Dia de los Muertos, The Crash Anniversary tour begins, AAA in Queretaro, Castillo de Terror

CMLL tonight

IWRG (THU) 11/02/2017 Arena Naucalpan [+LuchaTV, The Gladiatores]
1) Guerrero 2000 & Lunatic Xtreme b Alas de Acero & Shadow Boy
2) Lady Cat & Ludark Shaitan b Dulce Luna & Lili Dark
3) Pantera I © b Arez [IWRG IC Light]
3rd Defense
4) Dinamic Black, Dragón Fly, Eterno, Hijo del Alebrije, Imposible, Rafy b Heddi Karaoui, Hip Hop Man, Pantera del Japon, Pleitto Castillo, Taylor Wolf, Veneno
Imposible beat Hip Hop Man to win.
5) Black Warrior, Capo Del Sur, Máscara Año 2000 Jr. b Mr. Electro, Trauma II, Villano V Jr.
6) Spartan L La MoscaTrauma ICapo Del NorteLeoBlack DragónAramisDiablo Jr.Violencia Jr.Warrior Jr. [Castillo del Terror]
Spartan lost his mask to Black Dragon. Spartan is Victor Montes Martinez, from Acapulco, 43 years, 23 years a wrestler.

Spartan losing his mask now only is a surprise in that they didn’t find some way for all the Comando Elite to lose their masks at the same time. Arez losing terceras is a bigger surprise. Black Dragon, the hot IWRG rookie of the moment, is definitely not a surprise as a winner.

Travel Notice

I’m leaving for Mexico tomorrow morning, and will be there going to shows until 11/12 (the following Sunday.) I’ll be doing some of this stuff, and probably some podcasts, and maybe even other stuff, but I’m also trying to take it a little easier than usual. It probably won’t work and you’ll have 50 new posters on the lucharbot like normal but who’s to say.

CMLL

Today starts a big weekend, with CMLL, AAA and The Crash all busy. CMLL’s going to be the easiest one for you to follow, so it’s a good place to start. Tonight is the first of three Dia de los Muertos themed shows, where CMLL dresses the arena as if in an underworld theme. One or more wrestlers will stand on the stage in costumed as this year’s god, directing other wrestlers (all disguised in different costumes than usual) to drag the losers away to Hell as a punishment for their failure. It’s a quite a visual, and definitely worth checking out if you haven’t seen this show before. CMLL does a lot of local media promotion of these events, and the pageantry of the event alone should lead to one of the biggest non-apuesta turnouts of the year. CMLL’s Dia de los Muertos shows are not the Anniversario or Homenaje a Dos Leyendas in terms of turnout, but they’re probably doing the best of that second tier (and paying for the artists and design may be cheaper than paying for a mask or hair loss.)

The lineup is worth a watch even without the extra presentation, and that presentation doesn’t weight down the matches all that much. The big happening on the show is the Rey del Inframundo cibernetico. It’s designed to be the first of an annual competition, with whoever winning the belt this year possibly defending it next year. It’s a stacked group of eight – Valiente, Mistico, Soberano, Diamante Azul, Hechicero, Sanson, Cuatrero, and Forastero – where the biggest problem is that it comes on the heels of CMLL just doing another one of these. Hechicero’s arguable the least pushed of all the guys right now (maybe he’s ahead of Forastero), but he’s been used as the spokesperson for this Dia de los Muertos shows and stands a better chance of pulling off a big win anyway.

The actual main even is interesting, because it’s the Guerreros versus three tecnicos who do not get along at all. Caristico & Volador have spent the last couple of weeks taking shots at each other, and no one likes Rush. CMLL’s really not followed up on Volador & Caristico having issues since the Leyenda de Plata, but there’s a chance something more might happen between them or El Ingobernable.

The rest of the card includes Dalys defending the CMLL women’s championship against Marcela, the same match they did almost exactly one year ago. That show wasn’t the Dia de los Muertos show, but it was a Dalys successful defense and everything indicates this will be the same. Angel de Oro & Niebla Roja team with Stuka to face Cavernario, Negro Casas and Shocker. Puma, Tiger and Virus are usually a good trio, and they take on Drone and the two luchadors going to ROH, Esfinge & Rey Cometa. Astral & Robin face Artillero & Espanto in the opener; I think the Robin/Flyer/Magnus team got one match as a unit after they announced their group and haven’t even been together in openers since.

One last time: this show will air one hour later than usual if you didn’t change your clocks last week. Here in the US Central Daylight Time, that means it’s a 9:30pm start.

Wrestling With GIFs has a preview/introduction for everyone in the Rey del Inframundo match.

The Dia de Muertos shows continue this weekend. There may not be a show a month from now, though. Red Bull Batalla de Los Gallos announced they’ll be holding an event on 12/03 in Arena Mexico. That’s an international rap battle competition, and it’s on a Sunday at the traditional time for those shows. Not sure if that means more people will go to Guadalajara for the day or if they’ll run a show Coliseo or if they’ll just have the day off.

Esfinge expressed surprise that Esfinge was going to Ring of Honor.

The Crash

The Crash’s adventurous 11 shows in 13 days tour kicks off tonight in Guadalajara. The big show is tomorrow in Tijuana, and that’s the only one sure to make video. It looks like there’s a few changes on these lineups; Shane Strickland appears to be replacing Keith Lee, Lacey Lane will be in for Diosa Quetzal and I believe Rey Fenix is off the TJ show because AAW has him listed. (He wasn’t ever booked on tonight’s show.) Tonight’s Guadalajara show has a Flamita versus Sammy Guevera match, following up on a three way match with Rey Horuz in PWG that was said to be great.

