Another day with no time line updates. Social distancing policies in Mexico are currently mandated as going to June 15th, but will likely last much longer in some areas. Mexico City will announce more policies for businesses going forward on Sunday, which might give a read on what will be allowed for wrestling. At today’s press conference, Mexico’s president declared the worst of the pandemic had passed. This doesn’t seem to be a universal opinion.
Furia de Titanes has an interview with El Fantasma about the loan assessment program for luchadors he helped roll out in April. Fantasma says 250 people received 1500 pesos ($67 USD) in May and will receive another payment in June. They continue to look for more government support for out of work luchadors. Fantasma closed-door/empty arena lucha libre shows remain not permitted in Mexico City. In practice, that just means those shows won’t be sanctioned and the commission bears no responsibility for anything that happens. They’re not going to punish anyone who does them. (When these shows have been shut down elsewhere, it’s generally been other municipal officials involved.) AAA’s show is believed to have been taped in Mexico City. I believe the Mi Sagrada Lucha Libre show and one other were taped in Star Gym in Mexico City.
+LuchaTV revealed IWRG’s Rey de Ring will change format for 2020. The annual IWRG event is typically a royal rumble style match. They’ll be switching to singles matches instead, under the notion that singles matches are safer to do than multiperson matches at the moment. The rumble usually has 30 people, so the tournament will be a 30 person single-elimination tournament. It’ll have two weeks of blocks, a third week with a block vs block final, and a fourth week where this year’s winner faces reigning champion Demonio Infernal. IWRG’s announcing the participants via videos on their Facebook page. Mosca, Puma de Oro, Toxin, Fresero Jr., Dragon Bane, Hijo del Medico Asesino, Diosa Quetzal, Death Metal, Ra-Zhata, Hijo de Canis Lupus, Relampago, and Super Nova are in so far.
IWRG’s announcement talks about all these things happening in June, suggesting they’re planning on running soon. There’s no sign of a show this Sunday, so perhaps they’re looking at June 10th. Those shows with 14 elimination matches are going to drag and would be greatly helped by splitting them up.
El Mimo, wrestling mime, has started up a donut business during the pandemic called Lucha Donas. He learned the secret recipe from his mom back during the 2017 earthquake when wrestling was also shut down for a short time. She pushed him to always have work options. Tromba (who turns out to be El Mimo’s son) is helping him with the business, while Shere Khan came up with the art work.
A group of Oaxacan luchadors held a closed-door show to collect food donations, which they used to hand out to needy people in the area. Chokmah is mentioned as leader as the group. He noted 90% of the wrestlers had other jobs (at least before the pandemic) and weren’t living on the wrestling.
Luchadors received food baskets in Chiapas.
CMLL Informa didn’t air live due to technical problems but did go up later on their channel. It doesn’t appear they made any announcements, and are still in a holding pattern.
Voices of Wrestling has a review of the Casandro bio documentary. It’s available on Amazon Video in the US.
Masks, Mats & Mayhem had Lucha Underground Executive Producer Skip Chaisson on as guest, talking about the behind the scenes of some of the early vignettes. They’re going with shorter shows (or just taping splitting up the long shows over a couple of weeks) this time around, and it’s working better that way.
Box Y Lucha reposted a 2000 obituary for Sugi Sito and a 2002 interview with Humberto Garza.