1994 CMLL

No big intro needed for 1994 CMLL. Just continuing the quiet ways in how 1993 ended. Very limited TV available, even when we get to see some it's restricted to top two matches often. No real roster turnover or new faces being pushed. At least not that we will see on TV. I know what I'm getting going in & you should too. There isn't going to be much good stuff this year. It'll be a lot of filler & trying to piece together what's going on from results & information beyond what we see with our own eyes on TV. 1994 CMLL is definitely a year for the type of person who wants to have a hot take by saying there were hidden gems from guys who throw great punches or shit like that. But hey, let's watch and see if I can prove myself wrong...

A lot of these LuchaDB listings as to what aired will be wrong. I think Cubs was just guessing or maybe even more just assuming if something aired it would have been (X) & (Y). For example this first week of TV you'd never guess what aired. It was a minis battle royale from Tuesday setting up 3 matches - only 2 of which air - plus the Friday main event. You see what I mean? The entire TV episode is sub 1 hour & it's more than any other episode airing in this month. I at least took glee in the fact this random minis battle royale gave us a glimpse into what the division looked like at the time. I'm almost 100% sure this is their only TV appearence in 1994 so I hope the few who are still alive are happy I sent my tape to Roy as it seems nobody else had these matches uploaded. You're welcome! It's a funny battle royale as it's just guys piling on top of others to eliminate them in the planned order. No rhyme or reason. The idea is to form two tag matches & a trios. The trios was probably really good. The two tag matches. Woof. The first one in particular was just bad... and very short. Sub 4 minutes, only one fall. Or at least one fall that we saw. Pierrothito did a plancha onto Aguilita & Pequeno Jaque Mate caught Fierito with a power bomb for the win. Next one got a bit more time & Mascarita Magica was certainly putting the work in but the match went nowhere & just randomly ended when Felinito yanked off Cicloncito's mask. I should note this is Ultratumbita in the match, not Espectrito although it was the same exact gimmick. And that's it for Tuesday! Straight to the Friday main event which is another total nothing match in front of a quiet crowd even with Vamp around. His popularity plummetted at this time. Not a single screaming scantily clad woman in sight. I'd honestly struggle to find anything remotely interesting to say about this match if you paid me. Vamp wins it by pinning Mocho with a powerslam, then does the signal like that match was too easy. I'd say so, he didn't break a sweat. A very skippable show to start the year off.

Skipping forward a week & only getting one match from the Friday show of this week. I told you! A forgettable match at that. I may finish this before the 1997 AAA recaps I'm doing where I'm already almost in October. In this match Pierroth's mask comes loose so there are lots of spots where he is almost completely unmasked when he gets hit & it goes flying. A spot Dr Wagner Jr would end using throughout his career leading to his face exposed in many lucha magazines. The finish is very strange with Casas grabbing Vampiro's foot & clearly faking that he got fouled. The refs don't buy it at all. Then Pierroth tags in & does a kick to the inside thigh on Atlantis which is very obviously not a foul but Atlantis sells it like it is so the refs immediately DQ the rudos. I had no recollection of this match & I will have no recollection of it again after watching it this time. For the last time. Zero chance I will ever go back in time to watch this again & you shouldn't bother either.

Two shows, two matches on TV. Main event of each. Our Tuesday match has the return to the ring of Javier Llanes who had been MIA. Away doing what you ask? Well, he was working in the CMLL departamento de programacion aka booking. He resigned from the spot very publicly to start 1994 & immediately became a wrestler again where he is working main events (way above the position he had before "retiring") & oh BTW he also wins a title soon. Funny how that goes, eh? He attacks El Dandy right away knocking him out of the ring & soon enough has busted Dandy open big time as well. I liked the second fall finish which was a lot of bodies moving fast (by these guys' standards) leading to Silver King catching Emilio with a crucifix to tie things up. The third fall ends when Dandy/Llanes are trading punches with Dandy getting the best of him. He then goes for a back suplex but Llanes takes something out of his kneepad, KO's Dandy with it mid-suplex, then covers for the win. The camera zooms in on Llanes hiding the object back in his kneepad afterwards. You won't see this kind of finish today & that's one thing I'm okay with not returning. Cheap ending & crowd didn't seem to especially catch what happened since this isn't a typical CMLL finish. Welcome back Javier. We move to Friday where Mascara Magica is back! But not on TV. His match doesn't air. We are treated to an Ola Negra match against Vampiro & friends. It's noted Atlantis is undefeated so far in 1994 so that's a storyline they are pushing. Negro Casas tried his best to make this match as entertaining as possible taking great bumps for the tecnicos, selling Fiera's kicks like he got shot & trying to lure Vamp into chasing him into the crowd to fight. I appreciate the effort to spice up another dull TV match. In the third fall Fiera/Casas did the teeter-totter spot on the top rope which usually ends with both guys crashing to the floor but this time Casas shoved Fiera off & hit him with a flying senton to eliminate him. Rudos had the advantage & were beating down Vamp until Atlantis caught Casas from behind with a german suplex for the clean win since Casas was team captain. Atlantis remains undefeated. I should note one production change this year is pre-match during the intros each wrestler has their own music play when their name is announced & we have an in-ring camera man zooming in on each guy so you get the chance to say something under 5 seconds. Some guys take advantage, other guys forget or just don't care so you catch them making casual conversation. This was happening over in AAA too so probably a Televisa call to spice up the presentations.

And that's it for January! 6 matches total! The equivalent of one shitty Sunday show these days. Just trying to put into perspective how good a CMLL fan these days has it compared to anyone outside of Mexico City trying to follow the product back in 1994. People weren't talking about CMLL because there was no real way to watch CMLL.

This date does not seem correct at all but I will lose my place in what I have/haven't watched if I skip over it so we're just going in this order. I *think* this falls on 2/15 & our current 2/15 results belong to a different day. I'll explain why later. We start with a women's trios match which is pretty rare. A chance to see many women who were hanging out here for a long time but were almost never seen. This may be the last televised match Maria Del Angel has for example. Possibly the last TV anyone saw Cynthia Moreno till she showed up in AAA in 1998. Akira Hokuto is down here working as Reyna Jubuki so maybe that's why it aired on TV? The work was not especially strong in the first two falls. Even in this one-off it's clear Jubuki is working much slower & doing lots of shtick so the others can keep up with her. Xochitl Hamada takes a bad fall trying a springboard & then Maria humiliates her for it so someone who definitely sat under the Martha Villalobos learning tree for many years. Third fall picked up a bit. Nice dive sequence with Jubuki busting out a wild somersault plancha where miraculously they caught her. I loved the finish with Cynthia & Maria getting caught in a double pin where it was so realistic that they seemed legit stuck & the refs were trying to untangle them after calling the match a draw. Crowd was not especially into this but seeing as it's the only time these women make TV in 1994 (by my recollection), I'm happy this aired. Then we get the main event JIP where Javier Llanes has already attacked & busted open Dandy as the intros are going on. That is once again the feud focused on with Llanes having the edge the entire way in the first fall. They do a deal where every time he tries to pin Dandy's shoulders to the ground, Dandy gets one up. That kinda thing would never work with the dumbshit CMLL referees today. Clearly Dandy tipped these refs off ahead of time because no way they were actually seeing his shoulder get up in the nick of time. So Llanes eventually has to resort to a cerrajera, very old school submission, to win the first fall. Second fall had Llanes running from Dandy with Vamp chasing him down and dragging him back into the ring. It was a very realistic chase! Crowd was super into it. Llanes keeps trying to pin Dandy to no success. He goes for an elbowdrop which Dandy avoids just be sliding to the left, then while still down traps Llanes in Octagon's submission finisher to tie things up as Vamp chases Magic around the ring & they comically blow a spot together. But at least Vamp was on the ball enough to cover up with punches as if he meant to do whatever it was they did. Third fall gets cut (seemingly by whoever recorded, not CMLL themselves) straight to the finish which is of course Dandy/Llanes together, both bloody by now. Dandy goes for a figure-four leglock but Llanes rolls him up & gets the clean win. Vamp is dejected. Mano Negra taunts Vamp hilariously. Magic is screaming "WE WON, WE WON!" LOL Dandy is interviewed & says he has no choice now, he has to be a man and defend his CMLL Middleweight Title against Llanes next week or whenever it's scheduled. In the background you can hear the ring announcer letting the fans know the title match is on - this is how you had to let people know to come back the following week pre-Alexis releasing the lineup online 36 hours before the show. This is why I think this show is 2/15, the title match happens on 2/22. I'll spoil it because it doesn't air anyways - Llanes wins. Imagine strapping Javier Llanes up in fuckin 1994... jesus. His career was basically over at this point but a nice farewell gift from the company he was a part of so many years. Match was honestly good if you can stick with it. It's not fast paced at all, there's actually someone in the youtube comments saying it sucked. LOL 1994 CMLL is definitely an acquired taste & I am sure Rob from 10-15-20 years ago wouldn't have had any time for this match. These days I stuck with it & ended up enjoying the result. I'll go ***3/4. Good show!

Alright I have solved the puzzle somewhat. The matches in LuchaDB from 2/8 belong to both these shows which leaves 2/8 open for the show I recapped earlier that was in a placeholder 2/1 spot. Doing detective work on these old lucha results isn't the easiest thing! But it makes sense if this was Jubuki's Coliseo debut as Cubs notes, that previous trios couldn't have been from 2/1. So this TV show is a rare one with three matches starting Tuesday @ Coliseo with more build to Dandy/Llanes. It's not the most exciting thing in the world & not helped at all by the fact this show had no audio. Well, it has audio, but it seems to be recorded audio from the people who recorded the actual show. Someone who understands technology of the time better than me can explain how this would have occured. So without any audio & a very slow paced clumsy match, it's not the best viewing experience. The match goes two falls ending with Llanes doing a terrible fake foul spot but thankfully that's not the DQ. The DQ is Dandy getting mad the refs might believe Llanes so he punches out Tigre Hispano. I'll take it. Switching to Friday we still have no audio & pick up with Cota pounding on Demon. They are apparently feuding here which sounds fucking terrible. They remain the focus of this entire borefest. I'm not sure Ringo got into the ring at all in the two falls. The rudos win after triple team power bombing Demon who sells it like he's dead. There were moments where Cota seemed to be legit getting physical with Demon who has always been a weakling but that was the only thing you'd take away from another borefest. Main event begins with no audio once again. I don't know much about Ishin Riki & quite honestly I don't care to know much. He was completely unimpressive to me. At one point Ultimo catches him with a stiff spin kick which I popped for. There seems to be a bit of heat (that I can see visually) for a Rayo/Pierroth punch exchange. Near the end of the third fall........ WE GET AUDIO! A MIRACLE! Rayo takes out Pierroth a fat guy tope suicida. Atlantis tumbles outside after missing a charge, then Negro tumbles outside falling through the ropes on his own. Classic spot. Dragon/Riki then do a double pinfall spot while a Tapatia is hooked in. Flat finish. A very boring & skippable show.

