CMLL (TUE) 12/16/2014 Arena Coliseo Guadalajara [Martes de Glamour]
1) Brillante & Reycko b El Yaqui & Satara
Brillante was DQed for pulling Satara’s mask, but the tecnicos came back to take falls 23/.
2) Canelo Casas, Puma, Tiger b Esfinge, Leo, Omar Brunetti
Tiger beat Esfinge.
3) Zeuxis b Princesa Sugehit [lightning]
Zeuxis beat Sugehit with the caballete in 8:30.
4) Felino, Mr. Niebla, Último Guerrero b Gallo, Stuka Jr., Titán
Ultimo Guerrero replaced Negro Casas. Gallito and Zacarias foguht.
5) Atlantis, La Sombra, Marco Corleone b Rey Bucanero, Shocker, Terrible
Sombra & Marco didn’t get along with Atlantis – Marco specifically was upset when Atlantis beat Shocker instead of him – but the tecnicos took 2/3.
Nothing from this show leads into the next.
IWRG (WED) 12/17/2014 Arena Naucalpan [Estrellas del Ring]
***Caravana de Campeones, 2014***
1) Vampiro Metálico II b Atomic Star
listed as “Vampiro Metalico” but it’s been “Vampiro Metalico II” here of late.
2) Galaxy & Sky Ángel b Araña de Plata & Hip Hop Man
3) Imposible © b Metaleón [IWRG IC Light]
Imposible 7th defense
4) Canis Lupus © b Eterno [IWRG IC WELTER]
Canis 1st defense, against usual partner Eterno.
5) Apolo Estrada Jr., Avisman, El Hijo del Diablo © b Chicano, Danny Casas, Hip Hop Man [EdM Trios]
Hip Hop Man replaced X-Fly. Gringos took 2/3, Diablo beating Danny for the win. Gringos 6th defense
All the titles retained.
Toscano is said to be fired from IWRG after getting into that fight with the fans on Sunday. He was planned to be a big part of the cage match. The story is Toscano wasn’t drunk or high, but just really angry at those fans.
Who’s talking to Alberto? Everyone’s talking to Alberto. The WON mentions
- ROH, where he’s signed just thru the 03/01 show so far and wants to face top names; he was originally supposed to feud with champion Adam Cole, but Adam Cole is injured and no longer champion
- Lucha Underground, where he’s listed this week as “names as consideration” – which also kinds of sound like he’s not as close to be signed as previously said, but Dave later says “El Rey has offered a substantial guaranteed money deal and the expectation is he’s gone there.”
- Bellator, “a big money offer” – it’s implied other MMA promotions may have offered him big money as well
- TNA, “the number we heard was $400,000 for a one year deal”, but Alberto is said to be looking for either more money or more freedom (TNA would want PPV exclusivity – if he changed his mind and agreed, that’d mean he couldn’t start until after the ROH show at the least, and would throw a monkey wrench in Lucha Underground’s long range plans.)
- various indy shows
All the US promotions believe Alberto can draw in latino (and specially Mexican-American) fans and there’s no one better available to them. Meltzer added on the podcast “my impression is he’s making $5,000 per match in Mexico.”
It reads like Alberto can probably do ROH + Indies + Lucha Underground or TNA + indies + few Lucha Underground appearances. MMA is the wild card – and the highest possible one night payoff – it would figure Alberto would have to take time off from all the wrestling if he was going to do MMA seriously, though Bobby Lashley has been doing this without missing a ton of TNA shows. That’s helped quite a bit by TNA bunching together weeks of tapings at the same time, and that’s not far off from what Lucha Underground has been doing.
In somewhat related news, the WON reports that WWE writers were told to come up with a Rey Misterio Jr. storyline to take him from Survivor Series to WrestleMania, that storyline has never started, and it appears Rey Misterio Jr. has returned to the purgatory from which he came. It may just be a waiting game for his one year contract to expire, but I don’t think anyone’s definitely said if WWE has the option of rolling it over again (or indefinitely.)
