Tag: top six

1. Rush & La Mascara defeated La Sombra & Atlantis in the final of a 16 team tag team tournament, where the winners will eventually get a shot against Tama Tonga & Rey Bucanero for the CMLL Tag Team Titles. It was a rare tecnico versus tecnico match, though the Rush side was booed as always.
2. AAA announced the Heroes Inmortales, which has a mega title match, a tag team title match, a tournament, and nothing interesting. The TV lead up has been focused on Texano Jr. versus Psycho Clown (who will be in his first ever AAA singles match) and la Secta versus Perros del Mal and Cibernetico (which isn’t directly built up by anything on the show.) AAA appears to passing on doing anything major for this show, killing time until either the end of year show and/or their start in the US.
3. Rey Escorpion and Super Porky have feuded for the last few weeks leading to a hair match on 10/18, the same day as Heroes Inmortales and the WWE show in Mexico City. The build up trios match this past week was surprisingly great (due to Porky being super aggressive and Rey Escorpion probably being the best luchador in Mexico this year). The hair match itself will have special “Super Libre Plus” rules, where just about anything goes.
4. Cibernetico, Texano Jr., La Parka, Fenix, Drago, Pimpinela, and Psycho Circus were all robbed on the way to a show in Ciudad Juarez. The van they were riding in was pulled over, they were asked (with guns) to leave the van, and the criminals took off with all the possessions in the van. The van was found later, with a lot of the luchador’s items gone.
5. Dr. Wagner claimed AAA was trying to steal his name in the US by filing for a trademark. AAA counted by saying Wagner had asked them to protect the name since they were already taking care of their own names in the US, then Wagner changed his mind but would not respond to them. AAA claims the name has not been fully put thru the trademark process and they’d gladly hand over what they have so far if Wagner paid AAA’s fees. Wagner has not responded.
6. Dr. Wagner then was attacked by a person with a knife, and one his wrists was cut in the fight. Wagner has said nothing about the incident besides posting photos of the wound being stitched up, but Hijo del Santo took the opportunity to imply AAA was getting revenge for Wagner speaking up about his trademark. AAA has rolled their eyes about this.

• Dos Caras Senior announced he was starting on a retirement tour and would be retiring by early 2014. Dos Caras Sr. has generally been inactive outside of occasional legends shows, but this would the formal end to his career.
• There were/are plenty of rumors about Volador leaving CMLL for other places. So far, the only place Volador appeared to go was the face paint store.
• Negro Casas & Rush continue to feud on and off. There’s no announced date for their previously ‘signed’ hair match and it doesn’t appear to be on the immediate horizon.
• DTU, perhaps helped by their new TV deal, has announced their busiest ever month in October with about a dozen shows.
• Casandro, Mascara Dorada, Sangre Azteca and Dragon Rojo are headed to France for a show.
• Dragon Celestial unmasked Ciclon Black as part of the continuing Gym Tony Rivera vs Gym FILL feud in IWRG. Rivera’s Guerrero Mixtico also lost his hair.
• people who kept titles: Estrellita, Los Traumas, Virus, Mephisto
• Canek got a dumb title belt.

(It’s harder to do this when I stop posting for a while.)

1. CMLL’s 80th Anniversary Show was a mixed success. Reports were the tickets were sold out, but there were a handful of empty seats in the upper most reaches (and some sections that had been marked not to be sold actually including people; it’s confusing.) It definitely was the biggest gate in the history of the promotion and a one night business success. Almost all the matches were at least very good and some were great. The noticeable exception, a match that was only okay due to the short length, is also how the show will ultimately remembered. Volador & La Sombra upset Atlantis & Ultimo Guerrero to prevent the legends from having their mask match, which greatly upset the paying public. The remaining hour of the show was filled with FRAUDE chants (and an AAA chant, in the sense that this was like something ‘bad’ AAA would pull), with many in the crowd rejecting the show until eventually getting behind Volador in the mask match. It didn’t help him, as La Sombra took his mask in the culmination of a 3.5 year rivalry.
2. Other action on the show included a great Blue Panther versus Averno submission matches (where the promised rules were actually enforced, much to Averno’s surprise) and a very strong Revolucinarios versus Estetas match during the peak of the crowd rejection. Negro Casas and Rush continued to assault each other in the undercard in a match which technically included four other people, not that anyone was paying much attention to them. Also: Super Porky did a tope!
3. Volador Jr. was immediately the subject of (usual) rumors about his mask loss leading to him to jumping elsewhere, but quickly proceeded to defeat Mistico (in a singles match) and Sombra (in a tag match, sending Sombra out in ambulance) and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon. The volume of rumors about people jumping from group to group should increase greatly leading up to the WWE’s October trip to Mexico.
4. The deaths of a couple dozen and the homelessness of hundreds have the much more important effect of canceling Hijo del Santo’s three way mask match with Dr. Wagner Jr. & LA Park, TxT announced about 18 hours before the show was originally hyped as happening. In reality, the show had been off for weeks if not months and never really had a chance of happening and most people forgot it was supposed to happen until a very unfortunate press release.
5. Rey Bucanero & Tama Tonga picked up the CMLL Tag Team championship belts in NJPW from Jushin Lyger and Hiroshi Tanahashi (who clearly only won them as a pretext for Tanahashi to be in the CMLL Universal tournament.) CMLL’s holding a #1 contenders tag team tournament, and Tonga is expected to Mexico soon for another fall tour.
6. AAA held a TV taping which was more notable for it’s hurricane relief drive than most of the action. Dinastia retained his minis title over Mini Abismo Negro, a new foreign luchador Australian Suicide debuted, and Drago and Psicosis are back to feuding. There wasn’t a strong build in results for Heroes Inmortales, but none of the pretaped or behind the scenes vignettes were mentioned and maybe they’ll help.

• Ultimo Gladiador lost his hair in a three way match with Joe Lider & Daga. It was surprisingly Gladiador’s first hair loss, though not a surprise he lost this match given the other participants. The hair match was the main event of a good AAA/RCH show in Arena Naucalpan.
• LA Park won the new IWL Heavyweight Championship in a match including Dr. Wagner, Justin Credible and Canek, plus the usual shennagins that happen in an LA Park match. Super Crazy also won the IWL IC title and Secta Negra the WWA Trios titles on IWL’s 3rd Anniversary show.
• This year’s Lucha Libre Expo, first postponed until November, has been canceled. They hope to bring it back in 2014 (but don’t hold your breath.)
• Fenix came up short challenging Taiji Ishimori for the GHC Junior Heavyweight Title.
• CMLL celebrated a patriotic weekend by having Marco Corleone beat Mr. Niebla. It would’ve been an odd decision in any other week.
• The IWRG students and maestro Black Terry feuded a lot with Tony Rivera and his students (including a really fun trios match we saw live.)
• CMLL also unveiled an 80th Anniversary mural in Arena Mexico, depicting the history of the promotion and every single mask lost in a mask match in the first 80 years of the promotion (thru Namajague.) There is also an outdoor photo exhibit as part of a lot promotion for the show.
• The Trueno brothers won a tournament for the vacant Occidente Tag Team Championships in Arena Coliseo Guadalajara.
• People who kept titles: Estrellita (twice!), Terrible
• We deeply researched the case of the missing CMLL minis…who started popping back up right before we finished our research. This is why I shouldn’t try.
• Rob and I podcasted a bit. Oh, right, I went to Mexico! Everyone was nice and it was a good time and then I came home and got very sick (for probably unrelated reasons.)