2006 Year In Review: October

the big story: Antonio Pena, the founder and driving creative force behind AAA, passed away on October 5th. He was 57.

It was revealed, after his death, Pena had been sick for a long time before his death and had a long hospital stay. The illness was kept from all but a close few, with Pena continuing to book and run AAA by phone without his wrestlers knowing what was going on. They had an idea he was sick, but not the extent of it till he died.

Pena was remembered and honored by those who worked for him, those who feuded with him like LA Park and even the Archibishop of Mexico City. Pena was not honored by CMLL, who worked for before starting AAA, as they made no mention of his death that night on the Arena Mexico show. CMLL’s TV show did mention it, but that was the choice of the network, not the promotion. (He was dead to the promotion long ago.)

AAA’s TV air liked normal that Sunday, but the following week was a three hour tribute to Antonio Pena’s life, and the rest of 2006 of AAA shows were in dedication to him.

There were lots of obits. The magazines had theirs, Konnan talked about the future of the promotion on Wrestling Observer Live, and Jose wrote the definite remembrance of Pena’s crazy mad genius.

There was a lot of question about what would happen with AAA without Pena. It seemed possible that the whole thing might fall apart, but by three weeks out, it seemed like they were staying pretty stable. Pena’s family took over operations, and kept the promtoion together. There were no major jumps or losses; the only notable change was Arena Coliseo Monterrey split, but that seemed to be more local promoter politics using Pena’s death as an excuse. Part of the reason everything stayed together is probably because there didn’t appear to be chaos; no one made that first move to jump off a sinking ship, so it never was a sinking ship. Another factor was CMLL’s official unwillingness to acknowledge Pena’s death, which angered the AAA workers and focused them to get revenge on CMLL for the slight.

Despite having six TV tapings this month, including a stretch of five TV tapings in ten days just after Pena’s death, there wasn’t a lot of huge AAA news this month. Things were ticking along slowly to build for Guerrera del Titanes show, with no big blowoffs before hand.

Chessman was now openly feuding with the Sect, leading to a match against Muerte. Chessman had Charly Manson as backup, but superior numbers helped Muerte take the win. Cibernetico returned on the 10/22 taping, vowing to return to the ring before the end of the year.

The other big angle was Intocable taking a piledriver from Alan Stone in a six man cage match, heating up that rivalry again. Intocable was off of TV for a month of shows due to the resulting neck injury (though he appeared fine on non-AAA TV shows), and Brazo de Plata Jr. took his place in a number of matches.

CMLL vs AAA: As if the handling of Pena’s death didn’t fully articulate CMLL’s upper management feelings on AAA, the rumored and then yanked interpromotional show said it. Super Luchas broke the story of a Televisa backed dual promotional show, as part of Televisa’s annual Teleton events. As part of the build, Televisa brought in former CMLL announcer and long time AAA announcer Arturo Rivera back to Arena Mexico for a set of shows. (Later, Dr. Morales appeared on AAA TV to return the favor.) CMLL was not down with this idea, wanting nothing to do with AAA, and called the show off. In it’s place, CMLL announced a CMLL vs Indy show for charity on 11/20. This wouldn’t be the last of the teleton, though.

CMLL to December: AAA wasn’t the only one focused on setting up it’s biggest show of the year. Many of October’s Arena Mexico action focused on heavyweights, and adjusting them around to a foreigners/hometown battle. Specifically, Universo had to be a good guy to feud with Kenzo and Corelone, with Univero teaming with Shocker & Rey Bucanero and the foreigners teaming with whoever.

This might have not been the whole plan throughout; in the middle of the month, both I and Ovaciones thought we were getting some sort of Dos Caras vs Marco Corelone feud, as they had started building that up since day Marco debuted. Instead, they ran an angle with Universo 2000, the tecnico, giving Kenzo, the rudo, an illegal Black Hammer to send him to the hospital. That is the way of Universo.

Mistico vs Warrior, stuck on repeat: Before they started prepping for later, CMLL decided to yank as much money as possible out of the Black Warrior/Mistico feud, running trios matches with the two constantly. The whole match didn’t matter, because everyone quickly figured out it was leading to the same finishing sequence: Mistico would attempt La Mistica on Warrior, and either the move would work, or Warrior would escape to immediately cause a foul. It was the kind of match you might do all across the country one or twice for fans who hadn’t seen it, but it instead was run in the same locations on a weekly basis. They kept running this in spot shows and Coliseo and Mexico until attendance dropped off (coincidentally, that was the week Mistico finally learned a counter to one of Warrior’s DQ tactics.) It might have been too late; the repetitive finishes had been a complaint about Mistico matches previous to this, and this set of matches magnified that problem, causing people to turn against him.

The matches just ended one week, with both guys off Arena Mexico shows. Black Warrior was explained to be suspended for his role in stealing Mistico’s Leyenda de Plata trophy, a minor angle from the previous month which hadn’t been mentioned much since it happened.

Lady Apache vs Hiroka: It was a surprise to see Hiroka successfully defend the CMLL Women’s Championship over Hiroka at the end of September; the more tenured and connected Lady Apache was the easy favorite, for reasons even extending beyond vague notions of internal politics. When they continued feuding, and agreed to a hair match, I was sure Lady Apache was getting her win back. Turns out, no, Lady Apache was shaved bald. While Lady Apache would win the title at the end of the year, Hiroka’s two big wins over her are still pretty cool. I still don’t see the logic of Lady Apache getting the title back, but the road there did accomplish something.

Other CMLL
– the annual Leyenda de Azul tournament took place. We probably spent too much talking about it, since it still featured 0 worthwhile matches. Rey Bucanero beat Atlantis in the main event, to end that feud for the moment in the most pointless manner possible.
– Maximo won his fifth hair of the year, beating Emilio Charles Jr.. While they were all midcard feuds, Maximo had a pretty good year.
– In an exclusive interview, Oro II talks about getting a new gimmick as a rudo. Oro II’s vanished, but no one’s yet turned up as rudo matching his description.
Mistico is very delayed getting to an Arena Coliseo show and the promotion anticipates problems if he doesn’t show, so they stall by taking a undercard trios match very long, having the valets dance, and running a Hooligan/Mascara Purpura match until they get the all clear. None of this, except for clips of the dancing, makes air.

Other: William Boo, famous referee Argentina’s “Titanes en el ring”, died on 10/20. Boo become a national symbol for corrupt and incompetent refereeing. Nicho was reported to have been on armed robbery/reckless driving rampage; he later claims this was all a fabrication as part of an extortion job, but loses his WWE job in the process (though he probably was on his way out already)…Mistico vs Hijo del Diablo for a mask match, was announced to take place in December…Mr. Niebla worked an AAA spot show, though he was still months away from joining the promotion.