Lucha Memes empty arena show, deadbeat dad Octagon, retirement talk that’s hard to believe

Lucha Memes (SUN) 04/05/2020 Coliseo Coacalco, Coacalco, Estado de México [+LuchaTV, thecubsfan]
1) La Heroína b InfestLunatik Extreme Chairo Bill Vol. 5 - Lucha Memes c/ T.W.E. desde el Coliseo Coacalco | #QuédateEnCasa (posted by +LuchaTV)
4:09.
2) Alas de Acero & Iron Kid b Cobre & Moria and Corsario Negro Jr. & Drako Chairo Bill Vol. 5 - Lucha Memes c/ T.W.E. desde el Coliseo Coacalco | #QuédateEnCasa (posted by +LuchaTV)
10:45. Iron Kid beat Cobre. Corsario Negro Jr. & Drako were added to the match (instead of facing Arkangel Divino & Ultimo Maldito, who were not present.)
3) Garrobo & Gremlin b Diosa Quetzal & Hahastary Chairo Bill Vol. 5 - Lucha Memes c/ T.W.E. desde el Coliseo Coacalco | #QuédateEnCasa (posted by +LuchaTV)
13:55. Gremlin beat Hahastary in what turned into an elimination match.
4) Aramis b Perro De Guerra Jr. Chairo Bill Vol. 5 - Lucha Memes c/ T.W.E. desde el Coliseo Coacalco | #QuédateEnCasa (posted by +LuchaTV)
9:49. Aramis (replacing Black Terry) beat Perro de Guerra Jr., who was shaken up after.
5) Psicosis II b Toxin Chairo Bill Vol. 5 - Lucha Memes c/ T.W.E. desde el Coliseo Coacalco | #QuédateEnCasa (posted by +LuchaTV)
12:48. Psicosis powerbombed Toxin off the ropes onto some chairs for the win.
6) Ricky Marvin b Arez Chairo Bill Vol. 5 - Lucha Memes c/ T.W.E. desde el Coliseo Coacalco | #QuédateEnCasa (posted by +LuchaTV)
10:10, ending with Marvin caught Arez in a cradle.

This was a better empty arena show than the Vanguardia one; they just did a normal show as best as they could instead of a strange concept. Some of the guys were taking fewer risks than normal, but it wasn’t universal – the three-way tag was full bore.

The show had been presented as a live event happening on Sunday. It was clearly taped sometime prior. Arez posted a photo of himself with no beard before he appeared on the show with a beard. Photos circulated of others who were part of the show watching it from home. YouTube also listed the show as a “premiere”, which is their term for a video that’s been uploaded (instead of streaming live.) There were elements that appeared to be edited in between matches but the matches themselves seemed unchanged.

The fundraiser portion seemed successful. The YouTube chat had lots of donations via SuperChat and stickers. It weirdly was not working for me but seemed to be working for plenty of others. The highest donation I saw was a $50 USD; most were lower than that. Both that function and the account to donate towards were pushed far harder than on the Vanguardia show and seemed more successful as a result.

Lucha Memes taping the show when they said it’d be live and not announcing changes when they knew in advance there would be ones is not a gigantic problem on its own. It’s not a Memes show without people being missing with no real explanation being given. The problem is the Memes, and +LuchaTV, are asking people to trust that they’re going to do the right thing with all the money they’ve been just given when they were not transparent about much smaller things. There’s not really a way for the wrestlers to see how money came – it’s whatever amount Memes & +LuchaTV tells them – and that’s why it was uncomfortable doing it this way. On the other hand, if the wrestlers are unhappy, they could’ve solicited donations themselves as well.

Psicosis mentioned they may be sanctioned for running this show. Everyone involved in this show was aware the State of Mexico issued a statement saying they didn’t want closed-door shows. It’s possible something else was said behind the scenes or that it’ll simply be forgotten once lucha libre starts up again. It’s also possible there’s a cost coming later for this.

