Tag: features

the big news: Mistico beat Black Warrior for his mask.

This feud started back in February when Warrior turned on Mistico during a tag team title match. The two had feuded thru the year, and the breaking point was their matches in the Leyenda de Plata. When Black Warrior won his block, you knew Mistico was winning the other one so they could have one more big singles match. (They’d previous had a NWA Middleweight title match, with Warrior beating Mistico for the title.)

On 09/08, Mistico beat Black Warrior, and they agreed to a mask match for 09/29.. As the tournament was in progress, CMLL also decided they might as well have Atlantis defend his title. Despite Warrior’s interference, Mistico won that as well, and is the reigning Leyenda de Plata champion.

In the main event on 09/29, Mistico defeated Black Warrior to win his first mask. The match was good, worthy enough of the build, though not great. Black Warrior was revealed as Jesus Toral Lopes, but not revealed for much, as he covered up his face and left before camera people could get much of a shot of him.

Black Warrior worked hard to create a new look for himself after losing his mask – he’d already had his hair died and painted in a Dennis Rodman story – and gained new fans in the months after his mask loss. His personal re-invention helped, but the 09/29 has seemed to be the peak of the general public support of Mistico. After this match, the amount of fans tired of Mistico and his matches repetitive nature increased, and Black Warrior benefited from being the guys who was trying to put a stop to it. Warrior seemed to have an increased confidence as well, drawing from getting his chance to be a main eventer and succeeding at it. As much was designed to benefit Mistico, it’s worked out well for Black Warrior so far.

Shocker returns, joins Perros, unjoins Perros: Shocker leaving AAA had been rumored thru the summer, so I dismissed it as the same rumor popping up again when it came up before the 09/02 show. I was wrong, Shocker was a new member of the Perros on that show.

On purpose or not, with Shocker joining the group immediately after jumping from AAA, the Perros del Mal were about as close to an invasion force as you could get without using the name. Perro Aguayo Jr., Hector Garza, Mr. Aguila and Shocker had all recently been AAA members before forming/joining the group, and the other two members Halloween and Damian were outsiders from Tijuana. The Perros feuded with the Guerreros all year, and in a battle between two rudo factions, the Guerreros were portrayed as the the hometown defenders, despite the Perros being the more popular team. I’m not sure they were supposed to be an AAA faction come to Arena Mexico (though Chessman may disagree), but they were definitely supposed to be outsiders.

Upon returning to CMLL, Shocker went on a media blitz, pretty much apologizing for his lackluster AAA stint and promising to be back to his old self in AAA. While he was soon back to his old status – refusing to be part of a group where he wouldn’t be leading it, Shocker turned on the Perros to cost them the trios titles on 09/29 – he hasn’t gotten back to the quality of matches from his peak in CMLL. Despite becoming a tecnico (and reuniting with Que Monito), groups of CMLL fans still hold a grudge against him and he gets more boos than you’d expect for a top tecnico.

CMLL on PPV: This 09/29 show was also CMLL’s first PPV since 2002, when the main events were all based on the Boricuas/Gran Markus feud. Mistico/Black Warrior was a bit better. It seemed like it could be a one time event then, but CMLL also ran the year end show on PPV, so they may be restarting them for the major shows. Much like boxing PPVs, matches from the show aired one year later on the normal CMLL TV show (and that week of tapings never aired.)

The lineup for the show was announced two weeks before it, but there was a lot of non match notes. CMLL never mentioned it was going to be a PPV on it’s website, till hours before the show; we found out thru a Sky PPV press release. Tickets for the show were the most expensive ever, as CMLL tried to mine the most money out of the Mistico/Warrior feud. It did appeared the show didn’t sell out as a result. The magazine press was very upset about their access being restricted and not being able to take ringside (or anywhere close to ringside) pictures during the PPV.

I had live coverage of the show (1st/2nd, 3rd, 4th, CMLL Trios, mask), and the results were about what I picked. There’s a day after recap too.

Verana de Escandalo: AAA’s big show of the summer took place on 09/17, and really didn’t have much of note. (partial results, full results).

The opener had as much impact as the rest of the card, with Laredo Kid winning the Dream Tournament earning himself a higher place on the card. Unlike CMLL’s Gran Alternativa, this actually stuck, and Laredo Kid was in the semimains the rest of the year. The downside is Laredo Kid’s job in the semimains was to be repeated killed by Abismo Negro and the Vipers. At least that was building to Laredo Kid’s brief moments of non-death.

