Pentagon versus the Black Lotus Triad tonight, LU notes, CMLL Tuesday results

a Fuego GIF
a Fuego GIF

CMLL (TUE) 11/29/2016 Arena México [CMLL, Culticon]
1) Bengala & Sensei b Apocalipsis & Grako LUCHA LIBRE MARTES DE NUEVOS VALORES EN LA ARENA MEXICO 29 DE NOVIEMBRE DEL 2016 (posted by VideosOficialesCMLL)
Sensei replaced Leono.
2) Astral, Eléctrico, Último Dragóncito b Mercurio, Pequeño Nitro, Pequeño Olímpico LUCHA LIBRE MARTES DE NUEVOS VALORES EN LA ARENA MEXICO 29 DE NOVIEMBRE DEL 2016 (posted by VideosOficialesCMLL)
Tecnicos took 2/3.
3) Fuego b Forastero [lightning] LUCHA LIBRE MARTES DE NUEVOS VALORES EN LA ARENA MEXICO 29 DE NOVIEMBRE DEL 2016 (posted by VideosOficialesCMLL)
Forastero replaced Arkangel.
4) Misterioso Jr., Olímpico, Sagrado b Oro Jr., Pegasso, Star Jr. LUCHA LIBRE MARTES DE NUEVOS VALORES EN LA ARENA MEXICO 29 DE NOVIEMBRE DEL 2016 (posted by VideosOficialesCMLL)
5) Ephesto, Luciferno, Pierroth b Blue Panther, Guerrero Maya Jr., Rey Cometa LUCHA LIBRE MARTES DE NUEVOS VALORES EN LA ARENA MEXICO 29 DE NOVIEMBRE DEL 2016 (posted by VideosOficialesCMLL)
Pierroth replaced Ripper. Rudos won in straight falls, Ephesto sneaking in a foul Maya.
6) Ripper, Shocker, Vangellys b Ángel de Oro, Dragón Lee, Mistico LUCHA LIBRE MARTES DE NUEVOS VALORES EN LA ARENA MEXICO 29 DE NOVIEMBRE DEL 2016 (posted by VideosOficialesCMLL)
Ripper replaced Mephisto (though Pierroth was listed there this morning.) Rudos took 1/3.

I didn’t watch the card. It seemed OK. The deal with Pierroth remains weird.

Diamante Azul is off all cards. Volador replaces him Saturday. Atlantis is in on Sunday. Not sure if it’s an an injury or he’s gone back to France (he indicated he wouldn’t be going back any time soon on his last Informa appearance.) Forastero also replaces Sangre Azteca on Sunday.

Today’s Lucha Underground episode is 3×13, “Breaker of Bones”. Matches announced

  • Pentagon versus the Black Lotus Triad
  • and nothing else

Lucha Underground has revealed the names of the Triad: Doku (Kairi Hojo), Yuri (Mayu Iwatani), Hitokiri (Io Shirai – or Oyuki if you have a deep memory of short term AAA gimmicks.) The clip they’ve released appears to be the open of the show, which leads into Pentagon Dark versus Doku. (Also, Vampiro telling scary campfire stories.) There’s no other match hinted at, which suggests the gauntlet may last the whole hour. I’m just not sure how that’ll work; if they go one match per segment, they’re still short at least a segment. Maybe there’s another match or surprise coming, but I generally suspect they’ll catch up with a lot of other people in cut scenes.

Lucha Underground EVP Eric Van Wagenen was on last week’s Masks, Mats & Mayhem for about the first half of the show. He was very excited for this week’s episode, saying it’s a rare episode where he watched the live cut of the show the same night it happened because he just wanted to see it again. For him, it’s one of their “top two or three” episodes. They love the Stardom women. DeJoseph saw them at the first Stardom USA show and call Van Wagenen raving: “I just saw the three greatest female Japanese wrestlers, and one of them (Io) is the Japanese Fenix. You’ve got to check them out.” Van Wagenen went the next day to see the second show, was similarly impressed, and tried to sign them right away. I had thought they were only used for a limited time because the travel/cost, but Van Wagenen says he was told their schedule was already pretty much full. Shirai, Hojo, and Iwatani happened to be coming over this weekend for a convention, so they worked the scheduled around it.

(Mia Yim/Jade and Santana Garrett were mentioned as two others LU tried to sign off those Stardom shows. I think they came up before.)

There was a fair bit of talk about the Sexy Star title win and loss. To his knowledge, Sexy was not the long term original plan, but something that came up “fairly close to the match.” Chris DeJoseph and Chris Roach dropped the idea on him, he asked “you know we’re going get shit on for doing this, right?”, they did, and they went with it. The general idea they don’t want to ever be playing it safe: “We’re not traditional, and we don’t want to be traditional.” Once they decided to do a title match, it was always meant to be a one episode thing, they didn’t have cold feet and change their minds or anything. Van Wagenen’s feeling is the fan reactions the last couple weeks was about what they expected, but more towards the positive side, and they figure/hope that if you don’t like that, there’s something else they’re doing that’d keep you watching.

