2006 Year In Review: April

the big story: On a non-wrestling TV show appearance, Ciberentico gets into a brawl with ex-boxer turned politician Jorge Kawaghi. All involved act as if the fight is a unscripted incident, which garners a lot of press in Mexico.

On one hand, I totally missed the boat when it happened and didn’t think it was a big deal at the time. On the other hand, I was sure it was a work to begin with – as were many wrestling fans when they saw the video – and eventually the mainstream press caught on. Cibernetico, Antonio Pena and AAA were steadfast in maintaining that this was all real, and keeping up other angles related to Cibernetico, like his feud with Pena. Kawaghi kept up his end by threatening to sue Cibernetico.

Obviously, the idea was to do a Kawaghi/Cibernetico match at some point – it might’ve finally confirmed to all that the fight was never real to begin with, but by then there would’ve been plenty of interest in the story no matter how it was conceived. It was always supposed to put off for a few months, figuring that if it went to the ring right away, it’d look too fake.

As of 01/2007, the match hasn’t happened, and hasn’t even been hinted at in a great long time. Circumstances have conspired against it. Cibernetico suffered a knee injury in the following couple of months, which they managed to weave into the story (Kawaghi’s political clout forced Pena to suspend Cibernetico for the six months he’d need to recover), and Antonio Pena’s illness and death surely affected keeping Kawaghi involved. The shelf life of the angle hasn’t completely expired, but with Ciberneitco’s new tecnico role, it doesn’t seem to work unless Kawaghi is willing to act as the rudo. Looking back, Muerte turning on Cibernetico was the sign that they’d given up on this direction.

Even if the angle never comes off, there was some nice ancillary affects from it. I don’t live in Mexico and I don’t watch a lot of other spanish language TV, so I’m picking this up second and third hand and may be over or under playing it, but it sure seemed like Cibernetico got a lot more mainstream attention int he second half of the year, even much past the initial Kawaghi fight. While out with his knee injury, he was a guest on daytime talk shows, and often they’d do a ‘real unscripted fight’ as with the original Kawaghi bit. Sometimes Cibernetico would be involved, and latter in the year his girlfriend Esterllita would get into fight with Tiffany on these shows. Individually, these were far lesser deals, but it got Cibernetico in front of a lot of female viewers while he was reshaping his gimmick. When he returned to the ring at the end of the year, Cibernetico suddenly had a ton of screaming female fans (and male fans too). A lot of it was being the returning rudo who’s now a tecnico and going to save us all, but the talk show appearances and his new popularity couldn’t have been a coincidence.

I don’t know that Pena figured the mainstream pub of the Kawaghi fight would turn out this way, but establishing Cibernetico as a big tecnico star probably will gross AAA more in the long term than just the one match with Kawaghi would’ve.

Gran Apache beat Billy Boy for his hair: Gran Apache had opposed his daughter Fabi’s relationship with Billy Boy, and was angry when he found out Fabi was pregnant – till he realized/decided it wasn’t Billy’s son. This didn’t sit well with Billy Boy, and he feuded with his father-in-(common?)law leading up to a hair match on 04/30. Due to sparse coverage of AAA, both on their own website and elsewhere, it wasn’t really easy to get a good feel for how over this feud was before this match unless you were watching the TV show (which was still months behind in the US.)

The hair match between Billy Boy and Gran Apache has since been acclaimed as one of the best matches of the year. Bloodied and battered, Billy Boy can not overcome old man Gran Apache, and the match ends with the emotional scene of Fabi bringing her newborn son into the ring to watch as his red faced father gets his hair shaved off. This was AAA doing what it does at it’s best; going in, the thought was Billy Boy needed a win to establish himself as a singles star, but everything coming together as it did a better job of making him as an individual (and he can always get the win later.)

AAA would downplay the feud during the summer (starting a triangle with Gran Apache claiming Brandon was the real father but never really going anywhere with it), but ramp it back up during the fall. Gran Apache would kidnap his grandson, starting another round of matches.

The Mexican Powers debut: On the same show, Juventued Guerrera returned to AAA, starting a new group that was obviously intended to be a mimic of his previous WWE stable. They originally called it the MexiPowers (to be like the MexiCools), but split into two names. Replacing Psicosis was the AAA Psicosis (who left the just reformed Vipers to join this group), and replacing Super Crazy was his cousin, Crazy Boy – who was a CMLL undercarder up until that moment, and had just missed an Arena Mexico show days before, due to injury. Juvi didn’t just borrow from his own WWE group; he also took Rey Misterio’s area code gimmick and got his whole team jerseys with their own area codes.

The Mexican Powers, particularly the non-Juvi members, were way into hardcore/extreme/garbage wrestling styles; that’s how Crazy Boy had made his name, such as it was, on independent shows and AAA gave them free reign. Crazy Boy’s frequent indy partner/rival Joe Lider was later brought into the group to do more of the same style. Some of the younger AAA wrestlers went along with it, some of the older ones didn’t seem too impressed.

The Mexican Powers actually had more legs than the group they were mimicking, and got over well as an undercard tecnico group. Their matches provoked definite opinions – you either liked that style or you hated them (like me), and the wrestlers weren’t that great at doing their stunts; over the course of the year, there were a lot of botches AAA never bothered to edit out.

