LU on Netflix (but probably not 02/15), CMLL Parejas Increíbles tournament

CMLL (TUE) 02/07/2017 Arena Coliseo Guadalajara [Martes de Glamour]
1) Mr. Trueno & Rey Trueno b Javier Cruz Jr. & Metatrón
Rudos took 2/3
2) Explosivo, Magia Blanca, Robin b Difunto, El Coyote, Grako
Tecnicos took 2/3.
3) Esfinge, Rey Cometa, Tritón b Bobby Z, Dragón Rojo Jr., Pólvora
Esfinge replaced Stuka (double booked). Revolucionarios continued their win streak by taking falls 1/3.
4) Diamante Azul, Marco Corleone, Valiente DQ La Máscara, Pierroth, Rush
tecnicos took 2/3, the last when Azul unmasked Pierroth
5) Ephesto, Luciferno, Mephisto © b Ángel de Oro, Atlantis, Titán [MEX TRIOS]
Hijos del Infierno took 1/3. Ephesto was pinned in the second, but Lucifierno & Mephisto beat Titan and then Angel de Oro to keep the belts. 9th defense

Good to find out who the national trios champions are, three days later.

I was reading CultIcon preview of today’s CMLL show, and he makes a good if alarming point: the best show on tonight’s CMLL show might be Amapola, Dalys & Zeuxis vs Silueta, Princesa Sugehit and Esterllita. It’s one of the better CMLL women’s trios possible, but it’s not something that would be notable on most Friday nights, much less the best match. Welcome to the CMLL Parejas Increíbles Tournament, where there is no hope.

CMLL’s Parejas Increíbles tournament is an annual event teaming one tecnico and one rudo. CMLL started it back in 2010, when the idea was the teams would represent wrestling homebases. Atlantis & Mascara Dorada won the first two, representing Guadalajara. CMLL’s dropped the location part of the teams, but Atlantis has since won two more. The tournament has sometimes been used as a way to set up apuesta matches for later in the year, and can be useful in that structure. The final is usually pretty good. The rest of the tournament is usually pretty frustrating. The early rounds matches have the same problems in every other CMLL one night tournament – not much time, matches built around the one team getting 90% of the offense and then losing so their other team can save their moves for later, the dumb seeding battle royal! – with the added problems of lucahdors either wrestling out of character or betraying their partners. They will be rushing thru their usual matches, so there will be some excitement on what they can work in, but it’s usually a unsatisfying experience. CMLL is surely aware of the issues with the tournament and has little inclination of fixing them, which adds to the annoyance. Unless you’re a completest CMLL fan, you should skip all of these matches and simply watch the final on 02/24.

Adding to the issues this year is CMLL pushing the Diamante Azul & Pierroth feud strong, setting up the possibility they may wrestle three matches tonight to continue their terrible rivalry. There’s not many alternatives for winners. Cavernario & Volador Jr. teaming in a final would be great no matter who they faced and they have an outside chance. Caristico & Mephisto are partners after being on opposite sides of the final last year and just had a title match, giving them the best chance of advancing out of the this bracket besides Azul & Pierroth. The five other pairs (Kraneo/Marco, Angel de Oro/Rey Bucanero, Mascara 2000/Maximo, Puma/Cometa, Panther/Tiger) are classic CMLL filler teams.

The rest of the show are normal trios matches. The women’s match was already mentioned, maybe they’ll start a title match program tonight. Atlantis, Stuka & Valiente face Rush, La Mascara and Ripper in the tercera. Ripper’s feud with Blue Panther Jr. seems to have been dropped – we’ll really know it’s dead if they don’t team up next week – and the timing seemed to come after he was critical of CMLL’s use of the Invasors on Informa. The opener is Astral’s welcome to the main division. He goes from teaming with a short man who’s not really a mini in a tag match opener against rudos who may or may not want to do things that week to teaming with a short man who’s not really a mini in a tag match opener against rudos who may or may not want to do things that week. (It’s Astral & Principe Diamante vs Raziel & Cancerbero.)

You can read CultIcon’s full preview the show, which airs at 8:3o pm on ClaroSports. The shows are back to being on NJPW World, though with a new plan. They won’t air live, but instead on Sundays at 5pm with Japanese commentary. They tried this with the 01/06 show, and obviously having the language most people use is going to make it more accessible. It’s still not accessible to us, with only those with Japanese IP addresses getting access.

Prior to the show, Janeth Guadalupe and her band will be performing, as part of a tie up with a radio station. This probably won’t air on the stream. I’ve been in Arena Mexico when they’ve had bands before shows and few people have cared about the band (much to the band’s frustration.) Maybe it’ll go different this time? Here is a song of theirs. The real hope is it brings people to the show who might have not thought to go.

Dragon Lee faces Hiromu Takahashi on the New Beginning show in Osaka early Saturday morning if you live in North America; you’ll have about a four hour break after the end of the CMLL Claro show. You can sleep an hour or two longer if you’re only watching that match live, since it’s the semimain. (Start time for your time zone here.)  NJPW has posted the preview video that’ll air before the match, which pushed their rivalry as going around the globe. I’m excited for the match, even while not really believing Dragon Lee has a chance to win.

Lucha Underground, Netflix, and roster changes

Eric Van Wagenen was on the Masks, Mats, and Mayhem show last night, around 1 hour and 6 minutes in, talking about the recent Lucha Underground big topics. As always, I’ve got some quotes about it below but you’re always better off listening to the whole thing.

