CMLL Friday night return lineup announced, Heroes Inmortales Sunday

Sunday

CMLL’s posted their lineup for next week

CMLL (FRI) 10/06/2017 Arena México
1) Shockercito & Stukita vs Mercurio & Pequeño Nitro
2) Blue Panther Jr., Fuego, The Panther vs Misterioso Jr., Sagrado, Vangellys
3) Valiente vs Hechicero [lightning]
4) Cavernario, Felino, Negro Casas vs Pierroth, Rush, Sam Adonis [Relevos Increíbles]
5) Dragón Lee, Mistico, Soberano Jr. vs Luciferno, Mephisto, Rey Bucanero
6) Carístico, Diamante Azul, Marco Corleone vs Gran Guerrero, Shocker, Último Guerrero

It’s leaning towards a regular show, with maybe the guys in the fifth match bumping out guys (or women) who would be in the second match. Getting the stars work is going to be the short term priority. They’re picking up as if they haven’t been missing for weeks, with the Negro Casas/Sam Adonis feud seemingly heading to a big match on 10/28 or 11/04.

CMLL’s not posted a lineup for Friday yet. They have put up the usual video preview, with Sagrado announcing Ultimo Guerrero, Mistico, Negro Casas, Dragon Lee, Barbaro Cavernario and Soberano for the show. Ovaciones says the planned main event is Caristico, Marco Corleone, and Diamante Azul vs Ultimo Guerrero, Gran Guerrero and Shocker.

CMLL’s also put up the Zeuxis/Princesa Sugehit mask match.

Heroes Inmortales is this Sunday. It does not appear to be streaming. AAA clearly told the announcers to push the idea of the show airing on Twitch, so something happened (or didn’t happen) this week. It will turn up on TV starting about two weeks from now.

The full card is here.  The listed start time is 6pm CT, which means 6:40 on AAA’s clock. AAA had said they were doing Hall of Fame inductees at this show prior to TripleMania, but there’s been no mention of those in the leadup. Some thoughts on the matches they did mention.

  1. The Reina de Reinas title has never meant as much to the fans as the person who’s holding it at that moment (usually due to promotional lack of interest.) It would probably mean a lot to Lady Shani to win but would not make her much bigger of a star to the fans if she did it like that. If Ayako is going to available for a while, or even just for the major shows, it’d be better for Hamada to win and Shani to chase for a while. If not, it’s not like Shani’s winning is any worse for that title than it was before. My hunch is Shani is going to win so AAA can say they’re getting it right now, but they would’ve largely missed the point.
  2. Likewise, the Cruiserweight championship doesn’t mean much because AAA’s given up on caring about it for months (years?) at a time. I feel the opposite of the women’s title situation here: Hijo del Vikingo should win it right away, to immediately establish him as someone fans need to pay attention too and not just one guy in pack of new names. There’s no one really to chase and AAA needs all the new names it can get. Mascara de Bronce seems more likely to win, but it would be counterproductive given how much he’s been destroyed on TV – it would make the Cruiserweight Title a jobber title, and there’s no need for that. Either way, the multiman match should be exciting, and Mundo losing a title here probably tells the tale for the rest of his title matches.
  3. There’s more interesting possibilities with Poder del Norte as trios champs – AAA has limitless combinations of tecnicos they could throw together as a team to face them – and I think they’re getting it as a reward for their mask loss. It would mean that no one’s in that Golden Opportunity had anything work out for them: Venum lost the mixed tag title match, Lanzelot lost in the Copa TripleMania, Raptor would lose his trios title match, and Mascara de Bronce never even got his shot.
  4. The Latin American Title match is the hardest one to pick. Texano & Fantasma don’t especially need it, though it would add to the importance of the championship if it was part of a feud that heated. Psycho Clown doesn’t really need it, and should be focusing on whoever wins the last title match. It could be a La Parka prize, it could be something sent to Impact as part of the cross over promotion. Escorpion and Marty are both doing a lot right now and wouldn’t be outrageous winners. I have no feel for this at all.
  5. Rey Wagner beating Johnny Mundo, giving AAA a setup to do another Wagner/Psycho match at Guerra de Titanes, seems like the easiest way to go. (It also leaves Mundo up to face Vampiro, or Mundo to just go home, or maybe both.) These two don’t seem like they’d mesh well on paper, but the crowd is going to be into Wagner anyway. Mundo should be able to hide in the other two matches but they’re asking a lot out of him.
  6. Lucha cage matches are dumb. Dome cage matches are dumb. I presume Ricky Marvin is losing because any other outcome would be dumb.
  7. Joe Lider has not won a match on AAA TV since April. I don’t think that’s changing, but it seems a pretty strong hint that AAA had no plans to put Lider on TV until their attempt at doing a draw/non finish at TripleMania bombed. Lider’s there to do stuff no one else would agree to do, and to let this feud keep going until Guerra de Titanes.

