Day: October 28, 2020

Dia del Muertos, AAA/TripleMania, Traumas/IWRG, El Mago

thecubsfan 1 Comment

CMLL’s card for TicketMaster Live on Friday (an hour later than usual if you haven’t changed your clock yet)

CMLL (FRI) 10/30/2020 Arena México
1) Átomo & Microman vs Chamuel & El Guapito
2) El Audaz, Espíritu Negro, Rey Cometa vs Dark Magic, Okumura, Vangellys
3) Reyna Isis © vs Lluvia [MEX WOMEN]
first defense
4) Ángel de Oro, Forastero, Niebla Roja vs Negro Casas, Soberano Jr., Titán [Relevos Increíbles]
5) Euforia vs Terrible [Rey del Inframundo]

Maybe the Dia del Muertos set will look really cool. There’s no much here otherwise, and this is certainly not a 250 pesos card. It’s not better than last week’s card.

Euforia & Terrible and even Reyna Isis & Lluvia are interesting matches for people deep in CMLL but neither is likely to get someone to buy the show. Relevos Increibles matches mean little; those guys could have a good match but the stipulation doesn’t hide that it’s just a random match. These are never sold on the opening two matches but there’s not much an effort. Dark Magic has looked like one of the world’s worst professional wrestlers since the restart. Okumura & Vangellys are problematic themselves, but Dark Magic is outstanding in the field of terrible GIF moments. Atomo’s not really good either, but there are not a hundred other micros CMLL could use. CMLL putting together Dark Magic, Okumura, and Vangellys a rudo trio for a major show is an indictment of the CMLL programming department.

There are many recaps of the AAA press conference, but not much new. There would normally be additional post-press conference individual interviews, but that’s not possible right now. (All the questions were written to keep mouths closed, which was a smart move I haven’t seen much and also cut down on the thirty-second preambles.) Record, which tends to have an inside line to AAA, seems positive that TripleMania is a matter of when not if. They’re expecting a 30% capacity, which would be around 6,500 people.

The Marvel/AAA stuff got a ton of attention from the media as a big corporate partnership, though the existing lucha libre fans seem a bit more skeptical of the characters and how it’ll actually work. There’s an additional press conference from Marvel scheduled for Thursday in Monterrey.

Draztick Boy is Draztick Boy no more. He’ll now be wrestling as El Mago, apparently having premiered the new name and look on the Vanguardia show this weekend (which will stream on 11/08). He’s been Draztick Boy for 12 years, but also he’s 28 and it’s rough to be stuck with a “Boy” name forever. I would’ve guessed Draztick Boy as someone AAA might be re-gimmick, but that seems unlikely if he’s invested in creating a new character for himself.

Changing a name is a tough choice because it’ll take time for people to realize El Mago is Draztick Boy and he’d already but up Draztick Boy by working in AAA, Dragon Gate, and US groups. I think the “Boy/Kid” names don’t translate well, especially once a wrestler gets into his 20s, and aren’t as distinctive. It’s the same with the many women who have Lady/Princesa/Reina names; you can tell them apart if you follow them closely, but most of the world does not. “Toxin” is better than “Toxin Boy.” I would’ve guessed Draztick Boy would’ve also just dropped the Boy at some point, or been regimmicked by AAA but that seems unlikely if he’s spent money on a new look.

I was going to say I only have room for one El Mago in my heart but then I remembered I have no heart so it’s OK.

Los Traumas are in the finals of IWRG’s number 1 contenders tag team tournament. Los Traumas may also be out of IWRG for the time being. Mas Lucha points out the Traumas Instagram message, saying they’re not going to be in Castillo del Terror as originally announced or any other IWRG shows. IWRG announced a new poster with Hijo del Alebrije & Emperador Azteca in their spots. There were only a few hours between the two cards announced, but there’s a lot of unhappy Trauma fans in the comments of IWRG announcing the change. IWRG was doing discounted pre-sales on tickets too, so some of that is people expecting to pay for a bigger card.