Should Rey ever be released, he’s expected to appear in Lucha Underground. So is Alberto. Other names listed as “under consideration”: Jeff Cobb, the Young Bucks, Jack Evans, Angelico, Homicide, Texano Jr., Dark Angel and Flamita. Dark Angel’s name stick out for obvious reasons; it’s completely unclear if CMLL would allow her to work Lucha Underground while staying with them. (I’d guess no, other people think yes.) It could be part of a bigger move. Dark Angel joining CMLL was the biggest break in her career and has been her home promotion for a longer time, but she’s been completely underutilized in CMLL for years. Dark Angel has been unafraid to make her own deals outside of CMLL, working with Stardom in Japan (instead of REINA) and going to TNA on her own.
No Myzteziz on the list. It’s also worth remember AAA’s list of people they’re doing things with are hilariously unreliable, so it’s possible nothing comes of it.
The WON also had this bit on AAA. Let’s try to decipher this one together
There are going to be a lot of changes in 2015 that will become evident in the spring. But in a big surprise, there are right now no plans to tape any television for a few months, and things will be very different when they do.
It’s vague enough that it could mean anything, and it’s AAA enough that it could mean nothing at all. (As frequently pointed out to me, this is the year where everyone was going to be banned from wearing t-shirts in matches, and I’m pretty sure both Alberto and Texano wore t-shirts for a large portion of the main event of the last show. Lucha Underground finally getting on the air would be the counter point.) We know AAA has enough of taped TV to last them thru January 10th. Both Tuxtla Gutierrez and Guerra de Titanes are left to air and should be two weeks each. It looked like AAA was taping wrap arounds for Best Of shows, which usually run 3 weeks and would mean AAA wouldn’t absolutely need to tape until the first week of February. (They could drag it out farther if they ration the matches even stricter than usual.) December to February could qualify as a few months.
If it’s going to be more than that, and I don’t know, something where they’re still dark in March or whenever, it does start to question the idea of doing Alberto/Perro this year. I could see Mesias/Perro as a reasonable choice for a build up year after how Guerra de Titanes played out. But we really have no idea what these changes will mean or if they’ll be implemented.
Last night’s Lucha Underground was the 8th episode of it’s first season. Lucha Libre USA made it 7 before being canceled (and then brought back for a ‘second season’), so AAA’s show has already passed that bar.
This week’s WON has a more numbers focused depressing look at the El Rey ratings – the problem isn’t the low numbers, it’s that there’s no upwards trend despite the quality of the shows and advertisement of the show – making the case that show hasn’t gotten any traction. There’s been no signs of El Rey wavering on Lucha Underground, but it’s remains in a precarious position. That’s the TV world.
RobViper has a 13 minute music video of TripleMania.
Tercera Caida had Violento Jack as guest, and Angel o Demonio and Ovett (and Ovett’s son) as guests. All I know is Ovett has the much better hair. The after the show video is up as well.
Terra had Cholo & Ramstein, Marcela and Delta as guests.
Terra changed the way they stream video, putting me all the way back to square one. I don’t not know if I’ll be able to record shows going forward, since I can’t do them the way I was. I’ll definitely be trying to, I think it’s possible and I spent the entirety of Informa coming up with a couple of ideas and one possible solution, but I can’t experiment on it without the show being on the air (so much of this upcoming Sunday’s show will be me playing with video programs and not actually getting to watch the matches or making GIFs.) What would be wonderful is CMLL just putting up the shows themselves on some official channel so I never have to think about this again. As long as they’re airing stuff once and never making it available again, I’m going to keep trying.
DTU’s Jhonki was in the hospital after a concussion on the Arena Aficion show. He says it’s not serious he was just under observation, and he got back home late last night.
LuchaWorld has KrisZ’s news update.
Dos Caras, Hijo del Dos Caras and Sicodelico Jr. were announced WWL’s 01/06 show, challenging for their trios titles. El Patron Alberto, Laredo Kid and Mesias were previously announced. According to wrestlingdata’s records, this would be Dos Caras’ first match in Puerto since 1983.
SuperLuchas has an obit for Agente X.
Ohtani’s Jacket reviews Virus vs Cachorro.
Yahoo! Deportes looks back at the CMLL hair and mask loses of 2014.
Myzteziz, Wagner and Averno main event Arena Neza on Christmas Day.