It’s another slow weekend. Today’s shows include

Sunday has

AAA Japan announced a bunch of matches for the 10/09 Lucha Underground show in Tokyo, prior to the World Cup

This show is expected to air as highlights on SamuraiTV. It’s unclear if it’ll air any other way.

In something just announced a couple days ago, Dulce Garcia (Sexy Star) has a boxing match tonight. It’ll air in Mexico on Televisa Deportes. She’s facing a 0-1 fighter who just fought about six weeks ago. People who know boxing say Dulce was unimpressive in her first match and needs to do better this time.

Lucha Underground has Catrina and Ivelisse promos for their match next week.

Rio Grande’s The Monitor has an interview with Penta Zero M before his match there against Ultimo Ninja & MechaWolf on 10/21.

Powerbomb.TV has a Puma King promo for his 10/22 match against John Silver.

Segunda Caida reviews a couple lucha matches from eariler this year.

lucha TV preview for weekend of September 29th

full size

I think I’m still out of sorts with CMLL shows to keep rhythm. Guess we see next week.

CMLL streams resume on Monday with a Cavernario/Soberano match that seems like it’s must see. Meanwhile, Flip Gordon makes his last streaming appearance on the rudo side of a Relevos Incredibles. Are they setting up a women’s title match in the undercard, or yet another Euforia/Marco title match?

AAA has an hour and change of TV you haven’t seen before getting to the Twitch streamed stuff. Rhythm seems off here, with four out of six weeks skippable because the shows have already aired in unedited form (though last week had a Dorian and Vampiro conversation.)

I don’t feel as strongly about the rest of Lucha Underground’s Ultima Lucha 3 as I did Fox/Killshot. There’s some really great matches still, and this week’s Fenix/Marty match is definitely going to bring out the emotions of the participants and the people watching. The issue is I think you didn’t have to watch the last 36 episodes to appreciate that match, while the stuff coming up is more rewarding to those who’ve watched all or most of the series so far.

Two IWRG shows this week would be exciting if the AYM feed wasn’t broke all week and I don’t know how to fix it on my end and I’m not sure if it’ll ever be fixed. It’s possible those uploads are done.

1990 Coahuila/Durango lineups added to the luchadb

the two young men in the main event would go onto have decent careers

I added 1990 lucha libre lineups, mostly from the cities Torreon and Gomez Palacio (but a few from Lerdo!), to the luchadb database over the last week. They’re integrated the different pages of this site, and they’re also just available here. This is a slow continuing project to mine the El Siglo de Torreon archive for lucha lineups and results. I thought I was going to stop doing these for a while but it’s easy monotonous work that doesn’t require a lot of translation and I’m good at that.

Running total of recent events

year events
1985 150
1986 154
1987 152
1988 176
1989 188
1990 170

 

This year was tougher than the nearer ones. I have been search these lineups out by a text search thru their archive. Siglo’s text index is broken from July 16 to the end of the year leaving no way to search. I instead went thru every Thursday (for Arena Olimpico Laguna) and every Sunday paper to look for lineups, but I’m sure there were results, articles, and odd day lineups that I probably missed. On the other hand, this went quicker because I zeroed in on a year instead of doing five at a time, and I was usually doing those sort of check every Thursday/Sundays after the fact to find missing shows. It looks like 1991 won’t have the same problem.