Other news on the show saw Charly Manson join the Vipers as a new member (replacing Electroshock, not a long term member), Scorpio Jr. take over the Guapos and Hator join the group (replacing Shocker) and Groon II be the non-surprise surprise addition to the main event. There was plenty of TNA involvement on the show, with a group of random people (AJ Styles/Homicide/Low-Ki/Samoa Joe) winning a four team tournament. Jeff Jarrett wrestled in the main event trios, with a tease of a Jarrett/La Parka Jr. NWA World Heavyweight Title match.

Pena not sick: This month also included an infamous AAA press conference. The lawyer for AAA explained Pena was absent not because of a much rumored illness, but because he was busy organizing North and Central American tours. No one bought it.

Other AAA: Brazo de Plata Jr., Chris Stone (as a new Guapo member, and the sons of Pirata Morgan. Besides VdE, AAA just ran one more TV taping, building up the Scorpio/Porky feud, which wouldn’t peak till the end of the year.

WWE invades Arena Coliseo!: Well, no. But with WWE in Mexico City, and having a free day before their shows started, Edge & Lita took in an Arena Coliseo show, trying to hide their identity under lucha masks. It didn’t quite work.

Averno wins the Middleweight Title: Negro Casas held the championship since 2004, and it seemed to be a bit of a vanity title, with only four known defenses prior to the title loss. Averno had gotten a shot in August in Puebla, and earned another shot in September, winning the title on 09/18. This was a pretty big moment for Averno, allowing him to progress from a good rudo who put over young tecnicos, to one who got to beat those tecnicos some of the time, since he was now champ.

An oddity about this title change is Toxico, a wrestler in Guadalajara, had earlier also earned a shot for the title against Negro Casas. Negro was briefly injured soon after, and the title match never took place, and seems to have completely been forgotten.

WON HOF: Eddie Guerrero (and no other lucha-primary wrestler) was voted in the Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame. It was expected he’d make it, and the debate was more about why he was making it – his life or his death. In other evaluations of wrestlers, with slightly less credibility, lucha wrestlers were on the PWI list though not the order we’d expect.

Other CMLL:
– Volador suffered a neck injury due to a dive gone wrong. It looked bad at the time, and he sat out a couple of weeks, and Volador unhappily sat out the PPV.
– I didn’t know this before, but there was an article detailed Arena Coliseo being built with Lottery winning
– Ovaciones wrote a whole article about Ultimo Guerrero and Atlantis celebrating Atlantis’ birthday by eating cake.

the Big Story: Nacho Libre premiered in Mexico. It’d debuted in the United States in June, and this should’ve been mentioned there, but I sort of forget. And I’m not sure it’s a major story for any other reason than it’s supposed to be.

For those of you reading this in 2010 who aren’t familiar, Nacho Libre starred comedian Jack Black and featured the writer/director of recent the indy cult favorite Napoleon Dynamite. It was loosely based on the life story of Fray Tormenta, but really just lifting the concept idea of a religious figure who led a double life as a luchador and making up everything else from there. (It was still close enough that Fray Tormenta got interviewed dozens of times before the movie even aired.) The movie was promoted as a Nickeloden film, aimed at a young teens.

Nacho Libre received below average reviews, with critics complaining about the one joke nature of the film, and the movie trying too hard to be campy for it to work. The movie did find some fans, who were into the underdog story of the lead character. The movie cost $35 mil to make, and grossed nearly $100 mil in box offices alone, so it was certainly a financial success.

The lucha libre scenes weren’t authentic lucha libre, just what they could do to fit the movie in the time wanted to spend in the ring. The movie did feature appearances by lucha libre wrestlers, most notably Silver King as the lead rudo, Ramses.

One of the big questions surrounding the movie, at least for people already interested in lucha libre, was what effect the movie would have on those who didn’t know Mexican wrestling. There hasn’t been a big surge of interest as a result of the movie, but I think there was an increase of visibility from the movie. Nickeloden obviously liked the numbers they saw, as they’re working on a lucha libre cartoon, and airing a Kaiju Big Batte inspired wrestling show. It’s going to take some time to see if this has any long term traction, or if it’s just a minor fad.

In Mexico, the movie hit #1 in the box office during it’s run. (It peaked at #2 in the US.) Silver King continued his role as Ramses outside the movie (wearing the gold Ramses mask, but still being listed as Silver King since everyone knew it was him in the movie), and an indy wrestler or two took up the Nacho Libre gimmick themselves. The big promotions didn’t seem to take advantage of any crossover with the movie themselves.

I still haven’t seen Nacho Libre. I’d heard so much about it for the months up till it aired, and was just happy that part was over when the movie finally aired. The reviews didn’t help.