Trauma II had an incident with a fan a couple of weeks ago that looked like it could turn into something and didn’t, and incidents between the Traumas and the fans are a normal event. I don’t know if that had anything to do with it. There was no chance they were losing the Castillo del Terror match. Maybe they expected to win, but I’m not sure if they’d be told ahead of time. This situation comes up on Mas Lucha’s podcast and they reach the same conclusion: no one knows for sure what is guessing, everyone is guessing it is a money issue, but neither side is confirming that and no one’s reporting it.

Legend had a Lucha Libre Expo with wrestling shows on Sunday. The wrestler show portion of the event has been canceled, citing health conditions not allowing it. Health conditions in Mexico haven’t changed that much in the last couple of weeks; maybe they were hoping something would improve. The convention portion is still currently scheduled. It’s hard to make a health argument why conventions are ok and wrestling shows are not; it really just comes down to wrestling shows being regulated and conventions not.

Hijo del Santo is main eventing a show in Aguascalientes on Thursday. Santo barely wrestles now even in good times, there have been no shows of any note in Aguascalientes since the pandemic started, so this is surprising. There is a logo indicating governmental approval and Santo mentions the show will air on (local) canal 26, so they likely got special approval. That TV channel does have an internet feed, though it was not loading when I checked Wednesday morning. The Thursday show takes place around 7 pm local, 8 pm US CT if looking.

Ovaciones has a long interview with Dr. Wagner Jr. as a preview to appearing on IWRG’s show Sunday. Not much news. He says he’s independent who’s open to working with either CMLL or AAA. Cronistas del Ring interviews Omar Reyes about facing Wagner, working with the police, and a back injury.

Box Y Lucha 3445 talks about Oro’s death among other issues. They’re also selling 10 books of magazines from the late 70s to the early 80s. They’re $326 for a book (around 25 issues) or $2325 for all 10 books. That is US Dollars; it’s about $13 USD per magazine. That’s a little bit more than they were charging back in the day, but they did this again back in 2015 and those did get sold. I’m kind of thinking of getting one but I haven’t even asked about shipping costs yet. My ideal situation is would be to split it with someone in Mexico who could send it off to get scanned and then send the scans to me because I don’t actually care about the physical copies, but I don’t know how to make that happen. Box Y Lucha has indicated plans in the past to make older magazines available digitally, but we have no timeline on when that could be (and, like everything could always change.)

Box Y Lucha also announced its annual holiday awards party is canceled due to the pandemic. I’ve never attended that but the one good thing about the pandemic are holiday parties I no longer am obligated to attend.

There’s a drive-in show in San Luis Potosi on Friday. Motorcycles are welcome, but only two people on a motorcycle.

Ultimo Guerrero, Caristico, Forastero, and Soberano are among those working a Martinez show on Halloween near Dallas. Chicago’s Gringo Loco and Bandolero are listed on the show too. Bandolero is super talented but also infamously not fond of working shows far from home so I was surprised to see his name. Maybe it’s a different Bandolero?

Kriminal Lucha Libre (Toxin) debut show Deluxe on 11/07 Arena San Juan

Fly Star indicated he’s working behind the scenes with this promotion even though he’s retired for the ring and will help out MexaWrestling if ever asked.

Mexico City area luchador Coco Bronce (Enrique Ruiz) passed away Tuesday, reportedly after a battle with COVID-19. He wrestled as La Mancha in the Pavillon Azteca/AWWA promotion in the late 80s.

Bandido posted his memories of Principe Aereo on Instagram.

Hijo de Fishman, Pagano, and Maximo appeared in a music video.

Mas Lucha has a new edition of their En+Carados podcast.

LuchaWorld has the latest Lucha Report.

IAW: 2020-07-11 & 2020-10-10 shows

thecubsfan
very much a match where you can pick any 15 seconds and come up with a good GIF

Two for one.