That's a lot of stars to indicate what aired but I could only find the semi-main existing. The main event looks like something that would have aired but those matches tend to blend together. Yamato was only in for a short time & nothing pops up on YouTube with that combination of rudos so I'm guessing just a listing error. Our one match is the semi-main which immediately gets a cut after the intros. Rudos take the first fall. Another cut to start the second fall as Ray Mendoza (commissioner) is ordering Ultimo Dragon to get out of the crowd & back into the ring. Tecnicos take the second fall with an Atlantida on Casas as Dragon does a spin kick on Ishin Riki who either sells 2 seconds too late or is doing a cowardly bit where he lays down to get himself pinned. Sadly, I think the former. Meanwhile Casas does a lap around Arena Mexico running to avoid a chasing Atlantis. Talk about things that would NEVER be allowed today (unless you're a foreigner I guess). Silver King has a nice exchange with Mocho Cota & then Negro Casas to kick off the third fall after another noticeable edit. Most of the fall is built around Dragon/Riki with each trying to pin the other. At one point Riki accidentally hits Casas knocking him off the apron. Finally Dragon gets Riki with a tiger suplex as Casas/Cota stand in the corner disappointed in their partner losing the match for the team. Dragon wants a shot at the UWA Middleweight Title which he lost to Riki in Japan. Gee, I wonder how that one will go.

EDIT: So when doing clean-up work before closing the book on 1994 I found the tercera from this show is on a more recent Roy Lucier upload. Don't know how I missed it. I can't celebrate finding it because it adds absolutely nothing to this year or even this show. The refs immediately catch Kung Fu hiding nunchucks in his boot & take them away. During this distraction he walks up & punches Trueno right in the face knocking him off the apron. The rudos take from there & easily win the first fall. The second fall only goes a short time before we get a very uninspired Trueno comeback on his own. Ciclon works maybe 30 seconds with Felino. Sombra does a decent exchange with Gladiador. Then Trueno messes up a corner spot with Kung Fu. He goes for a backflip off the top but Kung Fu moves & Trueno goes splat. Kung Fu grabs him in a weak submission & that's it. Rudos win in straight falls. Easy night for everyone involved. I guess there's a Trueno/Kung Fu feud going on off TV? Let's just be happy it was kept that way. I am a little worried this match aired on the same TV episode as the women's match & Llanes rolling up Dandy match which I recapped on earlier episode & changed the date of... so maybe I was wrong changing the date & those matches do belong on 2/8? I'm not gonna overthink it as I have to assume my recent magazine finds will clear it all up easier than making a bunch of assumptions. Just a matter of getting around to entering results.

A somewhat standard 3 match TV episode starts us off in Arena Coliseo with the ongoing Dandy/Llanes feud. My write-ups of these may not sound exciting at all because it's hard to get excited about 1994 Javier Llanes. But you have to give them credit, they brought him back & made him a threat immediately. It was a very well built feud. Don't ask me to tell you for a fact this is the week before their title match, I've lost track by now on the order of these matches. But once again we have both guys bleeding (not heavily) & being the focus of everything going on. The crowd is very into the nearfalls near the end which was great to see. It was very slow delibeate wrestling like going for a pinfall after an elbowdrop or fighting for almost a minute to escape a submission. Just when you think Dandy finally has Llanes where he wants him & goes for the Dandina Cradle - Llanes manages to block it & score the three count to a big pop. Black Magic is loving it, Ringo Mendoza not so much. I would be in heaven if we still built up title matches like this with challengers earning their shot over the course of a couple weeks beating the champion in various ways. The negative here is of course we don't see the payoff even after getting four weeks of build. The Dandy/Llanes match never airs, nor does it make it into any year end review clips. I would have loved to have seen what they had up their sleeves in that one. Oh well. Moving to Arena Mexico we do get to see the title match between Dragon/Riki. As I said - Riki won this title in Japan & was just here in Mexico to drop it back which is exactly what he does here. Riki continues to do absolutely nothing for me although there's a YouTube comment on one of the videos mentioning what an amazing worker he is so perhaps this is a Ronnie Garvin/Greg Valentine Royal Rumble type deal where the "great punches" corner of the internet think of Riki as some darling worker? I dunno. I was not expecting to see him bust out a springboard plancha! I was expecting to see him fall over while running the ropes. Dragon seemed ready to win the first fall with a fisherman suplex but Roberto Rangel did not count the fall as he thought it was a submission hold. Dragon didn't panic & won it with a power bomb seconds later. Crowd was into the nearfalls which is nice. 12,000? If you say so. Dragon wins the title back with a dragon suplex. Our main event has another Japanese wrestler around - it's Yamato! He's a bulky dude, matches up well with Haku. So much so that this was a rare match where Haku not only sold at times (just some times...) but also left his feet incredibly. The rudos attack pre-match which allows Vamp to run out to a big pop to even the sides up. Casas was great as usual showing fear of Haku & doing his exaggerated selling any time one of his blows didn't work on the Samoan/Tongan. It was a very messy match at times with guys all over the ring & the referees seemingly annoyed as they didn't know where to look. The rudos seem to get the win after a triple team power bomb/Doomnsay Device on Fiera. He definitely gets pinned. Then we get a mass of bodies piled onto him brawling & as Haku/Yamato tumble outside, Casas/Pierroth won't stop pounding on the already eliminated Fiera which prompts an excessive violence DQ. Very strange finish, I thought Yamato would have gone over very strong his first night in. A so-so show overall. I'm sure others will have enjoyed it much more than me.

HA! Here I am going on & on about how these LuchaDB listings of what aired aren't to be trusted & sure enough it turns out I didn't take my own advice. It turns out Dandy/Llanes did make it to TV & is available on YouTube. This fuckin CubsFan guy found a way to troll me & he won't even know till months from now when this gets posted, and that's even if he bothers to read anything I'm putting up here. A true genius, that guy. So yes we have a two match TV episode (or at least what was recorded) featuring the Tuesday main & Friday tercera. I'll be honest - this is probably... let's go with a 90% chance... the first time I watched this Dandy/Llanes match in full. Rob of many years ago would have had ABSOLUTELY ZERO inclination to sit through it. Rob of even a few years ago would have had ZERO REASON to do any sort of re-watch involving it in any way. 2026 Rob... well... this is either a more matured Rob (not if you see the whatsapp messages) or a guy who is so sick of the monotony of current pro wrestling worldwide that this match hit at the perfect time. It's not even the match itself maybe as much as the crowd enjoying this kind of match. This is as close as you'll ever get to seeing a 1970's match transported onto a 1990's show. It would never have stood a chance even a year or two later. Don't make me laugh about the 2000's. Today it wouldn't go 20 seconds without the crowd whistling. It's not that it was all matwork... it wasn't. It was a struggle. Start to finish. There's a lot of being tenative, working one hold until your opponent finds his own escape, many vintage submissions that would end matches in the 70's but not 90's are treated as big deals here with each guy struggling to escape. At one point Llanes fights off a figure-four leglock variation for 2 minutes before grabbing the ropes. The amazing thing is this crowd is with it the entire way. There are moments of silence of course but as the announcers point out - it's not boredom at all. They are appreciating the action & come alive when their favorite (Dandy) is in trouble or on the offense. You just can't do this kind of match any more. I hate to say but it's just the truth. Just the feeling out process itself here would cause the crowd to go so quiet, surely the wrestlers would panic & speed things up immediately. Or the moment in the first fall where Dandy gets yelled at by Roberto Rangel for almost throwing a closed first punch leading to the second fall moment where he open hand slaps Llanes a few times & Llanes is furious he isn't DQ'ed. Would a current wrestling crowd even pick up on something like that? I had a blast watching this. Perhaps it's a good thing I waited all these years until the right moment where I could fully appreciate it. I was popping for every little moment as if it were a big dive to the floor or something. There are no dives in this match, FYI. The announcers were loving the shit out of this too & raving about what a throwback it was. They were so into it, they even dropped some knowledge. Very rare for lucha TV announcers! They noted Javier's dad Enrique Llanes won this same title from Sugi Sito & it just so happens Sugi Sito's nephew Panico was his cornerman for this match. See, that's cool! Panico even plays a role in the third fall as both men are down & Silver King jumps onto the apron telling Rangel to count both down. Rangel aruges with him & in the meantime Panico jumps inside to put Llanes on top of Dandy for a GREAT nearfall. The rudo go to cheat without actually cheating himself. There's another teased double pinfall before we get an actual double pinfall.......... kinda. Rangel counts to three with both men's shoulders down but it's clear even without the replay that Llanes got his shoulder up in time. It's announced as a draw & Dandy retaining. He even gets handed the belt. But something must have happened in the fallout b/c Llanes ends up champion & there's no records of any rematch. This is my new lucha title mystery to solve. I know I have the magazines covering this match/show so I'm gonna have to go through & see what happened. Either post-match the commission reversed the decision or maybe Llanes protested & they switched the title through the magazines to give the commission some semblence of authority? Weird deal. But doesn't take anything away from the match. I'll go ****1/2 which is probably asburdly high but this is exactly what I needed at this point in time in my lucha fandom. The entire build & execution of this match were something rarely done in CMLL at any point in the history we have on video. It's impossible to follow that match but due to the (un)luck of the order airing things we move to Arena Mexico for a rare rudos vs rudos midcard match. It's explained Felino teamed with Javier Cruz & Mogur the week before (vs Los Brazos) & they had problems so Felino recuited his own friends & the rudos picked up Mogur & are calling themselves Los Rebeldes Tapatios (all from Guadalajara). As it is a rudos vs rudos match the first two falls are purely brawling with each team controlling at various points. Back when the tecnicos/rudos had different styles, you see. Felino & Cruz have a nice exchange in the third fall before we hit our finishing run which has a wild Arkangel tope suicida, a head first Halcon Negro tope suicida & then Felino cleanly beats Cruz to a nice reaction from the crowd. If you didn't know any better you'd think Felino was going tecnico after this but he's not. A perfectly acceptable ***1/2 match here to finish up an excellent TV show!

