Day: November 29, 2024

CMLL

CMLL (FRI) 11/29/2024 Arena México
1) Astral & Legendario vs Alom & Hunter
2) Capitán Suicida, Futuro, Max Star vs Crixus, Infarto, Okumura
3) Blue Panther Jr., Dark Panther, El Hijo De Blue Panther vs Akuma, Gemelo Diablo I, Gemelo Diablo II
4) Neón, Star Jr., Titán vs El Hijo del Villano III, Valiente, Villano III Jr.
5) Flip Gordon, Templario, Volador Jr. vs Ángel de Oro, Niebla Roja, Rocky Romero
6) Místico vs Hechicero [Leyenda de Azul, final]

This is the first Mistico versus Hechicero match in Mexico City; they had a well-recieved one in Arena Monterrey back in September. Everything points to Mistico winning. Back-to-back tournament wins are unusual in CMLL, and Hechicero won the 2023 Leyenda de Azul last year. Mistico gave up a title seemingly to be in this tournament and probably to win it. Most importantly, he’s Mistico. No one else is. The real story is how they’ll work together in a big Arena Mexico match; there’s a belief their styles are just a bit too different to click together in this situation. Hechicero has moved up in CMLL’s standings this year a lot, he’s good no matter what happens here, but it’s a great opportunity to do a little bit more.

(Also, what if Mistico just went Llave Mistico for the night, that’d be fantastic.)

The semi-main is a good match on paper, but it’ll probably be more interesting for wherever’s coming out of it. Templario and Volador had issues last week and Templario did an interview on Informa where he said he didn’t know what was going on. (Templario and JCR so strongly insisted he’s staying a tecnico that it’d be telegraphing a turn in another promotion.) Maybe there’s another match for 12/13 getting set up. Match four will probably actually be the good match, and it’s a rare of late Valiente appearance on a Friday. Match 3 is also a lot of men who haven’t wrestled on Friday the last few months. (No women’s match this night.) The opening two have potential as well.

A reminder: Saturday’s show has the Blue Panther/Ultimo Guerrero singles match scheduled. It’s CMLL, so we may never see that match again or they may book it four times in the next six months.

The 12/13 show has undergone some changes:

CMLL (FRI) 12/13/2024 Arena México
1) ?, ??, ??? vs ????, ?????, ??????
2) ?, ??, ??? vs ????, ?????, ??????
3) Red Velvet & Viva Van vs La Jarochita & Lluvia
Jarochita return match
4) Deonna Purrazzo vs La Catalina
5) Persephone vs Reyna Isis, Sanely, Zeuxis [International Wrestling Cup, semifinal]
6) Volador Jr. vs Pac
7) Claudio Castagnoli vs Hechicero

Toni Storm is off the show. Julio Cesar Rivera started to explain it was “various reasons” when La Catalina cut him off declaring Storm was scared of her and that’s why Toni Storm is retired. (After originally shooting it down, AEW appears to be running with the idea that Storm is actually retired and so no CMLL appearance for her.) The segment gave the impression Catalina and Storm are still going to wrestle again at some other point.

Deonna Purrazzo is the AEW replacement and will face Catalina in a singles match instead. (That makes three women’s matches on this card.) Catalina expressed excitement about facing Purrazzo, saying she was a very skilled wrestler when they wrestled in the US.

Purrazzo did an interview on Informa talking about how much she’s always wanted to wrestle in Arena Mexico, mentioning she hadn’t seen Catalina in person since they were both in NXT and noting she always makes history when she comes to Mexico. That was the only slight nod to Purrazzo’s previous run in AAA, where she was the Reina de Reinas champion in 2021 and won the Lucha World Cup in 2023.

