Mexico City ended up remaining in Orange health conditions. Those health codes are supposed to be updated every two weeks and are supposed to determine if it is ok to run wrestling shows. The next update would be August 14, which would be the last chance for any wrestling shows to happen in August. The reality is something different. Hidalgo remains in Red, which means DTU should be announcing a farther postponement of their shows if the Red health conditions was truly the reason they postponed the iPPV the first time. Maybe they’ll wait until August 14th to decide, but most likely the shows which have gone on under the radar will attempt to continue to do so.
There was no wrestling at Arena Mexico this weekend – and there’s still no word on the secret show filmed Thursday – but there was an event in the ring. La Cotorrisa, a comedy podcast, held an iPPV in the arena. The report on the show mentions they sold 36,000 virtual tickets for the events. 20-25 people were in the building, including Caristico, KeMonito, and Microman for parts of the show.
That last name is notable – Planchitas story about Microman being ill and maybe having COVID appears wrong again. (People trying to report stories are occasionally being wrong; Planchitas never acknowledging his misses is an additional issue.) The article on the event mentions those in the building got temperature checks and antibacterial gel, though no COVID testing. It seems unlikely Microman would’ve been allowed in if he was really sick.
PWinsider (so many ads, be careful) noted a recent MLW show included a throwaway line about AAA buying CMLL during a promo. The PWInsider reports claim CMLL & AAA have indeed talked about a deal. It’s an MLW story and they have skill at getting their news picked up anywhere despite the size fo the promotion. MLW sometimes uses that ability to get otherwise normal news sources to report things that aren’t entirely true. This feels like one of those times, though I don’t know that for absolutely certain.
Salvador Lutteroth Jr., in his Comic-Con panel appearance, sounded like a person who emphasized the relationship between his family and this wrestling promotion and suggested they’d be staying unified for years to come. We know very little about the rest of the family. It’s definitely possible someone with Lutteroth in their name touched base with AAA to find out if they’d be interested; not everyone might have the same relationship with the promotion as Salvador. Touching base and actually doing a sale are a far distance away and there’s no other indication than an MLW story that there’s anything to this. MLW is close with AAA, and it comes across as an AAA favorable rumor leaked specifically to mess with CMLL.
It’s hard to figure if AAA could buy CMLL unless the Lutteroths were selling it piecemeal. I suspect the land Arena Mexico sits on, because of the size and the location, is more valuable than either wrestling promotion. It’s hard to imagine AAA has enough access to capital to buy that property, and buying the building would require a total rework of how they run their own promotion. An AAA purchase of CMLL, which is unlikely to occur, would make more sense along the scale of WWE buying WCW. Maybe AAA would pick up the tape library, the trademarks (even though they’re still in Sofia Alonso’s name), and the few wrestlers who are under contract, but it’d only happen after the Lutteroths had already decided they were selling or repurposing the lands and had no room for a wrestling promotion. I don’t think that’s happening.
CMLL usually holds “Copa Bobby Bonales” around this time, which is really just a bit of associating with Olympic medalist Daniel Aceves by honoring some older wrestlers. That wouldn’t fit normally this year. Instead, Aceves held a press event on Sunday where he handed out 36 food baskets to luchadors to celebrate 36 years since he won a silver medal. Luchadors mentioned as receiving packages are Rey Bucanero, Black Panther, Metalico, Sagrado, Mephisto, Volcano, Bengala, Principe Odin Jr., La Jarochita, Stephanie Vaquer, Disturbio, Cancerbero, Reina Isis, Akuma, Espanto Jr., Raziel, Valkiria, Sonic, Ultimo Dragoncito, Troyano, Ricky Marvin, As Charro, Demus, Demonio Infernal, Sstruendo, Principe, and Yoruba. Hijo del Villano III is pictured, so that leaves eight more. I’m not sure who person 37 was, but it was truly not their year. A “Marco Alonso” is mentioned as representing Salvador Lutteroth at the presentation; I didn’t remember the name, but some Googling mentions he was last seen in 2013 when he was in the front rows of a WWE show. He was listed as CMLL accountant at that time.
A group of fans organized food baskets for luchadors in Leon.
DTU & Lucha Time announced an alliance; Lucha Time is sending people to DTU’s next iPPV. This seems a good mix on paper: Lucha Time has some more experienced wrestlers but hasn’t really gotten much attention, DTU has gotten attention for their iPPVs but has a generally younger roster. The issue is this is a show happening during a global pandemic, which particularly makes traveling to another state foolish at worst and deadly at most. Just announcing this sort of thing suggests how non-serious both groups (and MexaWrestling, which will also be involved) are taking current conditions. DTU will announce a card for this at some point and it’ll be fine but the normal announcements that are supposed to make people excited come off as depressing.