Masks banned: The big screen wasn’t the only place lucha was making news in August. For at least the last year, some Mexican soccer players had celebrated scoring goals by putting on lucha masks. After a similar bit was done in the World Cup, the federations decided they had enough, and banned wearing masks, declaring the illegal foreign objects. Gabriel Pereyra, a more well known soccer player with the Cruz Azul team, who would do this bit and was invited by CMLL to Arena Mexico for some photo ops with Mistico, seemed to be the focus of this regulation

Roberto Rangel passes away: the long time referee passed away on 08/22, due to diabetes. He’d been out of the ring since the start of the year due to his declining health. Rangel had been a long time part of CMLL, back to the time of the original Santo. He’d also wrote and run wrestling magazines.

RXLL: With Vampiro out of AAA, he and partners announced the formation of an indy group based in Guadalajara, called RXLL. The plan for it seemed closer to a US indy group – flying in big names, making the money back on DVD sales – though there were plans for local and eventually international TV. There was lots of hype for the first show on September 2nd.

Things started unraveling pretty quickly. The way I’ll always remember this promotion is the ‘faulty’ early lineup that was passed around. A poster on the Box y Lucha forum posted a lineup, I and others discussed it, and then there were that somewhat upset e-mail to me about posting bad information from a person involved in the promotion. I hate having incorrect information and sharing like it’s true – that’s why I try to question some things and indicate the unsureness of others – so I was more than happy to post a correction. Except, wait, no, the ‘erroneous’ lineup was the one listed on posters advertising the show. That experience sums up RXLL’s difficulties – the different parts of the group weren’t on the same page, and communication problems seemed frequent.

Looking back at it now, I think I spent way too much time on something before it actually delivered anything. I think the end total was 1 or 2 DVDs (nothing worth seeing), 2 or 3 tapings, and everything falling apart within about a month. One of the business partners walked of with sponsor money, Vampiro moved onto other projects, and some others tried to relaunch the promotion under a different name (LLX), but those shows are being promoted just as inconsistently as before.

Too bad we never got that Blue Panther/Ron Killings match.

Latin Lover makes CMLL cameo: This was a surprise. On the 08/19 show, Latin watched the show from the front row. When the Perros del Mal appeared for the main event, he was invited in the ring by friends Perro Aguayo Jr. and Hector Garza, and put on the Perros del Mal shirt while a million flashbulbs went off. Latin and the Perros were on every single magazine cover that weekend, gaining a ton of press.

CMLL said they were going to try to sign Latin Lover, but that never panned out. Latin has left AAA, and after back and forth in the press about who owns the name, appears completely at odds with his old promotion. That may have been the plan all along – it was just a bit of publicity for both sides.

Other CMLL

In his biggest CMLL match of the year, El Hijo del Santo beat Perro Aguayo Jr. on 08/25, with the help of foul.

Dr. Wagner Jr and LA Park finished their Arena Mexico feud in the much smaller Arena Lopez Mateos for AULL on 08/09. Wagner won while some referee shenanigans took place.

India Sioux beats Medusa for her mask: I was worried about this match. Not because I thought India was going to lose. It was pretty clear Medusa was being used to give the new young tecnica her first big win. India and Medusa just didn’t click together in the lead up feud, having exchanges that made you not want to see the match they were working hard to build. Happily, the mask match on 08/13 turned out good, which was impressive by previous standards.

Maximo beat Mr. Mexico for his hair on 08/07. This was Maximo’s fourth hair match win of the year, and he wasn’t done yet.

Universo actually defended the CMLL Heavyweight Title, beating Dos Caras Jr. in Guadalajara, his third title defense of the year. That’s huge for him. It’s huge for him that he knew where the belt was three times in a year.

Metro->Fabian, Neutron->Fabian: Fabian el Gitano, who’d spent the year as Metro (a sponsored gimmick) was replaced under the hood by Neutron. Despite the two men being different body types, different styles and wearing different outfits, CMLL didn’t actually acknowledge the change. Fabian kept working with CMLL as a regular, so the change is believed to be the sponsor’s decision.

Straight out of Russia: Alex Koslov debuted in Mexico as some random guy from the NJPW-LA Dojo. He became the first Russian to ever wrestler in Arena Mexico (we think) on 08/19, and a favorite rudo by the end of the year.

CMLL and Warners Brothers made a deal for t-shirt sales. It seems to be only on-site sales, as they still don’t have much merchandise on the CMLL site.

Other AAA

Thru the month, AAA pushed the Mexican Powers/Sect feud over the Atomicos titles, while Chessman continued to break away from the group. AAA started the Dream Tournament, but that and the Leyenda de Plata finished up in September, so we’ll save the talk for then. Super Porky and Scorpio Jr., and Alan Stone and Intocable, feuded elsewhere on the shows.