For my own edification, here’s a recap of that Purrazzo title reign:

• Taya vacates the title upon getting signed by WWE
• Faby Apache wins a six-way match for the vacant commentary. Deonna Purrazzo does commentary for the match (in English, with the announcers translating) and positions herself as a xenophobic heel. She challenges Faby to a match at TripleMania.
• Deonna Purrazzo cleanly defeats Lady Shani on TV.
• Deonna Purrazzo defeats Faby Apache at TripleMania. The match looks interesting on paper, but AAA (or perhaps Faby) does not trust these women to get the heat they want. Most of the match is Maravilla and Hijo del Tirantes cheating Faby Apache and there’s very little to it.
• AAA attempts to schedule Purrazzo for a title defense (and likely loss) at a show in the fall, but Purrazzo has a wedding to attend. She opts for the wedding over the promotion she barely works for, and “AAA” later complains to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter about all of this and how it made it impossible for her to drop the title.
• AAA instead airs a promo of Taya (now outside of WWE) challenging for the Reina de Reinas title.
• AAA has no problem booking Purrazzo, still champion, at TripleMania Monterrey the following year. Except, Deonna has already lost the AAA title to Taya in Impact. (It takes AAA months to show even a clip of that happening.) The TripleMania Monterrey match is a trios match, seemingly putting together people who were promised a booking without any plans for them, and it ends in DQ.

This was high-end AAA silliness, and the poor planning marked this era. AAA got the title from Taya back to Taya by having run through and defame anyone who might have challenged her. It was also AAA jumping on a hot act from the US – Purrazzo was a heavily pushed women’s champion in TNA at the time – just for the sake of doing it. AAA could’ve capitalized when they brought Purrazzo in for the Lucha World Cup, but she won that too. They coudl’ve done at UltraClash last year, and Purrazzo didn’t factor into the finish. AAA had long moved on from that story by then; AAA typically has a story they want to tell, they give up if they hit any sort of road bump, and that’s how they end up the land of dropped storylines. Both AAA and CMLL are fairly rigid with the stories they want to tell, but CMLL usually has the power to force things to happen the way they want, and AAA has not had that control in the last few years.

I don’t think CMLL fans know or care much about a poorly executed AAA storyline. It honestly didn’t seem like AAA fans cared all that much about it. Mexicans fans just vaguely remember the name if they know anything else, and it’s not going to be an especially big thing if Catalina wins (which I’m guessing is going to happen.)

The Velvet/Van versus Jarochita/Lluvia tag match essentially replaces Tessa Blanchard with La Jarochita. CMLL didn’t explain why Blanchard was no longer booked; instead, they focused on Jarochita’s return. I don’t think anything is up with Blanchard, this is just CMLL thinking reuniting Jarochita & Lluvia would be the bigger deal on this night. Jarochita’s absence is still for undefined personal reasons, though she mentioned she was dealing with some ankle injuries. (It should not be hard to guess why a woman wrestler might have taken herself out of competition and public view for over nine months.) I’m not sure this card will be seven matches, but I certainly didn’t expect it to have three women’s matches.

The other big announcement had been expected for a while (though I guessed wrong on when it would happen.) CMLL’s has a tradition of an apuesta match on New Year’s Day. The Pequeno Estrellas have been making apuesta challenges since the beginning of November, and they will be bet their hairs and masks. The feuding has been between four trios, but it’ll end up the usual everyone for themselves cage match in the end. The show, Sin Salida, will take place on Wednesday, January 1st, with Ultimo Dragoncito, Shockercito, Galaxy, Pequeno Magia, Kaligua Angelito, Pierrothito, Pequeno Violencia, Pequeno Olimpico, Full Metal, Pequeno Polvora, and Rostro de Acero. Traditional lucha libre booking has the least important person losing these, which would be either Pequeno Violencia (lost a bunch of apuesta matches) or Rostro de Acero (new guy who’s not officially on the roster.) CMLL’s done more unexpected outcomes of late.

(Not sure what level the 01/01 show will be on; it’s a Wednesday show replacing the usual Tuesday one, which would typically mean everyone who subscribes gets it. CMLL’s not said anything about the 12/13 tier either. This stuff is not a priority.)