UPDATE: Digging through magazines to clear up historical confusion clears this all up. This was a draw. El Dandy retained. A rematch ends up being booked for 3/15 @ Arena Coliseo which is where Javier Llanes wins the championship. We didn't have full results from this show originally so that's why it appeared nowhere in any search.

A three match TV show although the first one is not only not listed as airing here, it's also not available anywhere I looked - YouTube or secret Google Drives. You know what that means??? OLD SCHOOL TIME! Had to place an order with Jeff Lynch, picked up a bunch of 1994 CMLL that is missing from the internet. He sent in a file format I can't convert to stick it on YouTube. Well, actually I can. Cubs taught me. But I also don't care enough to do it. What a dick. Let me re-phrase... I don't think the effort I'd put into doing it would be appreciated by more than 1 or 2 people at most (more accurately 0) so on the off chance someone needs something, just find a way to contact me & I'll pass you a Google Drive link. Or bother Cubs, I sent him all the links. He may care less than me though, be forewarned. Now I'll seem like an even bigger dick because I will give a big recommendation to the this Tuesday Coliseo main event that is unavailable! I had a blast watching this. Shadito Cruz (father of Los Brazos) is front row watching so they are really amped for this match. Porky especially. He's doing all his shtick on the apron early on including fall off of it when he gets carried away celebrating. The grandmas in the crowd are having a blast watching this & applauding everything. Porky's exchange in the first fall gets a huge ovation as he makes the rudos look like fools. Brazos take fall one. They embarassing of the rudos continues into fall two where Porky does a funny spot with Wagner where he tries to splash him but Wagner keeps rolling away so Porky hops across the ring until Wagner slides out. LOL Finally the rudos take over & even things up. We come back from commercial in the third fall & Porky is now busted open badly. The rudos have had enough of his shit. Wagner does a cool upside down submission on El Brazo but the tecnicos make a comeback & go on the offense. Now Markus has his mask torn & is bleeding. Porky splashes Gladiador but refuses to accept the pinfall win. He then sits on Gladiador but still refuses to let the refs count. Finally he goes up top & hits a huge plancha onto Gladiador but instead of counting the referees raise the rudos' hands signifying a DQ for excessive violence. Porky doesn't understand & explains his confusion into the TV mics. A very good match setting up a revancha which will have to wait 2 weeks because the Brazos are off to Japan for a short tour. I'll go ***3/4, would have been **** with a cleaner finish. Moving to Arena Mexico, what a rudo team we have here. Or should I say temporary rudos as Negro Casas/Mocho Cota are immediately having problems. Casas is trying to wrestle the match clean but Cota keeps breaking up submissions like a true rudo. When Ringo is having the same issue he comes up with a creative spot where he can see through his legs while applying a submission so on the third time Cota enters the ring, Mendoza rolls back to give him a headscissors. This is what used to be called laying the groundwork. Instead of just doing a spot to do a spot, you have the setup for it so when the payoff comes the crowd understands why you're doing it & tend to pop louder because the tecnico has outsmarted the rudo or vice versa. Now people are rushing so much there's no time to do stuff like that & fans seeit more as repetitive than clever. The lost art. Tecnicos take the first fall as Negro just chills on the apron. The power bomb Ultimo gave Cota was brutal! Rudos even things up in the second fall with Negro helping win it but not taking part in any of the teamwork or 2-on-1 spots. I like this kind of slow build turn where the person who is clearly turning isn't just fucking up the match, they are just doing their own thing & the tension builds. Finally Negro/Cota fall apart in the third fall with Silver King's prompting. But the rudos still manage to win when the refs are distracted & Cota fouls Ringo. Negro is very unhappy with the result here. More to come! Our main event is the start of the Fiera/Emilio issue that is going to be the first hair match of the season at Arena Mexico. Haku is actually selling more than usual here for some reason, must have been in a good mood. Mano Negra gets props for selling to the floor after a spot but directly to the spot where the pretty girls are sitting front row. These 70's wrestlers understand how the game is played. The finish is very abrupt with Fiera/Emilio trading nearfalls but seemingly being unsure how they are actually going to end the match. As if they never discussed a finish or someone forgot? Maybe a referee out of position? Fiera ends up just giving Emilio a weak spin kick & covers him for the win. Forgettable main event but you should definitely take time to watch the other two matches. Should also note I can't remember why that Tuesday Coliseo show is listed as 3/2 which is a Wednesday. It should be 3/1 (Tuesday) unless I'm forgetting some reason why it had to be moved. There doesn't appear to be any talent conflicts with the weekly Acapulco show that day so who knows.

Only two matches this week, both from Friday. We get the debut of Sagrado. The first time CMLL launched this gimmick. It's not a one & done but it has a very short shelf life here & in fact this is the only times it makes TV. The man under the mask is the ex-Lasser of Los Arqueros who would end up portraying many gimmicks. As a fun fact - he was supposed to be the original trainer of all the Toryumon/T2P/Toryumon X/etc guys. Ultimo Dragon loved him & really respected his abilities as a trainer. But Lasser has to run to Nothern Mexico around early 1997, then has to run to the US for a time period (he ends up working a lot in Southern California as Adventure/Aventurero) so he loses his opportunity. That's when Ultimo Dragon defaults to Skayde aka ex-Flecha of Los Arqueros because Skayde had been taught everything by Lasser so Dragon figured he could impart the same knowledge to his students. It worked out great! Not so much for Lasser. Although if I was really being honest here & sharing the reason why Lasser was on the run, most of you probably wouldn't feel much sympathy for him. No point going into it anyways, he's long since passed away although I guess there are still weirdos on social media who still love to cancel people that have either died or at their lowest points with nowhere to go that any cancellation can't hurt them any further. It's like a badge of honor for these weirdos who BTW 100% of the time are all about being nice to others & accepting forgiveness. Unless it's someone who's jumped into their DM's to make friends, you see. Then we just put a tiny box in front of the elephant standing in the corner to pretend we don't see it. Anyways... speaking of problematic people - Kung Fu is 100% drunk or impaired in some way during this match. It's blatantly obvious & so is the fact everyone else was trying to work around his limitations as to not have this break down into something worse than it was. He's got the glazed look in his eyes, stumbles around, enters the ring when he isn't supposed to & multiple times walks off into the crowd to yell at some young teenage looking kids sitting near the back of the floor seats. This gives us a rare opportunity to see how empty Arena Mexico is. If you told me this show drew sub 3,000, I'd believe it. Would need to get better shot to see if they opened the gradas though. Sagrado looks good in his debut, doing all his usual Lasser spots. Pantera is a guy I'm always excited to watch but he had nobody to work with here. We get a nice double dive spot by Pantera/Sagrado near the end & then Rocca basically has to power bomb himself as Kung Fu just falls over. He manages to do a bridge & get the win. There was no reason to put this match on TV aside from the Sagrado debut I guess but also anyone with half a brain or someone who values the credibility of the promotion should have let this see the light of day. Oh well. Skipping to the main event - so we miss the semi-main where Negro/Cota officially fell apart - we continue the Fiera/Emilio feud. Atlantis was technically in this match but I do not recall a single thing he did. This was your old school CMLL feud building where both guys bled & were married to each other the entire way through. That's why these days it can be hard to identify whether a CMLL feud is real or not (i.e. heading somewhere or just one week to set up a singles match before movingon). Blood always signified this is going somewhere. They both take a tumble to the floor in the third fall, classic Fiera spot. Haku is less giving this week so he kinda just rolls out instead of selling any more for Pierroth. Fiera/Emilio go back at it trading slaps & punches. Referee Pepe El Trejo tries to seperate them to warn them about closed fists a couple times. On the third attempt to break it up they end up charging at the same time so he gets sandwiched in between. Oops! His white shirt is immediately blood stained. Our other referee Roberto Rangel immediately waves his hands signalling a draw or more specifically a double DQ for knocking the ref down. Very creative finish. I don't dare point it out on Twitter/IG or Edgar/Aubrey may get some ideas as this is a very cool LOOK AT ME I'M THE REFEREE SUPERSTAR type spot. We have two clear big feuds going on right now - Fiera/Emilio & Negro/Cota looming. CMLL firmly stuck in place refusing to push new faces/names. Reminder: This show drew very poorly.

My own personal #LostMedia. :'( I've put out multiple requests & thus far nobody has stepped forward. I don't expect anyone to step forward either since it's an old lucha show & the only type of people who would even know where to look or had access to this show at some point are long gone from following any of this shit. I aim to follow in their footsteps some day. Jeff Lynch has this TV episode which aired the Coliseo match + the tercera & main from Arena Mexico. Unfortunately his video tape got mangled in the copying process so there is no DVD available. The only hope is at some point someone purchased the VHS & got it converted to DVD back in the day. Unlikely. So all that's left for me to recap here is the parejas incriebles match which got saved onto compilations & secret Google Drives. I'm not really sure why though. It wasn't an especially good match or anything, it was just another step in the Casas/Cota feud. The idea here is these are enemies teaming but the only enemies are Casas/Cota. Dandy/Silver King participate but in a professional wrestlers competing to be the better man way instead of two guys angry with each other. Cota/King take the first fall. In the second fall things escalate to the point Cota believes everyone in the match is conspiring against him... which technically he's right about. So he's had enough & walks out! HA! Of course this is just a way for him to return clearly hiding an object in his singlet which is immediately pointed out. He uses the object to hit Dandy & then his own partner Silver King. Casas sees what's up & grabs the object away from Cota, then smashes him in the face with it. Now to be clear... the refs saw Cota hit both Dandy/King but he was hiding the object in his fist. Casas made a big show out of having the object in his hand before he hit Cota so the refs immediately DQ him ending the match in two falls. The post-match almost goes longer than the match itself with Casas beating up Cota who juices heavily. Even the commission gets involved to tell Casas to chill out. Crowd is very much in favor of Casas beating up the dastardly rudo. On a final note Cota worked this match in a singlet that had his handprint on it... which is of course always notable as one of his hands only has 3 fingers. The story behind that has always been he got involved with some bad people who he owed money to but didn't have any to give. So they took his fingers. Cota disappears from the scene for a couple years which line up with that story & the incident perhaps taking place inside a jail. Insert Robert O'Connor "it used to be better".

