TripleMania tonight, Internationlals defeat Mexican team in CMLL

war

CMLL (FRI) 08/25/2017 Arena México [CMLL, luchablog]
1) Robin & Star Jr. b Akuma & Espanto Jr. LUCHA LIBRE VIERNES ESPECTACULAR DE ARENA MEXICO 25 DE AGOSTO DEL 2017 FUNCION COMPLETA (posted by VideosOficialesCMLL)
11:06. Tecnicos took 1/3.
2) Disturbio, Misterioso Jr., Sagrado b Drone, Guerrero Maya Jr., Pegasso LUCHA LIBRE VIERNES ESPECTACULAR DE ARENA MEXICO 25 DE AGOSTO DEL 2017 FUNCION COMPLETA (posted by VideosOficialesCMLL)
17:20. Rudos won 2/3.
3) La Vaquerita, Princesa Sugehit, Sanely b Amapola, La Comandante, Zeuxis LUCHA LIBRE VIERNES ESPECTACULAR DE ARENA MEXICO 25 DE AGOSTO DEL 2017 FUNCION COMPLETA (posted by VideosOficialesCMLL)
8:29. Sanely replaced Silueta. Straight falls. Zeuxis purposefully unmasked Sugehit for the DQ in the first, and Sugehit got away with a mask pull on Zeuxis in the second.
4) Soberano Jr. b Cavernario [lightningLUCHA LIBRE VIERNES ESPECTACULAR DE ARENA MEXICO 25 DE AGOSTO DEL 2017 FUNCION COMPLETA (posted by VideosOficialesCMLL)
9:13. Soberano won via powerbomb, though it was a clear screw up. Tirantes counted Cavernario down when he kicked out. Both wrestlers argued the count, continued to their planned finish, but Tirantes refused to count again.
5) Dragón Lee, Mistico, Niebla Roja DQ Gran Guerrero, Shocker, Terrible LUCHA LIBRE VIERNES ESPECTACULAR DE ARENA MEXICO 25 DE AGOSTO DEL 2017 FUNCION COMPLETA (posted by VideosOficialesCMLL)
11:04. Tecnicos took 2/3, the last by DQ when Gran Guerrero unmasked Niebla Roja.
6) Juice Robinson, Matt Taven, Michael Elgin b Diamante Azul, Último Guerrero, Volador Jr. [Relevos IncreíblesLUCHA LIBRE VIERNES ESPECTACULAR DE ARENA MEXICO 25 DE AGOSTO DEL 2017 FUNCION COMPLETA (posted by VideosOficialesCMLL)
13:10. Tecnicos took 1/3. Foreigners worked as total rudos. Johnny Idol came to ringside to distract Ultimo Guerrero and Matt Taven snuck in a foul for the win.

Like last week, there was nothing great on the show but it was not a bad use of time. Cavernario & Soberano clearly could have a great match if they were given the chance, though we may have to wait until NJPW wants to do it since CMLL doesn’t appear to be giving it any run. After playing tecnico/tecnico last week, the foreigners are working more simply rudo without Marco around to keep them in line.

Sugehit/Zeuxis was easily more over than Gran Guerrero/Niebla Roja. I’m not sure if that would be the case if the roles were reversed, because some of the non-reaction has to be displeasure about that match being the mask match and having more spotlight on the women wouldn’t actually help them. The best thing for the women is to continue getting more over than the men, stealing the show on 09/16, and forcing CMLL to take them more seriously going forward. They’d seem to get more out of that then a one night “we screwed up so, here’s this” main event. I’m not sure if there is a best thing for Roja/GG, but I expect they’ll continue to muddle thru their generic build to their generic match, it’ll be decently good, and then we’ll all just move on.

TripleMania is today. You can watch the show for free on Twitch, in English (Kevin Gill, Gabriel Ramirez) and Spanish. The schedule, in Central Time

  • ongoing-7pm: best of TripleMania marathon
  • 7:00-7:40: preshow, previewing the card
  • 7:40-8:00: La Llave a La Gloria finals
  • 8:00-???: main TripleMania card
  • after the Mayweather/McGregor: Psycho Clown vs Dr. Wagner

That match is airing after the fight on Televisa, as it’s been advertised on Televisa for months. I guess there’s always a change things could get screwed up and Televisa would air on some delay, but I believe the plan is still for it to air live.

I’m curious on how ads are going to work on Twitch. There will be some, but they’re airing about every 15 minutes on the best of stream, hopefully they’ll be timed to be in between matches when they actually go live.

My plan is mostly to write updates on Twitter and try to aggregate them on the website, then post a recap later. But my website will die with a swift breeze so Twitter’s probably the best bet.

Outside the main event, there’s not a lot of news going on with the matches. For the people not in matches, the answer is a lot of maybes.

  • Taya’s tweeting happily with other ex-AAA people and doesn’t seem like she’s about to work TripleMania.
  • AAA probably wants Alberto to be the mystery man in Torneo TripleMania and there’s a reported he’s headed to a feud with Jeff Jarrett that’ll start here. The one bit certain to be true from what Alberto said the other day is he’s not going to be working this match unless he’s gotten paid in advance.
  • LA Park isn’t listed as working any shows today. He’s also insisted many times he won’t be working this show.
  • Same with La Mascara and Maximo, though Maximo had previously said he was taking a booking on this day elsewhere.

I checked Mexico’s trademark search to see if there was any movement on “El Patron Alberto”, since AAA trademarking it was said to be an existing source of strife between them. Nothing’s changed, but AAA did officially file for “Lanzelot” about 10 days ago.

