Extreme Tiger out of AAA, Electrico’s road back to CMLL, Diamante Azul & Rush to Japan

Tonight’s Arena Mexico show is headlined by Diamante Azul vs Tama Tonga (Azul wants to prove himself a star) and Polvora vs Mascara Dorada for Dorada’s CMLL Welterweight Championship. Dorada is the easy favorite in his match, but Tonga vs Azul is more up in the air. Usually (but not always), the NJPW guys have lost in their big Arena Mexico singles matches, but Tonga has a big title match on Tuesday vs Azul & Atlantis for the tag team title mach. If CMLL’s different weekly shows work in unity, Tonga should win tonight to build up Tuesday, but CMLL’s weekly shows have operated without paying attention to each other in the past. The match itself is an interesting inversion of usual CMLL tecnico vs rudo ones – here, the high flyer is the rudo and the strong guy is the tecnico. Diamante Azul just went thru that match with Volador Jr., but I suspect there won’t be as much Mije involvement tonight.

Electrico, who’s been out of action since August after a bad leg injury, says he will not be able to return this year. The prognosis was a four month recovery, so he wouldn’t have enough time and it seems like it’s going slower than expected. The injury had a domino effect; he missed out of “being part of the 20 year celebration for the pequeno estrellas” (maybe being in an apuesta?), was supposed to challenge Demus for his title (which Astral won instead), had been offered a trip to Japan by Ultimo Dragon, can’t participate in the bodybuilding contest, and lost an opportunity to teach engineering at a college. Electrico says he’s not complain, and has learned to appreciate what he does have in life.

MedioTiempo mentions a promotion named WASP is planning to debut on 11/23 in Queretaro, promising ex-WWE, ex-ECW, US Indy and AAA wrestlers. It’s 12 days out and they haven’t announced any names. It’s the same arena that’s hosting the Rey Cometa headlined show the weekend after, and that show is a free show. This is probably not going to end well.

LuchaWorld has KrisZ’s news update.

Rob has highlights from mid March 2000 AAA.

Lucha Libre in Japan

11/11 REINA X WORLD: Amapola defeated Mia Yim (taking falls 1/3) to keep the REINA International Championship. Match was said to be good. Crowd appeared to be minimal.

NJPW announced the teams for it’s World Tag League, a 14 team heavyweight tag team tournament. CMLL will be represented by the team of Rush & Diamante Azul (as “CMLL ASESINOS”). They should enjoy teaming with each other, not sure how their opponents will feel. The other teams in the group are Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Satoshi Kojima (previous champs, though they may be going in different directions soon), Strong Man & Manabu Nakanishi (Nakanishi is recently returned from neck surgery, Strong Man is Strong Man), MVP & Shelton Benjamin (MVP was meant to be regular semi-important guy but has been sparingly used the last six months, and his contract runs out after the Tokyo Dome), Toru Yano & Takashi Iizuka (rudo b-team), Masato Tanaka & Yujiro Takahashi (also rudo b-team), Lance Archer & Davey Boy Smith Jr. (current tag champs.) It’s not impossible to for Rush & Azul to do well, because there are a lot of average teams here, but history tells us lucha teams finish mid table. We can figure Rush is probably back in Japan for FantasticaMania and they’ll need a few matches for that show, so stealing a win over the tag champs to set up a rematch might be possible.

The tournament runs from 11/20 to 12/02. Rush & Diamante Azul would probably be back in Mexico in time for the usual year end show, but probably not involved in any major match.

Lineups

JUNIORS (SUN) 12/02/2012 Auditorio Miguel Barragan de San Luis Potosi [El Sol de San Luis]
1) Lady Dinamita & Rossy Moreno vs Esther Moreno & La Sádica
2) Lobito & Octagoncito (original) vs Mini Conde Bartock & Mini Maniaco
3) ? vs ?? [cage]
particpants (including number) to be announced
4) Decnnis, Extreme Tiger, Oriental vs Black Terry, Pirata Morgan, Scorpio Jr.
5) El Hijo Del Santo & Villano III vs Angel Blanco Jr. & El Hijo del Solitario

FWIW, this is a SLP Juniors promotion different from the Gallo Tapado Jr. one. It’s essentially the dormant TxT guys plus whoever is in the cage match (to be announced this week, but I’d guess locals.)

The big news is Extreme Tiger showing up on a lineup here, which is about as much confirmation we’re going to get. (AAA still has said nothing, probably will say nothing, social media is pointless if you can’t say anything worthwhile on it.) In the long run, I don’t think Tiger leaving hurts AAA much – historically, they’ve shown the ability to replace high flying guys who leave with newer unknown ones, and Tiger was in the group of guys who rarely had feuds but was often thrown into a random match on a big show. (The TripleMania team with Halloween was the best example of this.) I wouldn’t be surprised if CMLL gave Tiger a shot, and he’ll probably work Tijuana a lot. It seems unlikely he’ll be better off outside of AAA then he was in it, and that seems like an indication of how frustrated he must’ve been to make this move.