Soberano/Templario have another great match, AAA in Madero part 1, BOLA

CMLL

CMLL (FRI) 01/06/2023 Arena México [CMLL, Kaiser Sports, R de Rudo, thecubsfan]
1) Mercurio b Angelito
15:04. rematch from 2022-05-27 (minis title match)
2) Dark Panther, Panterita del Ring, Panterita del Ring Jr. b Cancerbero, Luciferno, Virus 
12:32. rematch from 2022-11-25. Original lineup mistakenly listed Blue Panther instead of Panterita Sr.
3) Ángel de Oro & Niebla Roja b Guerrero Maya Jr. & Titán
22:59. rematch from 2022-01-23 (CMLL tag title change); Maya replacing Volador Jr. Guerrero Maya wrestled wearing a Guerrero del Futuro mask.
4) Euforia, Hechicero, Mephisto b Gemelo Diablo I, Gemelo Diablo II, Sagrado 
14:57. rematch from 2022-09-30 (then a trios title match)
5) Soberano Jr. b Templario  
17:05. Rematch from 2022-07-29 (Leyenda de Plata final)

Soberano/Templario felt the most alive of the rematches here; that rivalry is still building on itself, and probably will build further in Tokyo next month. Angel de Oro & Niebla Roja versus Titan & Guerrero Maya Jr. felt different enough by having Maya in it (and Maya wrestling knowing it was a big chance for him.) CMLL’s done enough 1 vs 2 comebacks that I was actually a little surprised when Titan didn’t find a way to win against both Chavez brothers in the end. Panthers/Cancerberos were well worked and finished strong. Angelito/Mercurio had a lot of moves but not a lot to it. Gemelos Panteras repeated the one spot that probably got the match into this spot in the first place, but there wasn’t much more than that.

This airs on YouTube on 01/22. This week’s CMLL YouTube upload is the Gran Alternativa final, a must see match.

CMLL (SAT) 01/07/2023 Arena Coliseo [CMLL, R de Rudo]
1) Fantasy, Shockercito, Último Dragóncito b Pequeño Olímpico, Pequeño Violencia, Pierrothito
2) La Guerrera, La Vaquerita, Princesa Sugehit b Hera, La Seductora, Olympia
3) El Suicida, Hombre Bala Jr., Robin b Arkalis, Pegasso, Stigma
4) Blue Panther, Panterita del Ring Jr., Volcano b Kráneo, Pólvora, Rey Bucanero
5) Atlantis, Místico, Titán b Averno, Bárbaro Cavernario, Dragón Rojo Jr.
Atlantis replaced Negro Casas on Saturday. Mistico beat Averno, challenged him to a mask vs hair match

Another good turnout for CMLL in their return here after two weeks off. I think Coliseo seems to draw well generally but this seems better than usual.

CMLL (SUN) 01/08/2023 Arena México [CMLL]
1) Full Metal, Minos, Pequeño Polvora b Aéreo, Kaligua, Pequeño Magía
2) Astral, Diamond, Sangre Imperial b Disturbio, Enfermero Jr., Inquisidor
tecnicos took 2/3.
3) Akuma, Dark Magic, Espanto Jr. b Flyer, Fuego, Valiente Jr.
rudos took 1/3
4) Blue Panther, Valiente, Volcano b Magia Blanca, Magnus, Rugido
Tecnicos took 2/3. Volcano replaced Audaz.
5) Gran Guerrero, Stuka Jr., Último Guerrero b Bárbaro Cavernario, Dragón Rojo Jr., Volador Jr. [Relevos Increíbles]
Team Guerreros took 1/3.

Usual Sunday show of no note. This is a tourist issue; there’s no sense in doing angles if a big chunk of the fans don’t know the characters and are going to be out of town by the next show anyway.

CMLL (TUE) 01/10/2023 Arena México
1) Angelito & Galaxy vs Mercurio & Minos
2) Leono, Oro Jr., Sangre Imperial vs Cholo, Dr. Karonte I, Dr. Karonte II
3) Arkalis, Pegasso, Stigma vs Cancerbero, Luciferno, Pólvora
4) Blue Panther, Titán, Valiente vs Ángel de Oro, Niebla Roja, Yota
5) Atlantis, Atlantis Jr., Templario vs Gran Guerrero, Stuka Jr., Último Guerrero [Relevos Increíbles]

Stuka either needs to make peace with Atlantis Jr. or he’s going to keep hanging out with the Guerreros a lot. CMLL again teased the possibility of Stuka joining the trio after Sunday’s show, though Ultimo Guerrero seems hesitant.

Yota is still around, after all. Polvora was acutally a Cancerbero a long time ago. Galaxy makes his debut.

