Feel free to comment about the show in the comments. Not bothering with cover it live – we’ll see if WordPress can handle the traffic! I’ll be updating here, maybe in the comments, maybe on twitter, maybe still distracted by this 2-2 game. Edit: Spoke too soon.
As of 9, radio was still doing soccer coverage. May be a while.
Pachuca won 3-1 over Queretaro. Now you know.
There’s no way we’re getting results for the opener. I notice SuperLuchas isn’t bothering with live results! This will allow me to catch up on the all important Alexa rankings. (Do you think they’d do live results for X-LAW?)
9:26: Are they on? As soon as they get the introductions done, yes
9:34: Semimain is on. Or at least introductions are on. No idea on the first two matches.
3) La Sombra, Mistico, Volador Jr. vs Atlantis, Mr. Niebla, Ultimo Guerrero
Fall 1: tecnicos
Fall 2: tecncios – rudos Mistica on UG, rudos yank Mistico’s mask. Thought it was a DQ, but apparently not? They’re still wrestling, you see. Or hear. Whatever.
Fall 2: rudos – Mistica on UG, but UG tosses his mask off to draw the DQ.
Fall 3: tecnicos by DQ, Mistico doing the mask yank fake.
Plenty of time to set up that cage.
Atlantis chats with the announcers. I’m going to go make some popcorn.
10:00 Entrances going on for the main event…
4) Shocker vs Hector Garza, Toscano, Negro Casas, Black Warrior, Terrible, Texano Jr., Naito, Yujiro, Shigeo Okumura, Blue Panther, Maximo, Ray Mendoza Jr., Heavy Metal, Mictlan [cage, hair]
Escapes:
1) Mictlan
2) Heavy Metal – dived out of the cage onto Mictlan
3) Blue Panther
4) Okumura
5) Terrible
6) Maximo
7) Shocker
8) Texano
COMMERCIAL BREAK.
?) Ray Mendoza Jr.
?) Negro Casas
– Garza and Warrior both do dives instead of leaving.
11) Hector Garza
12) Black Warrior (!)
13) Yujiro
Final is Toscano vs Naito. For real. Crowd is about as thrilled as you’d expect.
Naito beats Toscano with a Tiger Suplex. I swear, the call was like “uno, dos…tres?” If you’re going to have the final two be THAT final two, that’s actually the right finish.
Earlier
1) Flash, Metalico, Stuka Jr. vs Euforia, Skandalo, Virus
2) Hijo del Fantasma, La Mascara, Sagrado vs Averno, Ephesto, Mephisto
EstadioW feed: mms://63.99.225.140/estadiow
The key word is “always”, if a promoter has been doing business long before AAA showed up, he/she can keep using them, but there are dozens and dozens of promoters who got screw up by being on their own (as they’re new to the business) and got to invest money without needing to do so on tv/radio spots, chairs/bleachers, etc… what better deal than free tv/radio publicity + logistics can one get?
CMLL spot shows took a nose dive in frequency from about a year onwards, mainly because spot promoters were losing money from CMLL not helping them out, no one likes to loose money .
On the other hand, owning the building is not that much help, most buildings are owned by the state and pretty cheap to rent, sometimes even less than 500 dollar, but, the catch is that the gov gets a percentage of the gate (regardless of who owns the building), in Torreon is 11%, even if CMLL does not pay rent, the employee would probably be more than the 500 bucks, and they still got to pay to the state – actually, the strategy is to have tickets never being sold at the box office but available through scalpers (who work for the promoter) at a much higher price is to fool the percentage price tax.
@xuisaw: What can CMLL do to help out?
I noticed today that they were running promos for a spot/house show in Leon. Besides that, it’s up to the local promoter. If he/she is losing money, most likely it’s b/c he is paying too much. If I was promoting CMLL in Torreon, or Cd. Madero, I would not rely entirely on the weekly CMLL show on Televisa to boost my ticket sales. Sure, I’d want the same graphic and “live read” the Leon show got on today’s show, but I’d seek local media sponsors, most likely Televisa and some radio station.
11% is steep. And that’s just local, as you said. They pay federal too. There are some US cities that have steep fees after adding state fees. Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Harrisburg come to mind, but they’re lower than what is paid in Mexico.
I predict you, Chui, will one day try your hand at promoting.
If you know how vendors work at a real-deal arena, then you know how concessions are the big profit center.
When you go to a ballpark/arena/stadium that has vendors walking around selling in the stands, those actual “beer guys” have already bought the beer/food/pop from the arena, and are selling it to the fans individually. I know it sounds crazy, but thats how it works. Many times, something similar will happen at the actual concession stands themselves.
This is why food at ballparks is often so expensive – the arena essentially charges the actual vendor who sells the food an inflated rate, and then they have to mark it up even more to sell it to the fans, so they make money – and it is usually at a price dictated by the arena (that way one vendor isnt selling it cheaper a section over).
I dunno if Arena Mexico is like that, but I can only assume that they get beer and stuff dirt cheap from their distributor, and then mark it up when they sell it to the vendors. Keep in mind, Arena Mexico has 2-3 wrestling events there a week minimum – plus boxing and other events. A vendor could probably make a good chunk of change there with that many events.
So if CMLL buys beer for $.50 from Corona, sells it to the vendors for $2, and they turn around and sell it for $4… Arena Mexico is banking $1.50 for every beverage sold.
Ask any wrestling promoter if they have a crowd of 1000 paying fans, if they would rather have the gate, or concessions. Hell, expand that to MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA… that is why they all want the sweetheart stadium deals where they have expensive luxury boxes, and control over concessions. CMLL has that – they own (mostly) the arenas, they get the concessions.
