CAR The Crash shut down
Ecatepec authorities shut down the show Saturday night at the Centro de Alto Rendiemento The Crash building. The government officials arrived during the semi-main event. The show continued anyway to the main event, a two-minute match interrupted by the police getting on the loudspeaker to tell everyone the show was now over. (They finished the match anyway; you can see it here.) Mas Lucha reports neighbors complained about the event, and that led to the shutdown. CAR The Crash appeared to have a full house (around 200 people), while the current law in Ecatepec only allows 20% capacity indoors. They were also selling beer without a license.
The Gladiatores has video of the aftermath, while the government posted their video of the incident. Most of the comments on the Ecatepec Facebook page in response are thrilled the government did something. CAR The Crash is closed for the time being; it was being used for public events, no fans shows taped for Mas Lucha, and for some wrestler training (though Penta’s school in the same city had already absorbed some of the training.) It’s not immediately clear how long that closure will last.
I’m not absolutely sure who’s building it is, even though it’s used constantly for wrestling shows. “Centro Alto Rendiemento The Crash” implies this is a building owned by The Crash, but the information when it opened was there was just a loose relationship with the Tijuana promotional and nothing they were doing directly. There was also an early story that Fenix and/or Penta had bought the building (previously a wedding hall which also ran wrestling shows.) Penta, recently when he opened his training school, said they did not own The Crash – they were friends with the owners but had no involvement themselves. The actual show that got shut down was an Anniversary show for a luchador named Ancla, who has said to be the manager of CAR The Crash. (My guess why the main event still happened was because it was Ancla’s tribute for Ancla and it was important to him to still get his win.) Maybe Ancla owns the building.
The Mexico State lucha libre commission may suspend Ancla or others for running this show; the Mexico State commission doesn’t do much, but they’re more likely to do something when it becomes a news story (and so they look like they’re paying attention.) It’d be a bit late. The venue had run at least 18 advertised events since the start of the pandemic, including no-fans taping. This was the biggest crowd for a show in that venue since last March.
The CAR The Show show, eventually shut down to flagrant disregard of the current COVID-19 policies, began with a tribute to recent COVID-19 victim Ovett.
Vikingo and AAA
An anonymous Twitter account, active since late last year but not noticed until this month, has been repeatedly posting screengrabs of a Whatsapp conversation. The Twitter account alleges one of the participants is Hijo del Vikingo, complaining about his treatment in AAA and revealing the COVID-19 testing. It’s tough to get noticed as an anonymous Twitter account with no followers; they’ve been tweeting at AAA and Mexico City officials to get noticed, but you’d have to be an obsessive weirdo with a Tweetdeck column dedicated to “Hijo del Vikingo” or “@luchalibreaaa” mentions to pick up it. (The earliest post on the account was revealing the Marvel character identities and being completely wrong about them – and it hasn’t otherwise seemed something solid enough to write on here.) The posts did start to get noticed more in the last week. The contact info in listed on the messages are authentic, though someone truly dedicated could still fake those.
Record said Hijo del Vikingo came to them wanting to clear it the story. They also published some of the Whatsapp conversations. The conversation has “Hijo del Vikingo” upset with Dorian Roldan, Konnan, and Jorge Flores – Vikingo tells Record that’s not his real feelings, he has no problem with those three AAA officials is very grateful for what they’ve done for his career. Vikingo explains the main reason he missed the AutoLuchas show was he didn’t want to risk exposing his newborn child. He felt safer after a few months and agreed to work TripleMania and the Tlaxcala shows. Vikingo says he took COVID tests before TripleMania and before the Tlaxcala shows. Vikingo’s guess is someone is jealous of what he’s done this quickly by posting these messages. He insists he’s super happy in AAA, not the upset person in those messages.
The mystery Twitter account where the messages originally came from has vanished – it’s been deleted or deactivated. This probably won’t be the last time something like this happens; it’s easy for a vengeful person to take a screenshot and create an account. This has even happened with Vikingo before; a person claiming to be his girlfriend complained about his lack of bookings via burner Twitter account back in January 2018, though I believe that person wasn’t who they claimed to be.