2/3 of this week's TV had been around for a long time while the Friday main event was a newly discovered match shared by Roy Lucier when he was uploading Mike Tenay's collection. We start with the Arena Coliseo main event for the CMLL Trios Titles. In the match from the #LostMedia match the week before we find out the Ola Blanca won clean to earn this title match. We are also informed Javier Llanes is the new CMLL Middleweight Champion having defeated El Dandy. Now I'm very confused as to when this title switch happened. If it wasn't the 2/22 match that clearly ends in a draw, when did it actually occur? We have no documented singles matches with them beyond that. A true mystery here. This match is pretty standard stuff for the first two falls. I liked the first fall finish where it looked like the secondary Brazos were just gonna end the fall as Porky scared off Markus but instead Porky launched himself through the ropes with a tope suicida! Very cool. Ola Blanca evened things up triple teaming Brazo De Oro in the second fall which the announcers said was illegal because title matches are supposed to be clean matches. The third fall was all about Super Porky. You could really only do something like this with him. The rudos are beating him down, beating him down, beating him down. The crowd is screaming for Porky to fight back. El Brazo goes to grab a towel (from who - there are no seconds???) but Brazo De Oro refuses to let him throw it in multiple times. But Porky just stayed down being beat on. Finally he rolls to the edge of the apron & we get the doctor/commisssioner/commission doctor all over checking his heart. It's noted he has a history of heart attacks. I mean, he's clearly unhealthy looking but the only history of heart attacks I'm aware he had were fake ones in situations exactly like this. You would think this is where the commission would call the match off but they don't. They just deem he's okay to continue & roll him backwards the Ola Blanca who keep stomping him. LOL Now if you know your pro wrestling you should expect what comes next! Just as Wagner goes to pick Porky up, he gets rolled up... 1... 2... 3!!! Brazos retain! NUCLEAR POP! Fans on their knees screaming & cheering for our hero Porky. They pulled it off! This is exactly the king of match & finish that just doesn't work these days. You cannot get that kind of sympathy any longer. Not to mention the lovely on Twitter all day folks who would lose their mind with hastags about how insensitive it is to fake a heart attack in an industry where many have passed away the same way. Brazos get their belts & Ola Blanca complain to the commission they lost unfairly. Well, spoiler alert - they'll get another crack at these belts in a couple weeks time! Moving to Arena Mexico I thought it was gonna be a repeat match since this exact same set of rudos had a match weeks ago but this was actually a new match. Seems odd since rudos vs rudos was not common in these days & usually revanchas happened directly tthe week after, not multiple weeks later. I was not moved by this match in any way so it may as well have been a replay. It lacked much fire for two rudos teams who are supposed to be feuding. Felino/Cruz were pushed as having an issue but if that was the case they didn't really show it until the post-match when they started brawling out of the ring onto the floor. Felino's team ends up winning cleanly in three falls. Our main event is the new find by Roy - Negro Casas vs Mocho Cota! The announcers keep harping on the fact Mocho Cota only has one hand which isn't true. He has two hands that have 8 fingers total. Get your facts straight! Cota takes the first fall with ease. In the second fall we have a weird deal where ref Rafa El Maya keeps looking away & Casas uses the opportunity to blatantly foul Cota. It's weird because Cota is the default rudo here & then later Casas tries to play the sympathy card when he feels Maya is trying to screw him over. But the crowd just saw Casas openly cheat. Sometimes this kind of Negro Casas "psychology" goes over my head. Lots of that kind of thing comes off to me as an egotistical guy who thinks he can do no wrong, like a Hulk Hogan type. Truth be told, lots of Negro's peers have described him this way, especially in the days when he was part of the booking team & would make decisions that only served to benefit him. All-time great worker but if you're not telling those kind of stories, amongst others, you aren't telling the real story of Negro Casas. Anyways, he ties things up with La Casita. The third fall is when this match finally gets real good. I wish all three falls would have been worked this way. Just a violent fight with both guys bleeding, heads being smashed into chairs at ringside as women & babies scatter, heads being smashed into the post, hair pulling, faces slammed into the floor, etc. Just an old school brawl with two guys who dislike each other. Cota's bladejob may have been a bit too obvious with him reaching into his singles for the blade right before he suddenly had red. Crowd is firmly behind Negro the entire way. He's clearly getting the worst of things near the finish but suddenly makes a big comeback! He's pounding away on Cota in the corner as Maya is trying to tell him to relax. Negro unintentionally knocks Maya away & starts scaling the ropes. Cota seeing Maya is momentarily dazed crotches Negro on the top rope, then covers him while holding the ropes. Maya can clearly see Cota is cheating but still counts the pinfall anyways, maybe as a fuck you to Negro for the shot he gave him. It's up to you to decide. Cota takes the first round in this new rivalry. A fan walks up to the ring & hands Cota some money so he clearly enjoyed the match. Like I said, I thought the third fall really carried things. I'll go ***3/4 although they could have had it higher without the weirdness of that second fall. I guess I should also mention there is a very obvious edit in the third fall where as we join the action back in progress the announcers are noting "both men have tried to cheat to win" which we never got to see in this video.

Top three air from this Friday show... kinda. The tercera is JIP & also between each fall we get the weirdest jump cut to Arena Coliseo where we are told "more action to come from Arena Mexico after the break!" This happens between each fall. Not exactly the best production work being done at this time. On paper this looks like a really good match but it never really came together. A lot of disorganized moments & the finish is very flat out of nowhere + makes zero sense. I can't even figure out what happened to be honest. The rudos hit a triple team move on Dandy (the captain). One of them goes to cover, Silver King & Texano both enter to break the pin but get jumped by the other two rudos. The thing is... after the 1 count Silver King is clearly stomping Gladiador who is pinning Dandy. So the count should stop. Roberto Rangel does stop. But then as the rudos keep beating up the tecnicos, he just counts 2 more times & calls the match. Even the wrestlers seemed confused. So as I said, no idea what happened here. Next up is another JIP match + the first fall is missing. This appears to be from a seperate source than the TV episode Roy had put up as the video quality is much worse. Miguel Perez Jr has started up here. He'd have an interesting couple of months! He actaully wins this match pinning Vamp clean which gets the silent treatment from the Arena Mexico fans who were not expecting that whatsoever. Not much else to say here. Our main event gets full intros for both men & are the two guys currently feuding. I have a *theory* - that is NOT fact - CMLL intentionally booked Casas/Cota & this match back-to-back weeks as a test run to see which the crowd was more into before deciding which hair match they would do soon & which they'd save up for the Anniversary Show. It's not the worst idea. You've heard of focus groups, right? Well, CMLL has the ability to turn Arena Mexico into their own focus group without having to pay anyone for the feedback. This match ends up being the kind of brawl I thought Casas/Cota should have done the week before. They even head into the crowd & you get to see both the lack of people + the difference in how Arena Mexico used to look. There's an old school guardrail! Whoa! There are also cops holding fans back who are trying to get a better look at the action. These days nobody even stands up because security starts yelling if you even make any motion that you are about to get up off your seat. Emilio takes the first fall quickly & Fiera is quickly bleeding. Fiera comes back to take the second fall & now it's Emilio's turn to hit a real gusher. He does a much better job than Fiera at bleeding so in the third fall Fiera gets his head rammed into the ringpost multiple times in order to draw more blood. There's less focus on nearfalls like Casas/Cota & more on just hitting each other. The finish kinda comes out of nowhere which I expected as the video only had less than a minute left. Charles does a flying body press, Fiera rolls through & that's that! Sloppy cover & all it still kept Emilio down. Crowd exploded for the finish. I think CMLL made the right call capitalizing on the fans being more into this match so run the hair match sooner while it was the hotter program & save Casas/Cota for when it could be built up more to mean something.

I think that Arena Coliseo date is correct so I won't object. It aired with these Friday matches so there's really nowhere else it could go. The listing is wrong though. We get full intros - six of them! - which is strange for a random Tuesday match making TV but also allows me to see Pierroth Jr come out to his very evil music only to hug a fan & kiss a baby. RUDO! Silver Kingis here in his W*ING shirt which perfectly constrasts Pierroth's WAR shirt. ORIGINAL FORBIDDEN DOOR OMG!!! Unfortunately the shirt doesn't stick around as Silver King shows off his elbow injury & Texano just happens to be there in his gear to replace his partner. This does not stop the rudos who immediately attack. This includes Pierroth brawling with Silver King all the way to the back - at this time Arena Coliseo had no lights in the back (???) so we can barely see what's going on & some ushers are using flashlights to identify where the wrestlers are. They brawl all the way to the locker room where Pierroth shoves Silver King inside & slams the door. That means we get a peak into what the dressing room looked like! I can honestly say I've never seen anything this on CMLL TV since. They are very protective of the locker rooms. Only in recent years have wrestlers started posting photos from inside sacred ground. Usually security wouldn't even open the door an inch if anyone was around looking. Pierroth makes his way back & the rudos win the first fall easily. There is no delayed reaction in the second fall, the tecnicos just jump into action on the comeback. We get a nice run-up-the-ropes diving tope by Super Astro on Markus as Pierroth runs all the way almost out the front door to escape Atlantis. I remember being in attendance for the Coliseo show 2 days after Ultimo Guerrero lost his mask & he did this same trick to get into a waiting car & make his next show that day. We get the Super Astro dancing bit to mess with the rudos in the third fall. Boggles the mind nobody in 2026 tourist heavy Arena Mexico is doing this spot. It would INSTANTLY make you the most over person on the show not named Mistico or Kemonito/Kemalito. Honestly, you may be more popular than Mistico if you do it regularly enough. Super Astro does his 619 fakeout (this is who Rey Jr took it from) & follows with a slingshot tope to Markus. Texano does the same fakeout (it used to be his specialty too!) & follows with a pescado onto Kahoz. This leaves Atlantis & Pierroth Jr who actually exchange a bunch of quick nearfalls before Pierroth gets frustrated & fouls the tecnicos. Solid enough entertaining match.Not enough to hit the bare minimum ***1/2 that gets you on any list I keep but good enough for me to say job well done. Moving to Arena Mexico our feuds converge into one match here in the semi-main. Crowd is very hot immediately. La Fiera is also bleeding immediately. Rudos take the first fall. The tecnico comeback isn't as quick as the first match but when they get to it our match goes from 0 to 100 in seconds. Loved the way they did it & the crowd just eating up Casas being a madman trying to get at Cota. We get some Casas/Jericho double teaming going on which actually doesn't look half bad. The fall ends with Casas/Jericho pins & Emilio running out of the ring to avoid Fiera. He thinks he's outsmarted only for Fiera to do a rare tope suicida knocking Emilio into the second row! Very cool sequence! Third fall continues to be super heated, especially any time Fiera/Emilio are in together. The rudos take control once again & backdrop Fiera to the floor hard. They then dangerously throw Jericho to the floor as well. This leaves Casas alone with all three & it looks like he's outsmarted them leading to another tecnico comeback................ but he slips. It looked like a 100% unintentional slip but with Casas you never know. That's why he's one of the all time greats. He sells is so well & falls to the floor in pain after getting stomped down. The rudos grab Fiera, drag him back into the ring, then won't stop kicking the shit out of him so they get DQ'ed. Post-match we have the deal where Fiera tells the ring announcer he wants Emilio in a hair match next week! Emilio looks terrified, gets into the ring, beats up Fiera sone more, then signals he accepts the match. Our ring announcer does the big LADIES AND GENTLEMAN NEXT WEEK THE COMMISSION HAS AUTHORIZED THESE TWO MEN TO HAVE A HAIR VS HAIR MATCH! It gets a huge pop. As I've noted before, this is kinda what you had to do to get word out about upcoming matches. The fans needed to know what they could see next week before they left the arena that night. Good stuff here. Made the ***1/2 bar! Even ***3/4! Our main event is looooooooooooooooooooooooooong & I didn't enjoy it at all. None of the tecnicos were selling for the rudos early on so it was a lot of nothing going on. I got a chuckle out of Magic trying to figure out what he can do with a Vamp that doesn't feel like selling anything. The answer was - take a bump to the floor & let someone else try to figure it out. This match is so drawn out that the second fall actually ends with the rudos winning, we see the replays on TV, then the ring announcers for some reason holds up two fingers signifying "second fall" & the announcers go with it. Then they start to question themselves & realize oh wait we just saw replays of the rudos winning so this has to be the third fall. I'm not making any of this up. At some point one of them also shouts out Konnan which is hilarious to me because he's blacklisted from CMLL/Arena Mexico. But these are Televisa announcers who operate independently covering both companies. Imagine trying to explain this to anyone who became a wrestling fan from WWF vs WCW where the company providing opposition to WWF/WWE is never allowed to be even hinted at. So after this months long match going on we don't even get a clean finish. The referees have to pretend to busy themselves so Yamato can reach into his tights for an object which he uses to KO Haku. This is technically a big deal because Haku doesn't take any losses & not only does he lose here but he also sells it big being KO'ed until the show fades out minutes later. But... didn't we see this exact same thing the other week with Cota/Casas? We're already doing the object in tights thing again? Lame. Also, I have no interest in Haku vs Yamato. Or Haku vs anyone. Which seems a very bad sign considering next week is the first ever Grand Prix tournament full of international names. The good news is I don't think most of it airs. Also, it's a one night 16 person CMLL tournament on a night there is still an opener & main event hair match so odds are each match went no more than 3 minutes.