A couple of notes from the bodybuilding contest about unusual names

• Kuukai’s appearance in a CMLL tournament caught some attention because he’s appeared to be an AAA guy. He’s actually a freelancer who did appear on AAA TV three times in 2023, and often teams with whatever Japanese wrestlers happen to be in Mexico, and most of those Japanese wrestlers have tended to be with AAA. He’s teamed much more often with Kurama and not as much with AAA-related people in 2024, so I assume he’s been training with CMLL for some time. Still, that’s a quiet change, and it was surprising for most to see an “AAA” person in that bodybuilding contes.t
• Action Jackson showed up in one of the later weight classes. He’s a Puerto Rican notable for being in the Travis Banks group of friends and for being a member of the Black Generation until convincing Elemental and Extasis that they all should leave and go on their own. (That Jackson ended up back in Big Lucha made this amusing.) Elemental is now in the CMLL system. Jackson may have been in one of the later classes because of his size, but those are usually reserved for people who are officially accepted by CMLL.
• Canada’s Cody 1-8, another former Big Lucha foreigner, popped in the trainee categories. He hasn’t been wrestling in Mexico and I don’t stalk him on social media, so I was surprised to see him around.

AAA

the TV split:

• Space has Part 2 of the Dia del Muertos Showcenter card
• Unimas has Part 2 (of 3) Guerra de Titanes
• AAA has Part 1 of the Dia del Muertos Showcenter card

No taping this weekend. They’re back next weekend to close out their year.

Latin Lover insists he won’t be a surprise wrestler on 12/07 and 12/08 shows.

Hijo del Vikingo, doing press to hype the last couple of tapings of the year, again said that a doctor told him he was close to having his knee amputated. That doesn’t make sense with a knee ligament injury. Vikingo says he doesn’t feel like a young guy anymore and talked about wanting to retire once he reached all his goals. The interview pressed him on that retirement idea, and Vikingo suggested it’d happen in “maybe five years, maybe less.” No luchador has ever correctly determined when they’re retired years ahead of time.

Octagon Jr. says he used to make his gear as Golden Magic. Now that he’s making real money as a wrestler, his parents make his gear.

Laredo Kid faces Moose for the TNA X-Division championship tonight, in a show that will air on the TNA+ service and will be taking place just a few minutes after this gets posted. A good sign for Laredo Kid is TNA just launched a TNA En Espanol YouTube channel. A bad sign for Laredo Kid is he’s barely on the channel; you can find a big tag match he was involved in earlier this year as well a Vikingo/Kushida/Sabin three way match from an earlier PPV, but there’s no tell that they’re really getting behind him here.

AEW

A reminder: there’s a lot of lucha libre related stuff on AEW’s oddly scheduled weekend TV

• AEW Collision (3 pm ET) will have the Beast Mortos versus Kyle Fletcher, and Mistico in action
• AEW Rampage (5 pm ET) will have the Beast Mortos versus Serpentico, Katsuyori Shibata, Atlantis Jr., and Mascara Dorada against Top Flight & Action Andretti, Komander versus Hechicero, and Thunder Rosa versus “Harleygram”

Both shows will probably receive near-record lows in viewership because they’re at a weird time; it’s a holiday weekend, and Rampage will go against the start of a WWE PPV. You do not have to care about any of that. It is entirely irrelevant, and you can identify irrelevant people in wrestling discourse as the ones who take any sort of negative number as a point worth discussing. (I presume the main reason AEW felt comfortable with making that a lucha libre hour is it was an hour of Rampage they knew was going to door poorly regardless.)