Could they use TV better? Sure.
But drawing 15000 for a shitty card probably made them more money between the gate and concessions than AAA did from PPV with Triplemania.
@Nikita: They almost certainly made more money than AAA did from Triplemania. That doesn’t make the crappy Tuesday/Sunday turnouts at discounted rates make any more sense.
And I agree that concessions are a great source of income, so I’m not arguing that here, just want to let everyone know how reasonably priced everything is at Arena Mexico. Beers are 25 pesos or a little under $2 at the current exchange rate. Best deal I’ve ever seen at an event like that.
@Nikita: I don’t think CMLL venues have a vendor like Aramark or someone like that. CMLL has been around so long, they most likely handle all that stuff in-house. I also wonder if Corona trades the beer for the logo-inclusion on the ring apron. Just a thought.
The original Arena Modelo was built with their money, which was a brilliant way of guaranteeing that their products would be sold exclusively that the venue.
I agree about the tv. The episodes need to be better.
@Alan: Do you take the subway to ArMex? Talk about reasonably priced, I remember paying .15 cents.
If AAA drew roughly 15,000 for TM (wasn’t that the # given out?) and CMLL drew roughly 15,000 (Estadio W says it was less) for Friday’s show – how can anyone claim CMLL made more money? AAA was charing full price – in fact higher prices than their usual TV tapings. CMLL is running a summer-long deal where kids enter for free with a paying adult. Should I be expecting a crowd of 15,000 adults when I watch the show?
Maybe if you count concessions CMLL made more money but we won’t have the #’s to prove that and would need the AAA concession #’s to compare. But if we are just talking about the gate than AAA smoked CMLL if you are comparing the two shows (which we shouldn’t be doing anyways).
@Alan: Good news from Puebla TV?
@Rob: Puebla will be starting shortly and I’ll post what is on.
I think the point that AAA had much higher costs for TM than CMLL has for any of their shows is valid. I guess claiming that they made more money for last Friday might be inaccurate considering how much lower their ticket costs were, but I think for many shows at Arena Mexico (Dos Leyendas/Anniversary) have to make more money. I would guess that last weeks show probably came close, but you are right that this is impossible to prove either way.
Puebla opens with Garza and son arriving at the arena and then the locals. Minis were previewed with a recap of last week and interviews, just to make it clear that they are heading somewhere with this. Warrior has a new (to me at least) all back mask so presumably he isn’t losing in a couple of weeks.
@Alan: Oh no. Please don’t edit out my Fuerza Aerea just to air Shocker and Toscano.:(
On another note, if you count the Perrito feud and this Puebla show – Garza’s son has more CMLL TV time than Ramstein.
@Rob: Garza’s son has been getting serious airtime lately. He also was on Tercera Caida two weeks ago.
I’m sure I’ve told this story before, but the first show I went to at Arena Mexico was the Perro/Garza hair match. When we were leaving I walked by a kid dressed in Garza’s Tshirt and tights who was crying in the hallway and felt a little bad for cheering for Perro. It wasn’t until I was watching Tercera Caida the next week that I realized who it was.
I had the chance to meet Garza’s son last week at the Expo and he seems like a very nice kid.
Good news, we’ve got the tercera!
@Alan: That kid got exploited big time for that hair match by the TV crew. Right when Garza lost they got a million shots of him crying his head off. I wonder if he’s already been trained to “work” for the cameras or if he was tied to and told his dad was going to win. He can’t be 100% naive to the business b/c I’ve seen matches from Monterrey about 3-4 years ago where he gets involved and low blows the rudos or hands his dad weapons to use. He even took a bump once where Damian hit him and as Garza picked him up to see if he was okay, Halloween came across the ring with a spear to put the father/son through a table and they sold it like the kid was dead.
Yay for the tercera!
Insert Cam of Garza’s son during the match. Please tell me they aren’t going to show him during the dive…
Watching how Garza still had his pants on, would make it seem the match was ended before expected, but tvc was just great having his son crying on ringside…
And of course we get shots of the son immediately after the dive. Not sure I see why that is even remotely necessary.
How can CMLL make more money on “Infierno” than AAA did on Mania? CMLL owns the venue they run in. Nikita may argue that they “don’t have to pay themselves rent”, but I’m sure it costs quite a bit to maintain ArMex. Either way, it’s an advantage over renting.
CMLL keeps all the beer, soda, popcorn, and sandwich money. AAA rents a venue from OCESA. Bruce Moran runs Palacio and has stated that the rent is 12%(then there’s fed, city, state taxes), plus the huge costs of sound and lighting while CMLL has a permanent grid for tv purposes. AAA clearly had a huge sound and lighting bill for Mania.
It would not surprise me if “Infierno” made as much money for CMLL as Mania did for AAA.
‘mania kids were paying 99 pesos more than Infierno kids. That’s enough to made up for rent.
Prices were 2 or 3 times higher for the other tickets. Inferno would have had drawn 60000 to make more money than Mania.
@xuisaw: If it was so successful, they would not have to wait another year to run Palacio. The set AAA used at Mania would cost about $50,000 in the US. I’m sure it wasn’t cheap in Mexico.
You don’t think CMLL did $75,000 in beer, soda, sandwich sales? I doubt that Palacio gives AAA a cut of the food/drink sales.
Either way, it’s a disappointment for AAA to not sellout Mania, while CMLL did big business for a hair cage match.
Even with jacked up ticket prices, AAA had a huge S&L bill, rent, loaded show, etc…….
Maybe Mania made a little more than Infierno when it was said and done. We’ll never know.