano Jr. wants to face Mistico in the final and beat the best. He also dismissed Blue Panther as a threat at this point in his career. Angel de Oro said he’s grateful to be in the match and wants to win again.

Good luck to Atlantis Jr. in whatever mysterious personal thing he has going on today that CMLL had to explain as the reason he’s not in Leyenda de Azul. He is booked on a show near me on Saturday, but it’s one where they put the poster out weeks ago and would get pulled if the real story for him being off the show is him flying to the US for a AEW pre-show match. I think the real story might be Atlantis Jr.’s wasn’t in the plans to win or finish near the end of this tournament, and so they decided to pass on him losing.

That show is a Lucha Libre Total event, with Místico, Bárbaro Cavernario, Averno, Mephisto, Cancerbero, Virus, Súper Astro Jr., Hijo de Octagón, Atlantis Jr., Guerrero Maya Jr., Okumura, and India Sioux all booked through CMLL. The same crew is in Waukegan the next day. This group typically brings in four luchadoras at a time – they’ve got the Wagner Brothers, Oni el Bendito and Emperador Azteca on 12/15 in Berwyn – so bringing in 12 at once is unusual. They also do not announce matches ahead of time and charge high ticket prices; both shows are $55 get in price day of show for general admission. MLW had a similar amount of CMLL wrestlers and charged $10 GA a few weeks ago. That Saturday show is as close as anyone comes to running a lucha libre show near me, but that’s a high price and I know what effort level to expect in front of a couple of hundred people in a town they might never be back in. There’s also the AEW PPV going on at the same time, though AEW’s not done a great job of making me interested in that one. I’ll probably stay home, because it’s easier just to spend 50 and lay on the couch watching wrestling than go some place else on a cold November day, but I’m undecided.

Mistico is wrestling in the Chicago area on Saturday and Sunday and then again on Wednesday for AEW. I thought perhaps Mistico would get a nice couple of days off in the windy city, but instead he’s flying back to Mexico to work more shows.

CMLL (MON) 11/25/2024 Arena Puebla
1) Astro & Meyer vs Dreyko & Hijo del Perverso
2) Valiente Jr. vs Multy
3) Capitán Suicida, Fuego, Hijo del Pantera vs El Perverso, Prayer, Rey Apocalipsis
4) Arkalis, Rey Samuray, Xelhua vs Dulce Gardenia, Espíritu Negro, Rey Cometa
5) Atlantis, Flip Gordon, Titán vs Bárbaro Cavernario, Hijo de Stuka Jr., Terrible
6) Místico, Stigma, Templario vs Gran Guerrero, Stuka Jr., Último Guerrero

The main event is a rematch from Gran Guerero cheating Mistico next week. Hijo de Stuka Jr. isn’t going to be the new caveman but Hijo de Stuka Jr. being the new caveman would be fun.

CMLL (TUE) 11/26/2024 Arena Coliseo Guadalajara
1) Exterminador, Javier Cruz Jr., Maléfico vs Infierno, Mr. Trueno, Rey Trueno
2) Hatanna, Nexy, Valkiria vs Emperatriz, Lady Shadow, Miss Guerrera
3) Leo, Omar Brunetti, Vaquero Jr. vs Arlequín, Bestia Negra, Cris Skin
4) Dark Magic, El Elemental, Yutani vs Furia Roja, Guerrero de la Muerte, Ráfaga
5) La Catalina vs Dark Silueta
6) Atlantis Jr., Dulce Gardenia, Místico vs Averno, Difunto, Euforia

Elemental is alive but back to teaming with Yutani and Dark Magic in Guadalajara. Is that truly living? Not much notable going on here.

CMLL Informa did announce the four women in their qualifier for the 01/05 International Women’s Cup. CMLL went with the idea of making it all people who had won something in 2024:

• Zeuxis (CMLL World Women’s Champion)
• Sanely (Mexican National Women’s Champion)
• Persephone (Winner of the CMLL Universal Tournament)
• Reyna Isis (Winner of the Grand Prix)

The match will take place as part of the 12/13 international-focused show, which I should’ve thought about when guessing Tessa would be in it – she already has a match for that show.

