No IWRG last night. There was an enormous rain storm in the Mexico City area, causing bad flooding in some areas. The conditions looked unsafe to get people to the wrestling show, so they canceled the show.
DTU starts it’s weekend tour tonight in Arena Aficion. They’re bringing in extreme wrestlers from GCW this time around, with Ciclope & Miedo Extremo taking on Jimmy Lloyd & Matt Tremont in the main event. The other story is Angel o Demonio joining the X-Law side and trying to convince Ovett to join him. They’re partners in the semimain tonight.
CMLL Informa announced Satoshi Kojima as being on Team World for the Gran Prix. This would be Kojima’s debut in Mexico. He’s popular among NJPW fans, but not really known that much in Mexico; the announcement of Kojima participating led to JCR and Ultimo Guerrero talking about everyone but Kojima. (It sounded like UG would like another match with Michael Elgin.) He’ll do fine, and he’ll probably be more over in his Lucha Memes appearance because that’s higher concentrated amount of educated fans, but I kind of thing he’ll just be a Japanese guy to most of the crowd unless CMLL spends some time building him up.
The WON has a story about Sanada coming to CMLL; he was the guy being quietly rumored as being added yesterday before Kojima was announced. There are four spots (or three spots if Marco’s right) left so he could still be added later. Sanada wrestled a little bit in Mexico before going to NJPW and would probably fit in better, but would continue the pattern of NJPW sending their B/C heavyweight type guys and not their top guys or the juniors who might fit in better.
CMLL Informa also had JCR mention that NJPW & ROH wrestlers would only be working in CMLL and likewise with CMLL wrestlers, but Caristico and Sam Adonis were actually independents and so they might be working other places. (I guess Marty Scurll, Cody and the Young Bucks must also actually be indenpedents in CMLL’s thought process.) It didn’t seem connected to anything, except JCR must’ve known those guys were about to be announced for someone else, and today Caristico was announced for an Ultimo Dragon Fiesta show with AJPW on 08/19. They’re treating it like a DragonMania show in Japan. I suspect Adonis will be on that show too.
Imapct announced the tag title team match on Slammiversary will be LAX versus AAA’s Hijo Fantasma & Drago versus NOAH’s Marafuji & Ishimori versus The Crash’s Laredo Kid & Garza Jr. That should be a pretty good match and that’s important. It’s also a match that seems totally impossible to happen in Mexico. Impact themselves refers to the The Crash promotion in the press release (though the NOAH team is treated as a much bigger deal since they’re guests.) I’d think the state of things means the Crash and AAA teams can’t lose to each other, but Impact’s gone this far, who knows how much they can get these two promotions to get along for a PPV that’ll maybe get seen by 20,000 people.
Lucha Underground has been deathly quiet on this situation. And everything else of late.
Octagon’s press conference yesterday announced the Asociación Nacional de Luchadores Profesionales Independientes. He’s asking for dues of 300 Mexican Pesos (about $17 USD) a month, in exchange for legal help, and assistance with medical and discounts on funeral service.
It’s unclear how luchadors will be signing up: Octagon says the group has a Facebook page, but doesn’t link to it and I can’t find it. I suspect people working a show with Octagon in the near future will be getting sales pitches. Fuerza Guerrera (men), Lady Apache (women), Hijo del Fishman (juniors), Mini Rey Misterio (minis) and Yuriko (exoticos) were announced as heads of various divisions. It seems odd there’s all these groups and it’s this is one of those things that people are going to have see in action to believe it’s going to help them. Octagon says there’s a Facebook with more information, but there’s no Facebook page I can find. I suspect he’ll be pitching guys strongly at shows he works on.
Octagon said they would not be working with the existing Mexico City lucha libre commission, calling Fantasma corrupt. The reports have no explanation why he felt that way, but I’d guess it has something to do with siding with AAA over him. Octagon also said he won his court case for the name over AAA. For what it’s worth, Mexico’s trademark search still shows AAA owns the name.
Hijo del Santo’s quest to get Mexico City to pay for a Santo museum must not be going well: in this interview, he speculates about taking it to Hidalgo or Puebla.
In an interview with SI, Konnan said the Crash was close to a major TV deal. The matches from the latest The Crash show are up on Konnan’s Patreon right now; I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m interested in how it looks if you’ve subscribed to that $5/tier. They’re listed as “KI100+ Monkeys Get It 1st”, so I wonder if that means they might be showing up elsewhere too.
Lucha Memes is running Gimnasio Hercules on 07/15
1) Los Traumas vs Freelance & Mike Segura
2) Extreme Tiger vs Virus
RIOT on 07/29 in Arena Femenil Monterrey
1) a match in the Powerbomb.TV tournament
2) Muerte Extrema vs Psicotico
AAA held a press conference for their 09/04 taping in Irapuato. It’s the taping after TripleMania, so they can’t really announce anything now and didn’t.
An interview with Laguna luchador Tackle, who’s sons wrestle as Tackle Jr. & Bala de Plata Jr. (Bala de Plata is Tackle’s brother.) Tackle was Funebre Jr., but a guy named Raiders named a football tag team partner.
TKD reviews this week’s Lucha Underground.
The new Lucha Talk podcast is up.
Rey Escorpion says he’s happy to team with La Mascara & M-ximo, but still has the door open to return to CMLL.