CMLL (TUE) 01/10/2023 Arena Coliseo Guadalajara
1) Bello Antuan, Cosmos, Eclipse Jr. vs Demonio Rojo, Relámpago Azul, Thunder Boy
2) Atilius, Aurelius, Maximus vs Black Boy, Carlo Roggi, Cris Skin
3) Diamante Jr., Misterio Blanco, Misterio Negro vs Estrella de Jalisco I, Estrella de Jalisco II, Último Ángel
4) Cachorro, Hijo De Stuka Jr., Rey Insólito vs Barboza, Draego, Persa
5) Dalys, Maligna, Náutica, Valkiria vs Gema Andrade, La Misteriosa, Lluvia, Stephanie Vaquer
6) Dark Panther, Panterita del Ring Jr., Soberano Jr. vs Bestia Negra, Difunto, Zandokan Jr.

Gema Andrade and Diamante Jr. (also of the famous Andrade family) make their debuts. The main event could be exciting. It’s a very young show; Dalys is (well) over 40 and Carlo Roggi may be as well, but there’s a lot more people who appear to be in their 20s.

NJPW would’ve announced the Fantastica Mania lineup over the weekend back when it was taking place in January. It’s doesn’t start until February 22nd this time around, after NJPW’s usual New Beginning shows instead of before them. The final New Beginning show is February 11th and it’s possible NJPW could wait as long as the day after that show to make an announcement. It could be as early as after Friday’s show, since the Volador/Rocky Romero vs Mistico/Averno match seems likely to set up a main event for that tour.

RGR’s next show is January 29th, promoted as “Inicia la Alianza” and featuring CMLL wrestlers on the show. If they’re working with CMLL, that’s bad news for the batch of AAA wrestlers who got their visas through RGR (and who’s visas are thought to be coming up in the next few months.)

AAA

Marvel Lucha Libre is now listed as debuting on January 18th.

Some positive news for people who follow AAA: they’re back to covering their own TV tapings. AAA used to do live results and more prior to the pandemic and stopped during empty arena taping. They did not resume that coverage as they returned to taping in front of fans. That coverage will resume this year: AAA’s posted a preview of next week’s Queretaro show, and says they’ll resume posting live results during the show and a recap afterwards. This is great for me (and people like me) to no longer need to look through Facebook and Instagram accounts to find out what’s happening, and better news for AAA itself because it things like live results give people more of a chance to talk about AAA.

Naturally, the very first response was “so, can you air the AAA shows live on Twitch again?” AAA says nah, they’ll largely be following the plan from last year with certain events on PPV. AAA got paid by Twitch up front to air those shows and will only return to that sort of plan if someone else comes along with a big bag of money. I still think there’s revenue to be made off a subscription service that airs live AAA tapings, but I can’t be certain there’s enough of a demand to make that profitable. AAA knows what that first Showcenter event did and there wasn’t a second. I would really like to pay for live AAA (or even a clean feed of the AAA on Space show that aired at the same time and I didn’t have to run myself), but those are also low hanging fruit things AAA isn’t interested in going after.

While I’m just meandering on a slow Monday, the actual idea solution would be for AAA to be on the ROH Honor Club service. Hiroshi Tanahashi let it slip over the weekend that NJPW’s Strong shows were going to be supplanted by whatever co-promotion ROH, AEW and NJPW are doing for the Honor Club service. Tony Khan had previously heavily hinted the same back at ROH Final Battle, and I’m kind of surprised there hasn’t been a formal announcement yet. I still don’t think it’ll be enough to make Honor Club and ROH self-sustaining and I don’t think it’s going to catch on to a major degree given what we know, but there’s still value to be found. The person who is going to spend money on Honor Club to watch ROH, AEW and NJPW wrestlers are English-speaking fans who are interested in non-WWE major promotions and very willing to spend money on them. That’s a very valuable audience for AAA to get in front for the US expansion plans. It would be for CMLL as well.

This week’s AAA TV was strange, even by AAA standards. It was a lame duck show, with one match building up a match (Sammy & Tay defending the mixed tag titles) that didn’t happen, and one match anti-climatic by another result we already knew – though it’s not like the NGD title reign has had a lot of suspense to it. It’s a lot like the La Empresa title reign prior to it, where it’ll just meander around and sometimes the matches will even be good, but it’ll probably end when someone quits or someone gets bored and they absolutely have to change it that day.

The main event was a mess, an intentional mess but also still a mess. Taurus breaking up with Pagano and Cibernetico having issues with Rush & Dralistico could be good if they were going somewhere, but it’s AAA and it was a thrown-together main event so there’s no reason to hope for that. “Komander gets the main event win” reads much better on paper than it did in reality; a fluke main event win that felt meaningless as it was happening and was all but reversed in the post-match. Maybe this was an important show if this is the start of a lot of LFI in important feuds in AAA, but LFI in Mexico feels played out and AAA already has so many slightly different heel factions that another is too much. Maybe it’ll be better in the future. There are far worse AAA shows but I’d be OK if this one didn’t go anywhere.

Anyway, for scorekeeping purposes, AAA still clearly thought Sammy & Tay were coming to Acapulco when they taped this TV show. They also seemed to know Dragon Lee was finishing up in Acapulco; the FTR tag title match was mentioned, but the focus was on a new image for Dralistico after the breakup. It seemed both LFI and the announcers like they were not mentioning “AEW” by name, but I may just be reading too much into things after the Acapulco show.