Other AAA Notes Lots of continuing angles…
– Muerte Cibernetica, Cibernetico’s hired mercenary, started his feud with La Parka Jr.
– Zorro defended the Mexican Heavyweight Champion quite a bit as part of a three way feud with brothers Electro Shock and Zorro. As the feud progressed, Electro was slowly becoming rudo-ish, like his brother.
– Cassandro and Pimpinela Escarlata continued their feud, which never got around to a payoff
– Vampiro, Konnan, Cibernetico and Shocker had a four way chain match, which sounds like it should been a big deal, but wasn’t.
РLaredo Kid, N̩mesis AAA, Super Fly and Rey Cometa, dubbed the New Air Force, made their way up the cards and a feud with the Sect.

Besides the AAA stuff, there were three different important CMLL shows on the month.

Dark Angel beats Amapola for her mask on 04/14: When CMLL restarted the women’s division, Amapola and Dark Angel were initially the rudas, but they stole the match, Dark Angel got over as a tecnica, and everything got redone for that and seemingly a dozen other reasons. The two spent the first part of the year feuding, with Dark Angel yanking Amapola’s mask multiple times, but I don’t it occurred to me how big a deal CMLL was going to make it until it was announced as a semi-main of an Arena Mexico show.

It was proclaimed to be the highest women’s match and first mask match in Arena Mexico history. There was a discussion of women’s lucha libre history in that week’s Box Y Lucha; I was unaware until then that women had been banned for wrestling from around ’58 to ’88 due to local morals legislation (that same that kept lucha off TV.) Dark Angel seemed primed for the top spot in the division, so there as no doubt Amapola was losing her mask in the preview, and she did, but got herself in trouble for storming off after taking her mask, not allowing any of the magazine photographers to get a good shot off her. (I think they’re going to have to position themselves on the ramp to get people as they walk to the back, one of these days.) Amapola apologized for her actions in the press in the days after, but seemed to drop in rank on the ruda side as punishment.

Surprisingly, this win actually didn’t springboard Dark Angel. The match was fine, but outside of winning the CMLL bodybuilding title on her own, she wasn’t given major matches or feuds the rest of the year. She’s still seems to be the fan’s choice, but maybe not the promotions pick for the center.

Mistico & Negro Casas end Averno & Mephisto’s reign, win the tag team titles: Negro finally found the right partner. Title change went down the same day as the mask match. Averno & Mephisto had a great reign as tag champions, especially on the sliding scale for championships in Mexico, defending the titles often, in high visibility, and against top competition. The titles were raised to their highest level since Ultimo & Bucanero were trading them with Negro & Santo. Despite not having the titles, Averno & Mephisto are still casually referred to as the best team in the country and it’s assumed they’ll get the belts back at some point.

As of this writing, Mistico & Negro Casas have been near non-entities as champions. Outside of one defense versus the former champions (to promote Mistico in a music video), CMLL hasn’t done much with the duo as a team and Mistico’s individual issues would’ve made it tough for them to do a lot with this title even if they wanted to. Negro, as a guy who’d been chasing the titles, and Mistico, a frequent opponent of Averno & Mephisto, made sense as a team to finally stop the ex-champs, but didn’t make sense as a team that’d keep the belts valuable.

Guerreros defeat Perros on 04/28: This was the traditional end of April big card by CMLL. The top two matches were another outgrowth of the feud between the two rudo stables.

In the semimain, Ultimo Guerrero defeated Hector Garza to retain the CMLL Light Heavyweight championship.
In the main event, Tarzan Boy & Rey Bucanero beat Mr. Aguila & Damian 666 for their hair.

Neither match ended up meaning all that much by the end of the year; Ultimo and Hector’s match wasn’t as good as it might have sounded, and the double hair match was one you had to strain to remember a few months later. It really had no impact.

What we didn’t know at the time was how this card was probably a compromised rethought out lineup. Apparently, the original plan – maybe for this show, maybe for a show later in the summer – was to culminate the Perros/Guerreros feud with a cage of death match, everyone on both sides involved, and Rey Bucanero taking the loss and losing his hair. Bucanero, having started the Guerreros with Ultimo as his equal partner and since been passed in importance by every new member, balked at taking the loss, and considered a jump to AAA. CMLL changed it’s booking to keep Rey around, turning him tecnico later in the year – which flopped bad. He probably would’ve been better going.

Tecnicos lose on Kids Day!: CMLL ran a special Arena Mexico show on a Sunday, drawing lots of younger fans (at reduced prices) for a Kids Day show. Since the beginning of time, or at least since CMLL started running these years ago, the good guys would win on shows for kids, sending all the children home happy.

In 2006, La Park was a grinch. As noted in previous months recaps, LA Park had some issues with fellow tecnico Dr. Wagner and was upset with the crowd going against him. Despite Wagner not being involved in the main event (it was the Perros versus Negro Casas, Heavy Metal, LA Park and Mistico), LA Park got booed once again. Park became angry and bitter, taking it out on Mistico. He attacked his teammates, and then laid down to allow the Perros to beat him. Park teased joining the Perros at the time, but ended up being an independent rudo (and sometimes a tecnico in other parts of the country.)

historical note: at one point, it was hinted Black Warrior vs Mistico for the masks would happen on 04/30, to give Mistico the big win in front of all the kids, but they wisely waited for a day where they could for full price (and even more than that) tickets.

Stuka Jr. beats Flecha for his mask: This was an opening match feud that slipped under my radar till they were at the mask challenges. Stuka won on a pretty fun Guerreros del Ring show, and then Flecha disappeared off everyone’s radar, wrestling only rarely and not in the main arenas. In hindsight, this was Flecha putting over a youngster one last time on the way out, typical of his career.

Other: US indy wrestler Sabu did a weekend in Mexico, including a bloody brawl in a Luchas 2000 promoted card at Arena Coliseo. Sabu tore a nail off in one of his matches, which actually sidelined him for a bit