My favorite bit, and one of the reasons why I really wanted to do 1990, was finding the first matches of Ultimo Guerrero. He started under the peculiar name of Flanagan, and he started out sooner than we knew. His first match is always said to be in September of 1990, but Flanagan starts appearing on AOL cards as early as June 24. He appears regularly, and quickly gets into a feud which leads to a minor (lightweight!) title match. That feud continues in a singles match the same day as the Asai/Casas match up there. The paper writes it up like so:

Un combate espectacular se anunica para el tercer turno de la tarde, y que en mano a mano se ven las caras Super Punck y Flanagan; un duelo de acróbatas que debera de resultar emocionante para el publico y en donde no existe un favorito.

Super Punck (or Super Punk) is the luchador who would later become Ultimo Rebelde, Hooligan and now Luciferno.  (I think the current Super Punk in the arena is possibly ex-CMLL’s El Rebelde, or some other relative.) Baby Ultimo Guerrero and Baby Luciferno in an acrobatic duel is amazing thought. The two started teaming together later in the year. They’re many years away from that team taking them to Promo Azteca and the rest of their careers.  Still, it seemed like at least the Dipp family booking Arena Olimpico Laguna figured out not-yet-Ultimo Guerrero was going to special from day 1 by the way they used him.

I kept track of a lot of articles. So many articles. I split them up into categories in case you’re interested in any of them.

Local Stories

General History

Luchador of the Week type short bios/interviews

CMLL back to normal next week, AAA Lucha World Cup (finally) announced, TxT

AAA lottery tickets

TxT (THU) 09/28/2017 Palenque de la Feria, Tulancingo, Hidalgo [+LuchaTV]
1) Aeroboy, Hormiga, Jimmy b Amo de la Noche, Black Fire, Paranoiko
2) Crazy Boy, Fishman Jr., Rayman b Canek Jr., Cien Caras Jr., Heddi Karaoui
set up Rayman vs Karaoui for the WWA LH title (when? where?)
3) El Bandido (Indie) b Ángel Blanco Jr. © [WWA WELTER]
Bandido wins the title in an upset. Blanco falls on his 3rd defense.
4) El Dandy, El Hijo Del Santo, Mil Máscaras, Santo Jr. b El Hijo del Solitario, Satánico, Silver King, Silver King Jr.

Bandido can add this championship of a promotion that doesn’t actually exist to his Elite Welterweight Championship. I totally expected it would be Santo Jr. who beat Angel Blanco Jr. for the title as his first big win. Hijo del Santo seems to have always thought highly of Bandido, bringing him to the UK (under a variety of names) and picking him as his most recent singles opponent. The Karaoui/Rayman bit suggests they have plans for another show at some point, but I have no idea when.

This 100 Years of Santo show wasn’t as big a deal as hoped when it first teased months ago. By the standards of a indie show taking place on an odd day in smaller town, they seemed to draw pretty well.

CMLL announced they will resume running shows in Mexico City on Tuesday. The government has given them approval to start running next week, and they’ll begin with the already announced Tuesday show. Everything will be normal from there.

AAA held a press conference to finally announce the Lucha World Cup. The show is 11 days away and AAA had been weird about not mentioning it until now (or the LU themed show before hand.) They quickly introduced the two person team concept and listed all the teams.

1: Mexico (AAA): Psycho Clown & Pagano
2: Mexico (LU): Drago & Aerostar
3: USA (NOAH): Cody Hall & Quiet Storm
4: USA (LU): Marty the Moth & Son of Havoc
5: Japan (NOAH): Taiji Ishimori & HI69
6: International Japan (IGF): NOSAWA & Kendo Kashin
7: International (LU): Vampiro & Mil Muertes
8: UK/New Zealand (FREE?): USA (Impact) DJZ & Andrew Everett

You can see there’s been some changes. I really want DJZ/Everett vs Drago/Aerostar. I’m sure Psycho & Pagano are winning. I’m sure Vampiro & Mil will be in the tournament too long.

other matches for 10/10
King Cuerno vs Angelico
Danny Jones, Diego, Sumrise Natsu vs Taylor Adams, Rekka, and Heidi Katrina

The show will air on SamuraiTV a week later, and Dorian talked about the show airing in Mexico in some way.

