Valiente contra Japan, Psychos vs IWRG, Arena Mexico anniversary show

CMLL (TUE) 04/24/2012 Arena Coliseo Guadalajara [Fuego en el Ring]
1) Exterminador b Virgo
2) Pegasso, Rey Cometa, Triton b Barbaro Cavernario, Infierno, Malefico
3) Demus 3:16 & Pierrothito b Astral & Último Dragoncito
Dragoncito knocked Pierrothito into the third row with a dive. Rudos still pulled it together to win.
4) Sangre Azteca & Valiente b Namajague & Shigeo Okumura
Tecnicos took 2/3. Namajague pinned Sangre Azteca in the third, but Valiente beat Namajague & Okumura by himself. Valiente demanded a shot at Okumura’s title.
5) Atlantis, La Máscara, Máximo DQ Mr. Águila, Mr. Niebla, Psicosis
Straight falls for the tecnicos. Zacarias and Mije could not get along. Aguila fouled Maximo. Maximo demanded a hair match with Aguila. Aguila declined to respond.

Rey Cometa is on a scintillating four match winning streak going in to tonight’s trios.

(photo by Black Terry Jr.)

IWRG (THU) 04/26/2012 Arena Naucalpan [Black Terry Jr. (flickr), The Gladiatores]
1) Johnny Rivera & Templario b Epidemia & Luger
2) Charly Madrid, Crosby, Pequeño Ángel b Comando Negro, Imposible, The Mummy
Debuting Crosby beat The Mummy in the third.
3) Oficial Spartan, Pacto Negro, Zumbido b Angelico, Chicano, Golden Magic
Pacto Negro replaced Rayan. Zumbido defeated Chicano.
4) Alan Extreme, Carta Brava Jr., Eterno b Dark Dragon, Decnnis, Tito Santana II
Alan & Carta were able to put aside their differences to fight AAA, but Dark Dragon still snuck in a foul on Eterno for the win.
5) Monster Clown, Murder Clown, Psycho Clown b Hijo de Pirata Morgan, Hijo del Dr. Wagner Jr., Oficial Factor
Clown took 1/3. Wagner had Psycho beat in the third, but Monster stopped the count. Wagner was distracted and beat by a Psycho Cerebro Driver.

Bushi is just hanging out in Mexico.

Tonight’s Arena Mexico show is the 56th anniversary of Arena Mexico founding. The big main event for the occasions is the team of Marco, Rush, Maximo putting up the trios titles against TRT, a match they’ve been building towards for a while but only announced last week. It looks like it’s going to come down to Rush and Terrible, as Rush was the one hwo accepted this match (before his partners really had a chance to think about it), and it always seems to come down to those two. Champions are slight favorites but it wouldn’t be a surprise for the challengers to cheat there way to the win. Marco says his team is better, and they know TRT’s weakness.

This show is the start of the En Busca de un Idolo tournament. Triton vs Puma King and Dragon Lee vs Polvora open it up. CMLL published a schedule of matches, which clarifies the tecnicos will only be fighting the rudos, with no intra-group match ups. That means four weeks of group matches, then a break week with the top four finishers teaming with coaches Atlantis & Ultimo Guerrero. (That also leaves room for a tiebreaker that week, if needed.) It’s probably a four man tournament to finish, but it’s not on the schedule.

It appears it’ll be the top two wrestlers in each group who move on, not the top four overall, so they can have two tecnico partners for Atlantis and two for Ultimo Guerrero. The format also means that, as much as they try hype this as group vs group, the true victory is to be the best of your group.

I did match by match predictions for Forjando un Idolo, but it doesn’t seem like a worthwhile idea when no one’s quite sure about how the judging will work in practice, and the judging is more important than the match outcomes. Judging as a tiebreaker is a nice idea, and legit judging would be interesting, but it could very much backfire if someone with a worse record advances because he got more judge’s points. For my part, it seems more fruitful to predict the 1-8 standings, even though they may actually be two groups of 1-4.

  1. Niebla Roja
  2. Titan
  3. Polvora
  4. Dragon Lee
  5. Euforia
  6. Triton
  7. Puma King
  8. Diamante

Diamante seems out of favor, which makes him great for a tournament like this where someone’s got to lose. Puma’s not been treated at this level consistently. It’d be unlike CMLL to advance both Titan & Triton, and Triton got to go to the Gran Alternativa final so this is probably not his turn. (Also, if judging is legit, Triton has more off days than Titan.) Same reason Euforia doesn’t win the title – two Cancerberos advancing is unlikely, Euforia just won, and Polvora has a title so he should be protected a little bit. (In a less political place, one guy who keep winning all of this youth tournament to establish him as the guy. I’m trying to guess what CMLL will actually do, not what they should do.)

The order of the top four is not especially important, but my guess is Titan win this, and so they give someone else the group victory. It may just be a difference of judging points for the group stage. Dragon Lee will have at least one match where five things go wrong in a row and it’s impossible to judge him highly, and Niebla Roja is much more of a character than Polvora.

I’m supporting Titan in this, but if you wanted to mess with CMLL to see what they’d do, you’d probably want to flood the vote for Puma King.

Fuerza Guerrera promotes this weekend’s Todo x el Todo show by saying he has no idea who this Huracan Ramirez is and Santo is scared of him. Fuerza thinks Santo took advantage of Angel Blanco Jr.’s lack of experience in mask matches, but he’s beat Santo plenty of time and would defeat him in a mask match if the promotion wasn’t protecting him. Fuerza is back to wanting that mask match with Octagon, and now is promising to pay for it and promote himself if AAA will just release Octagon to have the match. Fuerza ends by talking about how lucha libre is booming. It’s a quiet boom.

Silver King explains it was he who went to Dorian and demanded Roldan team up him and his brother to fight the Consejo. Silver King says he hasn’t talked to Dr. Wagner Jr. in two years and there are still ill feelings, but the threat of the Consejo is so dire that they must work together.

Namajague explains he came to Mexico to have fun and learn lucha libre. His best teammate, besides Okumura, has been Misterioso, and his most difficult opponent is Valiente. Namajague says he knows of Yujiro though he’s never talked to him, but hopes Yujiro can team up with the rest of Fiebre Amarillo as a great trio.

Bob has highlights of IWRG 03/10/11, IWRG 03/17/11, IWRG 03/24/11, IWRG 04/14/11, CMLL GDL 02/28/12, CMLL GDL 03/06/12, and CMLL 08/28/1992.

Links

Site Note

Videos may be late this week. Heading to the local ROH/CHIKARA shows on Saturday and the not-quite-local CHIKARA show on Sunday, which leaves me unsure when I’m actually going to edit out commercials and convert files. It’ll get done, just like everything eventually gets done, but the schedule may be off. Or I may just edit videos at a Steak N’ Shake in the middle of Indiana? Or maybe I just won’t sleep? I have a lot of possible plans, but the only thing I’m sure of is I’ll forget about the time change border at least twice.

Hoping my road trip will be fun. Black Terry Jr.’s trip to Guadalajara looked like a fun adventure and he had to spend 7 hours on a bus one way. I’m just stuck in a car with a halfway working cassette player for three, this should be easy.