Zeuxis seems like the favorite to win, and Reyna Isis seems like she’d have a shot. I’m not really excited about this lineup. It should be fine. The ultimate winner gets a shot at a title of their choice, though it is hard to believe a CMLL person will win or anyone else will choose to challenge for a CMLL title.

CMLL Informa also announced Xelhua was officially in Fuerza Poblana, after teaming with them the last few months as a sort of associate. It was pitched like Stigma, Xelhua and Arkalis were now the main trio of the unit. Guerrero Maya Jr. left the group, of course. Pegasso seemed to be a main member but hasn’t wrestled outside Puebla since late September. Pegasso seems like a prime candidate for a late-career mask match in the next year or so. Rey Samuray is also supposed to be a member but appeared less infrequently.

AEW taped two weeks of Rampage last night. It wasn’t immediately clear what it is when, but my impression is all of these are airing on 11/30 (a Saturday due to NHL games)

• Komander vs Hechicero
• Beast Mortos vs Seprentico
• Atlantis Jr., Mascara Dorada, Katsuyori Shibata vs Top Flight & Action Andretti
• Thunder Rosa vs TBA

Rampage is a zombie show; it’s going away at the end of December (maybe 12/20). AEW’s already secured a TV deal without, and there is zero pressure to do anything on it. AEW has been using it in a hyper-logical way, using it as a space to give wins to low mid-level wrestlers before they lose to high mid-level wrestlers on Collision or Dynamite. It serves a purpose. It’s not very exciting. I’ve argued elsewhere that AEW should instead use the last days of Rampage as an experimental place, or just an opportunity to do weird stuff for the fun of it because there is no risk in failing any more. It makes even more sense to do so when the show is going to be moved to a strange hour and a strange day.

I don’t think that anyone listens to me (they do not do that) but it does seem like someone decided to go out of the box for an all lucha libre edition of AEW Rampage. Earlier on Wednesday, John Pollock, on his podcast, jokingly suggested Rob and myself be handed the reigns of AEW Rampage. Hours later, Rampage was an all-lucha libre show. My position remains clear: I do not book AEW. It’s becoming harder to refute the charges.

Aside 1: Because social media is a land of conspiracy theories and acting out on grievances, I saw people speculate that the CMLL wrestlers were bumped from Dynamite for Chris Jericho’s segment or whatever else people didn’t like on Dynamite. AEW could’ve been more transparent in their announcement that the CMLL wrestlers appearing on the taping didn’t mean they were necessarily going to appear on Dynamite. But I’m pretty sure the idea from the start was to do a lucha libre hour of Rampage, and they were never meant to be on Dynamite this week.

Aside 2: an all lucha libre edition of Rampgae airing at 5pm on a Saturday against a WWE PPV is going to bring out the worst people on social media, some who are going to be trolling for attention. They’re not worth your time. The rating truly doesn’t matter if it’s bad – show’s going away – and it’s a nice bonus meaning not a lot if it’s OK or good.

Komander’s participation is notable. It was apparent Komander and AAA were breaking things off even before his final match in TripleMania Mexico City, and he’s worked no AAA shows since that time. (He has worked on an EMW show after they’ve seemingly dropped their relationship with AAA.) It’s another thing entirely for CMLL to believe someone’s done with AAA, and that must’ve taken some convincing by Rocky Romero and others at AEW.

QueMoniito posted a graphic on Wednesday indicating he’s still fighting for the rights to his name. He also posted a short video, asking people to share that he’s still taking all his upcoming bookings and nothing has changed there. He said there’d be more info soon. It appears legal battle is still ongoing.

