The Mexico Secretary of Tourism and AAA has a press conference scheduled for Tuesday at 11 AM. It’ll stream on YouTube. It’s likely to be the announcement of the next AAA show (or shows), linking up with the government to run a special venue. I think it was here where I joked about how AAA should run at the pyramids like in their video game. They may actually be running at the pyramids. They also may be running at any other tourist location. The Tourism department tends to promote scenic venues away from Mexico City as travel destinations, so that may be the plan here. Southern Mexico is generally in better shape than the rest of the country, so that would make more sense as a location. We’ll find out Tuesday.
Another thing to watch for this week: Hijo del Santo marks his father’s death (February 5th) with a trip to his father’s statue and a sort of mini-press conference. It’s been a sort of announcement of plans for the years in the past. It’s trended towards not much news in recent year as Hijo del Santo has wrestled less (and his children have not wrestled much at all.) I’m not sure if it’s still happening with the pandemic, but it would take place on Friday.
Arena Coliseo Guadalajara is teasing something for 2/12. Their advertisements make it look like a lucha libre show, which would be the first at the venue since last March. It may be more of a performance; they haven’t responded to any questions about what’s going on yet.
There’s not a lot of Mexican wrestling going on this weekend; most sites talked a lot about WWE’s Royal Rumble and not much else. One thing that stuck out to me was Cobre’s ill-advised roof moonsault onto one person on Saturday’s Lucha Madre show. It looked to me like the back of Cobre’s head hit the very barely protected ground; it was still a stupid risk even if he got away with it. WWE likes to do these big stunt bits from time to time, and they will always fix it so the ‘ground’ is actually a very padded safe area. They also save those spots for the finish moments of long-running feuds; there’s a lot of meaning behind it. (And they still do them too often.) This spot meant nothing more than an average dive in the context of the match; both men simply returned to the ring to do their normal spots after, with the life-risking spot completely meaningless.
Cobre’s a talented wrestler – he looked impressive the rest of the match – and it’s a shame that none of the many other people there convinced him not to take that risk. Cobre made his own decision and fortunately gets to live with it, but I was drawn back to thinking about Rayo Star and Sky Man doing similar risky spots in Arena San Juan a few years ago. They got a viral moment for a couple of days, one of them go seriously hurt, and neither benefited it from either. (These things are so quickly forgotten that I couldn’t immediately recall which one was the one who did get hurt.) Cobre didn’t even get the two days of the viral buzz of this – neither Lucha Madre or Mas Lucha promoted the spot after, and my tweet about it didn’t get much attention as far as those things go. It was all for nothing and it could’ve cost him a lot more than nothing.
I’m planning on writing more about the Lucha Madre tournament later on; I haven’t seen the final yet and won’t spoil you if you haven’t either, but it does look like they’re setting up angles for the next show.
Kriminal Lucha Libre takes over the daily 9 pm match spot on Mas Lucha starting tonight with their Prohibido tournament. Rookies being banned from doing overdone moves sounds like a good idea in theory, but a tournament of all inexperienced wrestlers who may have not been able to train much in 2020 could be a struggle. It’s a situation where good matches are going to be pleasant surprises.
Even though it was clearly advertised a few times, I didn’t realize that Vanguardia’s Award Show event actually had matches as well until it was pointed out to me. I’m going to write a recap later this week but it’s worth watching.
Lucha Memes says their Guerra de Naciones show will now be up in “about a week.” It looks like they’ve got the person who’s done other lucha libre shows for IWTV is lined up to do English commentary. I thought he was good on the one GHC show I watched.
Pear Bureau Northwest has partnered with Psycho Clown to promote pears. He’s technically supporting healthy eating, this part of a larger campaign where actors (Fruit Luchadors) were going to schools to do the same (and now are doing it virtually), but basically, Psycho Clown got a sponsorship to promote the consumption of pears. You can find more about it on Facebook.
Rush told SuperLuchas that he enjoyed wrestling in AAA and hopes to be back, either for some shows or a longer run. He’ll probably be back whenever they can start running normally again, and not until then.
Mascarita Sagrada criticized the CMLL Micro division for looking choreographed in an interview with ESPN. This is the original Sagrada (not Torito or any of the others.) Sagrada said he and the other original minis had to pass a wrestling licensing exam and he doesn’t believe any of the CMLL Micros have had to do the same, with the exception of Chamuel. Sagrada apologizes if they did pass one, but is saying this more as an opinion on skill level – he’s calling them guys who can only wrestle a match rehearsed for them prior and don’t have the ability to improvise if things go wrong. Sagrada said, in his day, he’d and the other minis would go to Antonio Pena to give them ideas for feuds and matches and feels the minis today aren’t doing it.
Mascarita Sagrada says the only group of minis he’s not felt happy around were the AAA minis during this last run there in 2018, because there were minis who thought of themselves as ‘superstars’ who were not, and also some had personal problems outside of the ring that affected their work. The only AAA mini he liked was Mini Psycho Clown, who respected Sagrada’s place. Mascarita Sagrada says the doctors tell him he’s fine to keep wrestling and he plans to do so as long as he’s injury-free.
Rush, Dragon Lee, Bestia del Ring, and Flip Gordon will face Brody King, PCO, and The Briscoes on the February 6th weekend’s ROH show. That’s Bestia’s ROH official debut. Gordon is replacing Kenny King, who missed that round of tapings with a COVID positive.
Rey Horus reappears on NJPW US-based “Strong” show this upcoming Friday, facing TJP. He previously wrestled in their Super J Cup, and this appears to be more than a one-off. The California Misterioso is in an atomicos on the same show.
A profile of Oaxaca’s Guerrero Estelar.