In the pages of Box Y Lucha, Chessman accused CMLL of stealing all their ideas from AAA, specifically citing the similarity between the Perros del Mal and the cool rudo groups of AAA.

Scoria breaks his leg – or not: There was this story about AAA’s Dark Family being involved in a cage of death match on an indy show, and it coming down to Scoria and the indy wrestler who was due to lose. As the story goes, Scoria tried to climb out, but fell, ‘breaking his leg’. Instead of the indy guy leaving the cage, they just stopped the match and awarded the win to Scoria, as that was the planned finish.

The problem with this story is Scoria wrestled a few days later at a AAA TV taping, showing no signs of a leg injury. I don’t know what actually happened here.

La Fiera, who had made a cameo at TripleMania, hurt himself badly on a dive on 08/07 in Nuevo Laredo. La Fiera didn’t wrestle much of the year, and had been deal with personal issues.

Other

El Dandy was telling people he was going to retire. No one actually retires, but Dandy’s kept a lower profile after not getting the right feedback from his request to join CMLL.

In IWRG, Panterita lost his mask, his hair and even his name (changing to Free Lance) in a short time, which seems to happen once a year with someone in IWRG (and usually has to do with money.) Amazingly, he kept his title belt in all of this, and is still IWRG Welterweight Champion.

Rey Misterio Jr. instigates a riot: Not on purpose. He was in Mexico to sign autographs to hype up a WWE RAW tour, which he wasn’t actually scheduled to participate on. That seemed dumb, even before 5000 people got in line for an autograph, and lots of those were left empty handed when Rey’s time was done. Some of the disappointed people worked thru their depression by tearing up the mall.

…I think this was my funniest month.

The Big Story: AAA should’ve been screwed.

The big idea, Kawaghi vs Cibernetico, was doomed. By now, the media has decided the initial fight was a work. (Whether it was or wasn’t was beside the point.) The fans might, and still may, go with it, but the bigger problem was Cibernetico’s blown out knee. He appeared before the crowd on crutches at TripleMania, on crutches and obviously needed to stay out of the ring.

If they couldn’t set up Kawaghi/Cibernetico, the default is always to go back to Cibernetico/La Parka but again, no Cibernetico. Konnan would be around during the summer, and compete in matches despite being in obvious bad physical condition, but it was unreasonable to plan a main event in-ring feud around him with his own health problems. Muerte Cibernetico versus La Parka Jr. had run it’s course – the same course of every foreign masked rudo since the beginning of lucha libre – and there weren’t any other good alternatives. The fans were still reacting to the product, and the Sect rudo group seemed to be still strong, but they didn’t have an obvious next step.

Back tracking thru the stories told later, Antonio Pena was certainly in bad health by this time. He book and plan AAA till his dying day (and laid out the lineups for shows much later), but the odds seemed against Pena finding a way out of the booking knot.

And once again, Antonio Pena and AAA figured out a solution.

After a foreign rudo loses his mask, he’ll often wrestle just a few more times – enough for the fans to see him without the mask and for the tecnicos to get their last measure of revenge – and then disappear to some other territory. That wasn’t going to be the plan with Muerte Cibernetica all along. AAA brought him in because Konnan and others liked his work elsewhere, and when he lived up that level in AAA, they assured him he’d have a continuing role with the promotion after his mask loss. Muerte’s role was still to be an associate of Cibernetico, but with no Cibernetico, something else had to be done with him…

On 07/30, Cibernetico tried to help the rudos win the main event, but accidently threw powder in Konnan’s face. After the match, Konnan, Muerte Cibernetico, and Cibernetico had a conversation in the ring. Muerte decided, with Cibernetico hurt and responible for all their failures, Cibernetico shouldn’t be leader anymore – Muerte should. Konnan and Muerte destroyed the already crippled Cibernetico, setting up the big match for his return. Meanwhile, the one present member of the Sect that showed loyalty to Cibernetico, Chessman, was prevented by the other members from interfering. That set up an in-between program, focused on Chessman’s slow turn on the Sect and joining Cibernetico on his return. Just like they, AAA had set up six months of main event angles.

Cibernetico had almost always been an rudo in AAA. The only times he wasn’t, was when he was a rudo in LLL, the nWo-like splinter faction he lead against AAA, trying to take over the company (and even succeeding for a while.) As a main event rudo, he’d fought all the top tecnicos and managed wins. As leader of the Sect, he’d gotten a (appropriately) cult following as a cool bad guy, and the fans had started cheering for him already. The turn gave him great motivation, a vendetta against all those who had turned their backs on him, and a really easy storyline for people to get behind upon his return. By the end of the year, Cibernetico was a huge tecnico star – competing with Mistico for sheer fan noise reaction, and outdistancing old rival La Parka Jr. by such a extent, he may end up rudo a result.