ESTO caught up with Mistico, seemingly at the sports awards from a few days, and got in some good questions. The bigger one is the second one: “what did you think of the criticism of towards your match versus Chris Jericho?” Mistico says they had two different styles and they clashed, but he enjoyed the match and he’s thankful that Chris Jericho came to Mexico to fulfill that dream match and fight him one on one. “We all have good and bad matches”, but Mistico still feel people enjoyed the idea of seeing them together and moved on after. No one can take away that they were the main event of the 91st Aniversario show either. The other question is more logic based: “if you gave up the Historic Middleweight Championship to move out of that division, why not the MLW Middleweight championship?” Mistico tries to make sense of it by saying there are different weight divisions and cutoffs in different promotions – MLW just has middleweight and heavyweight for the men, and CMLL has light heavyweight in between. Mistico says he’d give the MLW one if MLW asked, but he’d rather lose titles in the ring. The implication there is it was CMLL call for him to vacate their title.

I never got around to putting up this week’s Puebla (11/17) until Thursday night.

• Rayo Metálico, Volcano, Xelhua vs Guerrero Maya Jr., Multy, Okumura
• Flip Gordon, Templario, Titán vs Hijo del Villano III, Villano III Jr., Zandokan Jr.
• Magnus, Rugido, Volador Jr. vs Averno, Euforia, Mephisto

AAA

The TV split for the weekend

• Space will have part one of the 11/03 Showcenter
• Unimas will finish part two of the 11/03 Showcenter
• YouTube will have part two of 11/17 Guerra de Titanes

No taping this weekend.

Dragon Suicida won the INJUVE Lucha x el Barrio competition, with Andy Panda Jr. second. Puma de Oro and Radioactivo finished tied for third. The original idea was the top 3 finishers would earn AAA one-year contracts. Maybe they’ll give them to all four. Those are all familiar names because Radioactivo, Andy Panda Jr., and Dragon Suicida all made it to the final match in the January 2024 version of this same contest.

Dragon Suicida works a ton of small shows around the Mexico City/Mexico State area, but doesn’t seem to have a home base and is used mostly in the first half of shows He’s a known guy but not a big name at all. Andy Panda Jr. is a panda luchador. He’s also is (or was) one-third of Big Lucha’s Delta Force as Morfosis; they’ve acknowledged the double life. He’s TV-ready as a comedy figure – he could easily slide in with Nino Hamburgesa and Mr. Iguana – but the gimmick may limit how far he can go. Puma de Oro is an Abismo Negro Jr. trainee, like last year’s winners Dick Angelo 3G and Legendario (now Taurus & Bengala.) Last year’s third-place winner, Lady Wind, never wrestled for AAA outside of shows in her home area of Xalapa. Radioactivo appeared on TV more than her; he and Extasis defeated the Money Machine in one of the better AAA matches of the year and then were never seen again.

I guess that’s a bigger statement of what happened with the last competition: AAA put the winners (except Lady Wind) and a lot of the other INJUVE participants on shows early in the year. Everyone but the winners vanished as they shifted more into Retro/Origenes matches. Those people disappeared by the time TripleMania Mexico City was over, and what was left was the prelim people who had barely been seen in months. Dick Angelo 3G and Legendario wrestled under their real name on the evening show after winning in the afternoon, and then were next seen as Taurus and Bengala. It’s fair to expect the same here: maybe Dragon Suicida, Andy Panda Jr., Puma de Oro and Radioactivo wrestle once with those gimmicks, and then it’s off to looking through the big book of AAA trademarked characters to put these guys under. Perhaps Andy Panda Jr. gets changed less than the rest, because he’s already got a gimmick, they’re just going to want it to be one they won.

Also finishing in the top six were Shere Khan (who also made it far last year) and El Cardenal (a complete unknown. Rey Espartano, Legado, Kenji, and Rey Cosmico were runner-ups and invited to join Faby Apache’s training class. INJUVE held a women’s match with Diosa Nix, Sairely, Adhara and Mary Caproal, but it doesn’t seem like they finished top 10. These are a lot of familiar names; the Mexico City talent pool isn’t deep and hasn’t changed much in 10 months.

Plans must’ve changed with the INJUVE contest; the original idea was the finals on 12/07, and the latest press release says the winners will be recognized on the 12/07 show and wrestle a match on that show. They also say Shere Khan and Sairely will also be invited to wrestle on AAA shows at some point.