I have nothing to say because there really is nothing to say. LOL The entire tournament is available through Jeff Lynch if you are a masochist. I am not wasting my time on a tournament, even if it is the first ever Grand Prix, where 7 matches go less than a half hour combined. It's not a giant waste of time but it's an excercise in futility. The only thing you need to know is the trophy they gave out was HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE! El Gigante sized. Rayo won it by defeating Haku in the finals which means people who paid for this show got 4 Haku matches in one night. I shudder at the thought. The DB has links up for the main event but they all link to the 4/1 match. I don't believe the hair match video unless there are clips on the year end show. If I eventually go back & check, I'll update this part with any thoughts. (UPDATE: It did not even appear in highlights on any of the year end shows)

A nice & tidy two match show that somehow Roy Lucier doesn't have on his channel! We don't even have full results from this show so I can't even wonder if anything else aired. Actually, I do have the results in a file I have yet to send Cubs so let's do a blog exclusive (which will probably get published after he's already entered these into the LuchaDB):

Negro Casas/Black Magic/Mano Negra over Pierroth Jr./Jaque Mate/Masakre (Black Magic had problems with his team but not as much as Pierroth who was attacked by his own teammates after the loss & had to be saved by Negro Casas)
Ringo Mendoza/Blue Demon Jr./Pantera over Damian El Guerrero/Guerrero Maya/Guerrero Del Futuro by DQ
Reyna Jubuki & La Diabolica over Lady Apache & La Sirenita

Looks like we missed some action! Negro Casas AND Pierroth Jr going tecnico??? TBD. From what we do see on TV we have a rematch for the CMLL Trios Titles between the Brazos & Ola Blanca. The intros get lots of time... like 6 minutes of the 31 minute video. And no, that doesn't mean entrances. That means intros with guys already in the ring just being announced by name. Even the commentators point out the excessive nature of the pre-match routine. I think this is a great example of how valuable 2/3 fall matches can be if you put a little thought into them. There are so many ways you can work them which to me always made them far more interesting than one fall matches. I'm not saying I was a huge fan of the finish to this match but the process getting there was a lot of fun. We start with some excellent matwork between the two sides that the crowd is loving. We keep rolling from there with some nice exchanges leading to a dive sequence. A first fall dive sequence! Porky gets cut off from his but leaps right back up to his feet & flies to the outside with a tope taking out all the Ola Blanca. Brazos win first fall by countout! Second fall more excellent work from both sides. We get some nearfalls including a false finish from the La Estrella/huracanrana in the middle spot. A very common finish in this era so doing it mid-second fall was a nice twist. Again... if you treat 2/3 falls like this, that is to say using your brain to insert bits normally reserved for other falls, you open these matches up for so much more excitement. The rudos end up taking the fall as Gladiador blocks a Brazo De Oro roll-up & Markus splashes Brazo off the top. The third fall starts... and within seconds Brazo De Oro is ganged up on & his leg is smashed to bits causing him to submit! Brazo De Oro, you have been ELIMINATED! This leaves the Brazos at a handicap. The medics come out to tend to Oro who is in pain but refuses to leave. The rest of the match is the rudos in control, mostly focusing on beating Porky down. If this sounds familiar - it's playing off their Arena Coliseo match a couple weeks previous where Porky was beat down for like 15+ minutes including the fake heart attack deal but scored a surprise roll-up. So we have some continuity going on here! El Brazo is worried about his brother & goes to grab the towel but the injured Brazo De Oro hobbling around ringside won't let him throw it in. Drama! The rudos keep going to pin Porky but pick him up before the three count. Other times he kicks out. He won't quit! The two Brazos outside the ring keep arguing about whether to end things or not as Ola Blanca have Porky in a triple submision. Out of nowhere the towel comes flying in from El Brazo & Brazo De Oro is furious. The refs call the match - La Ola Blanca win the CMLL Trios Titles! Crowd is unhappy. Porky is literally crying (what a performer!) asking why his brothers would throw the towel in. He wanted to keep fighting & not lose the titles this way. The hardcore fan remembers at Arena Coliseo they wanted to throw the towel in as well but Porky managed to pull the win out before they could. It's a very "telling stories" deal like WWE but obviously this is a rare CMLL finish so we let it slide. Also, this felt more real than any WWE focus the camera on someone making a dramatic face for 13 seconds to show their inner struggle deal. Coming away from this you'd think problems are about to start once again between the brothers. In fact, during the main event the announcers mention they heard the family bickering backstage so this is definitely a situation to monitor in the coming weeks/months. Speaking of our main event... gross! I did not like this at all. We find out La Fiera lost his hair to Emilio, thanks to "a bad decision" from referee Rafa El Maya. This match is competely aimless & devoid of much heat. Only in the third fall do we even get anything of note when suddenly Miguel Perez Jr is bleeding courtesy of Rayo. Tecnicos win clean with Fiera getting revenge on Emilio which is traditional CMLL booking. The guy who loses the apuesta match always wins the following week. A total DUD of a match. I guess I should mention Perez is not long for this world... or is he? Not sure where else I'll get to mention this so may as well add it here. Perez jumps to AAA at Triplemania in May, which is right around the corner. He appears in the crowd with El Boricua (Fidel Sierra I think) & attacks Perro Aguayo. Then... he never wrestles for AAA again. As the story goes, CMLL refused to release his work permit & got Victor Quinones involved. Quinones told Perez he controls him & as long as he controls him the only company he can work for is CMLL. So without missing a beat Perez is back in CMLL a couple weeks later & it's as if the AAA thing never happened. We go right back to this Rayo/Perez feud.

LuchaDB does not have it noted but the Tuesday main event airs this week with the Friday main event. That's it. Just those two matches. I'm not going to break them down. They were both the same kind of matches. Cold. Ice cold. Very little action, very little effort from anyone involved. Very little people in attendance as well, perhaps that was a contributing factor. But what I will do is give a speech I've often had to give... luchadors work a lot of dates. You don't make money if you aren't working. So when you tune into that Tuesday show & the main event gets mailed in, you can be annoyed but you also always have to keep in mind some of these guys may be working their 5th or 6th match in a row with a couple more still to come. The schedule was grueling & no way anyone can be delivering ****+ on a nightly basis, not even the best wrestlers of all time. You have to conserve yourself. I've caught myself being too hard on mailed-in performances before & always felt bad about it. With that said I have do an asterisk for this time frame that doesn't apply to current CMLL where everything ends up streaming. In 1994 - as this week shows - we were getting TWO matches per week. When the top guys show up to mail it in, the purpose of the underneath guys existing is those guys are NOT getting the same level of work the top guys are so they should be fresh & pick up the slack. There's no set rule each main event had to air. It's hard to imagine there wasn't a better match or two somewhere on these two shows that could have ended up on TV instead so the company can put it's best foot forward instead of airing two depressing matches where the building was empty immediately after the final fall in each match as if the crowd was just dying to leave. A bonus asterisk, as much as the schedule is grueling I do think wrestlers should prioritize the big Friday show of the week or at least the shows where they know they'll end up on TV. If you are gonna mail it in, pick Puebla or a Sunday that isn't being filmed. Local promoters pay more for TV stars but nobody wants to book TV stars if this is the effort they will be getting. The wrestlers would probably counter with the flip side they are working for a % & if these shows were drawing poor (they were), no matter Friday for TV or not they aren't gonna bring their A game knowing the low payout that will be waiting for them on Monday. Anyways... Brazos had no issues in the Tuesday main & Pierroth reversed a flying body press to pin captain Dandy clean in the Friday main which featured Apolo Dantes return to the ring after an extended absence. Neither match would crack **1/2.