Bernardo Guzman writes about the Crash’s big tour. I’ve written a lot about turnout, but the other thing to see is how the wrestlers hold up. These guys are wrestling a hard style and running as many days as the Crash is expecting to run is going to be a big workload. I’m sure they’ll do their best to manage the workload, and it’s a helpful to have different people main eventing in different places to keep people fresh and allow others to pace themselves.

Tickets for The Crash’s show as part of WrestleMania weekend are now on sale.

AAA

AAA is taping tonight in Queretaro. This is a show that was moved from their normal building to a much smaller one. No one reason was given; ticket sales are always the easy guess, but it’s possible something else was going on (AAA’s capable of concealing how full buildings are and changing locations is a nuisance, they wouldn’t be making this change unless they had to.) As always with 2017 AAA, there is a lineup, and we have no idea how many of the matches on the card will happen. It may be all of them, it may be none of them. It was one last time.

The listed main event on the announced lineup is three way with Texano Jr., Psycho Clown and Rey Escorpion. It’s supposed to be for Hijo del Fantasma’s Latin American championship, only Texano stole it from Fantasma seconds after he won it and still has it at last check. Escorpion & Psycho are also feuding, so the logical bit would be Texano getting the match with Fantasma. It’s AAA, so anything could happen, including a four way with everyone involved.

The other title match on the card is scheduled to be OGT challenging Poder del Norte for the AAA Trios Championships. Poder del Norte won the belts outright back on Heroes Inmoratles thanks to help from the OGT, who challenged for a shot after. OGT actually first asked for a shot way back in May, it’s come up a couple times and they may finally have the rudo vs rudo match here. (It seems like the OGT storylines get the most follow thru of everything in AAA. That was the same show where the briefcases were handed out, and we’ve seen how that’s gone.)

The rest of the show has matches. Some of them look pretty good. But there’s no telling if any of them are happening so we’ll move on.

Mesias isn’t on the card, and probably won’t be in action for a while. Puerto Rico’s Contralona mentions he underwent double knee surgery on Thursday. All wrestlers seem to have knee problems, but ones which require double knee surgery could explain why he’s not looked like himself in the ring for quite a while. It might explain the strange ending to his TripleMania match (which might have been a knee going out for real), and why his Heroes Inmortales match didn’t air. He was not moving well on the Lucha World Cup, but he was still wrestling as recently as this weekend’s run of sorta-Martinez shows in the US. No idea when he’d be back.

Everything else

I’ve failed to keep you updated on the happenings of Enamorándonos, an Azteca 7 show in Mexico that started as a dating show to have drifted into a typically strange Mexican variety show. (I fail on most Mexican cultural things, as non-Mexican not living in Mexico. This one of the twelve times a day where I wonder why I’m the one doing the and not the million people more qualified.) This seems like Multimedios’ Noches de Futbol, which started as a vaguely soccer related show and had signing & dancing contests and luchadors acting in skits last time I started it. Anyway, this was the show Dragon Rojo has been training a clown to fight Shocker, which is why neither has been around CMLL at the moment. The clown Oskarin won by DQ after being handcuffed to the ropes and other stuff happened, just watch it for yourself. This led to evil Shocker getting into an argument with special guest Cibernetico, and the two agreed a of match on 11/26 in Juan de la Barrera. A Shocker/Cibernetico match does not sound like something that will be getting a lot of stars (unless there’s a negative sign in front of them) but I’m curious to see if they can draw off this TV show. It worked for Noches de Coliseo, when they put Multimedios celebrities in the ring, but also people also bitterly complained it killed the wrestling business in Monterrey. I think the wrestling business tends to kill the wrestling business, but I guess we’ll see.

There was a Dia de Muertos altar put together by the local commission and arenas in Ciudad Juarez. Ari Romero, Fishman, Eddy Guerrero, and many more were remembered.

Caristico replaces Mistico against Sam Adonis on the 11/26 lucha libre show in Palmetto, Florida.

Heroes of Lucha Libre runs a second show in Ontario, California on 12/09. The main event is Rayo de Jalisco & Tinieblas vs Cibernetico & Trumposo, and Mistico & Dragon Lee face Sam Adonis & Russian Hacker in the semimain. The opener is Pierrothito & Demus taking on Octagoncito and Mini Rey Mysterio (the second Octagoncito), which sounds like it should be pretty good. It’s a bit of a surprise they’re running a second show after the first one didn’t draw close to what they were publicly expecting. Either they set the bar higher than it really needed to be or they’re pretty well funded.

LuchaWorld has the latest Lucha Report.

Lineup

IWRG (SUN) 11/05/2017 Arena Naucalpan
1) Full Contact vs Skanda
2) Lunatic Xtreme vs Demonio Infernal
3) Hijo del Alebrije vs Cerebro Negro
4) Leo, Mike, Rafy, Teelo vs Liderk, Rayan, Spartan, Spector
5) Diablo Jr., El Hijo del Diablo, Imposible © vs Black Dragón, Dinamic Black, Dragón Fly [EdM Trios]
first defense
6) Black Warrior & Warrior Jr. vs Pirata Morgan & Pirata Morgan Jr. and Trauma I & Trauma II
7) Emperador Azteca, Villano IV, Villano V Jr. vs Capo Del Norte, Capo Del Sur, Máscara Año 2000 Jr.

Missed this yesterday. The Diablos won the belts back in April, celebrated big, and never got around to defending them. Title change is possible.