CMLL announced this year’s Anniversary show would take place on September 18th, kinda. The “write a story about CMLL” kid’s contest winners will be recognized at that show, and the fine print of the contest rules lists that show as September 18th. That’s such a quiet announcement that CMLL could get away with changing it, but it’s likely to be the correct one.
What’s the main event? I have no idea. This week’s edition of the bloated CMLL Informa spent a lot of the last segment trying to press Volador and Mephisto to agree to a hair vs mask match. Mephisto didn’t really answer, but it’s as reasonable a candidate as anything – which more to say there is no strong match for September yet. CMLL’s focused on Rey Escorpion versus Ultimo Guerrero too, but both those matches feel like matches for lesser shows and not ones which will draw 16,000 people. (It’s unlikely CMLL has anything that’ll draw 16,000 people.) I still think there’s a tease to a cage match this summer, but it doesn’t seem to be coming together quick enough to be run against the Lucha World Cup – maybe just some random Friday in June.
The FULL promotion has a TV taping tonight at Carpa Astros in Mexico City. Their main events are pretty similar in style to the Leyendas shows – Mascara Sagrada, Octagon, Tinieblas vs Cien Caras Jr., Heavy Metal and Pirata Morgan headlines tonight. They do better at including younger guys on the undercard, though it’s still unclear what will air. Tinieblas Jr. says all of his shows will only be two hours long as to not be too tedious. The three other shows they’re running at Carpa Astros are today on June 4th, June 18th and July 2nd. Their next TV taping is 05/29 in Toluca, so pretty much everything from tonight’s show should end up airing.
Also, Alushe did more beat boxing.
The Handsome Timmy D Express has an interview with Chavo Guerrero, talking about how he’s been involved with Lucha Underground. Chavo loves the show, saying the wrestling is the best in the world and the production is even better. Chavo says he did not see the first episode until it aired on TV and was completely blown away by the production. “Usually, it’s the production that has to catch up to the wrestling, but this was the other way.” The first taping after that, Chavo says he urged the guys to up their game to match the quality.
Chavo says he’s been told by high up people “every single frame that airs on Lucha Underground, Robert Rodriguez approves.”
The Wrestling Observer has consistently talked about a give and take about how the style of show and wrestling should be, and Chavo ends up addresses that discussion:
Chavo says he was “butting heads with other people, who wanted it to be more lucha”. Chavo was pushing that it can’t just be lucha, because it would be seen as knock off lucha (compared to AAA), it had to be different. Chavo says there are bad parts of lucha and good parts of lucha, just like there are bad parts of US wrestling and good parts of US wrestling, and as long as they use the good parts of everything, it’ll turn out well. “This is Guerrero style. This is how Eddie and we wrestle.” Brings up Shawn Michaels too as a guy who mixed the different styles.
Chavo says they’ve been helped by the wrestling landscape – the 10 years post-WCW opened the door for a strengthened independent scene, and now there’s a lot of great talent they can pluck and use on their own. (Chavo also notes he has interested people contact him all the time looking to see if they can get in here, but they’re only looking for people who can work their Lucha Underground style.) Chavo explains part of his job is to help evolve the wrestlers.
“My job is kinda get them is to calm down a little bit (laughs) – just because you can do a backflip doesn’t meant you should a backflip. We want you, we want – I’m trying to teach some of these guys, ok, there’s a time and a place when you do things to get the most out of them, because some of these guys are working so hard out there, and I’m like guys you’re working too hard, sometimes less is more. And they’re getting it, they’re getting it, they’re understanding it, they’re so good, they’re so talented, they just need to be directed a little bit. And that’s what we’re trying to do here. And some of our main stars, in the next year or two, are going to be even better because they’re going to be better. Because some of these guys have been on TV for four years, five years, but they didn’t know what a hard camera is. They didn’t know they were supposed to play to this camera before, and that’s what we’re teaching them and showing them. And, lucha is, lucha is – is – it’s a different entity in it’s own, so we’re teaching them this style, which is what we want them do with this style, which may work in other places, but they’re all getting it, and the wrestling from the first episode to better is going to get better and better and it’s going to continue to evolve.”
The hard camera speech is just about the same HHH gave on a conference call about Finn Balor. That’s not saying Chavo borrowed it, it’s saying there’s both places note the same differences between indy (and lucha) wrestling and TV wrestling. I’m pretty sure I saw people doing flips for flips sake last night, but I’m growing less interested in the process as compared to the product.
There’s a long discussion about intergender wrestling, how the production crew went from not knowing wrestling to being blown away by what the wrestlers were doing, about Son of Havoc’s changing feelings on the show, and Chavo’s own thoughts of being part of the first match ever on the show. It’s worth a listen.
Cassandro is about to have surgery which will put him out of wrestling for several months, and there’s a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for living expenses in the meantime.
Video promo for team Fantasma, Psycho and Texano, who seem to be going by Team MexAAA. There’s also a Psycho Clown text interview. They’re strongly pushing the idea they’re not going to lose by turning on Psycho Clown, which is hard to believe until it happens. I think that if you’re trying to establish the legitimately of the tournament, you’ve got to have every team treating winning it like the biggest deal (more than how much they dislike their teammate.) But if building Verano de Escandalo is more important, than you need to run something big to set it up on this show.
Titan says Cavernario told him he’d get a rematch, so he’s focused on winning the Leyendas de Plata on Friday and then winning his title back. He’d like to go back to Japan as well.
RobViper has a music video for 01/16 CMLL.
LuchaWorld has KrisZ’s news update.
SuperLuchas looks back ten years ago at Mistico vs Hijo del Perro Aguayo.
+LuchaTV talks to Rey Fenix about the El Bestiario competition.
They had a perfect Aniversario match in Rush/UG, but then Rush got injured and once he came back of course CMLL didn’t go back to it, typical CMLL style. And now they’re dropping Volador/UG as well.
Rush says he wants a mask. I figure that Rush/Atlantis could draw. If Atlantis is near retirement, 2016 could be hair vs career.