Boring Puebla show, not much better Mexico show tonight, Dragon Lee to MLW, Lucha Capital

a totally normal ending to a show

CMLL (MON) 11/26/2018 Arena Puebla [CMLL]
1) Astro, Centella Roja, Meyer b Espíritu Maligno, King Jaguar, Rey Apocalipsis LA MEJOR LUCHA LIBRE EN VIVO DESDE LA ARENA PUEBLA 26 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2018 (posted by VideosOficialesCMLL)
tecnicos took 2/3.
2) Black Tiger, El Malayo, Hijo del Signo b Arkalis, Súper Astro Jr., Tigre Rojo Jr. LA MEJOR LUCHA LIBRE EN VIVO DESDE LA ARENA PUEBLA 26 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2018 (posted by VideosOficialesCMLL)
Rudos took 1/3
3) Flyer, Kráneo, Volcano b Felino, Tiger, Tyson La Bestia LA MEJOR LUCHA LIBRE EN VIVO DESDE LA ARENA PUEBLA 26 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2018 (posted by VideosOficialesCMLL)
Tecnicos took 2/3.
4) La Bestia Del Ring, Okumura, Terrible b Ángel de Oro, Niebla Roja, Soberano Jr. LA MEJOR LUCHA LIBRE EN VIVO DESDE LA ARENA PUEBLA 26 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2018 (posted by VideosOficialesCMLL)
Okumura replaced Dark Magic (injury?) Rudos took 1/3.
5) Carístico, Valiente, Volador Jr. b Ephesto, Luciferno, Mephisto LA MEJOR LUCHA LIBRE EN VIVO DESDE LA ARENA PUEBLA 26 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2018 (posted by VideosOficialesCMLL)
Tecnicos took 2/3.

A nothing show of bad to ok matches. Maybe they’re setting up a Mephisto/Caristico match. The Voices of Wrestling recap mentioned Dark Magic looked hurt after his match on Friday.

They mentioned the winner of the bodybuilding contest will appear on Informa tomorrow. The contest starts at tomorrow at noon and I have no idea if we’ll see it. I’ll be OK with not seeing it. Edit: This article says Arena Mexico will open to the public at 11:30 for this tomorrow.

Today’s Arena Mexico show doesn’t look much better. There’s no feud going on and none of the matches stand out as good. There is a curious match, Blue Panther in a lightning match against Dragon Rojo. Panther has been in only one other lightning match this year, a match with Rey Cometa that ended in a double countout after a Cometa dive. I’m not sure what strange will happen here, but Panther matches tend to have strange things happen.

The main event is scheduled to be Angel de Oro, Niebla Roja and Diamante Azul versus Ephesto, Mephisto and Rey Bucanero. That may change, since Bucanero missed both weekend shows. Soberano, Stuka and Valiente Titan take on Hechicero, Templario and Vangellys in the semi-main. Maybe. There’s a women’s match, a typical segunda, and a minis match to round it out. The show starts at 7:30pm pn YouTube.

Arena Coliseo Guadalajara has Los Guerreros against Volador, Caristico and Valiente. Going to be tough for Valiente to wrestle in both arenas at the same time so one of those is getting changed. EDIT: This story on today’s show has Titan in Arena Mexico, so Valiente will be in Guadalajara. (This seems to happen when someone’s out hurt and they have to slip in a replacement. Maybe Mistico is on vacation?)

No CMLL show Saturday. They’re canceled for boxing. The only notable Saturday lucha libre show in Mexico City area I can see right now is the Lucha Libre Boom show in Arena Lopez Mateos. That means a lot of luchadors will likely be in attendance for the WWE show at Arena Ciudad de Mexico, which will include La Sombra/Andrade Almas’ first match in Mexico since leaving CMLL.

FULL says they have a TV taping tonight. I have no idea where or when it might be airing.

MLW announced Dragon Lee will be making his debut with them on their 12/13 & 14 show. Rush had mentioned promoters were asking about booking his brother and MLW was obviously one of those promoters. Rush is working the 12/15 ROH TV taping. I figure Dragon Lee will end up doing the same, but there’s been no announcement of that so far. Right now, Dragon Lee has no announced bookings in Mexico, though he is doing a fair bit of TV interviews talking about the reality show.

AAA’s latest Lucha Capital lineup has Pentagon Jr., Aerostar, Golden Magic, Lady Shani, Fenix, Nino Hamburgeusa, Lady Maravilla and Maximo. They removed Murder Clown, Australian Suicide and La Hiedra but not the injured Fenix. No matches are announced. It’ll probably change again.

An AAA spot show in Satillo on Sunday was said to draw about 6,000 people. Main was Psycho Clown over Pagano & Rey Escorpion.

GALLI announced Drago will replaced Fenix on their show next Sunday. The promotion that was running a vacant mall until they got kicked out of the mall (for an indoor baseball practice facility) is better at updating lineups than AAA.

Casandro does an interview about her recent documentary, says she was originally doing a “Jane Fonda” aerobics class when a friend first told her about training wrestling.

LuchaWorld has this week’s Poster-Mania.

+LuchaTV has the latest edition of their podcast.

A 13 year old girl (Angely) debuted in Arena Aficion last Sunday. She’d been training for the year and is believed to be the youngest luchador in the state. She’s the daughter of El Angel; I’m not sure if that’s the AAA one or a different one. (There’s no mention of AAA.)

Lineups

Lucha Memes (SUN) 12/09/2018 Coliseo Coacalco, Coacalco, Estado de México
1) Aliado de Dios vs Zumbi
2) Máscara Magica Jr. vs Sádico
3) M. Plateado Jr. vs Zumbido
4) Imposible © vs Loco Max [IWRG IC MIDDLE]
5) Canis Lupus vs Templario
6) Dragón Bane vs Audaz (CMLL)
7) Ricky Marvin vs Arez

This was the show originally set for Arena San Juan. Dragon Bane/Audaz and Marvin/Arez could be good. Imposible has been restored to being Middleweight champion.

