Vikingo/Omega at TripleMania Regia, FTR tag champs, CMLL weekend results

CMLL

CMLL (FRI) 10/15/2021 Arena México [CMLL, DeLuchasTV, Kaiser Sports, Mas Lucha, R de Rudo, The Gladiadores]
1) Oro Jr. & Sonic b Grako & Inquisidor   
2) Esfinge, Flyer, Guerrero Maya Jr. b Dark Magic, Disturbio, Luciferno   
Luciferno replaced Okumura. Tecnicos took 2/3.
3) Avispa Dorada, Marcela, Princesa Sugehit b Amapola, Dark Silueta, Reyna Isis    
Tecnicos took 1/3.
4) Euforia, Hechicero, Mephisto, Satánico b Atlantis, Blue Panther, Negro Casas, Valiente [Relevos Increíbles]      
the new Infernales cheated to win in the first Arena Mexico. Infernales took 1/3.
5) Gran Guerrero, Templario, Último Guerrero DQ Místico, Titán, Volador Jr.    
Guerreros took 1/3. UG tricked Mistico into fouling referee Noriega, Mistico got UG in La Mistica, the referee called the DQ. Mistico challenged UG to a mask versus hair match. UG said he’d think about it.

As expected, the Infernales were treated as the big story but the feud CMLL wanted to get over was UG/Mistico. CMLL pushed the idea of a hair/mask match happening next week, which is obviously not happening. A singles match might take place.

CMLL (SUN) 10/17/2021 Arena México [CMLL, ESTO, Kaiser Sports]
1) Apocalipsis & Cholo b Bengala & Leono
2) Cachorro, Robin, Sangre Imperial b Diamond, Magnus, Panterita del Ring Jr.
Team Robin took 1/3. Panterita was hurt in fall 1.
3) El Audaz, Kráneo, Volcano b El Felino Jr., Luciferno, Pólvora
tecnicos took 2/3
4) Gemelo Diablo I, Gemelo Diablo II, Sagrado b Espíritu Negro, Panterita del Ring, Rey Cometa
Rudos took 1/3.
5) Fugaz, Star Jr., Volador Jr. b Dragón Rojo Jr., Negro Casas, Terrible
tecnicos took 2/3

I would like to think Sagrado got put with Los Gemelos because he’s a veteran who was teamed with inexperienced guys before but it may just because their masks look kinda the same.

Nothing much notable tonight in Puebla. Tomorrow in Arena Mexico:

CMLL (TUE) 10/19/2021 Arena México
1) Grako, Robin, Sonic vs Leono, Nitro, Sangre Imperial [Relevos Increíbles]
2) Espíritu Negro, Rey Cometa, Stuka Jr. vs Felino, Felino Jr., Pólvora
3) Dalys & Princesa Sugehit vs Amapola & Marcela and Dark Silueta & La Jarochita and Lluvia & Reyna Isis and La Vaquerita & Metálica and Avispa Dorada & Stephanie Vaquer and Skadi & Tiffany and Náutica & Sexy Sol [Torneo Increible de Amazonas 2021]
11) Atlantis, Blue Panther, Valiente vs Ángel de Oro, Templario, Terrible [Relevos Increíbles]

Templario & Volador Jr. won the men’s version of this tournament back in June. There’s nothing here I’m excited to see (and we probably won’t unless CMLL’s TV changes suddenly in the next week) but they might as well. The umpteenth tournament isn’t interesting, but neither is the Tuesday shows where they do nothing at all.

The Second match has the current and most recent tag champs, which might be a thing.

We keep getting a trickle of information on the CMLL NFTs. I promise it’ll be done soon: they’ll be out October 22nd, it’ll be a thing that day, and then we’ll probably never think about it again. The two NFTs to be released are short video of Mistico and Titan spots. Only 3125 numbered copies of the same exact video will be available. They’re not for sale yet, but magically more than a third of the videos are already claimed. (If you just want the video, you can also right click and download it – you’re not really buying a video, but the artificial scarcity associated with it.) The cost has not been announced, except for revealing you’ll need to use the LEAF cryptocurrency. The concept here is probably not to be successful to make money off these videos themselves but to get people on board with NFTs (and give their banking info) so they might spend more money in the market over time; my guess is these will be cheap just to get people to get a shot. It’s still very hard to imagine CMLL’s fanbase caring about this at all.