Lucha Memes/Marvin
Lucha Memes quietly taped their CoacalcoForever show this Sunday, the reward being offered as part of the Donadora campaign. The promotion’s acknowledged it on Twitter. What hasn’t been mentioned, at least as of this writing, is the advertised Jimmy versus Ricky Marvin didn’t take place. Marvin wasn’t there. I’m not sure if it was a travel issue or what, but the card got changed around as a result. You can see it in the photo on the Twitter account; that’s Astrolux but he’s not facing Skayler. My guess is most people who donated did so because of Coliseo Coaclaco or because of Lucha Memes and not for a specific match (or matches), but it’s worth pointing out for those who did.
The donadora campaign has crossed 50% with a few days left; it ends at the end of the month. Memes taping before the campaign ends hopefully means the show will quickly become available for those who did donate.
Ricky Marvin was traveling because he’s been in the US for the last month, including stopping by Orlando. Marvin posted about perhaps going to NXT one day, which led to some news articles about NXT Latin America, which caused Marvin to clarify he didn’t mean he was actually going and nothing is in the works. The original Ricky Marvin post seems to have been disappeared. Marvin would figure to be on the shortlist for potential trainers if WWE did ever open a NXT Latin America branch. There’s no indication of that happening any time soon.
AAA on YouTube
AAA’s YouTube upload this week and next week will be the television version of TripleMania. The 2021 tapings will not start until March 7th (as correctly listed on the poster Tlaxcala’s tourism put out.) That means AAA’s YouTube will be just over three weeks behind the first-run episodes on Space.
This seems like an issue if AAA runs major shows live, as Dorian Roldan said was possible when the 2021 tour was announced. It’s not a big one – AAA’s not so tightly (or coherently) booked that being behind a month of TV is going to make a live show impossible to follow. Most people who have access to AAA’s YouTube can also follow in ‘real time’ via TV, since only people in Mexico have access to both. It’s a bit annoying but not to the level of the “no one outside of Mexico can see our content” issue.
I’ve figured out it’s possible for me to record AAA episodes off of Space, though I haven’t bothered because there are some quality issues. It’s a bit flying too close to the sun if I’m putting AAA matches on YouTube before AAA puts them on YouTube though.
Other Notes
ROH’s new episode with the Mexisquad trios title defense is up on their website. ROH does a group watch Monday nights but they actually upload those episodes earlier if you don’t feel like waiting.
Vanguardia also taped their February show and also had their main event change, though it was part of the angle to set up a replacement main event. Full results here, unless you want to skip it until it turns up on Mas Lucha.
Torreon will allow local building Arena Azteca to run a show on the 28th, as a test run to safely restarting lucha libre in the area. They’re scheduled to go over health protocols on Tuesday. If all goes well, other local buildings will be able to restart following those same protocols. This seems more organized than most restarts.
LA Park will face Hammerstone on MLW’s March 12th show for their National Championship, their secondary heavyweight championship. LA Park is already half of the tag team champs.
There’s a dispute over the rights to the name Hijo del Super Brazo, or whether a previously agreed upon deal selling the rights to an unrelated wrestler remains valid. I link to this only so we’re all prepared in case a luchador starts wrestling as Super BRAZ or something along those lines.
Carxyus posted a tribute video to Ovett.
WWE PC put up a tribute video for Discovery, with comments from Joaquin Wilde (DJZ), Kalisto and Mustafa Ali.
Box Y Lucha has Demonio Blanco and Wotan on the cover.
El Sol de Salamanca has a lengthy biography of Sergio Gonzalez Castro, formerly Aquaris II, and Guero Gonzalez, currently head of the Box Y Lucha Libre commission of Salamanca. He says he ran away from home at age 9 because his parents yelled at him, and didn’t return home until he was 18 and started wrestling.
The Oaxaca profile of the week is Mr. Raton, not to be confused with Super Raton.