This upcoming Sunday Coacalco show has Virus versus Aramis. That looks good on paper but, and I know this is probably a bad take, but I can’t think of the last great Virus match. He does do as much on indie shows, he’s not been in position to have a great match in CMLL in a long time and he’s not making the miscellaneous trios matches great. It may still be there inside him but I’m not sure if we can count on seeing it.

Generacion 21 has a big show on 12/22 with LA Park & Rush vs Penta & and a mystery person. It looks like it is Caristico in the shadow.

Lucha Capital: 2018-11-21 

Murder Clown, the unexpected Lucha Capital breakout character

Recapped: 11/21/2018

Matches

Argenis beat Mocho Cota Jr.
(5:38, Argenis top rope headscissors, ok, 00:13:07)

Hijo Del Vikingo beat Máscarita Sagrada
(6:05, shooting star press, ok, 00:25:06)

Drago beat Puma King
(9:44, reversed casita, good, 00:39:31)

Keyra beat Vanilla
(13:42, german suplex, good, 01:12:05)

Murder Clown beat Samoano
(6:32, top rope splash, good, 01:40:33)

What happened:

a good sequence

If you thought AAA could make it four whole weeks without a tournament going off the rails, AAA proved you wrong in this episode. It was not all their fault: the Mexico airport was full of delayed and canceled flights due to fog. Those fight issues caused Vampiro and Pagano to miss the show completely. It may have also affected Killer Kross & Scarlett’s participation, though that wasn’t as clear. Konnan replaced Vampiro on commentary and took a neutral position instead of the rudo/pro-MAD character. Arturo Rivera and Australian Suicide also posted on Facebook all night.

All the matches were changed around. Máscarita Sagrada, scheduled to face Kross, faced Hijo del Vikingo instead. Vikingo’s opponent Vanilla wrestled Keyra. Keyra’s opponent Drago faced Puma King. A bonus non-tournament match between Argenis and Mocho Cota Jr. was added to the start of the show.

Most confusingly, the main event turned out to be Murder Clown facing Samoano. Murder Clown was also on Facebook for a while (as if that was the thing he was scheduled for), while Samoano had done the usual arm wrestling challenge. It wasn’t clear if the match counted at the time, but three points were awarded to Murder Clown in the standings the next day. It’s possible this counts as a loss for Kross or Pagano.

After the match concluded, Killer Kross – in his gear, as if he had been ready to wrestle as scheduled – beat up both Murder Clown and Samoano. Kross then introduced Scarlett, with both saying they’d win the tournament. There were a lot of questions left unexplained (can Scarlett enter after four weeks? Does Kross get any points for this round? What happens if Kross & Scarlett meet in the tournament? Why weren’t MAD teammates Konnan & Kross friends?), with Kross mostly concerned with threatening the life of the hosts. To make it fully awkward, La Griega insisted on the usual end of show selfie with the winners, which meant Murder Clown was suddenly fine and posing with Kross.

The show was the longest so far. There was a long interview with Puma about his career before the main event as well. It felt like they may have been trying to get the show to run long in hopes that Kross would make it to the building, but Kross showing up for the run-in in full gear made it seem like he had been ready to go.

Thoughts:

head kicks to the back of the head are not fun

This was a weird show. The changes to the matches generally made for a better show than had been originally announced. As long as you don’t spend any time trying to figure out what this means for this tournament or why Kross was there but did not wrestle, it was a solid show. I like Lucha Capital because it has good matches and no nonsense, and they were veering into the nonsense portion by the end of the show. We will have to see how it goes once the fog lifts next week.

Murder Clown versus Samoano was better than it had any right to be. Both guys seemed motivated by the opportunity. Murder Clown apparently can do more in singles matches than he’s shown the last couple of years and is very willing to throw himself into dives. They also both looked strong with their ability to throw around each other guy for big moves. It is a bit amazing that Murder Clown and Rey Mysterio have the same finishing sequence.

Vanilla and Keyra felt like it was less reheased than most matches on this show, with them both being a little bit not on the same page at times and also a little bit going hard at other times. It made the match a bit ragged but it made it compelling. Vanilla coming thru with a hard dropkick and then having a look at fear of what Keyra would inevitably do back toward her was an amazing thing. (Vanilla didn’t seem prepared for the kick to the back of the head later.) When they were working together, they worked together pretty well and exchanges like the big forearms near the end came off impressive. They got asked to go about twice as long as they might have been asked on a normal show and managed to make it thru without losing the crowd. Vanilla’s flying is still not great – the tornillo was shaky, the pin attempt after eve more so – but this was her best match in a while.

Murder Clown power

Drago & Puma was pretty good, with Puma showing some stuff we haven’t seen from him. Drago is still obviously not 100%, but he did enough to be interesting. He also survived the accidental superbomb near the end, which seemed scare everyone. The cradle reversal sequence at the end was well done, but I still wanted a little bit more out of the match.

Hijo del Vikingo tried to have a match around Máscarita Sagrada, taking a few of his moves and selling big. It worked only slightly better than with Keyra. Vikingo’s took a few big bumps and sold big but mostly just moved slow. Sagrada is not a great inclusion in this tournament and I hope he’ll move out.

Argenis and Mocho Cota was solid even if they didn’t amount to much. Argenis rarely makes TV now, so it was a bit of a surprise to see him win but also does not matter. He did a little flying, Cota was a good base, and it was fine.