The July 11th IAW took me a while to get to because the no fans atmosphere became hard to enjoy – this is one of many problems CMLL has too – but the Tromba versus Arez versus Latigo match should be seen anyway. I’m lower on the most, the short duration makes it hard for me to rate it better than Good, but it’s still plenty worthwhile for the totally different matches this crew is doing. They seemed to go into this match with the idea of doing no moves that anyone else had done before, or at least it felt that way for the first four or so minutes. The creatively was off the charts and this might have worked as a Great match for me if they could totally hold it together. They were just a little bit off from connecting at times. The finish made sense in that they were all going for their big moves, but it still felt way too short. I wonder if this is an actual result of it being a no-fans show if they would’ve been afraid of a negative reaction for the brief main event if there were ticket-buying people.

The women’s match on a typical Mexican indie show typically gets no more booking attention than “ok, just let the women have a match”, which occasionally is good news. There’s no wild booking to get in the way of the high effort match between Lady Cat, Star Fire, Lilith Dark, and Miss Delicious. There still is a superfluous double pin, but they work at a fast pace over a short time length. The main event is obviously better, but this still fits in the same Good level. It’s a little bit too indie cliché when the got to the four-way chop spot but otherwise good action for eight minutes. Everyone besides Star Fire has been part of the improved IWRG’s women’s division before the break; it’s too bad that concept seems to have been downplayed since their restart

The wild booking does kick in the Jitsu & Energia three falls match, which turns into a tag match, which turns into partners turning on each other. Just, no. Kunay versus Heroe Romero was a better use of creativity and another Good match; maybe Kunay’s niche is just finding weird spots to do in a falls count anywhere situation. The fight improved the moment they stopped doing a normal match and started climbing on carefully positioned people to do headscissors. Hera & La Fuerza vs Ciclón Infernal & Slyfer was a bit too long and not remarkable.

The August 10th show is back in front of people at Gimnasio Mitklan. I watched the Estrellas del Ring version. I can not name the IAW commentators, I do not recall anything they said on the previous show, but I did miss them greatly when I was trying to figure out who people were in the undercard. The tradeoff is the undercard isn’t much good. The women’s tag match falls apart at points, the five-way is all offense with no particular direction, and this was another in a long line of Mexican indie royal rumbles where too many people stick around for too long. The highlight of the Rumble was seeing Santy Hernandez involved, assuming a 100% chance he was going to do a WWE bit, and then watching him hide outside of the ring until Kunay thought he won in a WWE bit. He is that dude.

Baby Love versus Star Fire versus Candy Swing is not memorable, but it was successful in having a goal (Baby Love heroically overcoming the odds against bigger opponents) and achieving that goal. It was in this match that it clicked that she’s a blond thin masked woman from Monterrey with a generic name and some popularity; hopefully this goes better than the last one. (She absolutely should change her name as soon as possible, before it becomes harder to do so. She’s only going to go so far as “Baby Love”.)

Jitsu vs Yoruba vs Mr. Leo vs Ciclón Infernal was back to just having a lot of moves and nothing much coming from them. The referee screwing up the count (in the second straight match) didn’t help, but having so many multi-people matches really doesn’t help. I know it’s not actually true, but it feels like Jitsu is the only person in Mexico working more after the pandemic started than before it; I can’t escape him right now.

Ares vs Aramis vs Willy Banderas had some ups and downs. Willy had trouble either with the rhythm the other two are used to working or remembering the complicated spots. There were few problems when it was a one versus one match, but the hit rate went down whenever all three people were involved. It’s useful to prevent Aramis & Arez from facing each other and their same crew forever and they’ve got to make what they do work with outsiders to continue growing, but this just made Banderas look not up to their level. I liked this enough that it was still Good, though even just the Guadalajara guy against either one of these guys might have been better

The Latigo vs Aeroboy match didn’t go for any big innovation, it was just a really well done title match. (I rated it Great.) There were a few spots that were particularly entertaining, like the well done rolling casita spot. This was more a match building very strongly to the end, getting the crowd very excited for the last few minutes. It’s an obvious advantage to have an actual group of people making noise for a match, and I was with them. They probably could’ve gotten in one more comeback after the big near fall, but that seemed like a minor complaint.