Mas Lucha has interviews with the winners are one more

• Dragon Suicida mentions going to AAA events as a child and is excited to be on one. He felt the big difference this time was he only knew about that one shortly in advance. He correctly figured INJUVE and AAA would run another LuchaXelBarrio and spent the year making it his goal to get in the best shape possible.
• Andy Panda Jr. noted he’s wrestled under multiple identities – there’s one beyond Panda and Morfosis that he starts to say before getting distracted – and just had a feeling that Panda was the right one for this competition because of the personality factor. He still wants to prove that even, though he’s a ‘fantasy’/comedy character, those characters can do more than just comedy
• Radioactivo is very proud of being third, and is happy his Delta Force ally (Morfosis/Andy Panda) also made it through. It’d be great if all of Delta Force came together in a new universe of AAA
• Puma de Oro credits his success to not treating his mask loss as a setback, but instead growing and learning afterwards.
• runner up Cosmico felt he learned a lot just from doing the competition and will learn now training with Faby Apache.
  • Cosmico and Radioactivo are both from Xalapa. They thank Dr. Ricardo Munoz, who runs the Lucha Libre Radioactivo shows in that city. Even prior to that, he’s sponsored these guys and others (CMLL’s Legendario) so they could afford to relocate to Mexico City and advance their careers.

AAA has a live event on the 6th in Tijuana.

AAA (FRI) 12/06/2024 Auditorio de Tijuana, Tijuana, Baja California
1) Colmillo de Plata & Garra de Oro vs Kamik-C & Skalibur
2) Anubis vs Belcegor
3) Hijo Del Vikingo & Laredo Kid vs Alpha Wolf & Dragón Bane
4) Dave The Clown, Murder Clown, Panic Clown vs Bestia 666, Hijo de Rey Misterio, Tony Casanova
5) Galeno del Mal & Hijo del Dr. Wagner Jr. vs Forastero & Sansón
6) Cibernético & Pagano vs D Luxe & Sam Adonis

Match 3 and 5 have gotten attention. It sounds like Los Golpeadors have gotten more polished over their time in NOAH and maybe lost some of the bad habits they had picked up in the indies the last couple of years. (NOAH fans who don’t watch Mexican wrestling may look at this sentence like I have three heads; it’s all relative.) They, and the Wagners, also can’t be cheap to bring in right now. Pagano and Sam Adonis are also here after not working much AAA TV. Tijuana’s a competitive market – EMW, The Crash, Lucka Libre and Cholo de Tijuana will all run this same building in the last two months of the year – so a stronger card may be necessary to compete. It still seems like there’s a lot of money going toward talent on this show, whereas AAA seems to be going a more cost-efficient route on their actual TV tapings. I’m glad the people in Tijuana get to see the match and I’ll try to watch it if it turns up online, but the strategy here is more intriguing to me.

Laredo Kid challenges Moose for the TNA X Division Championship on 11/29. They did a quick angle to set this up on Impact Thursday. Moose is an unconventional X Division champion, Laredo Kid is a traditional X Division wrestler, it’s probably just a first defense before Moose goes onto whatever he’s doing with that title in the same way as the Alberto/Laredo match. At least Laredo Kid gets a singles PPV match; this is his first 1v1 on an Impact PPV if I’m using cagematch correctly.

(There’s an alternative timeline where this match is instead Vikingo/Laredo and that would’ve been cool too.)

Box y Lucha notes that Pagano has replaced Cibernetico on the 12/07 show in Mexicali. He’s on the Mexico City taping that day. Unsure if that means Alberto was going to challenge someone else originally on 12/07 or if it was poor AAA scheduling.

There was some controversy about Vampiro being announced for a show in Italy. He had always said his retirement was Mexico only, though AAA didn’t advertise that part much, and no one much listed Vampiro’s details. The absurd part to me is this came up about a show he’s working on in Italy on October 31, 2025, and something like that announced 11 months in advance is highly unlikely to happen as planned initially anyway. (The promotion did run a show with US names back in October.) The promotion putting it on is NWE; Vampiro said earlier he would work for them post-AAA, and now he’s saying he’s part owner. NWE was a big deal in Italy for a short time in the ’00s and is forever trying to recapture that moment.

Other News

There’s a new lucha libre exhibit in Leon.