I think this was chaos induced genius. Maybe I’m seeing this all wrong, and this was the plan from the start, but if it was, they could’ve have booked it better than Cibernetico’s own legit knee injury. The time away from the ring allowed the anticipation for his return to build and added to the importance of the feud.

This could not have worked out better for AAA. If they manage to keep Cibernetico at this level of popularity or near it the rest of the year, he’s surely the 2007 Mexico Wrestler of the Year.

12 Man In A Cage: With no Park/Wagner feud, no seeming confidence in Rey/Ultimo, and no Lizmarks/Averno/Mephisto mask match, CMLL was kinda without a plan for a planned big July show. Warrior/Mistico was clearly the Anniversary main event, and there’s no way they could replace that either. In recent years, they’d run a summer major show with a cage main event

2004/06/18: Negro Casas L Vampiro, Pierroth, Tarzan Boy, Perro Aguayo Jr., Shocker [cage, hair] *
2005/06/17: Máscara Mágica L Damián 666, Mistico, Héctor Garza, Heavy Metal, Negro Casas, Halloween, Universo 2000, el Hijo del Perro Aguayo [cage, hair]

Logically, and there were leaks to back this up, the plan probably was to do the Guerreros/Perros stuff this month, with a hair match – this is the one Rey balked at losing, which changed everything. The default plan was to do a cage match, they just didn’t have a feud to put into it.

CMLL announced the 12 way cage match on July 2nd, with Sangre Azteca, Nitro, Mascara Purpura, Pantera, Volador Jr., Averno, Mephisto, La Mascara, Sagrado, Felino, Misterioso II and Neutron, to take place on July 14th. All wrestlers included were masked, so much of the promotion surrounded someone’s identity being revealed.

This had been built to with various combinations of these tecnicos and rudos wrestling in the undercard previous weeks:

06/23 Arena Mexico
2) Hombre Sin Nombre, Nitro, Sangre Azteca b Mascara Purpura, Pantera, Sagrado *
3) Felino, La Mascara, Volador Jr. b Averno, Mephisto, Misterioso II *

06/30 Arena Mexico
2) Hombre Sin Nombre, Loco Max, Sangre Azteca DQ Neutron, Pantera, Sagrado *
3) Mascara Purpura b Stuka Jr. [lightning] *
4) Averno, Mephisto, Misterioso II b Felino, La Mascara, Volador Jr. *

Looking back, you can see the 06/23 show was the one where they had decided on the direction; the week prior, Averno & Mephsito were still feuding with the Lizmarks, and that’s suddenly dropped on this show. Those involved had been ripping masks and such, to the point where it seemed like some sort of stakes match should be coming out of it, but the announced match was still a surprise.

The real attraction of this match was it’s balance. Typically, when a promotion does a multiman match with someone losing his hair or mask, there’s one or two wrestlers who are at a much lower level than the others, and stick out as the only true candidates to lose. The build will be push the idea of a masked legend risking his mask, and in the end, it’ll be the guy who just put on his mask two weeks ago (and will get a new one in two months later.) This match was different, because there were no ringers, no newcomers who’d just shown up to lose. This match had twelve midcarders, of various lengths under the mask but at least a couple years, and no giveaway of the finish. A guy like Felino still was more important than a guy like Nitro, but the overall difference was a lot less.

CMLL pushed the match based on that aspect, using uncertiantly and misdirection and putting in peril those who otherwise seemed a little safer. The week before the cage match, 07/07, they ran a cibernetico featuring all 12 in the match. Volador won, and he received a plaque – which was pretty unlucky for him. When Ultimo Guerrero appeared to congratulate Volador on his win and strangely insist all the rudos shake his hand as well, Mephisto got a hold of the plaque, and cracked it over Volador’s head. Volador was stretchered out, but recovered enough vow immediate revenge on Mephisto, and now you started to wonder if he was going to quickly attain it.

Ovaciones and other publications got quotes from the participants during the week leadup. I had some fun discussing everyone’s chances. For something that was obviously just thrown together, it was a pretty fun build.