No matches were announced for 10/09. I suspect that’s coming soon, though that’s only airing as highlights so we may never seen it either way. It’d be good Twitch content if they could get it, but there was no sign of that happening.

AAA also unveiled the new AAA lottery tickets being put out by Mexican National Lottery. The tickets go on sale today for 25 Mexican Pesos ($1.37 USD.) One has the Pena/Roldan family (Antonio, Joaquin, Dorian, Marisela), one has wrestlers (Fantasma, Psycho, Wagner and Parka.) The money from the tickets will go to reconstruct hospitals and schools damaged by the earthquake. Lottery tickets in Mexico seem to work more like what I would think of as raffle tickets in the US, where every ticket has a serial number on it and a few of those numbers are drawn for prizes.

Psycho Clown talks about his Latin American title match.

Masked Republic is selling a special t-shirt to raise money for earth quake victims. Sleeve Assassin is selling shirts of the time in WCW DDP dressed up as La Parka to raise money for Mexico and Puerto Rico.

como estaz 4×15: hell of war

Rob and I finally return to talk about the best match on this Lucha Underground season, CMLL being on hiatus, AAA’s recent shows, and The Crash’s upcoming ones. This podcast goes about 100 minutes, no matter how many times I say it went two hours.

right click download/rss

The audio gets unbalanced later on. I know what’s going wrong now at least, maybe I’ll get it right someday.

Rob’s Mexico schedule:

 

CMLL Martes: 2017-09-12 

no mountain too big for Microman

Recapped: 09/25-26/2017

All matches aired from Arena Mexico live.

Matches: 

Retro & Sangre Imperial vs Templario & Yago
(11:56 [5:00, 4:19, 2:37], 1/3, ok, via
VideosOficialesCMLL)

La Vaquerita, Marcela, Sanely beat La Comandante, La Seductora, Metálica
(12:45 [6:34, 3:54, 2:17], 2/3, n/r, via 
VideosOficialesCMLL)

El Gallito & Microman beat Chamuel & Mije
(11:07, good, via
VideosOficialesCMLL)

Luciferno, Tiger, Virus vs Esfinge, Fuego, Pegasso
(13:54 [6:21, 3:08, 4:25], 1/3, ok, via VideosOficialesCMLL)

Rey Bucanero, Terrible, Vangellys beat Drone, Johnny Idol, Titán
(12:43 [5:26, 3:34, 3:43], 1/3, n/r, via VideosOficialesCMLL)

Dragón Lee, Stuka Jr., Valiente beat Cavernario, Negro Casas, Shocker
(12:33 [4:07, 1:48, 6:38], 1/3 DQ, ok, via 
VideosOficialesCMLL)

What Happened:

gotta springboard

Shocker fouled Stuka to finish the main event.

This was Chamuel’s Arena Mexico debut after wrestling in Arena Coliseo previously. He is twice Microman’s size.

Thoughts: 

behold the power of Chamuel

The main had teases of what might happen if we ever got to see a 2017 Cavernario/Dragon Lee full length match, and just enough action to send the crowd away satisfied. Not something you need to rewatch, and Shocker fouling Stuka wasn’t built to at all and doesn’t set up anything interesting. Cavernario was entertainingly in Dragon Lee’s face in this one.

The fourth match has some good ideas – Luciferino getting battered 3 on 1 by dropkicks to set up a pin is a nice change of pace with the teammates actually working together – but it doesn’t totally come together as something worth watching. Esfinge coming into too early in the ending sprint was amusing. Tiger has good timing on his big strikes.

this was not good

The third match was a another fun micros match. This Tuesday crowd didn’t seem as into it at first as other ones, but they were getting showered by coins as well. Chamuel did well, selling big for the smaller técnicos to make them see more impressive. Mije had a problem with his tapatia and Gallito seemed like not everything went right, but Microman was the start as always.

The opener was not as exciting as the Fiero-fests, but Templario was out to impress. He was also out to do some springboards, and did a lot of those. Retro does bad quebradoras and I’m really becoming a quebradora snob as I grow older. My Facebook friend Yago still needs a better finish.

Templario has a lot of finishes.