CMLL’s next En Busca de un Idolo should only include luchadoras

Really. Why not? Dark Angel’s comments planted the seed of this idea in my head. It’s not exactly what she seemed to be looking for, but it’s a step in the direction of getting more attention for that division.

Good wrestling programming, whatever language you do it in, is a lot of making the best hand out of the card you’ve been dealt. CMLL’s big picture landscape is without a lot of excitement, and of a fanbase disinterested in the status quo. The smaller picture is they have a national women’s championship, but not a healthy champion to defend it. They’re going to run a tournament to decide it eventually. Why not make it an interesting one?

To cut off the first complaint, CMLL can still run a men’s En Busca de un Idolo too. There’s plenty of CMLL shows which don’t currently have any reason to exist that can be pushed out for something with more effort. It wouldn’t make sense to run them both at the same time, but there’s no urgency to run the men’s one right now. (I’m concerned that any next edition of that tournament will have trouble following the last one; inserting a women’s version and pushing back a men’s one will only help fix that.)

The best En Busca de Un Idolo competitions have focused on breaking out newer wrestlers. That wouldn’t change with a women’s one and shouldn’t change. CMLL’s women roster is old by any comparison. It feels rude to post go luchadora by luchadora to post ages, but most everyone who’s an important regular is over 35, and many are closer to 45. Some can still go and hopefully will keep on going, but it seems like a safe assumption that of the women who are around today won’t be around five years from now, or won’t have the same prominence. CMLL’s got to decide now if they want to introduce a new wave of women to carry on the division, or if they rather wind it down. CMLL’s gotten benefit out of their luchadora’s being in secondary apuesta matches on big shows. I tend to believe there’s more value in women’s wrestling than CMLL’s gotten out of it, but there’s unquestionably value in keeping it at least viable, and they need young people to keep it viable.

There’s not nearly as many women to choose for such a project as men, but they can be found. There appears multiple troupes of luchadoras who work on indy shows but never together, for whatever reason. The WWS women don’t work with the Leyendas Inmortales women who don’t work with the women on IWRG and the Moreno sisters seem to have their own opponents and so on. They’d likely get past those differences if it meant a chance to tryout for CMLL. There’s probably a few hanging out in training classes waiting for a chance to debut, and there’s plenty of capable women away from Mexico City who’d be qualified. And throwing in women already in CMLL but not used much as ringers is totally acceptable: Vaquerita and Isis and whoever else are ready made for this. CMLL can find eight women for this tournament if they put the effort in. (Trying to figure out would be best fit is probably the biggest reason not to do it next – casting is vital, you want time to figure out the best possible lineup.)

The biggest risk is the matches may not be any good. It’s definite possibility when using people who don’t have as much experience, are on a much bigger stage than usual, and may be wrestling unfamiliar opponents. The great news is CMLL does not seem very concerned about people having bad matches. I watch their TV every week, I’m pretty sure match quality is not the management’s biggest concern. Even if some of these matches will be worse than usual, they also won’t be the usual matches. CMLL luchadors suffer from over exposure and an over-reliance on the same routines in every appearance. Just replacing them routine matches for a few weeks with anything else, even a disaster, will help everyone seem fresher.

There’s an added benefit outside of possibly creating a new star: giving more attention to the existing ones by making them judges. CMLL doesn’t give any time to traditional promo time, but these sort of judging appearances have been a useful replacement. Dragon Rojo Jr. turned tecnico mostly because the reaction to his super polite judging style, and Tirantes is second only to Rush in the negative reactions he can get from the crowd thru his comments. CMLL’s current women are usually only heard at shows when it’s time to urgently create a title or apuesta match, but they’ve shown more ability when allowed to be guest commentaries on the TV shows. Putting Tiffany or Amapola or Dark Angel on the panel would help them and the competition. (Thinking back on, it’s very strange that a woman hasn’t appeared on the judging panels for the men’s competition so far.)

The best possible scenario? CMLL (and the commission) would frown on a unknown or a barely known woman walking off with a title in a reality show competition, so fall back to the status quo and simply give the winner a shot at the vacant title. The winner of this En Busca de Un Idolo would earn a place in the decision match against the former champion – Estrellita, who would then also be a permanent member of the judging panel. Esterllita’s capable of that role, and you’ve got the added drama and intrigue of her having a role in selecting her opponent. CMLL creates a new star in the winner of the competition, they’ve got a built up title match to follow up on it, a logical next title match with Zeuxis returning to face the winner, and possibly some other new stars based off the competition.

That’s the point. Make people interested in new stars. Simply seeding them into matches once every six weeks isn’t going to do it for anyone. This would be a big gesture, and big gestures are needed to accomplish big things.

So, We’re Thinking About Going To The Anniversary Show

Myself and some others are strongly considering going to CMLL’s Anniversary show this year. We haven’t exactly booked flights yet, but we are far enough long to be looking at flights and hotels. We are wondering if other people are interested in going, or already planning on attending the show.

I need to emphasize this point: this is not a luchablog tour, everyone is on their own for making arrangements for the trip. This is more about being able to travel in larger groups when possible and sharing information. (Any suggestions from people who’ve previously made this trip or live in Mexico are also welcome!)

