Anibal Jr. passes away, AAA/PUBG, Penta

Anibal Jr. (Jose Contreras, 50) passed away Friday. (He’s interchangeably known as Hijo del Anibal.) Anibal Jr. wrote on Facebook about going into the hospital with COVID on January 12th; he never made it out. He’s the 139th luchador who’s passed away since last April; many of those deaths are not directly related to COVID.

Anibal Jr. was a local promoter around Cuautitlan and said to be part of the Mexico State commission. He trained wrestlers and was well connected for many years. His father, Anibal, was a hall of fame wrestler peaking in the 70s and 80s. Anibal Jr. got many opportunities due to the name but didn’t stick in any major promotion for long. His name and history kept him useful for indie shows, but he was a wrestler more famous than successful. Anibal’s last moment in the spotlight was an infamous one; he withdrew recognition of Princesa Azul as his daughter (revealing he was actually a friend’s daughter), Princesa Azul implied she had rebuffed his advanced leading to the rejection, Anibal denied the story, she didn’t change her name. Other Anibal Jr. students stood up for him, suggesting he’d earned loyalty if nothing else. That situation isn’t how he’s going to be remembered; this was someone who was around wrestling since he was a kid and lived in it for decades to come. He may have never turned into the star his father was, but he’s a guy who everyone knew.

AAA should have an announcement sometime this week. PUBG Mobile – a multiplayer shooter game, the most popular in that field a few years back – are teasing some sort of tie-up with Lucha Libre AAA. (These games allow you to be displayed as a variety of characters, so people in Mexico will likely be able to virtually shoot someone in the head as Psycho Clown soon.) TripleMania happened in part because there were sponsors willing to pick up the tab. AAA getting a new sponsor and AAA having upcoming tapings seem likely to be related. Psycho Clown’s column says some AAA announcement would be made in the next few days.

This week’s Being the Elite starts with the Young Bucks and the Good Brothers saying Pentagon is out indefinitely. BTE isn’t meant to be taken seriously, but it does following Kenny Omega, Karl Anderson, and Luke Gallows beating up Pentagon on Wednesday’s AEW Dynamite. That already seemed like a write out for now. The AEW segment appeared to really be someone in a Penta outfit – that person getting beat up was missing the hand tattoos of the actual luchador. That sort of switch makes sense if it is indeed an injury, there’s no sense in having the real Penta fly all the way to Jacksonville just to get beat up quickly,

Penta hasn’t wrestled since November except for the TripleMania match and a Dynamite match where he was immediately taken out. (Edit: and AEW Dark match I missed when double checking this in a database.) There are other reasons he could miss shows besides a pre-existing injury, we do know AEW doesn’t talk about injuries or other absences unless that person was already announced for a match and Pentagon was not announced for a match. Pentagon also hasn’t said anything about it publicly but doesn’t talk about his injuries.

The Lucha Memes/Martinez took place as scheduled as Saturday. The quality of the show was said to be good – Marvin/Deppen and Laredo Kid/Black Taurus were said to be good, here in the comments and elsewhere. The attendance was as much as a struggle as figured, drawing about half as well as the last Martinez show in that venue. Lucha Memes says the show will be up on IWTV this week and they’re happy they got the chance to run a show in the US. I saw a Facebook post saying Memes would be offering the show through a paid private Facebook group as well, which might be something Mexican fans are more willing to try than IWTV.

Monterrey luchadora Baby Love explains she got into wrestling by borrowing her father’s phone and pretending to him asking a wrestling trainer if he’d coach her daughter. The trainer said yes and her father was surprised when Baby Love told her the truth; he imagined she wanted to do another sport or a dance class.

The Cinta de Oro led PPV show in El Paso Texas scheduled for 01/30 has been canceled. They’re blaming it on the pandemic, which was in existence when they announced the show.

In this week’s Box Y Lucha, Arena Lopez Mateos’s Hector Guzman is quoted as saying they’re hopeful of returning in March. The same column has IWRG believing they’re still running their all cage match show this upcoming weekend. IWRG hasn’t promoted it much, so that may just be them not officially canceling it yet.

Ring of Honor will air a Dragon Lee vs Brian Johnson ROH TV Title match exclusive on Facebook in the near future. That’s a private group.

Rey Bucanero, appearing on Shocker’s YouTube channel, said the two hardest injuries he’s had in wrestling were knee and arm injuries. Bucanero says the arm injury came at the start of his training: his uncle Verdugo intentionally caused Bucanero to break his arm, on orders of uncle Pirata Morgan. Pirata wanted to test Bucanero’s toughness by demanding he return in a week no matter once, or give up wrestling. Bucanero did return. Pirata Morgan would also slap Bucanero after a match if he felt Bucanero wasn’t been tough enough in the ring and defending himself. I would not recommend this behavior if you are not Pirata Morgan.

In another Shocker interview, this one with Dos Caras, Caras says his mask match with Canek never happened because even today Canek wants 40 million pesos for such a match. That would be nearly two million US today, a number few people have paid for any single match. Asking for 40 million pesos is politely saying you have no interest in ever doing it. Dos Caras believes UWA promoter Francisco Flores is the only one who could’ve done it. Every UWA luchador says the same thing about Flores – the downfall of the promotion is linked to his death in 1987. It comes off sometimes as a bit of an ‘everyone used to be better in the old days’ bit, but Flores success came in modernizing lucha libre and increasing revenue far above what they had been before. It does seem conceivable he could’ve found a way to get these guys enough money.

Estrellas del Ring and R de Rudo have started putting up episodes of Lucha Time. They’re starting on episode 1, which means these are episodes that have been up on Mas Lucha for seven months and on Lucha Time’s own social media channels for much longer. (R de Rudo is at least doing some new in-between segments to add some value.) I do not understand the purpose for Lucha Time of this at all; there’s no one who is watching just one of these channels, they’re all on the same site. They’re reaching the same people. It’s good for those channels to get some ‘new’ content, but it barely counts as new. It fits with the inter-promotional stuff as something wrestling promotions do because it makes them feel like they’re a bigger deal without helping themselves in any measurable way. Perhaps the person in charge of Lucha Time wants to get to 5000 views a week instead of 3000 and putting the show on separate channels will help with that (through people clicking on the video, realizing it’s a repeat, and closing the window before watching much of it.) There are probably more useful ways to achieve that goal.

This is my blog so I can put this digression in here despite any useful editor telling me to cut it out: the Mas Lucha uploading the most is the Rey del Monterrey show. No description, no graphics, the card has no lineup, it’s two hours of video that just exists. The commentary surely has the names, but I’m unable to listen to it until later, so either I could look through the caption transcript to figure out who’s in the matches or spend my time in other ways. I did that. Mas Lucha has generally added both match listings and timestamps on videos of late, this is a rare frustrating example of why that stuff is useful. This is not even a Mas Lucha issue, this promotions involved should be doing that work.

Dr. Wagner Jr. visited a seafood vendor who had lost his daughter and wife in a traffic accident a few years ago. Wagner also got to sell some food, a response to fans who had been cat-calling him a ‘vendor’ for selling his mask and hair.

A story about Santo films being ahead of their time due to all the amazing technology they used now being commonplace.

Paranoiko is helping for government support for the wrestling school he’s running in Tulancingo. It’s DTU affiliated but shut down at the moment due to the pandemic.

Officials in Torreon held a meeting to discuss safe protocols for restarting lucha libre in the city. Not sure about their commitment to safety when they’re all sitting at a conference table.

Segunda Caida watches 2013 Negro navarro and Solar in Guadalajara.