Trying to be positive: one way these NFTs could be a positive development is if a portion of the money went directly to the wrestlers. Masked Republic is doing that with their own NFTs and it solves a problem no one else seems much interested in solving in terms of getting money to wrestlers. If I want to buy something to support Titan right now, I pretty much have to see him at a show. It’s hard to buy or support a wrestler from a distance in Mexico, and it’s extremely hard if you’re outside of Mexico. The NFT stuff would be worth supporting if the money was actually going to wrestlers. I imagine this is more a CMLL licensing deal where the promotion already got paid in advance a flat fee and no one’s getting more or less money no matter how well these do. Someone’s in Mexico is eventually going to have their Pro Wrestling Tees moment, being the universal standard connecting luchadors and fans, and make a lot of money doing the transactions. Maybe it’ll be Masked Republic getting there or maybe it’ll be something else, but it’s the most obvious untapped source of revenue in Mexican wrestling.

Tuesday’s Arena Coliseo Guadalajara line is not impressive

CMLL (TUE) 10/19/2021 Arena Coliseo Guadalajara
1) Avispón Negro Jr., El Divino, Luminoso vs Bobby Black, Fúnebre, Infierno
2) Bello Antuan, Rumbero, Último Ángel vs Gran Kenut, Jabalí, Relámpago Azul
3) Adrenalina, Estrella Oriental, Minotauro vs Joker, Omar Brunetti, Vaquero Jr.
4) Bárbaro Cavernario, Demonio Maya, Principe Daniel vs Bestia Negra, Difunto, Zandokan Jr.
5) Explosivo, Fantástico, Star Black vs Diamond, Magia Blanca, Rugido

The Depreadores as local trios title challengers works, but it’s a weak main event compared to recent matches here.

The Friday Guadalajara shows return on 10/30:

CMLL (SAT) 10/30/2021 Arena Coliseo Guadalajara
1) Bello Antuan, Gran Kenut, Temerario vs Destello, Destructor, Thunder Boy
2) Avispón Negro Jr., Dalia Negra, Flash I, Flash II vs Fúnebre, Great Eku, Mr. Trueno, Rey Trueno
3) Adrenalina, Estrella Oriental, Minotauro vs Cris Skin, Joker, Vaquero Jr.
4) Sexy Sol & Valkiria vs Dark Silueta & Náutica
5) Bestia Negra, Difunto, Zandokan Jr. vs Furia Roja, Guerrero de la Muerte, Ráfaga
6) Explosivo, Fantástico, Místico, Star Black vs Bárbaro Cavernario, Crixus, Demonio Maya, Principe Daniel

Maybe Mistico coming will be a big deal.

Arena Coliseo Guadalajara will be running their own Dia de Muertos show on 11/02.

ESTO talks to Silueta, who explains her crazy schedule when she was training, working and going to school. She ended up putting school aside for now.

AAA

AAA held a press conference to officially announce TripleMania Regia. Two matches were officially announced.

AAA TV (SAT) 12/04/2021 Estadio de Béisbol Monterrey, Monterrey, Nuevo Leon
6) Kenny Omega vs Hijo Del Vikingo [AAA HEAVY]
7th defense
7) Cain Velasquez, Pagano, Psycho Clown vs ?, Rey Escorpión, Taurus

(It’s a 6 pm CT start.)

The main event is a similar to Cain’s previous TripleMania appearance, with Pagano replacing Cody Rhodes and Rey Escorpion and a mystery person replacing Kross & Texano on the other side. Dorian Roldan invited fans on social media to write in who they’d like to see and they’d do their best to get that person in. That’s a hard promise to live up to; there’s not going to be a majority pick without heavy coaching from the promotion, so most people are not going to get the person they were asking for.

The Psycho Clown match was announced first. Vikingo was brought on second and it seemed obvious it had to be for him to face Kenny Omega. Vikingo still seemed like he didn’t believe it was actually going to happen until Dorian Roldan said those words; he was visibly emotional and a lot for words about the opportunity. The build to Vikingo getting this show has been indisupitably poor. Vikingo is a special wrestler where people are going to want to see him face Omega for the first time no matter how bad of a job AAA does to get there. It was impossible to screw this match up, as AAA seemed to go out of their way to prove. I think Omega will have no problem losing to Vikingo if that’s the decision AAA makes. I don’t know if that’ll be the AAA’s call.

Dorian Roldan also suggested the Lucha Brothers and Hermanos Lee (Dralistico & Dragon Lee) will be in a tag match, though that wasn’t officially listed on the poster. Roldan explained that was going to be the tag title match, but now FTR have won the AAA tag team titles and Roldan is talking to AEW about bringing them in for the show. Bringing in FTR for a three-way match with Dralistico & Dragon Lee is ignoring what either team does well, but it’s about star power and not fit. I’m also not sure if FTR will mean a lot as the third outsider act on the show.