We’re looking at a week long trip, maybe from the Wednesday prior to the show to the Wednesday, with a plan to hit as many lucha shows as possible during that week. We’d like to get a group of tickets together for the Anniversary show, which go on sale next Tuesday, so we need to lock down dates on the trip in next couple of weeks.

If you’re thinking about going, please email me (thecubsfan21@gmail.com) or let me know in the comments.

idea for making CMLL work better

You think the recaps are backlogged? I’ve had most of this article sitting around waiting to post for near four months now…

This is not exceedingly thought out well, but some of it’s been tossing in my head for a while and I might as well get it out. It’s not really a Push X and stop Pushing Y deal, or yet another iteration of “hey, it’s 2009, sell your stuff on the internet, you goofballs”, it’s more general scheduling ideas.

* Change the name of Reyes de Aire. It’s kind of generic, “Rey” is an AAA term and it should be put on the same level as the other annual tournaments if it’s going to be annual event. Someone can be Rey de Aires if they win, but I’ve got a better idea for the name of the match. CMLL has a Leyenda de Plata for Santo, a Leyenda de Azul for Demon, why not a Leyenda de Sombra for Black Shadow? It’s that three man feud which made mask matches in Mexico; Black Shadow losing his mask to El Santo is the most important match in lucha libre history, but Shadow’s contribution gets overlooked because he lost and Demon was the one forever looking for revenge. It doesn’t happen if Shadow doesn’t lose his mask.

Shadow’s name isn’t being forced on here either; he’s considered the father of high flying lucha libre. He didn’t create the tope, but he made them famous, and the guys on TV are doing the same. Thanks to TV coming at around the same time, Shadow got popular after his mask loss due to his spectacular style, which is what the current Reyes de Aire tournament is about. It’s a perfect fit.

* Bring more than just the discounted tickets to Puebla and GDL. One of the few interesting part of lucha libre at this time of year during late December is reading about all the Lagureno guys who go back home and wrestle on local cards during the holidays. The intermixing between big TV stars and local heroes must be fun to watch and, in the long run, it doesn’t hurt the national guy if he loses a match to a local guy. El Tackle beating Misterioso in a cibernetico at AOL doesn’t really hurt Misterioso in DF, but it makes Tackle seem a bigger star in Gomez Palacio.

To some extent, they do intermix talent in Guadalajara and even the lesser CMLL guys may end up facing the Puebla guys, but the message is always that the best of the locals are not stars and can not beat even lowly DF regulars. Why not change the message for a couple nights a year by importing some Mexico City concepts? CMLL could run local variants of Gran Prixes (Guadalajara vs the World, with CMLL GDL wrestlers going home to represent their city) and Gran Alternativas (CMLL DF wrestler paired with a local wrestler; maybe the winning local gets a DF match) to give the fans different looking matches a couple times a year.

* Focus various championships on different days: CMLL, at last count, has 17 18 different championships in play. Yet, between the erratic patterns of defenses and number of regular locations, the same audience is going long stretches between seeming defended, making them seem even more interchangeable and meaningless.

If CMLL can’t get rid of one, two, or a dozen (and apparently they can’t), maybe they can be more effective by tying them them a regular location or date of the week. Assign all the titles a base show where they’re defended (say, NWA Light Heavyweight belongs to Sunday Guadalajara shows, or the Mexican Middleweight title is for Tuesday Mexico City shows); they don’t have to only be defended on those shows, and you can do whatever title matches you want for Fridays because that’s the show that matters, but the attempt is to do 3-4 different title defenses on the show. Over time, those title defenses would start to mean something more than the 2-3 week build for them, because the previous defenses would be more real than reading a line about in the paper, more meaningful than a random fact tossed off during commentary.

remixing the lucha subset of PWI 500

I figure, if I’m going to criticize ideas, I might as well put my own idea to be equally ripped apart. Since, I had some thoughts about the lucha libre rankings in this year’s PWI (as I do every year), I figured I could do my own.

So the criteria is supposedly:

– Win-loss record
– Technical Ability
– Influence on the sport
– Success against the highest grade of competition
– Success against the most diverse competition
– Activity

Let’s go with that. Why not. I’ll skip the minis and the women, because that seems to be part of the rule as well.

There were 62 wrestlers from the lucha libre sphere of influence on the list, which means I’ve to rank 62 people. THIS IS NOT A LIST OF MY FAVORITE WRESTLERS, though that’s obviously going to be an influence.

What did I say last time?

This list is for entertainment purposes only. If you find yourself being legitimately upset about a ranking, you’re doing it wrong. If you’re mildly amused, you’re doing better.

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the new layout

is a result of me pushing buttons and seeing what happens. We’re not sticking with this one (though the post layouts are nice), but we’re not sticking with the old one either.

Personally, I think Ol’ Moo and Oink at the bottom of the page is fantastically hilarious, but it was pointed out to me that they don’t quite fit the theme. The dead spaces on the sides bug me far more. We’re without borders at the CMLLBlog.

Anyway, the old main page is now up at http://www.thecubsfan.com/cmll/oldmainindex.php, just in case people want to actually use this page. 99% of the stuff on that sidebar will be back on this side bar regardless of the wacky color (which will change often), just as soon as I figure out how to do it.