Back in 2016, Octagon introduced both the current Hijo del Octagon & two teenage twin sons as people who’d be carrying on his name. This was during Flamita’s run as Octagon Jr., and part of Octagon trying to argue he had the rights both to his name and to any others using it. The twins were a surprise to all. Octagon was believed to have only daughters and even people with AAA were unaware of them. It subsequentially was revealed out that the twins were the children of a relationship between Octagon & luchadora Sahori outside of Octagon’s marriage. Octagon’s never spoken much about them much outside of that one day. Sahori passed away in 2018 after a battle with cancer.

A Facebook account for Juan Carlos Ramirez, who says he’s one of the two twins, has a long post about the unsupportive actions Octagon has taken towards himself and his brother. Sahori sued for child support, Octagon fought against it (though refused to take a DNA test), lost the court case, and then refused to pay the court decided monthly amount. Octagon told Sahori he would pay a smaller account, claiming he didn’t have much money himself, and rarely paid even that amount. Octagon contacted the twins out of the blue to ask them to help him with the Hijo del Octagon press conference, then disappeared from their lives again. They believed they were being brought in so one of them would be trained to be the new Octagon, and only grasped later it was someone else – someone who wasn’t actually Octagon’s son – would be taking that role. Sahori’s medical bills for her cancer treatment left the sons in great debt with, Octagon declaring poverty when asked for help. Octagon was in articles talking about restaurants he was opening at the same time. The twins later went to Octagon for help in paying simply a 500 pesos fee for a university entrance exam and Octagon would not help them. The twins later found someone who could help them get the original child support case re-opened, since Octagon has never paid his obligation, and that’s led to Octagon counter-suing the twins. Octagon’s also threatened to get the twins sent to jail or destroyed in the media, so they felt they had to speak out first. Octagon usually fires off many angry Twitter posts at things like this, but it’s early yet.

New/unseen lucha libre content is close to exhausted. AAA put up the second part of their show from Cancun. That’s the last new matches they’ve got left to upload; AAA’s been airing matches from past major shows on TV instead. CMLL has been out of new matches for a while. Televisa is getting an old Homenaje a Dos Leyendas, starting with 2013 last year and 2014 this past one. The B-shows are getting footage from January, with an occasional unaired Sunday match slipping through. AYMSports/InternetTV is airing repeats of IWRG earlier this year. +LuchaTV should have the last MexaWrestling show, maybe a DTU show, and perhaps some smaller shows left to put up. They also started putting up shows taped back when they were Tercera Caida on Friday.

Arena Rayo de Plata in San Luis Potosi has been running empty arena shows for the last few Sundays on Facebook. Arena Orizaba (Veracruz) also ran an empty arena show for donations this past Sunday.

This is a luchador claiming he’s going to retire soon, which has an extremely low percentage of being accurate. Keep that in mind when I mentioned LA Park says he’s going to retire in a year or two. He says his knee hurt a lot, he says the ligaments are “very torn”, os he’s not going to go on for much longer. LA Park says his goal in all his matches is to make sure the fans leave happy and aren’t ever bored.

Rush & La Bestia del Ring will be interviewed by Lucha Azteca (on Instagram) and by AAA themselves. These are listed as different times, so I think these could be two different interviews going on at the same night. It’s part of many different Mexican sports organizations working together to provide content while everyone’s staying at home. CMLL is not part of that collective, as usual when AAA is involved. There’s always some hope that the latest big world event is the one that’s going to get AAA and CMLL to run a combined show, but current CMLL leadership doesn’t seem amenable to even having a CMLL logo on the same graphic as AAA.

Last week, AAA announced a new roster of sponsored eSports competitors for 2020. The amount of participants seems to have about doubled (7), with official casters and “official partners”. Perhaps the official partners are the sponsorship deals Dorian Roldan had mentioned as wanting to achieve this year. AAA has also launched a TikTok account.

CMLL asked Dalys a 100 questions as part of the recurring bits.

Hijo del Soberano is making lucha libre themed COVID-19 masks.

The July 27th Hijo del Fishman/Wotan mask match is already postponed.

A bio of Chihuahua’s Misterio de Plata, who is always a lawyer.

A profile of Chiapas’ Jaguar Negro Jr.

And one with Oaxaca’s Rasputin, who was a decathlete before getting into wrestling.

