Lluvia is CMLL’s second COVID-19 positive luchadora

CMLL announced Lluvia is off the CMLL Aniversario show due to a positive COVID-19 test in a special announcement. There were no additional details on her status. She hasn’t posted on Instagram in about a week. CMLL focused on the match changes instead. The second-place finishers will now get those Aniversario spots

• Dalys will now challenge Marcela for the CMLL Women’s Championship
• Reyna Isis will now challenge La Metalica for the Mexican Women’s Championship

Princesa Sugehit and Lluvia will still get their title matches in October on future Ticketmaster Live shows. That was the first acknowledgment the Ticketmaster Live shows will continue past Friday. Ticketmaster does not currently list those shows.

One case can be an isolated incident. Two cases are worrisome. A third would turn this into a full outbreak, and the point where it becomes proper for CMLL to shut down and quarantine for a couple of weeks. This is CMLL and their biggest show of the year, so we can’t even be sure there is a number. We also don’t know if there’s any government oversight who would stop them from running. These shows exist seemingly because the authorities gave CMLL special permission and health protocol to run, a health protocol that may not have been sufficient to run. We’re dealing with multiple powerful parties who’d have to admit they made a serious mistake and have no incentive to do so at a particularly crucial time. It’s not a great situation.

We don’t know when Lluvia tested positive (or even how she’s doing – I hope she’s fine.) It is concerning CMLL pulled her from Friday’s show and waited until Monday to say anything. That’s the normal way CMLL handles an injury, but this is not a normal injury. Instead of removing the luchador, CMLL should’ve removed the show. Going ahead and running with a recent positive reminds me – a person paying a lot of attention to baseball – to the Miami Marlins decision to keep playing even after a positive test sidelined one person on their team. Around twenty players and staff ended up getting COVID-19. The Marlins are taking tests, just like the CMLL wrestlers were taking tests, but those tests aren’t perfect. If a group of people includes one person with COVID-19, others might slip through detection until it’s too late to stop the spread. Last week’s CMLL was pretty close to meaningless, something that seems a low cost to sacrifice for the best chance of the Aniversario show scheduled. If CMLL isn’t going to stop last week’s show, they’re definitely not going to stop Aniversario for a single test. It’s possible we won’t know the final lineup until the next round of COVID-19 tests (Thursday?), but it’ll likely take a lot of people being pulled out of the show to change their direction.

Ultimo Guerrero probably should probably be already pulled as a cautionary move. He has not been. He and Lluvia have kept their relationship publicly secret, at least until the Los Angeles Times article last week. Guerrero being removed because Lluvia tested positive gives that way. It is possible UG & Lluvia are keeping their and Guerrero is fine; we’ll never know most of that because even just saying he is fine is nodding at something they don’t want to talk about. I presume that CMLL will allow Ultimo Guerrero to participate as long as he tests negative, no matter what the reality is of his living situation.

(Even an “Ultimo Guerrero had COVID-19, that’s why he was pulled from those shows, and so he’s not in serious danger of being infected by Lluvia now” theory has problems because we found out this weekend Ultimo Guerrero really has been on the tapings. We haven’t seen him, but NJPWWorld about a dozen empty arena matches over two shows, most of which I don’t have as airing anywhere on TV. Those include a few Guerrero appearances and also matches with the missing Angel de Oro & Niebla Roja. If Guerrero has been missing due to coronavirus, then he would’ve been around a lot of people who have still been around the entire time.)

It appears CMLL is testing wrestlers just once a week based on what Sugehit’s said about her own testing and a Julio Cesar Rivera comment about the most recent test being the fourth. It also appears Sugehit saw something that prompted her to obtain a test outside of the ones CMLL was providing. I convinced myself she just did it out of caution over traveling. I’m not convinced now. This is not proof of anything beyond Lluvia and Sugehit testing positive, but this is enough to be concerned.

CMLL Informa on Wednesday at 4 pm is the next time we’re expecting to hear from the promotion. Maybe they’ll explain more then.

AAA’s AutoLucha press conference has been postponed. I’ll save the full news update for tomorrow.