Lucha Underground is coming to Netflix. It just probably won’t be there on February 15. EVW could not officially official confirm it, not wanting to pre-emept whatever press release, but talks about it as if it is a done deal on their side. Lucha Underground expects to have delivered the episodes by February 15, but doesn’t know when they’re going up. EVW didn’t completely rule out the possibility of the episodes up on the 15th, but said it’s unlikely given what he knows about both the process it takes to roll out videos and the advanced marketing Netflix usually does prior to releasing a new series.

Everyone on the show made a point of not referencing them by name, but it’s came off as they believe MLW pulled the 02/15 date out of thin air and LU sees this as spreading bad info to make the promotion look bad. I wonder if it’s possible someone else in the LU structure saw that episodes were to be delivered to Netflix by the 15th, misunderstood that as the date it would go live. I am no defender of MLW by any means, but I’d at least leave open the possibility they got fed bad info themselves rather than were intentionally putting out bad info. (Of course, that info could only be coming from people associated with LU.)

At this point, you should assume everyone – wrestlers, news sites, even Netflix Twitter folks included – are all working off the original MLW story (though they may have heard it thru other people.) Those episodes will be up but not right away.

EVW said he did not know which places would get the episodes, only that it was cleared for multiple territories. The Spanish language versions of season 1 will also be included.  EVW noted the long lead up to getting this deal done – “The Netflix deal is like giving birth to an elephant…it’s taken two years” – and cited the challenge of aligning the interests of the various different pars of management. There is no Netflix & Series 3 at this point. That’s more a LU issue than a Netflix one. LU is still working on editing season 3 as we speak (based on the hints, they’re on episode 31 – hi WON readers) and Netflix is just going to want a complete season. There’s also an element of LU betting on themselves here – “We’re more optimistic about our Netflix audience than Netflix. I think Netflix is skeptical about getting into the wrestling game, but I think they’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

The other big story is the future of those who’ve left AAA. Eric Van Wagenen was as definite as you can be: “I have zero reason to think those guys [Pentagon, Fenix, Sexy Star, etc] won’t be there for Season 4. We’re planning that they’re going to be there.” EVW sees his job description in part as ‘protect Lucha Underground’, and is also used to dealing with actors and crew who have multiple contracts with different groups at once. Everyone on Lucha Underground is under Lucha Underground contracts, and still is whatever else is going on with them. “As long as they’re honoring my contracts, I don’t get into the rest of it.”

EVW noted Prince Puma/Ricochet was an exception, and one he didn’t want to comment on, but was positive about the status of everyone else. “Johnny Mundo’s still got another year with us, and we’ve got some other people we’re excited to bring in.” EVW said he didn’t know anything about the patents, and found out the same way everyone else did. (Sorry!)

EVW talked about plans to improve the communication between the LU side and the Mexico side with yet to come announcements. He also pushed the idea of being more a full time promotion, recognizing that they need to help find work for the LU luchadors when they’re not taping. “It does us no good if people are starving in between seasons…we understand people need to work year round.” EVW said it make sense to go with Dorian as taking care of things like merchandise for Lucha Underground because he does a good job with those things in Mexico. (Uh.) Finally, we got an answer to the most important LU question of all: the GIFs disappeared because the old El Rey social media guy left, and the new person is just new at this point.

Other Things

Masked Republic is now selling La Rebelion shirts, both the group t-shirt and individual ones for all the wrestlers. The money from those go to the luchadors, and they say the Lucha Underground merchandise does not go to the wrestlers.  merchandise money doesn’t go to most wrestlers. (Edit: Phrased it wrong.)

AAA’s next TV taping was originally planned today, but pushed back to Saturday weeks ago. They were in Aguascalientes last night, and Angelico says they sold out. That crowd was seemed hot on the TV taping last year.

Speaking of AAA, a couple of people pointed out that TNA promoting Nicho as “Psicosis” is a potential issue, since AAA owns that name. They filed a US trademark long ago under AAA directly, and again during the early days of Lucha Underground.  I think Impact would be wise to change the name they list Nicho as next week, and I have no idea what happens if they don’t – if AAA’s going to threaten people for using the Pentagon/Fenix names, they’re kind of obligated to step in here. (Plus, Impact’s working with The Crash, another reason to get involved.)

There was no Luchas 2000 this week due to an issue with the printer.

LigerFever translated a Reyes del Biutiful interview with Mary Apache from this summer, prior to TripleMania. Mary talks about the injuries which kept her out of wrestling for five years and could’ve killed here.

Sam Adonis is featured on BBC Mundo today, also on Vice and mentioned he’s filming something for CNN. Foreign media services love to write about the foreigner who goes to Mexico and plays the evil American, to play off immigration and other political issues. They went nuts for it when it was RJ Brewer and Lucha Libre USA – and all that media didn’t help Lucha Libre USA all that much. Hopefully Adonis and/or CMLL can get something more out of it.

Lucha Memes announced their 02/19 show will be on VOD. It’ll be the same deal as the previous show, with just two matches from the show being offered. This time, they’re going to wait until after the show, see which matches get the best reviews, and choose the two matches that way.

Tinieblas says the Alberto promotion will be in Arena Coliseo Monterrey on 05/28. He’s said they’re running Mexico City on 05/21.

Okumura talks about wresting in the Tokyo Dome in front of 70,000 people. Maybe he’s counting up multiple visits, because that building doesn’t even seat 70,000 people.

RobViper has highlights of 04/06/2016 ELITE.