Roldan mentioned Psycho Circus and NGD will also appear. Some people watching the press conference took that as they’ll be in a match with each other (probably with Dave replacing Psycho) but I didn’t get that sense. We’ll find out as the lineup comes up. No mention of La Empresa or Deonna Purrazzo. The focus was really on those top two matches they expect to sell the tickets, nothing else really matters.

AAA and the owner of the baseball stadium said they drew 17,000 for the 2019 TripleMania Regia and hoped for 20,000 this time. Around 12,000 tickets were actually put on sale. Tickets run from 200 to 1200. That’s a bit higher than the 1000 max last time, but those ringside tickets starting moving the moment the matches were announced and they’re 40% gone already.

I don’t know how this will air. The previous TripleMania Regia, back in 2019, aired on the Multimedios cable channel on a one-week delay. We can be sure this will at least air on Multimedios, since they’re tied up to the promotion of this show. We just don’t know when and it’s possible this’ll air on a one week delay again. The reason people want to see Omega versus Vikingo is because fans have seen highlights of Vikingo for years, but AAA (and almost all lucha libre companies) care only about selling tickets for the show and remain light years behind the times in any other measure of business. TripleMania Regia would be an easy show to sell on PPV internationally, only AAA still has an outstanding lawsuit about it’s international rights. There are still people from Veracruz to Guadalajara to Merida to Puebla who would like to see Vikingo versus Kenny Omega and don’t have the spare change to travel to Monterrey and buy a ticket but maybe would pay for it some other way. They, and the rest of us, will have to wait until AAA gets around to talking about how they’re distributing the show.

Adictos al Ring appears to have removed their post about the AAA 12/04 show happening in Orizaba, and the group promoting the Heroes Inmortales locally have changed their Facebook. I have no idea what that was all about, maybe just a miscommunication.

Some notes from TV: The AAA trios match from Heroes Inmortales was the second best match from that show. It’s all action in the style of the tag title match and it came together better than the Jinetes versus Poder del Norte one on TV a couple of weeks back. The post match had a slight tease of Villano III Jr. joining up with Los Mercenarions, which would probably produce even better trios title defenses if he ends up defending the trios titles instead of Hiedra.

The one result I didn’t have correct from that show is the Pagano/Chessman/Shani trio actually won by DQ over the new Vipers when Psicosis (Ripper) ran in. DQs are exceedingly rare in AAA, the few that have happened this year were mask pulls or fouls right in front of the referee (and even those aren’t always called DQs.) Interference regularly happens in AAA matches and there was no obvious reason why this should be treated differently.

It came off like a compromise result, that AAA didn’t want the Vipers to lose in their debut under that name but the other team wasn’t interested in losing either. I’ve mixed feelings on the entire Vipers idea, but my feelings are less important than its chance of success. The biggest obstacle is convincing the fans that these are now important guys and that’s going to be though if the current top wrestlers see them as small guys they don’t see the value in putting over. AAA’s solution may be to give Psicosis and Cibernetico – who was all but mentioned by name as showing up soon – a prominent role since the top AAA guys may see them as real stars though that won’t get any of the existing guys over.

A DQ being called in a situation where it hasn’t been called for months was not really a point of discussion. No one’s surprised when AAA does nonsense, they’re a nonsense promotion.

Tirantes did an angle with his son, so maybe the endpoint of this version of the Apache/Tirantes feud is something with the referee’s hair on the line as seconds. The bigger story is Tirantes teasing an issue with Konnan. Abismo Negro Jr. also wore a half Konnan mask; he wore a half Vipers mask earlier to foreshadow that group’s return. Cibernetico, Psicosis and Tirantes all are guys who left AAA in the early 2010s after Konnan got more power with the promotion and some haven’t been on the best of terms with him since, so it’s a bit interesting they’re all coming back. (Cibernetico quit once, came back, and then left later than the there two.) I’m not sure the fans know that history though. Konnan hasn’t really been involved onscreen in AAA this year except for inserting himself into the Andrade/Omega match. There’s no reason to be referencing him except if he’s going to be coming back on screen soon. It’s hard to imagine why AAA needs to spend time on Konnan angles when they’ve got a lot of other people to balance, but Konnan likes to feature himself on the one or two AAA shows people outside of Mexico watch to make sure he’s still perceived as a big star to that crowd. This’ll probably go somewhere for one of the December shows.

(Konnan and Psicosis did bury the hatchet after the viral Psicosis slapping Konnan moment from early 2020; Psicosis wouldn’t be back here if they hadn’t.)