The match itself was well laid out, as CMLL cage matches go. The stipulations and setup turn the match into a slow beatdown one way or another until people start leaving, so the aesthetics are always going to be lacking. They made up with by having two lowest wrestlers, Nitro and Neutron, be the first to escape the cage, so the fans could realize immediately that they were getting something that had lived up to the hype. Misterioso, Felino, Pantera, and Mephisto were the final four left in. Pantera was the first of those to attempt to escape, but returned to save his old enemy/sometimes partner Felino from being beat. Felino and Mephisto escaped before Pantera could try to leave again, and Misterioso eventually beat him with a La Rosa off the top rope. Pantera was revealed to be Francisco Javier Fosas, 40 or 42 years old.

In 2005, Pantera, driving with his kids in the car, had gotten into an accident driving home, and one of his sons had died in the accident. It’s believed that legal issues surrounding the accident caused Pantera him to be in the need of some money, and losing the mask helped out.

Misterioso and Pantera would somewhat continue their feud in CMLL, but mostly take it over to IWRG, which was Pantera’s home base at the time. This was Misterioso’s second big win of the summer, and it gave him some recognition.

Rey vs Ultimo for the LH Title: Also on 07/14 show, Rey Bucanero beat Ultimo Guerrero to end his 4 year CMLL Light Heavyweight reign. The match was good, but not great, and so a little disappointing. It was an after thought on the cage match show, and that’s the way they built it.

Mr. Niebla Rey vs Atlantis for the LH Title It was an odd weekend for Rey. After winning the CMLL title on Friday, he ended up challenging for the NWA Light Heavyweight Championship on Sunday.

The scheduled challenger had been Mr. Niebla, who was listed as missing due to a shoulder tear that’d keep him out two months. In reality, Niebla was MIA for two weeks, worked some indy shows, took more time off, and came back to only work indy shows. CMLL was very high on Mr. Niebla earlier in this decade, but his quality of wrestling had noticeably dipped in recent years, and he’d had long abcsenes from the ring due to injuries. Whatever caused him to miss this show was the last straw for CMLL, because he was never brought back to Coliseo or Mexico.

Rey facing Atlantis and getting a chance to unify the belts (only the NWA was on the line) should’ve been a big deal, but the last minute nature of the match diminished any build for that sort of thing. As it turns out, it only lasted for about 6 minutes when it aired on television. Ultimo Guerrero got a measure of revenge, helping Atlantis beat Rey and retain his title.

A new Gronda: AAA debuted a new Gronda – actually, in the space of one paragraph, they declared him a new one and the only authenic one, so it’s the La Parka deal – to replace the original, who’s now an independent. As expected, it was Ghefar/Lucifer/Magnate/the other big muscled guy AAA has around and uses sporatically.

The new Gronda was quickly shown to be far more vulnerable than the previous version, getting laid out by Abismo Negro in an injury angle and selling it for a few weeks of tapings. The original Gronda has a reputation for an unwillingness (and inability) to sell for his opponents, and it was as if AAA was making a statement that things would be different for the new Gronda. The new Gronda is somewhat of a better wrestler and there haven’t been complaints about his attitude, but he’s not as popular as the previous one. He only appears spordically.

The original Gronda, now Groon XXX, has appeared very occasionally for CMLL and more often for indy shows. Still, he doesn’t have much of a work schedule, due to his high per show fee.

A new middleweight Champion: Ocatagon, who’d held the Mexican National Middleweight Championship belt three times in the 90s, won it from Zumbido on July 15. There was a one taping build to the match, with Octagon beating Zumbido in a trios match before beating him for the title.

The tournament to set up Zumbido as champion seemed successful, but nothing was done with the title between the time Zumbido won it January and lost in July. (Octagon’s done no more after winning it himself.) Zumbido would be rumored to be jumping from AAA to CMLL or rehab for the rest of the year, but was still in AAA at year end.

Other AAA: there were 5 tapings this month
07/07: Chessman and the Black Family, still getting along, confirmed their hold on the Atomicos titles by turning back the Air Force
07/15: discussed it to death already
07/23: Tiffany, Estrellita (revealed to be Cibernetico’s actual girlfriend, since they’re both tecnicos now), and Shocker all kinda feuded in the opener. El Dandy was originally listed as appearing in the fourth match, but was replaced by Alliens – who led an alien invasion! Two more normal sized outer space creates and a mini assaulted Alebrije and Cuije.
07/28: not much
07/30: the turn

Other CMLL:
– Hector Garza suffered a scary neck injury after being clotheslined in the back of the head on 07/21. Everyone was worried that day, but Garza only was out for a short time.
– after a couple weeks of hype, Eclipse debuted. Though promoted as someone with 10 years of experience, it was actually rookie Rey Tigre under a new identity, as a giant man endorsed by Ultimo Guerrero and Atlantis and wearing a combination of their masks. Whatever idea for pushing him there was disappeared early, as Eclipse was clearly not ready for the position they wanted him at, and was taken off shows for a time. He’s back wrestling now, but as just another guy. Eclipse is a rare Mexican heavyweight, so he’s got many more chances in his future.