AAA had a press conference yesterday, but it was mostly inconsequential. They just had Dorian & the CEO of Roshfrans interview both Psycho Clown and Dr. Wagner about this match. Dr. Wagner was teasing like this could be it for him, which is probably the way to go regardless of the outcome. No one else appeared, though+LuchaTV got brief promos with Crazy Boy, DJZ, and Intocable and Scorpio Jr. There’s also a Vamprio interview which might be from a previous press conference – it’s so tough to tell when anything is from on +LuchaTV – but I could only make it about two minutes before I needed to move on.

CultIcon previews TripleMania.

Konnan said The Crash will have an announcement tomorrow. Konnan managed to post that exactly at 11:59pm local time, so your guess is as good as mind if he meant Saturday or Sunday. TV is the what people want the answer to be, but I’m skeptical it’ll be that. The Crash & Rush rumors are getting another run and Rush is hinting at surprises on his Facebook.

Coliseo has Juice Robinson vs Shocker, which will be weird. CMLL’s had the foreigners win every match and that would not be a time to change it. DTU is running the car wash with a Hormiga/Camuflaje Alto Impacto title match. Sunday has Euforia vs Matt Taven.

La Aficion has a complimentary profile of Rush, which might not be coincidentally coming after the not complimentary article.

El Hijo del Santo writes about the time he and Negro Casas were thrown out of a match for going out of control with brawling. It’s this match. Santo says they were suspended from Arena Mexico 60 days. They wrestled in Arena Mexico less than a month later.

Lucha Underground posted a Mariposa promo. She makes a point of mentioning that Marty is her half-brother and not of full blood, and that she’d rather Marty was going after her than Melissa.

LuchaWorld has the latest edition of their podcast.

CMLL edecanes are featured in the latest H Para Hombres magazine.

Lineups

CMLL (FRI) 09/01/2017 Arena México
1) Blue Panther, Blue Panther Jr., The Panther vs Cuatrero, Máscara Año 2000, Sansón
2) Marcela, Princesa Sugehit, Silueta vs Amapola, Dalys, Zeuxis
3) Carístico, Mistico, Soberano Jr. vs Cavernario, Felino, Negro Casas
4) Diamante Azul, Dragón Lee, Euforia, Mephisto, Rush, Último Guerrero, Valiente, Volador Jr. vs Johnny Idol, Juice Robinson, Kenny King, Kojima, Marco Corleone, Matt Taven, Michael Elgin, Sam Adonis [Gran Prix]

It’s the Gran Prix, so a four match show. Surprisingly, we’re free of Niebla Roja & Gran Guerrero for a week, though Sugehit and Zeuxis are back again.

Mascara 2000 hasn’t wrestled in CMLL since they used him for the Sanson/Cuatrero vs Navarro/Terry feud, and hasn’t wrestled in Arena Mexico since June when they ran this exact same match. There’s no reason for him to be involved on this show but it helps to be friends with the people in charge.

Triplemania mask match result revealed?

You should stop right not and not read this update if you want to go into tonight’s mask match with 0% knowledge of what’s going to happen. I’d point you the the preview I wrote for Voices of Wrestling instead. The normal news update will go up separately. 

Late last night, a poster surfaced for an AAA show in Oaxaca on 09/17. The main event is listed as Poder del Norte against Hijo del Fantasma, a surprise luchador, and “presented without a mask” Dr. Wagner Junior. That would indicate Wagner is losing his mask tonight to Psycho Clown.

The poster is everywhere among people who talk about lucha libre right now; the most scandalous image in lucha libre is the lineup for a show that’ll draw maybe a 1000 people. I’m not exactly sure where the poster originated; the Facebook accounts for the local group (Promociones Rams) haven’t been updated since 2013, but I’d guess it was on Facebook somewhere. Dr. Wagner has seen the poster, because he’s RT-ed it, but he hasn’t actually said anything about it and neither has AAA. I’d be surprised if they acknowledged it either way.

Rams is a small promotion by AAA affiliate standards; they don’t need run many shows, they don’t get TV tapings. They wouldn’t be figure to be in AAA’s inter circle. Monterrey’s KDNA group seems to be a more important group – they do run every week, they get major shows – and their next lineup has “the loser of the mask match” instead of a specific person. (Rob asked around about this, and the impression was the KDNA promoter doesn’t even know who’s going to be sent to him for this show at this point.) It doesn’t make a lot of sense for AAA to be telling people who will be losing this match, and this doesn’t seem like the person they’d normally pick to tell. There’s plenty of people who work much more directly to AAA who did not know who was going to lose as recently as last night.

This reveal would represent a tremendous screw up by AAA to let this get out. It make no sense, it would be a willful error of a giant magnitude to the point where I have trouble believing someone could mess up this bad. I may have trouble with that belief, but most people talking about this point to all the other times AAA’s royally screwed up in recent years and don’t see it as that much of a stretch. My instincts and what I’ve picked up has suggested Psycho was the loser tonight, but I’m at the point where I don’t really trust my instincts (the Atlantis/Sombra point?) – I now think it’s going to be Dr. Wagner who’s unmasked.

This poster is everywhere. It’s going to be hard to avoid spoilers. And yet – I don’t think it really hurts the amount of interest in the match. A Dr. Wagner fan is not going to turn away because he’s going to lose – there might be more interest because the more historically relevant man losing his mask. It’ll dampen the excitement of the match if people feel they know the outcome already, but everyone’s going to want to see that unmaking moment anyway because it still means so much. And, if this happens and once we get over the colossal screw up of it all, there’s also a story about AAA incredibly pulling off the mask loss that no one thought was actually possible.

If I was running AAA, I would cancel that show and never work with that promotion again for letting that promoter out there, I would fire the person in the office responsible for working with them as soon as possible, and I would carry an angry grudge for a long time. It is a good thing I do not run wrestling promotions for my own health. But that all can wait – they’re going to announce a sell out tonight and they’re going to do huge numbers, even if everyone’s already been leaked the outcome.