07/24: Santo, Metalik, Dragon Rojo Jr.

Better late than never. I don’t when tomorrow’s update will turn up, but it won’t be at least until afternoon. Some other posts will go up before then, if I get to them tonight.

CMLL VIP (SUN) 08/03 Gimnasio Nuevo Leon [RFC]
1) Diana La Cazadora & Justiciera vs Perla Negra & Princesa Sujei
2) Super Muneco, Super Pinocho, Super Raton vs Coco Amarillo, Coco Blanco, Tramposo
3) Angel Blanco Jr., Antifaz del Norte, Averno vs Hijo de Trueno, Sagrado, Volador Jr.

I believe this is a benefit show for Caifan, but I may be confused

As listed above, add Antifaz to the AAA departure list. Again, it’s another veteran midlevel guy thinking he’d be better of booking his own schedule.

I think I’ve done a poor job of explaining my opinion on this going back to The List, so let me try it again: I think it’s a significant issue for AAA to be suffering this midcard drain, because they’re losing a lot of experienced guys who can put together good matches (Antifaz may not fit in there) and not really replacing them. At the same time, the vast majority of these guys going shouldn’t have an effect on attendance in the short turn. Of all who’ve left, I’d only count Intocable as a draw (Alan is taking his spot, but I don’t think he’s as over with that audience yet), and Mr. Niebla as an asset (mostly due to the effort AAA put in to rebuild him from scratch, and being a name wrestler willing to drop his mask.)

indy (THU) 07/24 Arena Olimpico Laguna de Gomez Palacio [el Siglo de Torreon]
1) Autentico & Escriba Jr. vs Chakor & Jerry Brown
2) Dragoncito & Payasito vs Pentagoncito & Ricky Estrada
3) Dorado Jr., Piloto Negro, Tuno Negro vs Escriba, Sangre Negra, V57
4) Conflictus, Piloto Suicida, Virtual X vs Dr. Cianuro, Espanto V, Mr. Guerrero

Conflictus is billed as a star from CMLL, but hasn’t been working under that name in Mexico City as far as I can tell. A wrestler by that name worked in GDL in ’06, maybe that’s it.

El Hijo del Santo made the back cover of today’s Ovaciones. Saturday’s the 66th anniversary of El Santo’s debut, so they talked to his son. A lot of it’s about the Lucha Libre London/Europe tour, and not much you haven’t read already. There’s a bit about his CMB championship – he’s planning his first defense in October in Cancun (no opponent mentioned – I’m holding out for Floyd Mayweather) and he’ll be at the CMB convention in China in November. They’re talking about more weight divisions (Santo is welterweight champ) being unrevealed soon. I found it interesting it was Santo’s WWA title that he and Demon traded on the tour, since that title had been put on the shelf since the CMB one was unrevealed. Perhaps the CMB actually does somewhat control Santo’s belt, so he had to use another one to do the title program?

(Reforma via Jazzo) Metalik is out a week after suffering a knee injury in Puebla. Sounds like they feared it was much worse.

(MT) La Mascara crowed about his team’s win Tuesday, while Hijo del Fantasma challenged any trio to take a shot at their belts.

After his success in the Gran Alternativa, Ultimo Guerrero says Dragon Rojo Jr. could become a member of the Guerreros del Atlantida. They’ll keep on watching him and seeing how he does, but UG figures Dragon is on the way to becoming a star. I think UG just likes the idea of having a Dragon on his side for once. Naturally, Dragon Rojo is thrilled with his prospects.

SuperLuchas is teasing a Lucha Libre Fan Fest this September in Mexico City.

AAA posted a video promo with more animation art, as well as subtitled version of the trailer.

While in LA to promote the house shows, Zorro and Konnan visited the children’s ward of a hospital. The show got a short write up in Metro Active.

The Southtown Star writes about GALLI‘s shows in Joliet and Chicago Heights, IL this weekend. (No mention of the Berwyn show?) I think I may just be sleeping in this weekend.

‘Zonie Report has an article about a lucha libre group in Phoenix. Tickets to the show are $1, which is hard to beat.

A new restaurant in Philadelhia called Distrito is themed after the DF, including 600 lucha libre masks.

(grumpy section ahead!)

The Gladiatores did live radio coverage of IWRG’s Rey del Ring tonight. If only they had posted this on their own blog ahead of time, I could’ve passed this on.

CMLL got around to posting Wagner/Perro today. Dollar late/short. Let me point you to Reyes del Aire 2005 instead.

411 Mania posted this article on the AAA shows in LA this weekend. I don’t got all night, so let me just grab four of the dumb parts.

“AAA holds their first US Tour in over a decade this week”
They ran Texas last year. They taped TV in Houston in 2000.

“AAA used to regularly hold shows in the LA Sports Arena back when stars like Rey Mysterio Jr., Juvenstud Guerrera, Eddie Guerrero, Psicosis, and Konnan were big stars in Mexico and prior to ECW and subsequently WCW’s raping of their talent roster.”
Way to skip over Promo Azteca

“assumed Super Fly was either the aging WWF legend or the super concentrated date rape drug I bought in Tijuana….I mean the…antihistamine I bought in TJ…legally….over the counter…to give that one Sorority girl who kept saying, “oh my GOD, I am SOOOOO drunk”. I’m sure she felt just fine in the morning. I’m also not familiar with Dark Cuervo unless his tag team partner is Coke.”
Translation: I have no idea what I’m talking about, couldn’t be bothered to find out who these people are, and will now be acting like I know what I’m talking about for the next eight paragraphs. Yay internet writing in 2008.

“But you know, maybe I’m wrong, maybe the fact that the information I have says to look on Ticketmaster for tickets and that they don’t even show the event on-line means that everything in the entire arena is sold out. then again,”
Took me about a minute to find the ticket link. By the way, you still can buy 4 tickets together in Row 21 as of Thursday night.

That’s just four. There’s probably four more better if I broke it down, but reading the article again angers me greatly. Such idoicy. To bookend this post with me trying to make previously alluded to things clear: if I’m already writing all of this stuff about lucha libre for zero apparent return, I’m probably really available to write about it for your site too. If not me, there’s other smart people you ought to be using. But whatever you do, writing clueless posts about lucha libre is about as bad as not writing at all. And not writing about lucha libre isn’t pretty pathetic in itself – it’s defies all reason sites like PWTorch write gobs about shows which draw around 200 and are only eventually seen by a few thousand, while completely ignoring promotions where 16,500 people turning out can cause a 20+ plus comment debate about it being a disappointment. Stop living in your bubbles.

In the meantime, I gotta figure out how to block 411mania from my Google News feed.