It’s the half way point of the year in review, so it’s a good time for a break, and a chance to throw some random statistics at you. This is probably going to be the least newsworthy actual post, but it’s stuff I wanted to write about, so that’s what I’m doing.

Elsewhere on this site, I’ve been keeping track of all the shows and match results I could track down in 2006 and plugging them into a database. You see it turned into things like the wrestler cards or event lists. There’s a lot of events included which never actually made the news updates; if I cover every indy event, it detracts from pointing out the ones that actual matter. I’m sure I only get between 20% to 60% of the actual shows going on in Mexico at any time (and probably closer to the low side), but piled together, they do bring up some interesting patterns.

The upside of all this otherwise semi-pointless busy work is, at the end of the year, I can stack all the events up and check out some totals.

As of now, I’ve got at least a partial lineup for 2201 different lucha events – most in Mexico and a handful of US events. In those 2201 matches, I counted 9833 matches. That’s 4.4 per show; dragged down by shows where only partial lineups were announced (and results never mentioned) and dragged up by shows that featured tournaments.

Counting the participants in those matches is a little bit funky in my database. 422 of the guys I’ve identified and set up profile pages wrestled in 2006, and I’ve got 5803 ‘other’ wrestlers who participated in at least one match, but haven’t wrestled enough (or in a big enough place) to be counted. Some of that 5802 count is misspellings of other wrestlers or double counting of wrestlers who’ve switched gimmicks, so I wouldn’t claim 6225 wrestlers, but then I’m sure there’s a ton of guys who escaped notice all together.

I counted 858 different arenas as well, but there’s a high amount of duplication and misspelling there, so I wouldn’t take that number seriously.

I broke this down by promotion, and put in a table to save on the paragraphs. Anything featuring AAA or CMLL stars was recorded as such unless it was clearly supposed to be it’s own promotion (think IWRG) This reaches beyond the TV tapings and includes all the spot shows. (I don’t think I ever included the teleton, in case you’re wondering which area it goes in.)

   shows  matches  IDed wrestlers  Other wrestlers   Arenas
CMLL     664    3136         287           1389            164
AAA      389    1654         208           1289            278

You’ll notice that, even including every indy show where there was a name main event and a bunch of indy guys on the undercard, less than half of the total recorded lucha cards in Mexico were indy shows. The stars of lucha libre are the wrestlers people see on TV and in huge events, but the importance of the local indy guys should be noticed – those are the people fans outside of Mexico City are seeing on a more regular basis.

While I’m on frivolous database stats, here’s some current ones from the luchawiki.
Pages: 9633
Files: 3691
Users: 520

Edits: 21,841
Page Views: 3,412,317

big news: TripleMania (06/18): The lineup was announced at the beginning of the month, but it was long before known that the main event would be Muerte Cibernetica/La Parka Jr. TNA involvement was also off, because they had their own major show on that day. Muerte vowed to break Parka’s bones, which would be something since he’s a skeleton and all. Box Y Lucha did the most AAA coverage it did all year in the lead up to the show, and there were a lot of bigger than usual shows that weekend from CMLL and IWRG that weekend. Coincidence? Not? Still not completely sure.

Results saw Parka indeed win, and Muerte Cibernetico reveal himself to be Ricky Banderas (which isn’t his actual name.) I finally saw this match, and I think I counted 14 different guys interfering in some way, including Cibernetico (on crutches) and surprise jump Brazo de Plata. There had been talk of a big jump from CMLL in the days leading up to the event, but no one really understood what the rumor meant by big, I guess. Plata’s jump involved a falling out with CMLL (they weren’t going to do anything with him at his age and shape) and El Brazo convincing him to change sides.

For a taping, Muerte switched his name to Asesor Cibernetico, but it got dropped. In the undercard, Charly Manson beat Zorro for his hair, but also forced him to wear an evil demonic mask, which he still wears today. The Fuerza Aera/Black Family atomicos title match had no finish, with the commission throwing the match because of all the hardcore stunts. (Initially, it seemed as though the commission perhaps had stripped the titles as well, mirroring what happened with the middleweight title previous, but we just got a normal rematch a few weeks later.)

Brazo de Plata jumped from CMLL at the show, starting a partnership with La Parka Jr. and wrestling in his corner. Nieto del Santo made a cameo as well.

In one of those other shows the same day, Okumura lost his hair to Rey Bucanero in an 8 man cage match, and La Mascara wins the Reyes de Air cibernetico (which wasn’t that great.)