NOAH announced that Dralistico would debut for their promotion on 02/12.  Dralistico had been teasing a deal to go to Japan prior and family friend Andrade had previously mentioned considering going to NOAH just to go to Japan. That’s a standalone show, so it’s not clear if he’ll be around for more than that. It’s about 10 days before CMLL’s own tour of Japan starts. They used a lot of Rey de Reyes footage in their intro video, though are pushing him as the former CMLL star.

Other News

There’s no real news peg here, but I’m starting to believe there’s a chance Blue Demon & DMT Azul are headed to a mask match this year. I’d say the odds are still 30/70 against, but we’re talking about a sort of rivalry that’s usually 5/95 against. It’s the usual indie lucha libre rubbish feud on the surface: every finish has the referee get knocked down and three or four fouls so both sides can claim victory (and both sides can say they didn’t lose, which seems more important.) That is exactly what is happening to Blue Demon Jr. & DMT Azul too. The thing that sticks out to me is even the garbage finishes are usually 50/50, and DMT Azul seems to be winning far more than that. Mas Lucha aired the 01/01 Arena Lopez Mateos show for subscribers this weekend, and DMT Azul got a (shaky) victory there. Demon technically got the win back in Arena Neza that night, but that was more Demon’s partner Rey Espectro betrayed him and joined Azul & Hijo del Fishman in beating Demon. This last Sunday, DMT Azul & Hijo del Bandido got a (shaky) win over Blue Demon Jr. & Hijo del Fishman. Demon does win some – he won on 12/18 – but Demon wouldn’t be losing even this much unless he thought there was a payoff coming. The problem with this theory is there’s no one promotion where this feuding is happening, it’s a feud they’re taking all over Mexico State. Nothing happens unless someone puts up the money to make a mask match happen, and there’s no obvious candidate for that. The feud is stronger if DMT Azul picks up more of the wins and fans want to see Demon get revenge, but Mexican indie matches are usually booked just for what’ll work that night, not with the idea of a longer feud. I just have a general feeling of Something Is Fishy Here.

The Azul/Demon feud and the Puerquiza Extrema team – the five Pig luchadors – seem like the most popular acts on that style of indie show. I haven’t written about anything on the Pigs because there’s nothing much to write about their shows (nothing that happens seems to mean anything on the next show, so it’s just meaningless results) and their style isn’t my favorite style, but they’ve definitely built up a fanbase in the last year and are one of the indie success of 2022. This Saturday’s Arena Lopez Mateos show ended with the Pigs and the Capos teasing a mask match, which would do very well if it actually happened. Just like with Demon/Azul, a big problem is that no one typically wants to lose (or no one wants to lose for the amount of money that’ a promotion of this scale could reasonably offer) but that feels like a match someone should actually do if possible.

Former AAA wrestler Speedball Mike Bailey defeated Konosuke Takeshita to win PWG’s Battle of Los Angeles. This year’s BOLA a lot of Mexican wrestling participation, but it didn’t seem like any of them had a great chance of winning coming in. Komander went the farthest of the Mexicans, losing to Takeshita in the semifinals. Komander previously beat Bandido in the semifinal; this seemed like a real attempt at elevating a name to be a bigger star on future shows, as opposed to what aired on AAA the night prior. (It was also probably keeping the Bandido/Takeshita match as an unseen match for another night, I’d assumer.) Latigo & Black Taurus beat Aramis & Rey Horus in a night 2 match in a bit of a surprise.

Hijo del Vikingo, Bandido, and Taurus main evented the first night. Bandido did the moonsault powerslam on Vikingo to the floor, landing on Taurus, in some real insanity. The ending of the match saw Vikingo leave the match injured and Bandido get the win. Fans were very concerned about Vikingo’s health; I’m told he’s fine. Bandido is the one who may be hurt; he apparently had neck issues after he and Vikingo retried (and didn’t pull off) the imploding poison rana spot from Noche de Campeones and it hampered him on Night 2.

Former CMLL luchador Corazon de Leon made his PWG debut in a bonus match on night 2. Good for him.

Box y Lucha says the confusion around el Magnate’s ‘death’ (he’s still not dead) is a case of mistaken identity over his mask. The wrestler who passed away on January 2nd was former Guadalajara wrestler El Milionario (Antonio Botello). Both wrestled with a dollar sign on their mask. It’s not the IWRG wrestler under that name, since he’s now Oficial Fierro.

There’s a strange situation going on with Monclova luchador Baby Rap (Diego Rene Sanchez Coronado). Police entered his home on Saturday accused some bricklayers of working on the house. Baby Rap got involved and the police took him into custody, but they wouldn’t tell his family where he actually was. They went to press about it. A few hours later, the family found out where he was being held and went to bail him out, only to find out the police were charging Baby Rap with dealing drugs. That charge meant the money they brought to bail Baby Rap was suddenly not enough any more, and he’s still in jail at last word. This looks terrible on the police, but I’m not sure I should take anything for certain this far away.

An Oaxacan wrestling reunion took place.

Segunda Caida watches the really good Cuernavaca trios.