Lucha Memes (Chairo Bill Vol. 5): 2020-04-05

got your nose

Recapped: 2020-04-05

This was an empty arena show held in Coliseo Coacalco. It had been billed as a live show but was taped some day prior. The matches didn’t appear to be edited but the time between matches may have been reduced. The broadcast makes a point of showing the ropes being cleaned after the first match but not again, which makes me think perhaps they weren’t.  

Matches:

La Heroína beat Infest and Lunatik Extreme
(4:09, ok, 00:02:59)

Heronia was the weakest link in the opener, had the most obvious blown spot, seemed to get hurt in the process and still won. She was sort of the sole TWE rep on what was supposed to be a co-promoted show, so maybe it made sense for her to win, but her matches are usually this sort of struggle. She’s a character but not good enough of one to make it work. It’s not connecting for me. I didn’t know much about Infest but he did well here and Lunatik Extreme was about normal for him. There’s not much to make out of a four-minute match.

a good tope

Alas de Acero & Iron Kid beat Cobre & Moria and Corsario Negro Jr. & Drako
(10:45, Iron Kid Volador Spiral Cobre, great, 00:14:50)

The three-way tag was the best match on the show. It was a little sloppy but a lot crazy; it was a missing AAA opener. La Fortaleza (Corsario & Drako) always seem out of place in these spot heavy matches, but they’re right two sorts of heavies to take the tecnico offense and keep it together. This also seemed like the rare match where Alas de Acero outshined Iron Kid (because he was more willing to do an insane thing.) This match built better than most indie matches, ended well, and distracted enough from the emptiness around it.

probably not healthy on any sort of show (also check the video desync on the cut)

Garrobo & Gremlin beat Diosa Quetzal & Hahastary
(13:55, good, 00:35:21)

I’m slowly making my way through some recent IWRG, where Diosa Quetzal tries to do things in women’s matches and sometimes it works. It worked out a lot better here, which has to be credited to Gremlin & Garrobo. The better of the two was Garrobo, but they both did a lot to make the women the stars of the match. Turning this into an elimination match didn’t add to any story and Gremlin & Hahastary struggled on its own. Still, this was very watchable for a match I wasn’t expecting much from

this should’ve been the absolute finish

Aramis beat Perro De Guerra Jr.
(9:49, head drop, good, 00:59:11)

This match came across as a surprisingly hard-hitting match, though it was also the one I was most distracted during. Perro de Guerra came across well, but surprisingly had no character for a Coliseo Coacalco show; he was just a guy in trunks with an odd name. Guerra similarly doesn’t have a lot of flash to his wrestling style, but he does the simple things well enough to be a good fit with Aramis. He was also a man who was probably hurting after this match; Aramis dropped him hard a few times, including on the finish. This was a basic Aramis indie match – no dive – but he still is interesting even stripped down a little bit.

tricky

Psicosis II beat Toxin
(12:48, powerbomb onto the chairs, ok, 01:16:23)

Psicosis isn’t a compelling singles wrestler in a normal situation and there’s nothing he and Toxin could do to cover for it an empty arena. The vacant arena situation bothered me less on this show than most of the ones I’ve seen, but the emptiness felt overwhelming here. They also went longer than they needed to for being a match with no particular dynamic. There was nothing substantially wrong with this, but it was just two guys doing spots in an empty arena with nothing interesting to it.

so that’s why they had the chairs

Ricky Marvin beat Arez
(10:10, cradle, good, 01:36:54)

It took until the last minutes of the match for me to get there, but I was left hoping Arez wouldn’t finally get the win over Marvin in this match. It’d be a shame to get that moment in front of no fans, and in a match that wasn’t epic enough to make up for that. Marvin & Arez had their usual strong chemistry, though it didn’t come off as big given the conditions. It’s like a match they would’ve brought to an audience to get over with an audience who didn’t know them in Tampa this weekend, not as much as the next chapter in a rivalry mostly in this promotion. The finish was clean but close enough that this is still unsettled, the fighting was good but not being too risky in front of zero people. This may have been as good as it should’ve been in this situation but the other matches meant a little more to me.

wrap-up powerbomb