CMLL’s Gran Alternativa:

Teams were announced in late May for the annual young star/experienced star tournament. Some of the particpants talked their chances up in Box Y Lucha, and Ovaciones picked Texano, Maximo, and Misterioso II (which is only 38% of the field.) Everyone noted that the “new stars” being presented this year were repeats and guys actually older than the vets they were teaming with (particularly Nitro and HsN.)

The tournament itself actually took place on 06/03. I pretty much nailed the preview; the results saw the plot points of Rey Being Turned On Yet Again, and Perros refusing to fight each other. In the finals, Misterioso II & Perro Aguayo Jr. beat Ultimo Guerrero & Nitro to win the title.

Beating the odds, this was actually the start of a significant push for Misterioso II, as we’ll see in later months. He was an associate member of the Perros thru the summer, and got slightly higher position on cards. They’ve since dropped the Perros relationship (although it’s still there neough that they could bring it back if the mood strikes them and/or they need someone to lose), and he’s since fallen to about the same position. The GA didn’t break Misterioso II out of the pack – the AAA equivalent did a better job of that – but it did give him something to separate himself from the other at his level.

Guadalajara Walk Of Fame: This match had been announced back in April, but was finished up the first week of June. You can see a good picture of it on this post. Lots of people showed up for the dedication. The first class was Salvador Luttertoh, Diablo Velasco, Santo, Rito Romero, Mil Mascaras and Rayo de Jalisco, and the second class was announced as El Solitario, Angel Blanco, Alfonso Dantes, Perro Aguayo, Gori Guerrero, Black Shadow and Cavernario Galindo, but I haven’t heard more about it. It’s a Guadalajara Lucha Libre hall of fame, so that’s why some regional names might go in before the likes of Blue Demon.

Hiroka wins the CMLL Women’s Title: This surprised me. It was one of those things where I didn’t like the idea when it started but was unhappy when it was over.

Hiroka was a below average ruda worker; not horrible by women’s standards, but she wasn’t one of the best for sure, and she was most notable for having like a billion indy trios matches opposite of Sahori. In April, Hiroka got a title shot versus Marcela in Arena Coliseo. Remarkably, it was a pretty good match, Hiroka’s best match in Mexico for sure. I chalked it up to Marcela being better than I had figured and when they announced a rematch for 06/09 in Arena Mexico, it seemed like they were just going to repeat the match for a larger audience.

Hiroka won, becoming the 10th champion. It was another good match. Hiroka’s reigned seemed filled with tecnicas beating her, and demanding a title match, but she clearly improved as a wrestler and raised her status as champion (with the help of a couple really big wins later) to the point where she actually seemed like a champion by the end. Maybe I should have a little more faith in CMLL, huh?

teased double mask match: Averno & Mephisto feuded with the Lizmark on some Arena Mexico shows with some mask ripping. The magazines – I believe Luchas 2000 in particular – pushed the idea of a mask match, and it seemed like they were headed that direction. I was quite worried that the more tenured/famous Lizmarks would take the masks, though Lizmark Sr.’s rumored retirement gave a little bit of hope. And then it was dropped.

Later on, it was leaked that that the plans was actually to have Averno & Mephisto take both Lizmark’s mask as a major attraction of the bigger summer show, but it didn’t come together for whatever reason.

Maximo beats Loco Max for his hair: a basic Arena Coliseo midcard feud, one of quite a few while thinking about it. This was set up the end of May, and it was no surprise Loco ended up bald. That’s going to happen every 9 months he wrestles, it seems.

spanish fly is deadly: Joe Lider got hurt on apron Spanish Fly to the floor gone bad, and Averno and Volador tumbled hard to the floor off a blown one in Arena Mexico, putting them out of action for a bit.

shoe still hasn’t dropped: There was a lot of talk this month about Univision, which also owns Galavision (and a couple other channels) which was put on the market. It was initially expected that Televisa Mexico would pick up the company, and that would have [whatever] effect on lucha libre broadcasts. Near the sale, some of Televisa’s investors dropped out, and Texas Pacific Group/Haim Sabin swooped into get in the high bid and control of the network. This angered Televisa, who a partial stake in the company already and was expecting on getting it rest. The stockholders aren’t thrilled with the deal either, so nothing has come out of this, not even Televisa Mexico on internet, as promised.

At some point, it would seem there should be fallout, but if because of stockholder issues or inertia, there’s been absolutely no affect on lucha libre broadcasts on Galavision as of yet. Eventually, the people deciding what airs when will be different, but they don’t appear to be right now.