A bit messy here but should be cleaned up in the LuchaDB before you see any of what I'm writing here. The Tuesday main event is listed on Friday as well but w/ Dandy instead of Fiera (it's Fiera, he subs in). So we have a three match TV show with the Tuesday main, Friday tercera (I'm assuming they didn't semi-main event with Kung Fu on a Friday...) & main. The Tuesday main starts off GREAT! Atlantis & Dr Wagner Jr doing matwork like you'll never see these days. Not even just directionless matwork, every sequence they did was leading to a conclusion where Wagner was made to look the fool which is an example of a great rudo. Wagner was being vocal & expressive too. Something that is a lost art in place of working for the TV or these days you are taught to work for imaginary fans in the distance which helps you express to the many. Wagner was working for the front row people at Arena Coliseo, including almost getting into it with a couple of fans at one point which caused a security guy to show up out of nowhere incase things escalated. They didn't. Wagner high fived one fan & blew off the other. It's amazing to see this old stuff where fans are standing & cheering/yelling & CMLL security is just in the distance watching on. Today if you even make a move that you are getting out of your seat, security is on their feet urging you to sit back down immediately or else. But back to the match - Rayo actaully seems to have dropped some pounds & was moving well. In all my rewatch so far, this may be the first Rayo match I actually enjoyed. Of course the rudos were doing most of the work but so it goes. The first fall finish was tremendous rudos bumbling bits. In the second fal we get more tecnico shine before the rudos take over to win. The third fall has our comeback. It all leads to a very lame foul finish out of nowhere. I was thinking the new trios champ rudos would go over strong so shame on me, I know. This was a match that began at the **** level but fell to ***1/2 by the end. Still a good time was had. Onto Friday we see Kung Fu is bald courtesy of Americo Rocca a week earlier. That match didn't make TV, thankfully. Kung Fu once again looked in no condition to perform so I can't imagine what a singles match with him looked like with nobody to carry the load while he stood on the apron trying not to fall over. Poor Rocca had to be the one to move him into place any time he got in the ring during this match. In the rudo beatdown part Kung Fu was throwing these hilariously bad karate chops. I was excited to see Apolo Dantes get another chance to shine but he didn't do much here. The finish is HILARIOUSLY BAD. Cruz climbs up top as Apolo hits the ropes so it's the usual cross body cut-off deal but Apolo seems to slow down just as Cruz jumps meaning either he goes splat or....... he chooses to land on his feet & stumble into this weird clothesline taking Apolo down. Everyone knows it's fucked up. Cruz covers & you can CLEARLY see him say "TRES!" for both refs to hear. So they count... 1... 2... then both stop. Apolo realizes so he kicks out. Cruz kinda lets go, gives the refs an annoyed look, then covers Apolo again... refs count... 1... 2... 3! Just an abysmal ending. Main event time... Casas & Cota teaming??? What happened to that feud??? Well, don't worry. It still exists. They are just being subtle. Which means this is your dream Negro Casas match since he speaclizes in stuff like that. His interactions with Porky are delightful & have the crowd dying of laughter. After Porky embarasses him over & over - Cota is on the apron laughing which Casas takes umbridge with. Then it's Cota's time to be embarassed. Throughout all this Porky is playing shit-stirrer, poking & proding them both to fight amongst themselves. Meanwhile Pierroth is stuck in the middle although I'm sure he preferred that over taking Vamp's awful offense. I can't say enough great things about Casas & Cota's bumping here. You don't really understand the whole lost art thing until you see a match like this & how they aren't getting themselves over, they are doing the work to get their opponents over. It's that unselfish part of the sport that has fallen by the wayside for whatever reason. Ultimo Dragon does a pescado which is caught by Casas/Cota only for Porky to jump off the apron with a plancha taking everyone down. Tecnicos win the first fall. Things escalate in the second fall with friendly fire amongst the rudos that leads to blows being exchanged. It really falls apart when Ultimo Dragon for an asai moonsault but Cota shoves Casas into the way. The tecnicos end up winning in two falls & post-match breaks down into an all out brawling between the two rudos as Pierroth watches on unable to maintain the peace. My description definitely doesn't do this match justice, you gotta watch it & hopefully appreciate the work they put in to still have an entertaining match while hitting the key points of the storyline being pushed. I'll go ***3/4. I would have loved for it to be even longer honestly. You should watch the opener & main from this show but do everything possible to avoid the middle match.

I'm not quite sure these results don't have some results flipped, maybe Tuesday goes on Friday & vice versa. Either way this is three matches that took place the same week & aired on TV together so it fits. We start off with another Kung Fu match. He was dru... OK... I'm not gonna go there again. He was just awful, again, in this match. Maybe I've been seeing what I want to see in terms of being drunk but this is a guy who has no business inside a wrestling at this time. It's wild to think he kept wrestling into 2001/2002. He looks like he has one foot in the grave here. Americo Rocca was stuck working with him once again but at least got one moment with Tornado Negro where he could show off. I always thought Rocca was criminally underrated based on the footage we have. If we had even more I'm sure he'd be considered an elite level guy. Eternal rivals Pantera/Felino are attached here as well. They do some mask tugging ending with both switching masks in the third fall. This leads to the hilarious moment where Tornado Negro starts kicking Felino because he thinks he's Pantera so Felino has to rip the mask off to show him his face to get him to stop. The camera was shooting from behind so even on the replay you can't see Felino's face even though his mask is off for a good two seconds. There's also a spot where Pantera gives Felino a spinning backbreaker & Felino's mask goes flying off (he helped it out) which prompts an argument about whether it should be a DQ or not. There's a big dive sequence near the end which is the prootypical version of this spot. No delay, guys just going for it, dives in order of spectacularness so you aren't starting with a tornillo & ending with a plancha. The art of this is long since gone. Back inside Ciclon submits Tornado with the Reinera. For some reason we get an extended post-match with the guys trying to fight some more. Ciclon seems to indicate he wants a hair match with Tornado which is odd only because I know his future contains a hair match but it isn't with Tornado. Next up we get full intros for the Ola Blanca vs Fiera/Dandy/Silver King. On paper this looked like a great match, in reality it was alright. I wanted more. We got some good stuff like Dandy busting out a great couple slaps that crowd popped for. I liked the Dandy/Wagner sequence. The Ola Blanca was being put over as rudos who cheat as an undetected foul gets them the first fall & then a fake foul by Wagner gets them the win in the third fall. It never really settled down into a straight match if you know what I mean. I should note it looked like this show drew very poorly. Tons of empty floor seats. Our main event, presumably from Friday, is rudos vs rudos with Casas' side working as La Ola Negra. Negro, Negra & ... uh... well... Black Magic! This is another show that doesn't appear to have drawn very well. Casas wants his enemy Cota right away & obviously that's not happen as Cota runs off. We get some extended matwork with Mano Negra/Emilio Charles Jr before the match devolves into mainly a brawl controlled by Cota's side. The comeback is really funny because it includes Casas smashing Cota's head into the chairs & he sees a lady who flee'd left behind her purse so he hits Cota with it! Cota then grabs the purse & flings it into the air landing in the ring. Needless to say this woman is not pleased! But she gets it back from the referees almost immediately. The announcers joke everything went flying & they have the contents of her purse now. LOL Finish is a very simple one where Magic appears to have things under control trapping Cota in a bearhug but Casas goes a huracanrana on Emilio only to be power bombed & pinned. He was the captain so the Ola Negra lose. Magic seems disappointed in Casas. I *think* this is to establish Casas has no friends to continue his slow burn tecnico turn. Not a particularly inspiring show here.

Again a case where I can't be sure the assigned Friday matches happened on Tuesday instead but it's still a full three match show. I don't know why Cubs thinks so many matches aired? I wonder if he was just guessing or pulling from somewhere incorrectly. I wish all these matches aired, may have been better TV. I didn't mention this last week but we now get TV intros by the announcers which are taped as the undercard matches are going on so last week we saw women wrestling in the background & today I got to see a glimpse of the Tuesday opener which had Pegaso II & others. This sounds like a stupid detail to mention unless you grew up on CMLL TV airing 2 matches & just hoping to catch a glimpse of some undercard match behind the announcers talking. Tzuki sightings! Our TV opener is the presumed Tuesday main event. Starts off as a normal match with no drama. Some excellent work by Dandy/Casas that should be studied. Ultimo/Magic have more a messy exchange but they are both pros so they get it together by the end. Tecnicos end up taking fall one. Second fall some more good stuff until rudos take over & that's where the drama kicks in. Magic slams Ultimo but before Casas can do a slingshot something - Jaque Mate shoves him away. Magic gets angry at Jaque Mate (remember Casas/Magic are a team as La Ola Negra). They try it again but once more Jaque Mate won't let Negro do anything so they start shoving each other. More rudos not trusting Negro! This is how the tecnicos take over & they end up pinning Jaque Mate with a combo superkick by Fiera & german suplex from Ultimo which looked very painful for the rudo. Casas/Magic walk off on Jaque Mate as the fans are filing out. Next up is our first look at the Guerreros Del Futuro in quite a while. Sucks being a lower to midcard trio in the era of CMLL only airing the top two! On the tecnico side we have a new to Mexico still & very green Chicago Express. So green that the announcers openly talk about his "unorthodox offense" to cover for how sloppy everything he did looked. I have no idea why he came in as a tecnico considering his lack of athleticism. I assume they didn't want to make him a rudo because in this era rudos had to be actual rudos - bumping & selling. He was not ready for that. But he's such a bad fit as a tecnico & it's so clearly obvious. If you don't know Chicago Express, he's actually from Chicago but both his parents were Mexican. He worked locally before coming down to Mexico which was an entire different world in 1993/1994. The teams split the first two falls. Lots of classic rudos bumbling spots by the Guerreros who specialize in that sort of thing. In the third fall they do the bit where each tecnico hits each rudo one-by-one before bailing from the ring so the next tecnico can do the same. Until inevitaly the rudos stop one from escaping the ring & beat the shit out of him which in this case was Mascara Magica who gets eliminated. Guerrero Maya is out next. Chicago Express does a wild tope over the top onto Damian El Guerrero who gives a 30% effort in breaking his fall so Chicago comes down hard on his back/side & is in clear pain. Justiciero/Futuro exchange pinfall attempts until finally they double pin each other so match ends in the rare DRAW! Multiple replays of Chicago leaping to his near death. Did not look healthy. Our main event is one of those *Norm MacDonald voice* ALL THE STARS ARE HERE matches. The Atlantis/Emilio work was good but the same can't be said for their partners. Crowd was into it at least. Who gave this ***1/2? Surely not Meltzer. Tecnicos take the first fall. Pierroth uses an unseen foul to pin Rayo in the second fall. Unseen by refs & us since cameras were not focused on it so I have to go by the call of the announcers. Rayo hits a rare tope suicida in the third fall & he's a big boy so he's coming in with a lot of steam. Poor Pierroth. Atlantis does the same but much softer to Wagner. This leaves Vamp vs Emilio & within seconds Vamp pins him with a powerslam. Nothing too offensive at all here but also nothing interesting to me. Just kinda killing time before heading back to Arena Mexico at some point soon. I would have much rather seen the semi-main which is where the Ciclon Ramirez/Javier Cruz issue begins that will be our first apuesta match of the year for the new Arena Mexico season. You can safely skip this week of TV.

