Day: March 28, 2007

03/30-04/01 Lucha Times

thecubsfan 5 Comments

AAA US: The penultimate tag team tournament matches. Sexi Star’s in-ring debut, Black Magic as a member of the Foreign Legion and Latin Lover versus the Vipers.

I really have no idea what’s airing anywhere in CMLL land this week. Or next week.

CAN52: I’m like three weeks late in noticing this but – did CAN52 ever adjust for daylight savings time? Everything seems to be on a hour later. Very strange. If things go back to normal next week, that’ll be funny. Guessing the Perros/Mistico trios airs here.

FSE: the listings say “Volador vs Averno”. There’s no unaired one with those two guys recently – the last one was the one that aired on GdR last week. They can’t be repeating matches from these two shows, can they? I think the Jeque/Stuka stuff actually starts here.

CMLL: the PPV! (Note to self: try to find something to write about the PPV.) And who knows what on Saturday.

AAA MEX: The day after Rey de Ryes. What happens when a policeman, a scarecrow, a monster, and a human virus stop being polite, and start getting the opening match?

03/28: Coliseo, Tijuana, Monterrey, Ticketmaster

thecubsfan 5 Comments

CMLL (TUE) 03/27 Arena Coliseo Results [ovaciones]
1) Angel Azteca Jr., Explosivo b Carrona, Zayco
2) Mini Damian 666, Mini Halloween, Mini Mr. Aguila b Tzuki, Shockercito, Electrico
3) Hirooki Goto, Okumura, Ohara b La Mascara, Virus, Texano Jr.
4) Lady Apache b Amapola [CMLL WOMEN]
5) Atlantis, Ultimo Guerrero, Misterioso Jr. b Shocker, Rey Bucanero, Heavy Metal
6) Dr. Wagner Jr. b Averno

The big news is Shocker actually wrestled a scheduled match. The rumors of him going to WWE popped back up over the weekend, but I’ve not heard them come from WWE’s direction.

Ovaciones says just over 2,000 people showed up for this card. I don’t know what they’ve been drawing lately on Tuesdays (just generically “bad”), but it doesn’t seem like this card was as interesting to the people who were buying tickets as it was to me. I guess, not knowing what they’ve drawn previously, this could even be a bump up, but it’s still a low amount. On this night, Wagner wasn’t a draw and the women’s title wasn’t a draw.

Ovaciones was sounded very down on Amapola/Lady Apache (which was three falls) and doesn’t have much to say about Averno/Dr. Wagner. “Dr. Wagner put Averno in his place”, indeed.

VIVA LA LUCHA (FRI) 03/30 Palenque el Parque Morelos, Tijuana Lineup
1) Disco Machine, Karl Anderson, Joey Ryan vs Human Tornado, Lil Cholo, Silver Tiger
2) Pancho Cachondo, Animaniac, Shamu vs Viernes 13, Tazmania, Scream
3) Super Astro, Venum Black vs Angel Mensajero, Psico
4) Genio del Aire, Iron Boy, Luminoso vs Phoenix Star, Zokre, Cobra II
5) La Parkita, Octagoncito vs Piratita Morgan, Espectrito
6) Los Ice Creams vs Jigsaw, Lince Dorado
7) Xtreme Tigre vs Mortiz
8) Nicho, Juventud Guerrera vs Rey Misterio, LA Park

This is a co-promoted show with TJ’s lucha commission, a free show, and a pilot TV taping. ‘ccording to El Sol de Tijuana, it’s for a Yet To Exist US Combat Sports network, which, well – it’d be nice if it happened, let’s say it like that. PWI says it’ll be G4, so I may have to get over hating that network if this makes air. Since this is just a pilot, it’s far from sure it’ll ever be air anywhere.

I’m guessing this is two (or more) shows combined into one taping. Whoever’s doing this seems to have a clue, because they’re making the local stars the headliners instead of the random US/Canada indy guys, which seemed like an issue with the US-ish run RLLX in Guadalajara (though I guess we should remember that it probably didn’t matter who was on top given the billon other things that seemed to go wrong for that group.)

I wish I loved Xtreme Tiger as much as everyone who books him. I presume PWG is providing the film crew and that’s why their guys are working the opener. Sixth match is from CHIKARA; whoever did the poster I’m looking at had it listed as “Los Helado Atomico”, and it wasn’t untll I looked at the PWI article that I realized someone had translated “Ice Cream”. PWI also says Cobra II is TJ Perkins in one of his dozen masked gimmick – he wrestled under that name once in Arena Coliseo.

Do you think LA Park is going to be BANNED FOREVER from Arena Mexico for working a show with AAA worker Juvi (and Nicho, maybe)? I’m thinking no.

indy (TUE) 03/27 Arena Coliseo Monterrey [rfc]
1) Rey Morgan ?? Jimmy Navarro
2) Erin Snake b Angel Negro
3) Ejecutor b Ultraman Jr.
4) Konnan King b Huracan Ramriez Jr.
5) Silver Star b Silver Cat
6) Pancho Tequila b Golden Boy

They failed to deliver Nygma vs Silver Cat! What a fraud.

