CMLL has the first of two ‘major’ shows tonight. The Mexican National Women’s Tag Team Championship tournament concludes with Amapola & Metalica versus Jarochita & Lluvia. That will be the first-ever match in Arena Mexico for the national women’s tag championship. The show will also include Caristico & Mistico versus Volador & Titan in a battle of tecnicos and Los Guerreros versus NGD in a battle of rudos on a five-match card.
This is a 288 MXP/13.60 USD PPV. It looked stronger with Volador/Bandido, which is now delayed. The Guerreros/NGD match is a long-anticipated battle. These teams have never met in this combination; Mascara 2000 replaced Forastero for a couple of matches in 2019 and Templario was added for a 4v4 match in 2018. It’s a match logically which should’ve taken place long before this point – NGD is the unbeatable team, the Guerreros are the world champions – but CMLL’s saved it for a day where they needed it. I don’t sense much fan excitement for this show, but this is CMLL pushing the buttons they believe will get fans to care. That finish could have implications for the next two weeks: the 10/30 show will have Sanson defending the Rey del Inframundo show against a winner of a 10/23 show. CMLL hasn’t built up matches from feud to feud, but I guess there’s always a chance.
Caristico & Mistico versus Volador Jr. & Titan is the opposite, a match with no particular build. It does also exist to be a big match when CMLL’s looking for anything to get people to buy a show. Caristico & Mistico need to be teaming often if their team is going to mean something, but there’s no reason for Volador & Titan to the team. It’s possible this match could be great, but we’ve seen Volador work up and down to his opponents on the show, and Caristico & Mistico are doing a very narrow formula match. It should be good but I’d be pleasantly surprised if it was a must-see. The same applies to the NGD/Guerreros.
The women’s tag tournament continues to be hard to pick. CMLL championships have tended to go to who the company wants to reward, rather than who would be a bigger draw as a champion or what stories they could tell. This is likely a situation where someone gets to call themselves champion while the promotion fails to book more than one defense a year. The bigger titles go to the more tenured people, which points towards Amapola. I’m not at all confident about it. The match itself doesn’t seem exciting, but the major CMLL women’s matches frequently look middling on paper and then overachieve.
Super Astro Jr. hasn’t appeared much since the restart. He’ll get a PPV appearance with Diamond against Akuma & Coyote. Zacarias will make his first known appearance in the empty arena era oddly teaming with Microman versus Chamuel & Gallito.
The CMLL Anniversary show airs on SamuraiTV on Sunday.
CMLL media interviews this week included Sonic, Coyote, La Jarochita, and Amapola.
AAA’s AutoLuchas shows continue on Saturday and Sunday, two shows each day. It’s the final announced weekend of four shows. They’ll take a week off and be back just for a November 1st Dia del Muertos day of shows. On Keepin’ It 100, Konnan mentions a Saturday or Sunday AutoLuchas show will be streamed on Facebook. AAA’s made no mention of streaming any shows this weekend, so it’s at least possible someone meant the previous streamed show is on Facebook and not a new one. (EDIT: AAA confirms there are no plans to stream this weekend.) AAA is bringing the garbage men from a viral lucha libre video in Chilpancingo to a Saturday show.
Konnan also mentioned on that podcast that he believes the next EMW (Tijuana) will be inside the Auditorio, with 30-50% capacity, since the area is opening up.
Dr. Landru of the Gladiatores mentioned a the Mexico City lucha libre commission submitted a proposal to open arenas at 30% capacity. The commission sent in the proposal last week, with the idea of starting to open at the end of October or early November. The Mexico City government turned down the proposal, saying there are still too many infections to allow the public in at this time.
Wednesday night’s Welcome to Mi Barrio included a Verzal versus Hijo del Pantera semifinal match in their singles tournament. I was planning on watching it later, but Mas Lucha’s result post indicated something strange occurred and it seemed worth checking out. They were correct. It’s not a long match, but here’s a timestamp to the part to check out, if you want to play wrestling detective. Verzal definitely won and just as definitely was unhappy he didn’t have the match wanted to have. I’m less definite about Hijo del Pantera’s injury.
Puma King & Barby have a new video.