Milenio writes about Shocker’s jaw injury, which he’s spoken about on his YouTube show. Diamante Azul broke the jaw in a 2017 match but the bigger problem is the repair job has failed twice. He’s had a plate break and a screw come loose, requiring operations each time.
El Fantasma was asked about appearing at an autograph signing this past weekend in this week’s Box Y Lucha. Fantasma explains it as if he was an invited guest while also mentioning wrestlers have a right to earn money however they can during a time where no shows can happen. He says he attended as a luchador, not as the head of the lucha libre commission. Also, the lucha commission governs wrestling shows but not autograph signings, so wrestlers are free to do those.
Mexico State luchador Potro Salvaje (Salvador Quintana, 80) passed away over the weekend. He was often seen in Arena San Juan.
Fellow Mexico State luchador Golden Jr. (35) passed away Monday, as announced by Golden and reported by Furia de Titanes. Golden Jr. was posting videos as recently as last week, though it looks like Golden knew something had happened a few hours before the announcement.
Pagano says he doesn’t find extreme wrestler dangerous because wrestling itself is dangerous.
A drive-in show will be held in Torreon on August 15th.
Mas Lucha looks back at Rayo de Jalisco’s career and an entertaining tale of how one of the current Mas Lucha members first found the Tercera Caida show. The channel turned 14 years old this week, counting the prior Tercera Caida iteration, which is a long time for any media company.
Mas Lucha seems to have quietly changed their promotional ad copy from “an exclusive event each month” to “more exclusive events.” It is a challenging moment to launch a premium content channel and I’m totally fine with them deciding not to run shows during this time (though it’s probably more logistical than ethical; they’re still taping for other groups.) I think that month change not being explained is more part of the general lack of communication than a specific slight of hand. I’m guessing an explanation deep may be found deep into tonight’s podcast but it’s like an AR mystery game to find out what’s going up and when on the Mas Lucha premium site for the stuff they want to promote right now, so it’s easy to believe other details might just not have been mentioned easily.
Mas Lucha announced Sunday Kevin would replace Fire Boy in the Welcome to Mi Barrio 24 man tournament. It suggests they were taping the tournament Sunday since that’s the time they’d know a substation.
Infobae has an article on the next Chinampaluchas show, which was taped Saturday and will air as a 30 peso iPPV. The full card includes a Guapos main event and a Shun Skywalker/Yoshioka iPPV. This is a show at a nature reserve which featured multiple people going into the water last month (but not the DTU show featuring multiple people going into the water.) You can find some photos here; you can contact a Whatapp group to buy the PPV here. 30 pesos is so low a price that I wonder if even covers the administrative fees in running an iPPV.
The wrestler who used the name “Coronoavirus” on a Generacion XXI show is also a nurse at a Queretaro hospital. He talks about the hard conditions he’s currently working in. It surprises me that a medical professional would also be wrestling at this time, but I’d guess he’s going to get tested all the same. Angeluz Fly is confirmed to be the current Generacion XXI promoter in the article.
Box Y Lucha is offering eight old issues as a bonus if you subscribe for 50 issues at 500 pesos. That’s just over $20 USD. All issues are digital; they’re not printing issues right now. They’ve got five of those issues up now; I think four have been given away for free prior. They’re also talking about putting up 60s/70s/80s issues digitally at some point.
Segunda Caida watches some fun random lucha libre.
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hooray for Microman not being dead!
Does CMLL own their tape library or is that footage owned by Televisa and various other TV partners?
Part of it is owned by CMLL and part of it is owned by Televisa, but which part is which is hard to figure. (Also hard to figure if Televisa would be so set on keeping control of old content like a US company. They’ve never monetized CMLL so maybe we shouldn’t assume they care.)
I’m not paying much attention but there’s an ongoing story about Chespirito’s estate fighting Televisa over the shows and characters rights. Televisa definitely cares about that content, I think there were 3 or 4 hours of Chespirito (including the cartoon that was produced by one of the Lucha Underground producers, Alex Garcia) each day, even more counting cable, and in Brazil it is even bigger (like 24/7) and now apparently all the shows will be taken out of the airwaves.
In the US there’s an IP law that is returning creators their properties after 35 years, I think James Cameron got to own The Terminator again and Sam Raimi the rights to The Evil Dead (or at least they got leverage for better deals), maybe the nafta included some provisions to align the IP laws and something similar is happening with Chespirito. AAA is less than 35 years old, and CMLL stuff that old supposedly was destroyed by the earthquake, but it could be their chance to buy back the rights if Televisa thinks they’ll go empty handed they may sell them off cheap.