07/23 news: Accion, Congress

Accion

CMLL: The Dos/Lizmark/Metal vs Corleone/Stamboli/Kenzo match, of all things. I guess no one got hurt in that one. This match is oddly listed as for the NWA Middleweight title – not quite accurate. Jindrak has an awesome running down the ramp and leaaping over spot in here. It’s like his vertical leap was actually useful for once. Stamboli takes a good chokeslam from Lizmark. Dos got Jindrak – who has hair again – with a quick German for the win. I was thinking Stamboli and Jindrak were leaving money on the table by not having hair for Lizmark and Dos to eventually win, and maybe someone educated Mark?

AAA: Octagon vs Zumbido for the Middleweight Title. I didn’t complain about this as much as maybe should’ve when Octagon won the belt, but it’s quite the dumb idea and a complete waste of the tournament they ran to fill it. If Octaogn needs a token belt, remind him he’s tag champ. In the final sequence, Zumbido’s big slap got not-el Hijo de Tirantes. Zumbido went on to rollup Octagon, and Electroshock ran out to count – I have absolutely no clue why Electro would do that, but I guess we’re getting a Guapos/Vipers feud? Zumbido of course assumes that’s three, but everything gets sorted out – oh, Electro is making “I want the belt” motions, I guess that’s the explanation (though it still doesn’t make sense.) The match gets reset – so Zumbido wasn’t actually hurt by this turn of events – and Octagon got La Jarocha for the win.

Ovaciones today previews the upcoming AAA taping, noting Rossy Moreno’s return – from having kids.

Arenas de Chicago (SUN) 07/23 Congress Theatre Results
1) Pato Loco & ? b Angel de la Muerte & ?
2) Acid Jazz & Danny Daniels b Justin Adams & Larry Havoc
3) Yakuza, Amenza de Siglo, Angel Dorano b Angel Dorado, Issac Velzaguez, Bill Factor
4) Aguila del America b SWAT Kat and Rayo Laser
5) Mini Charly Manson & Lancer 2000 b Gringo Loco & Guerreirto del Futuro
6) Hurcan Ramirez Jr. & Blue Demon Jr. DQ Rey Misterio & Arkangel de la Muerte

Scattered thoughts from a scattered brain after the link.

* This time, “5:00 pm” meant Doors Open time – the time listed has meant Bell Time on previous shows, and it wouldn’t taken all of two words to explain that. LAZY! On the upside, they gave ringside laminated tickets for whatever reason. I’ll scan mine in tomorrow.

* Guessing attendance in the 250-300 range; not significantly different from when they ran the show they ran angle to set up this match. If they were video taping the show for later sale, they were doing it very secretly (I did see someone bring out a handheld for the main, but that’s about it.) Didn’t see the DVDs on sale, though there was a semi-advert for in the program. There was also an page proclaiming they’d be on some latino network I haven’t heard of starting in October; I can’t imagine that’ll amount to much regarldess.

* They had the usual guy doing announcing in Spanish, and someone else who’d seemed never to hear a ring announcement before trying to do English announcers (for the benefit of the 10 English-only speakers there, I guess.) About half way thru the show, he disappeared. PROFESIONALISM!

* The ring layout was as smartly set as it’s been, somewhat benefiting from the lower expected audience. No seating on the stage, and they figured the best use for the barricades is to create an aisle to prevent the wrestlers from being mobbed by kids as they come to the ring. Balcony was closed, and wasn’t really going to be used with the amount of people.

* The lineup not only differed wildly from what was on the promotion’s website two days prior, but from the printed program they were selling for $3 – only the 4th and main were as listed. PLANNING!

1) Opener featured a wrestling Duck – great sounding and looking gimmick, worker not at that level – and two kids who might have walked off the street. There names were announced, but inaudible; one was wearing a Rey Mysterio shirt, cargo shorts, knee pads, and sneaks; the other had a Parka shirt and actual wrestling pants (but also sneakers.) Match was hilariously bad at points – many mistakes evident to everyone in the building. No surprise that the kids couldn’t do a lockup or any basics properly, but had mastered double jump armdrags and diving twisting headscissors to the floor. (Well, sorta mastered – I thought they were going to die when they tried that one on the hard floor.) Match was announces as three falls, but they just went home after the first one – literally all four guys just walked off, leaving the announcers confused. They must’ve figured they were done as soon as they got to do their spots.

2) Segunda was a total Chicago arena indy match in a lucha show – completely random and ill fitting on the card because it was worked US style, but the wrestlers were generally better trained and more experienced than the lucha equivalents, it nearly worked. This match was announced for someone’s tag team title belts, but no title belts were brought to the ring and who cares. Acid Jazz didn’t do much high flying at all, and was absolutely awesome as a goofy rudo. I don’t know if I’ve seen him in the role, but he should do it more often if it’s going to work like this; crowd really got into booing him, and he wasn’t doing things much more complicated than complaining about his hair being pulled (and letting the ref point out he’s bald.) It was a lot of going with crowd and the moment, not forcing things to work. Justin Adams did a good job selling a lot of stuff. Danny Daniels didn’t adjust to the situation and did a lot of high tech indy offense which didn’t get over for the effort. Whoever’s training Larry Chaos – if that’s his real name – needs to emphasize diet and working out stronger, and not wrestling in only trunks until you work on those things. Like I said, match was an okay->good indy match, but it was a one size fits attempt, and clear from stuff like doing a hot tag (no pop) that the participants were unaware or unwilling to do lucha. The topper was Daniels using a piledriver off all things for his finish; everyone in the building knew that’s supposed to be a DQ in lucha, but the ref dutifully counted three because (they’re not really good refs and) that’s the finish. I keep thinking Daniels should’ve known better to put the ref in an unwinnable position like that (especially since he seems to have 4000 other Big Moves he could’ve used), and I’m thinking he probably did know he shouldn’t do a piledriver and did it anyway. On the upisde, this was three falls and they didn’t 20 minute indy falls, which I was slightly worried about.