Domingo Familiares has a quick promo from Satanico talking about his return.
There’s been reports last week was their highest ratings to date. Also, Nielsen now rates the el Rey network.
Surprised IWRG had any fans in the arena for Toscano to fight with, tbh.
When AAA was on KWHY in 1994-1995 they did about a 6.0 or 70,000 HH’s a week. Now they do about 35,000 HH’s on UniMas in LA. The Hispanic population has increased a lot in nearly 20 years so the rating is much lower, but the number of Spanish television stations has increased, fragmenting the market, so you can’t expect numbers like those of the glory years. I was hoping they’d do 40,000-50,000 a week there, but I guess that’s my bias showing.
It’s sad that the mainstream audience has not been making as much noise about LU.
Rah: I enjoyed that.
Turtles are draws.
Anyone wanna take a wild guess on the AAA thing? I’m going with brand extension, or something like that.
Sorry Chismo, but Rob doesn’t like it when we speculate about stuff.
They would need a second show for a brand extension, and they bailed on that the last time
I was thinking maybe some kind of consolidation of LU and AAA tapings? Or using the US production team of LU for vignettes, graphics, editing, etc…..for the Mexico show?
Speaking about Rob, I hope he posts his 2015 predictions.
Maybe AAA could air LU if they wanted but it wouldn’t make sense since it would need to be dubbed and edit out Mundo and the others storyline (since they’re not working Mexico) and Sexy Star since it does not fit with her role here.
They could try a if they really want things to change “reboot” . I’ll do it like this: Start hyping next ReydR is the last one and AAAmania might be the last one as well. Resolve every storyline by AAAmania, Fabi shaves HdTirante, PentJr unmasks AS or whatever. But main thing Roldans win and Sociedad et al disband. Roldans dissapear from tv as well, saying now that they have full control of AAA they’ll just work behind the scenes as advisors, managers and assit in building franchises (brands) and as a governing body for titles and logistics.
One franchise would be a local version of LU, an actor playing a Dario, more ike a spin off being shady dudes running “underground” shows, same or similar skits (for different performers), more one on one matches, etc.
The other brand would be “legacy AAA” with more trios matches and a “sports feel” but from scratch, one main title and a tag title open to anyone (a la LU), new major events replacing old ones save ‘mania, and no estables or feuds at the beginning, just the old rudos vs tecnicos.
Each “franchise” would have a 1 hour show, either one after the other in their current time slot or “Legacy” during weekends and “Underground” on a week night.
Roldans disappear from TV? In storyline Dorian and AAA are part of LU storyline. LU is like a telenovela and all telenovelas come to a finale. In the end I see Dario character being written off, LU written off too, and AAA being the promotion that airs in place of LU, as a spinoff.
2015 will probably be the year when AAA airs in the US again.
Maricela looks bored dead in the shows, and storywise, makes no sense, she could and should reverse any and all wrongdoing in the ring, being the owner and president and seated RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE RING, yet never does, maybe she’s evil… besides her, her 2 parents and entoragge, proly 200-300 dollar worth if they acutally sold those seats, enough to pay a couple mid level telenovela talent, maybe even someone with an evil character, if Peña used Huicho Dominguez, they could find someone these days.
Unless Alberto is being paid in dollars, he’s getting much less now in Mx, with the peso losing 20-30% in value, if he’s being charging in dollars, he’s much more pricey now than back in Sept. Both Heroes and Guerra fell short of being sellouts, so he probably should be leaving for greener pastures.
I don’t see why would LU want to use Sarah Stock, she speaks English (and Spanish, kinda) but then AAA has J.Balke anyways, And neither would fit the show, Sexy Star is miscast, but Fabi Apache would be miscast too, the problem with the show is it is sopposed to appeal “Hispanics”, yet, they’re portrayed as the heels, Catrina, Ivelis and Chavo, heck, they sure had trouble finding performers.
Maybe Dark Angel could play the “Hispanic girl” role, but it would be better they do find someone to play it (Melina? Heck, maybe Melissa Santos), and since Konnan has been said to be evil, they should run an angle where they reveal Prince Puma is not “heir to the Aztecs” and let him have his real background be acknoledged.