Ovaciones confirms Friday’s show will be on PPV, and mentions that tickets will be on sale today at Arena Mexico. That ticket mention is a twisted way of saying* the Ticketmaster deal is off, I believe. There’s still no ticket listing at the site. This week’s Figure Four Weekly has a story on the situation. Ticketmaster typically adds a flat processing on every ticket, as do most similar ticket services. That fee would be a big increase to the cheaper tickets, so CMLL would rather Ticketmaster just take a percentage of the ticket cost. Neither side has budged – Ticketmaster doesn’t need CMLL, and CMLL rather do things their own way. Ovaciones mentioning that you can buy tickets at Arena Mexico and not even addressing the ticketmaster situation is the usual (highly annoying) way of addressing the issue by not addressing it all.

There ARE Ticketmaster alternatives – MLB owned Tickets.com, for one, so maybe they’ll look around for a better deal.

Ovaciones also has stories on Niebla, Oriental, and Super AAA visiting a home from special needs children, and La Parka Jr. perhaps going rudo.

El Halcon #89 is up. They’ve got an interview with La Mascara (who credits Skayde and Negro Navarro for helping him with classic lucha elements), second part of the Cibernetico interview and a Vaquero Q&A (he says he’s once won the world Minis title – ?), as well as features on the original Ray de Jalisco and the fourth part of it’s look back at the original El Halcon.

Paco Alonso in Luchas 2000 interview

thecubsfan 1 Comment

Cesar @ Box Y Lucha’s forum is great man. He transcribed many of the comments made by CMLL’s Paco Alonso in the latest Luchas 2000, all regarding the fallout with Santo. I encourage you to read them for yourself, as well as the people responding to them, but here’s some of the highlights:

– Paco blames the fallout totally on Santo, naturally. Alonso explains the only thing he ever required of Santo was to not work for the competition (who he refuses to name), and since Santo worked for AAA twice (on 12/05/06 in Puebla is one of them, Monterrey’s the other), he can’t work with CMLL. It’s one or the other.

Later on, Alonso says it was about Santo’s pay request. Alonso says everyone recieves good money, all dependent on where on the card they work, and everyone’s doing well. He’s not going to break that scale for Santo, by paying him more.

Alonso feels Santo is getting bad advice and hasn’t had a problem with him to this point.

– While the Dos Leyenda show will now honor a different wrestler each year – Black Shadow, Mil Mascaras, and Perro Aguayo are thrown out as possible future names – there will be no change to the Leyenda de Plata (which may happen in a couple of months.) CMLL has trademarked both names and will go to court to keep them.

– Alonso states a couple of times that El Santo is a legend, and El Hijo del Santo is a quality wrestler who has a legend’s name.

– Alonso says Mistico is a better draw than Santo, and other wrestlers receive far less than normal with Santo because his cost is so high.

– Mistico didn’t go to WWE and stayed with CMLL because Mistico has a “unshakable moral structure” and a greatful person for all CMLL has done for him. (That’s being Mistico’s reason is questionable at best, but the bigger point is if you get pushed by CMLL and leave, you’re an morally corrput ungrateful lost soul.)

This disagreement seems all about how much Santo gets paid per show, (and, relatedly, how much CMLL pays everyone else), and it sounds like it’d be immediatly over if they could agree on a number. As much as he backhands Santo here, if he simply didn’t want Santo at that price, he just wouldn’t use him and that’d be that. Things like isolating him from the CMLL workers and allied arenas, and continuing to use the Leyenda de Plata with him are Paco Alonso’s ways of forcing Santo make a deal before he loses more.

Or maybe Paco Alonso is just a vindictive dude. There’s a bit of evidence there. I hope he’s not mad at me!

If this was happening in the US, I’m sure there’d be some sort of legal fight over the Leyenda de Plata tournament name. Not sure about Mexico.

off topic: I’d like to point everyone towards a Luchas 2000 page or website or something so you can buy the issue with this interview (and more), but – they don’t have one. Come to think of it, you can’t actually buy Box Y Lucha on Box Y Lucha’s site or buy Super Luchas on Super Lucha’s site (and Guerrero del Ring’s message board seem to be have been close for a long time) – that seems to somewhat defeat the point of having a website that’s promoting the magazine.

CMLL on FSE #7 (09/24/06)

thecubsfan

taped 09/24/06

The third straight ripped up episode. By this point, FSE figured they should give the finishes, so we get 2 minutes of a womens match and the final two falls of a trios match.

It occurs to me now, if FSE really wanted to be helpful, they’d ditch the first segment, since it’s just hype and teases, rather than cutting out stuff that’s actually being hyped and teases. It’s kinda tough to skip the opening of a show, I guess.

I want to be annoyed about Averno and Negro being cut out, because it’s a rare CMLL TV match between upper level workers (a bit too rare of late), but I don’t think one more fall would’ve saved it. This was Every CMLL Singles Match Ever for the final two falls, what with the quick tecnico pin, taking 10 seconds of rest between every move in the third fall, super slow counts, the “tecnico does a dive, comes back in first, celebrates on his knees, gets pulled into a caverneria, fights free” spot they’re apparently required by law to do every time; it felt like enough title match clinches so it qualifies as a title match and very little desire to do any more. And it wasn’t well done enough to overcome the lack of imagination. Disappointing.

FSE should’ve have a big shot of Averno winning the belt at some point here, but they appeared to forget until we saw it on him during the post match interview. That’s championships in Mexico.