I attended the AEW taping on Wednesday. A few scattered thoughts

• Anecdotally, there was more advertising for this show in different places than prior events. I was out grabbing takeout in Batavia the week prior and spotted a flyer on the window for this show. I’ve never seen an AEW flyer in the wild before, and Batavia is a good distance away from the Wintrust Arena. I also seemed to be getting lots of Twitter ads for this show for a couple of weeks prior. I can’t tell you if this was a one-off thing or a strategy change to reach people who aren’t currently watching AEW.
  • The advertising on the poster, of course, was as misleading as always for AEW. Of the eight people on the poster, two wrestled (Jericho & Allin), two more appeared before the live crowd (Mone, Moxley), one showed up in a taped segment (May) and three did not appear at all (Kris Statlander, Christian Cage and Orange Cassidy).
• It didn’t seem to make a marked difference in tickets sold. WrestleTix estimates it as a little less than last time in the building. The building was configured differently than recent shows, too. They had been closing off the hardcam side on these shows, trying to pack people facing the camera. Much more of the lower bowl was opened this time, but that was mostly relocated people who probably would’ve been seated in the upper level in the old set up. (The upper level instead had a few scattered people.)
  • I waited until the last minute to get a ticket, feeling burned for paying too much in past shows when there were late discounts. Sure enough, there were $20 ticket sections added last week. I bought one, never actually sat it. I think the seats I ended up hanging out in were about $20 more expensive —well, part of the show.
• It was great to see Mascara Dorada and Mistico. I have no idea why AEW booked them. They barely advertised them during the week of the show; it seemed pretty likely they were not getting much to do when AEW made no match announcements for them. Dorada/Komander wrestled in a fun, though not deep, three-way tag match. A personal highlight of the night was seeing Private Party come out without a partner for a six-man tag and waiting for what seemed to be an eternity for their entrance to finish while wondering if AEW booked Mistico as their partner. They did, in a match that it existed, just to use guys who happened to be there. Easy paydays are nice, but perhaps it’s too easy for AEW to get CMLL guys if they’re comfortable using them like them meaninglessly. Anyone paying a ticket just to see Dorada and Mistico on this show walked away mildly disappointed.
  • I did hear Dorada/Takeshita was on the books at one point, but it did not happen. Takeshita did not appear on the taping.
• The crowd largely stuck around after Dynamite, which has not been the case for the tapings I’ve attended this year. I’m sure a large part of that was knowing Will Ospreay (versus Juice Robinson) was coming up. They did start filtering out after that Mistico six-man tag, though it never got as barren as the shows that tape Ring of Honor last. Those who stayed were very into The Beast Mortos taking on Kyle Fletcher. The reaction for Mortos was in the sort of style as Villano III Jr. in Arena Mexico, though not as intense as that one came across – the fans think this guy is cool, though it’s unclear if they think he’s cool and they’ll buy tickets to support him. The only way to know is to put him in a good position. He’s in a tournament where I suggested he’d go 1-4 and got some feedback that I was too optimistic. Maybe this’ll put him in the position to have great matches for a month and people will want more Mortos, maybe it’ll instead continue  to convince people he’s on the Komander level of “fun but not to taken seriously.” We’ll see in December.
• I spent the last hour of Dynamite and the first part of Collision watching the wrestling show before me while also watching and listening to CMLL Informa. It’s tough being an absolute nutcase dedicated lucha libre blogger. After CMLL wrapped up, I decided it would be a great idea to sit in an empty area on the hardcam side of the ring to watch the Morts/Fletcher match a bit closer. I sat down for about 14 seconds before an arena usher came to me, said something, and gestured for me to leave. I asked him what happened, and he explained, “Those seats are for media only.” The man was doing his job correctly, I was not wearing a media pass, I never have much interest in asking for a media pass, I was not what counted as media in that sense. I’d also just spent the last hour reporting on wrestling news at a wrestling show, possibly one of the few people in that building doing that on that night, and being reminded I was “not media” brought me some joy. I left peacefully and watched the rest of the show from behind an emptied-out production table that I was not supposed to be using. No security guy informed me I was not production, thankfully.

Other News

Gran Hamada’s family is looking for blood donors, especially those in the San Luis Potosi area.

Police in Puebla have arrested a suspect in the murder of Rey Komodo. The luchador was stabbed to death in May, and police arrested “Jose Eduardo N.” for the crime on Thursday. Both Komodo (Jonathan N.) and Jose were apparently dating the same woman. Jose and a second man lured Komodo to a warehouse, where they stabbed and beat him to death. The police know the identity of the second man but have not been able to find him as of yet.