This will appear confusing as I'm entering it before LuchaDB gets updated. I believe that 5/30 match belongs on 5/24 as it aired on the same episode as these 5/27 matches. There's no reason to believe CMLL had a random Monday Arena Coliseo show sandwiched between a Sunday & Tuesday show we already have full results from & that Brazos trios appears on neither. The first thing to note is how empty the building is. Empty seats on the hard cam in like the 4th row of Coliseo. Long shots reveal the balcon is open but nothing above it as the lights are off. Bad times for CMLL. Even so I can't say these guys mailed it in or anything. I thuroughly enjoyed this match. Any time Casas crosses paths with the Brazos you know you're gonna get something super fun. They were not afraid to workshop things on shows like this. I loved the spot where Brazo De Oro keeps hitting the ropes as Casas does drop-downs but Oro won't leap over him. Casas ends up frustrated & tries to give him a taste of his own medicine. But of course when he drops down........ Oro just gives him an elbowdrop. LOL Magic is always funny but especially so when the building is empty so you can hear all the stuff he is yelling. First fall finish was great! Second fall finish is an unseen foul by Casas who then scars me for life by leaning in to french kiss the camera lens. Brazos take the match by press slamming Oro onto all three rudos as the building quickly empties out. ***1/2! It made the cut! Moving to Friday we get the top two & our semi-main starts with some awesome work between Dandy & Felino. Two masters of their craft. They'd get another moment in this match as well to show off their skills together. Everyone was working hard here. Bigger crowd than Tuesday but still nothing to brag about. Very sketpical of that full house number Cubs has listed which is credited to me. First fall finish was great! Second time I've written that without explaining, maybe one day it'll insprise someone reading this to go look up the match themselves to see what made it so great. This kinda thing always worked on me when I was becoming a lucha fan! Dandy slapping the shit out of Cota really popped me. The finish is very well done with near submissions being broken up until Felino goes up top for a moonsault or something & in fitting with his character he slips taking a comical fall to the floor leaving Jaque Mate all alone in the ring to get pinned by El Dandy who then issues a challenge for the NWA Light Heavyweight Title. Another ***1/2 match! These are ratings to be celebrated on a normal scale! Main event was one of those matches that never really gets any rhythm going. We have the rudos in control, no comeback at all, tecnicos just suddenly are in control, then no real transition towards the finishing run. It could have been edited too & maybe I just missed the edits but all three falls are done in sub 11 minutes. Vampiro busts out a rare for him tope suicida that was as ugly as you are probably imagining. Atlantis gets Emilio in the Atlantida to close things out. Good enough show. Should also make note in the opener there is an extended public service announcement/plea as around this time Mascarita Magica's son had gone missing. It was a pretty big story at the time even outside lucha libre circles. So the announcers send a message that if someone knows his whereabouts, please contact the CMLL office for his safe return, no questions will be asked or if he ran away from home & happens to be watching please flag down a police officer & tell them who you are, they'll bring you straight home. I think the ending to this story was very sad as they end up finding him dead.

That's a lot of matches & as usual only three air! Starting off with the Tuesday main event in front of another very sad turnout. It can only go one of two ways when you see a lowly turnout like this - either the guys are gonna be super depressed since they get paid on the gate which in turn makes them completely mail it in or they are gonna say fuck it nobody is here let's just go out there & have a good time. Thankfully this match fell into the latter category. This was the exact kind of match they would have had if the building was full, a credit to their professionalism. Rudos bumping all over the place in the first fall. They are hesitant to get in the ring for the second fall so La Fiera slides under the rope to scare them huddling on the floor but he ends up pulled outside into a beatdown. That was clever. Rudos take the fall easily. Third fall has more good action & a great finish where Atlantis is monkey flipping everyone in sight so Casas decides to give him a taste of his own medicine. He goes for one but Atlantis just holds him up so Apolo can jump off the top with a clothesline. Fiera pins Bestia as Atlantis gets Emilio with a huracanrana. The video length is 20+ minutes & the match ends at 15 so you know something else has to happen. Casas stays down for a long time in the ring with nobody checking on him. Finally he comes to & seems to be annoyed at his partners for not coming over to help him. This annoys Emilio & Bestia who enter the ring & lay a beatdown on Negro as the tecnicos do nothing to help. Continuing our saga of Negro Casas having no friends beyond Black Magic & Mano Negra in the Ola Negra (for now). Good match! Moving to Friday we get full semi-main event entrances which is new. So if you ever wanted to know what Hayabusa's CMLL music was, load the video! Ciclon attacks Javier Cruz immediately as they are in the midst of feuding. He is soon ramming the rudo's head into chairs at ringside & Cruz is busted open quickly. The refs work hard to get Ciclon to stay away from Cruz so the match can proceed normally. Our definitely of "normal" here is Hayabusa vs Mogur. Two... uh... very different people. It's made immediately clear as they have communication issues. Mogur throws a stiff clothesline on the young boy. Hayabusa goes for a rope walk huracanrana but his leap is off & Mogur's base is not sold at all so they come crashing down at a disgusting angle. Mogur just rolls out & Hayabusa sheepishly crawls to his corner to tag out. The announcers talk about how Hayabusa is a rookie & things like this will happen. The tecnicos take the first fall. Second fall has the rudos mainly in control. I thought they won the fall but apparently not as there's no replays & the announcers keep referencing segunda caida. Hmmm. Pantera ends up put in the tree of woe so he can't help Ciclon who is getting destroyed by Cruz now which busts him open. The refs keep warning Cruz but he's not listening so he ends up DQ'ed for excessive violence in presumably straight falls. Post-match we get our official challenge & acceptance for the re-opening of Arena Mexico next Friday - Ciclon Ramirez vs Javier Cruz in a hair vs hair match! Our main event is the Cowboys vs Ola Blanca. Very long first fall with tons of matwork & a feeling out process that never seems to want to end. Which is fine. I am NOT complaining! This match on this day hit perfectly for what I needed. Luchadors doing their thing without feeling rushed or me watching the refs yelling at them to speed things up. There was a bit teasing rudo problems when Markus kept getting hit because Wagner refused to stop breaking up a submission the same time as his brother Silver King. Cowboys take the first fall. A bit faster in the second fall. Rudos tease problems again but this time they use it to take control of the match & win the second fall without much issue. Third fall gets plenty of time as well but the action slows back to the first fall pace. We get a funny bit where the tecnicos whip Wagner into the corner but all three miss charges towards him so he does a funny strut laughing about it. They grab him & try again - this time all three nail him - so he takes this funny Flair bump the crowd pops for. They do a double elimination bit that came off very sloppy as it was clear Silver King could have broken up the pinfall but did a 180 & chose not to. He seemed pretty gassed by this point. The next double pinfall is much better with both Silver King & Dr Wagner Jr getting a fall which means this match is a... DRAW! Refs dual counts were timed perfectly. We get much discussion post-match about who really won but no clear answer. This does seem like drawing with the champions should lead to a title match upcoming but who knows. Enjoyable show!

