Tag: headline

CMLL (FRI) 09/19 Arena Mexico
1) Alex Koslov, La Sombra, Volador Jr. vs Damián 666, Mr. Águila, Texano Jr.
2) Héctor Garza, Hijo del Fantasma, La Máscara vs Averno, Ephesto, Mephisto
3) Dos Caras Jr., Dr. Wagner Jr., Marco Corelone vs Heavy Metal, Lizmark Jr., Mr. Niebla
4) Rey Bucanero vs X-Pac [CMLL LH]
5) Atlantis, Negro Casas, Último Guerrero vs Alex Shelley, Chris Sabin, Sonjay Dutt [CMLL TRIOS]
6) Blue Panther vs Villano V [mask]

X-PAC. X-Pac. Next time I need a job, I’m going to Marco Corelone, the man gets it done.

If people believe in the main event, it’d make this work as an event. There’s nothing much special – foreigners getting title shots is unusual, but I don’t if it draws – and everything else is about getting people on the card. But unless they were willing to do Wagner/Niebla, this may be as good as they were going to do with what they have at the moment. (Too bad no one believes in Panther/V5 and V5’s not capable of changing their minds in his shape.) That’s not to doing as good as they should – there should be some sort of hot feud in the place of Rey Bucanero vs X-Pac – but since you can’t fix what didn’t work so far, I’d rather this than trying to stunt book something.

It doesn’t matter much, but as far as these things goes, the undercard trio teams make far more sense than usual. If Felino replaced Lizmark Jr., it’d be perfect, but Lizmark is surely there to counter Dos and Marco.

game theory question: gotta this feeling the main event is going the tecnico way, so does that mean one of the foreigners is winning a title, or will they go with the all home team finishes for the anniversary show?

I’m too fascinated by Rey Bucanero vs X-Pac to be down on this show. (And I can’t believe there’s questions about what I like in the comments when I say things like that.) Plus, the ex-champs vs the unbreakable Triad should be fun, right? And having limited time will only help the Perros focus, surely? Give me 3 more minutes and I can talk myself into the whole card.

At the same time, I’m setting the opening line at 12,000. It can appeal to me all it wants, I ain’t the one buying tickets.

UPDATE: Paco Alonso gets into the HOF. Must’ve been the exceptional job he did in building up a card featurning one guy being brought in completely out of blue, one feud only occuring due to heavy encouragement by another promotion, and a main event of an old guy looking for one last big payday. (Or perhaps it was the vision of the Felino turn?) The power of paying people what they were supposed to get in the wrestling business can never be underestimated.

If anyone from CMLL was going to get vote inflation for slightly questionable reasons, wouldn’t you figure it would’ve been Blue Panther? The man’s about to headline the biggest show of the year of his promotion for two straight years after a good long career. He went DOWN.

It doesn’t pay to be a Mexican midcarder with tenure in AAA right now. The Gladiatores reports Intocable is the next to leave the promotion and will be an independent in August. Probably should’ve seen this coming with they hyped a big deal to find new backup dancers for him, and then it was cut to one short clip and never mentioned again. Or maybe Intocable being left off TripleMania and Alan Stone seemingly taking over his role.

Intocable’s a different animal than Calo or Scorpio or some of the others – he’s certainly not the worker, but he does have some drawing ability. (If NWA Mexico was not a fictional promotion, they would be rushing to the phone to get Intocable signed – the hair match programs you could do with him would be a big help for a startup, and it’s not another guy who seems past his prime.)

We can be pretty sure Intocable wouldn’t be leaving AAA if Antonio Pena was still alive. Other people are in charge now, and they seem more interested in letting the roster wither away to a smaller size for TV purposes. You don’t need a lot of people if you’re just running six matches a week with generally the same people.

That’s the other thing, though – AAA’s not really a TV promotion. They run spot shows all over the country in between TV tapings, and even against tapings – Elegido, Alebrije, and Gronda versus the Psycho Circus was main eventing another show the same night as TripleMania. AAA’s not a public company, so everything’s just a guess, but I’m figuring those booking fees are a nice revenue stream for the company. There comes a point where you’ve dropped enough talent that you can’t staff as many shows anymore. (The foreign guys are going to be in and out and not fill all those dates. Intocable was especially valuable, because he could be sold as a main eventer while guys like CIbernetico and Parka had reduced value.)

Either other guys are going be working a lot more or AAA’s shifting how it does business. They haven’t lost/dropped enough guys where everything has to change, but it seems part of the slight change of direction in the last year.