3) Hey, it’s a trios match! The guy’s name is not Bill Factor, but I have absolutely no idea what it was. I thought they said X-Factor the first time, but he didn’t look the part. He was actually a more toned version of Eskelton from Nacho Libre; insanely thinn, but it looked like he worked out quite a bit. Angel Dorano may not actually be Angel Dorano; I don’t know about the name there. After the oddness of the first two matches, this was just an ordinary lucha match – nothing more than okay, and far too many shenanigans for match 3 of a 6 match card, but that’s what you get with this group. Rudos did a whole elaborate tecnico match switching around during the third fall and then Siglo put his mask on the (no mask-ed) Velzaguez. Despite completely different body types, Velzaguez’s partners saw the Siglo mask on him, assumed he must be Siglo, and beat him up for a while. After they got it sorted out, rudos immediately put them in wacky submissions for the win.

4) This was a triangle match, for reasons only known by – actually, maybe no one. Aguila was the one rudo, but still won the match. They forced the odd man to stay out (always the other tecnico), so he had an even shot. The bigger deal was the two refs on the show feuding all throughout it, and it became five levels past obnoxious during this match; they were doing their own angle and it was the focus instead of the match. There was completely dumb stuff, like the tecnico ref getting bumped out of the ring early by Aguila, and then looking for revenge by breaking up submissions holds aguila had on legally. I don’t understand the point of feuding refs and fighting refs, but someone obviously things different. Aguila pinned Rayo Laser – it occurred to me tonight Rayo’s probably the guy who was under the Discovery mask and I should’ve realized this months ago, for what it’s worth – when Aguila low blowed him blatantly with the rudo ref letting it go and the tecnico ref seeing it – and letting it go too, really. Aguila later pinned SWAT Kat after the rudo referee low blowed Swat Kat. For reals. Post match when on forever and a day, with SWAT Kat and Aguila seemingly agreeing to a mask challenge with the refs also in a hair match; I don’t know, and I don’t really care unless it’s signed (and even then, I wouldn’t show up just for it.)

5) Mini Charly Manson actually made sense before the match, noting he’s a heel but was upset with Gringo Loco’s anti-Mexican actions (he was throwing tortilla to the crowd, many of which came back at him.) Crowd seemed a bit quiet when the rudos did the long beatdown, but went nuts for the comeback, so I guess they were into it. It was the best match of the night, to me. Gringo’s pants got yanked down on a sunset flip in the third fall (reoccuring spot), and Manson spanked him before pinning him for the win. Gringo had a valet, and Guerrerito kept giving her unwanted advances, which was an amusing subplot. This match is the template for what I think these lucha shows should be – skip the screwjobs to build up things that aren’t going to happen, just have someone explain who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy before the match, and do three falls with an actual finish at the end. Don’t over complicate it.

* Near the end of this match, I was flooded out of my seat. I don’t know what happened, but it seemed like a faucet was overflowing and no one could turn it off, so a stream of water started flowing down a hallway into one part of the seating basin. There was some high comedy involved in people trying to fix this problem – I saw one person arrange a row of chairs to block the flow of water, as if the water wouldn’t find it’s way thru the legs. I saw another person put a towel at the end of the stream of water and start pushing the water back, as if they were going to reverse the flow of the stream with one mightly shove. Eventually, they asked all to move – there were plenty of seats elsewhere – and eventually actually turned off the water.

6) Before the match, they brought out Rey Misterio (wearing his mask again), gave him a plaque, sent him to the back, brought out Blue Demon, gave him a plaque, sent him to the back. This really should’ve been done early in the show, during one of the many unannounced and lengthy intermissions. Match was built around Demon/Misterio and descended into the usual Tijuana hardcore goofiness in the third fall. There was nothing really interesting wrestling wise at all – Arkangel didn’t do anything noteworthy, and I wasn’t expecting much from the other three (who all seem to be living off someone else’s identity here, at least in part.) Finish was Rey maybe low blowing Demon (couldn’t tell) and covering, but both refs had already taken ref bumps. Ark came in, and used the unconscious’ ref arm to count to three. The other ref came in, and was going to let this stand, but then decided a strike he never saw was a low blow and gave it to Demon.

Post match, they talked forever and forever and I kept waiting for them to do something or decide something – they eventually did the “we’ll do one on one five minute rematch -> sunset flip by the tecnico after five seconds” bit, which might have been for the fifth time in Congress in the last three years. And then they still kept talking and talking.

In the middle of this, they teased a Demon/Misterio match for next time (last time, they teased it for this one), with these stips:
1st Fall: “tecnico”
2nd Fall: “hardcore”
3rd Fall: “mascara vs mascara”

The heck? It’s too late, and I’m too tired to hash out the infinite ways that makes no sense. Rey Misterio was awful hesitant to wager a mask he lost 18 years ago.

I kept waiting for something definite to happen or be announced, and then finally realized nothing ever would and left while they were still yapping.

I can’t see me ever going to another Blue Demon show, nor an Arenas De Chicago show without better talent. I’ve seen it all, I have no desire to see it again. The guys in the semi main and Acid Jazz were great, but it’s not worth the trip into the city.