FTR won the AAA tag team titles on Saturday’s edition of AEW Dynamite. This was spoiled by the photo of Tony Khan’s leaked Full Gear lineup; while some things on that photo will change, the bulk of the matches seem to be still on. The Lucha Brothers/FTR was on that sheet and this match on Dynamite was to set that up in the same way as AEW’s done for other titles. I had a pretty good idea it was going to be FTR only because of that spoiled line but didn’t know for sure until they showed up as the Super Ranas.

I thought the FTR masked gimmicks in the title change match was lame – a homage to a territorial idea without the context of those angles – but lots of people nowadays enjoy nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake and I think I’m in the minority not liking. The bit is also something that gets heat on the promotion, for teasing an actual Mexican wrestling team and delivering guys mocking lucha libre, and I’m sure that wasn’t the attention. You could see in real-time AEW realize they had a fanbase thinking they were going to get Dragon Lee & Dralistico or some other lucha libre team and trying to reel back in those expectations by having Andrade declare it wasn’t going to be Los Ingobenables and Taz hint that it was going to be people under a mask and not luchadors on Friday’s show. I’m not sure it worked and doing an 80s territory angle for a lucha libre title doesn’t really make any sense, but again most of the people watching are 80s wrestling fans and not lucha libre.

I expect FTR will lean heavily into either lucha libre parody or anti-lucha libre bits for the next few weeks because it’s what they’re comfortable with doing and is the sort of stuff Konnan and AAA likes. FTR did well in a similar fashion with their feud with the Young Bucks and did great work with the end of that feud. I just don’t know that AAA has any idea what that feud is going to be – AAA clearly has no plans for what to do with Deonna Purrazzao after winning the Reina de Reinas title. The Vikingo/Omega match is happening not because of any AAA master plan, but because Vikingo is so exceptionally talented AEW had no choice but to book it. (Maybe literally no choice to get another Omega match.)

Maybe FTR will lose the titles right back at TripleManai Regia, but most likely they’ll just keep holding on to them in hopes AEW will do something to promote them. AAA clearly wants to be a bigger deal in the US and they’re not willing to do the work themselves to do so themselves – that lawsuit exists, their entire marketing strategy is hoping someone like me does the work for them in English – and so the plan seems to get titles on to people on US TV in hopes to build a brand that way. Maybe it’ll work, it just makes watching AAA an unfulfilling proposition outside of the 5-6 big shows a year.

Nerd stuff

the tag team titles FTR hold are not the same ones Art Barr & Eddie Guerrero held. Those were the AAA/IWC Tag Team championships, which were never seen again after Barr passed away in 1994. They likely would’ve been dropped anyway in 1996 when AAA and IWC had a falling out. AAA used the Mexican National Tag Team Championship as their primary 2v2 belt for years, then supplanted it with the current AAA World Tag Team Championship in 2007 in a tournament. Those are the belts FTR hold, long removed from Los Gringos Locos. I’ve heard this wrong multiple times in the past week. It’s lucha libre history so I’m not sure it matters. I’m not exactly going to correct a widow about it.

It would be sporting of AAA incorporate the AAA/IWC tag title belt in their current history, but they haven’t in the past. I can’t tell you what they recognize now; the tag team title history page on AAA’s website has been broken for years, like many of the links on the mostly forgotten page. We list them as separate titles on the luchawiki but I’m not the keeper of Mexican wrestling history.

Other Notes

IWRG (SUN) 10/17/2021 Arena Naucalpan [+LuchaTV, Furia de Titanes, IWRG, R de Rudo]
1) Death Metal & Satania b Sagittarius & Sol 
2) Heddi Karaoui b Fulgor 
3) Diva Salvaje, Jessy Ventura, Rasputín b Big Boy, Big Chico Che, Big Mike 
4) Toxin b Freelance, Puma de Oro, Aster Boy 
ten minute time limit. If no one ones, everyone loses.
5) Sick Boy b Medico Brujo, Hijo del Fishman 
6) Hijo del Pirata Morgan b Giant Orión, Máximo, Lolita, Diosa Quetzal, Hijo del Alebrije, Halloween Jr., Villano V Jr., Caballero de Plata, Súper Nova, Cerebro Negro 
Wrestlers win 5000 pesos for each wrestler eliminated. Match goes on until wrestlers agree to stop or one wrestler remains. All wrestlers a surprise. Pirata was the last person standing to get all the money.

IWRG threw themselves into the Squid Game concepts with homage outfits in the main event, but I’m not sure if it meant enough to get more people to show up.

The 10/03 Lucha Memes show, with Negro Navarro vs Jonathan Gresham, is up on IWTV. Lucha Memes getting a show up in two weeks is really fast for a non-Mas Lucha production.