That did leave me – and the hosts – with one big question: if Sexy Star was a late decision, who was supposed to be champion? Van Wagenen was evasive on that, only saying they had to change the first half of the season because of “injuries and other travel issues.” Angelico & Ivelisse are the most obvious injured people, and the hosts pressed about Ivelisse. Van Wagenen thinks the fans would’ve bought into it, and the Season 2 opener was testing the waters for it, but didn’t seem to think it was the plan.

(The travel issue might have been related to Taya based on a later discussion, or it might have been more people. Travel/immigration comes up again when talking about a discussion about who’s really dead, so maybe it was a Daga joke?)

The other thing that came up about the title change was the shot of the four women in the front row cheering for Sexy Star right at the finish. Plenty of people, myself included, wondered if they were plants. Van Wagenen’s explanation is they were the wife of a cameraman and her three girlfriends, in Los Angeles for a bachelorette party. They were on VIP guest passes, and they were moved to a camera friendly position as part of a normal policy of trying to make the crowd look as diverse as possible on TV. (That’s a thing you can do when you don’t charge for tickets.) Van Wagenen were not paid to be there, and the show generally can’t afford to pay to cast people as plants if even they wanted to do that. Later, when talking about the camera people who love to work on the show for the experience, Van Wagenen mentions an Emmy award winning cameraman turning up one weekend to ask to film the show, but they had no room in their budget to pay him. (In that case, the camera guy still wanted to work for free, and they used the footage for some of the “previously” show opens.)

The big picture question is when Season 4 will be taped. That’s still up in the air. It won’t be January, and the closest to a date is Van Wagenen saying “Ideally, we’re taping in the spring”, to avoid taping in the hot summer. He was careful with his words, noting a lot of things are in the air. He made it clear he expects the show will return for season 4, but as of yet they don’t have a pick up or a set budget and don’t expect to have that by the end of this year. They can’t work on taping dates until that happens.

I’m already cribbing too much, so I’ll cut if off there. You should go listen to the podcast for the stories about Mil Muertes punching Van Wagenen at the last LU live event and why there were so many Rabbit Tribe vignettes.

CultIcon has a preview of the show.

Kahn-Del-Mal promoted the upcoming Chilapancingo taping as “the last one before Guerra de Titanes.” My guess has been AAA would start 2017 with their usual year end show (which I guess is now the usual year start show) and that seems to be happening. The date and location is still unknown; it was 01/22 in Mexico City this year.

A LA Park vs Pentagon vs Pagano match in Nuevo Laredo ended with some of the usual challenges, but also LA Park expressing his feelings about AAA’s office (and portraying Pentagon as their puppet.)

Averno brags about the OGT’s trios title win and Drago & Aerostar talk about their tag title match.

CMLL’s health announcement with the senate turned out to be participation in a campaign against prostate cancer. Hechicero & Estrellita represented CMLL. The cancer is currently not discovered/treated until it’s in an advance state for 75% of Mexican men, so they’re working on prevention and awareness in a campaign starting next year. Hechicero says his father has fought this cancer for 20 years.

CaraLuchas says the Hechicero/Fly Warrior vs Ultimo Guerrero/Templario match on 12/03 will be the first part of a Gran Alternativa like tournament they’re doing. They’ll be announcing more on this tournament later today.

LuchaWorld has the latest Lucha Report, including a recap of the newly named +LuchaTV podcast, EN+CARADOS. On that podcast, Extreme Tiger said he’ll be out 2-3 months after hurting his shoulder on The Crash. The podcast also mentions Caifan said Sunday was his final Lucha Memes show, though no one seemed to know why.

Kcidis draws LA Park & Rush’s Christmas wishes.

Bandido sees his first season in Elite as improving from making a lot of errors in his debut to improving enough to win the welterweight title match in the end. (That generally would be true if not for the harsh ending to the title match.)

The New Yorker has a video story on Cassandro.

CultIcon pleads for Valiente to put on some pants.

Lineups

CMLL (TUE) 12/06/2016 Arena México
1) Acero & Aéreo vs Pequeño Universo 2000 & Pequeño Violencia
2) Príncipe Diamante, Sangre Imperial, Sensei vs Arkángel de la Muerte, Metálico, Nitro
3) Star Jr. vs Raziel [lightning]
4) Blue Panther Jr., Drone, The Panther vs El Cuatrero, Forastero, Sansón
5) Blue Panther, Guerrero Maya Jr., Rey Cometa vs Ephesto, Luciferno, Pierroth
6) Ángel de Oro, Atlantis, Carístico vs Euforia, Gran Guerrero, Niebla Roja

Semimain is a rematch; not sure if Ephesto/Maya has a better chance than Ephesto/Idol but who knows. Fourth match should be fun. Principe Diamante gets booked two straight weeks, which maybe justifies working all year for a bodybuilding contest.

CMLL (TUE) 12/06/2016 Arena Coliseo Guadalajara
1) Mágico & Reyko vs Carlo Roggi & Thunder Boy
2) Leono, Magnum, Star Black vs Artillero, Ráfaga, Rey Trueno
3) Princesa Sugehit, Silueta, Skadi vs Amapola, La Comandante, La Seductora
4) Johnny Idol, Máximo Sexy, Titán vs Cavernario, Felino, Terrible
5) Mistico, Valiente, Volador Jr. vs La Máscara, Mr. Niebla, Último Guerrero

A Sky Team main event with Mr. Niebla.

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