Now this is a show! We start in Arena Coliseo with the presumed main event for lack of knowing what else happened on this show. Another poor turnout with only the first few rows of seats filled. There were definitely fans in the balcon as you can see Wagner yelling at them at various points during the match. The same thing I wrote about the previous week's opener applies here. Again you gotta give these guys credit. They went for it! I really liked this match! Lots of stuff you just don't see any more today & little things that showed they put some thought into what they were doing. I thought the third fall in particular was super. The entire finishing run was well done with a Fiera tope not even phasing Markus, then a Dandy tope takes him out but it leaves Ringo alone with both Wagner & Gladiador who won't stop stomping him down. The refs clearly warn them but they still refuse so the refs award the tecnicos the win by DQ. I guess this is the Ola Blanca gimmick? Getting DQ'ed for being too violent? It basically allows them to lose but it's clear they've won. I don't hate it. I would definitely suggest checking this one out. ***3/4 or **** depending how high you wanna go. Ringo Mendoza did the bit at one point where he kept hitting the rudos, then did somersaults around the ring as they chased him only to barely escape their grasp as they bumbled over the ropes. I'll now spend all night thinking about how today's Arena Coliseo would react to something like that. Moving to Arena Mexico we have our first look at Ricky 'Samson' Fuyuki. Commentary says he followed Ultimo Dragon to Mexico to continue their rivalry. I feel like Dragon was a junior in Japan & Fuyuki was a heavyweight? But I also was not exactly keeping up on my WAR video tapes so I have no idea what was going on in Tenryu's world. Lots of shots of pretty girls in the crowd which is our sign Vamp is booked. Atlantis & Emilio have this incredible exchange in the first fall. I wouldn't call this Atlantis' prime, maybe just after it, so imagine this exchange a couple years earlier when he was in peak physical condition. Wow. Vamp/Pierroth seems to have difficulties at one point & it turns into a quasi-shoot with neither wanting to budge before they get back on track. It's so interesting to hear the announcers discuss stuff as Televisa personalities & now CMLL representatives. They just go into an open conversation about Miguel Perez Jr showing up in AAA but being forced to return to CMLL who wouldn't release his working papers. Imagine WWE discussing AEW openly on RAW & mentioning a story that maeks it look like they forced someone to return to the company who wanted to leave. Wild. Outside of what I already described the match is nothing much. Fuyuki kinda stinks. Am I to assume somewhere out there there is someone who will argue with me Fuyuki was a superworker? Big man with agility? Secret GWE candidate? Probably. But no matter what I will give this match a huge thumbs up just for the finish. Vampiro slams Pierroth & starts scaling the ropes... he gets up top... gets ready to leap... AND SLIPS!!! He comes tumbling down hard as the crowd of Vamp-haters (the men) all pop huge. To his credit or maybe just reacting naturally he grabs his ankle as if he's broken something. To Pierroth's credit he doesn't skip a beat, he instantly covers Vamp for the win. I couldn't help stare at Fuyuki on the apron standing there looking around like "is that it? we're just changing finishes on the fly?" Dragon comes over to say something to him so Fuyuki enters the ring & gives him a DDT for the secondary pinfall. Probably the actual planned finish of the match. You can rest easy - Vamp was fine & wrestles on Sunday (if not the next day, we don't have results). He just had an oops moment. He has another one about a month later when he jumps to AAA for one show before quitting haha. Moving to our main event we have our first apuesta match of this season - Ciclon Ramirez vs Javier Cruz! Ladies & gentleman... a classic! For real! No hyperbole. I hadn't seen this one in a long time but I had a note on my Jeff Lynch tape list beside the match: "****". I don't know when I'd have given it that rating. Maybe over 20 years ago. Yes, the tape list paper is yellowing by now. Cruz attacks Ciclon during his entrance & it's on. Ciclon bleeds immediately. Our first big spot is what else? A wild Ciclon tope knocking Cruz into the crowd as Ciclon crushes a lady in the front row who couldn't move in time. LFG! Back inside he gets the win with his Reinera. Second fall it's Cruz's turn to bleed. They take the fight into the crowd & brawl in the seats a bit. Only a bit as the commissioner is over there instantly to get them back in the ring. Inside the ring Cruz ties things up with a senton. The third fall is just batshit insane. Lots of nearfalls. Ciclon sends Cruz out & flies over the top with a tope that ends up a somersault plancha where Ciclon almost takes a header & Cruz falls into the seats hard. Also the famous bell-ringing rudo fan in the front row almost takes out the cameraman trying to get out of the way. Cruz knee's Ciclon to the outside & dropkicks him off the apron. We get a teased countout spot for each after those dives. More nearfalls. Both can't get the win with camel clutches. A surfboard turns into a double pin nearfall that the crowd totally bites on. Ciclon dropkicks Cruz off the top to the floor & Cruz almost takes out the same cameraman which leaves BLOOD ON THE CAMERA LENS as Ciclon gears up to hit a tope suicida near the ringpost! What a visual! You couldn't plan this any better & trust me in 2026 wrestling they would definitely try which would take out all the authenticity. We think we're going back inside but NOPE! Ciclon dropkicks Cruz very hard off the apron sending him flying into the front row as fans scatter from this now very bloody & sweaty man. Ciclon gets a medium speed start... AND DESTROYS CRUZ WITH A TOPE SUICIDA INTO THE FRONT ROW!!! If the Black Warrior September 2001 tope of death vs Black Tiger is the best tope suicida ever, this has to be #2, right? This was the definition of using the tope suicida as an offensive move. Cruz was rammed so hard into the seats you could totally buy if he just got counted out right there. But nope. They keep going! Cruz won't quit! Cruz escapes the Reinera. Ciclon whips Cruz into the ropes & goes to boot him but Cruz kicks him instead... lifts up Ciclon... puts him in the hangman's position... EL VOLANTIN!!! After a few spins Ciclon has had enough & waves his arms. JAVIER CRUZ WINS!!! Ciclon wasn't the heavy favorite but he was definitely the favorite heading into this match with the way CMLL books (Cruz on a hair match win streak) so this means for the second straight year Ciclon Ramirez has lost an apuesta match he was favored to win in Arena Mexico. Telling stories, the normal way! There's no rule you can't change your original rating if a match doesn't hold up. There's also no rule you can't rate a match higher if you appreciate it more watching later. I'll up mine to ****1/4-****1/2 here. I go back & forth depending on the minute. I fucking loved it! A classic Ciclon performance & Cruz was right there with him. The visual of both men drenched in blood & exhausted between nearfalls in the third fall is a sight to see. The most painful thought is there were probably tons of matches just like this one throughout the 80's & early 90's in buildings like Pista Arena Revolucion or even right here in Arena Mexico that we will never get to see. I mean La Fiera/Emilio Charles Jr from only a few weeks before this one is a perfect example! Ciclon goes for a handshake but Cruz says no way, it's snip snip time. As soon as Ciclon gets some of his hair cut he hands some to Cruz & then they raise each other's hands. Cruz, a true rudo, wouldn't show any sympathy until after the tecnico acknowledged he was the better man. That's how to do it, folks. Great TV show!

Had to dig for this one as the files aren't on YouTube. We start off on Tuesday as usual but with the semi-main instead of the main. Why? I don't know. We see the turnout is exceptionally bad. So many empty seats. Scary bad. Here's a hack for these older shows with poor lighting where you are trying to judge how many people are there. Look where the beer vendors/security people are standing in the aisle. Their eyes always have to be on the people if they need something or are causing trouble. So it makes no sense for their backs to be to the people. Right on the hard cam you can see the security guy standing in like row 5 or 6 & it's not like there are many seats taken in front of him. Yikes. This is our first look at La Sombra this year. Cool outfit, half black/half white. I would like to tell you he made a good impression but nobody got to make a good impression here. The rudos win the first fall easily & we are instantly made aware there is a Hijo Del Solitario/Jaque Mate issue going on. OH JOY! Just when I was ready to dread a long match with them as the focus, the incompetent CMLL referees saved me! Thank you Roberto Rangel! Literally a minute or two into the second fall Jaque Mate puts Solitario into a figure-four leglock & Solitario is selling he's in lots of pain which leads to Rangel calling it a submission. I'm positive Rangel forgot the rudos won the first fall literally seconds earlier. You can always tell a screw-up in a CMLL ring because most of the time nobody knows how to react normally & almost 100% of the time they try to pretend it never happened. Solitario rolls outside. Dantes is very confused & goes to fight Espectro. He hits his Nothern Lights Suplex which I guess would have been the finish of the fall. Rangel counts to three eliminating Espectro but everyone is so lost at this point that Espectro just gets up & keeps wrestling so the refs can get mad at him. Meanwhile Solitario jumps back on the apron & then gets waved at saying he can't be up there, he's eliminated. Apolo is quickly pinned & the rudos win in straight falls which was absolutely not the plan. Solitario/Mate do some awkward post-match brawling to make up for whatever was supposed to happen later in the match. VERY BAD START TO THIS SHOW! Thankfully right after commercial we enter the Super Porky show so things take a turn for the better. Even pre-match he's messing with the rudos doing his jump & spin deal to cause them to scurry. Early on Bestia Salvaje is bumping all over the place like a madman to put over Porky being the immoveable object. One of the announcers is absolutely dying watching all this. Tecnicos win the first fall easily & for good measure Porky sits on Bestia when he tries a sunset flip even though technically the fall was already over. More fun tecnico offense in the second fall. Emilio takes a crazy bump off the top to the floor. Rudos manage to take control & tie things up. Third fall has Porky being trapped outside the ring. He tries to start the comeback by chasing Bestia around ringside but the official comeback doesn't start till a bit after in the ring when Ringo & Fiera take control. Porky does a plancha off the apron, Bestia takes him out with a tope near the ringpost & then Fiera flies over the top with a tope. After some nearfalls, Cota small packages Ringo to win the match clean for the rudos. Bestia appears to have hurt his arm. Good effort by this crew, crowd was really into it - mostly due to Porky. ***1/2. Our main event made me ponder the question - who's worse Rayo or Vamp? It's a tough call. I'd lean Rayo to be honest. A good wrestler can get something out of a motivate/drugged up Vamp. Aside from Apolo Dantes nobody has ever been able to get anything out of fat fuck Rayo. So it was all up to Atlantis to save the day in this match. He tried but he's only one man. There were some hilarious back suplexes in this match where the people giving & taking both didn't seem to know how to do the move safely. Announcers mentioned Fuyuki is only 25 years old. Surely that can't be right??? Dude looks at least 35. At the end of the first fall Vamp chases Wagner into the crowd which unfortunately allows us to see how poorly this show drew as well. Empty seats everywhere you look. I told you 1994 was not gonna be a good year for this group. The third fall is a mess with guys just doing whatever & now real semblance that this match is going anywhere. And clearly it wasn't so Atlantis just pinned Wagner with a huracanrana to get us outta here & get the old ladies in the front row who were putting on their jackets during the second fall already out the door as quick as possible. A one match show but you'll have a good time watching it if anyone decides to put it on YouTube one day.

Two match TV show! Maybe. These are my uploads so who knows where I pulled them from if we're being honest. Jeff Lynch has these same two matches. So if what I'm sure was a classic Vampiro vs Ricky Fuyuki match aired, it just never made the tape trading circles. This does keep getting problematic as the year goes on & random CMLL matches just keep popping up without attached results so it's unclear how much of the year we are missing. From the known Tuesday show matches we have what I think slots in as the semi-main. Another poor turnout, Solitario/Jaque Mate still feuding. Very very very tenative start with nobody touching for the first few minutes. Why's that? Well - Ringo & Cachorro don't want to fight. Or more notably Cachorro does not want to fight which his partners are unhappy about. This actually has a great payoff because after all that delay Brazo De Oro/Negro Casas square off & Casas indicates he wants a truce as well. Brazo De Oro says no fucking way & slaps him to a huge pop. This is what makes Casas what he was... one of the all-time greats. He could turn anything into gold. Unfortunately his magic didn't work on this match overall. A run of the mill match ending in a DQ when the rudos put Solitario in the tree of woe & Jaque Mate kept pounding on him even though the refs warned him to stop. Ringo/Cachorro did get physical later in the match but not in a direct way. Moving to Friday we get the semi-main which is Ricky Santana's debut (or return?) here. I can't be 100% on that & am too lazy to check right now. I feel like debut though. Mocho Cota's hair has gotten into absurd territory. He's got a full on FRO going. So if you didn't know who was losing the Anniversary main event - he's trying to make it quite clear. Atlantis & Wagner do some fun stuff as usual but really this match is just killing time until the big angle. Ultimo gets caught trying a pescado onto two rudos who smash him into the ringpost. Out of nowhere we see Miguel Perez Jr hit the ring to attack Rayo! Not his debut, his return here. I explained the deal above in the April TV recaps. His AAA jump having been disallowed, he's back with here a vengeance going after Rayo who is immediately bleeding buckets from having his face smashed into the ringpost. Miguel is in a white track suit so it provides for a good visual. The beatdown goes almost long than the match did with Ricky joining in to rip & then steal Atlantis' mask. So we're doing the Mexico vs Puerto Rico feud here, coincidentally the exact feud Antonio Pena was going to run using Perez. Not much of a TV show from what we saw although the Perez thing is supposed to be a big deal as CMLL is heading for a showdown with AAA in July but more on that when we get there.

A four match TV show! But not the four you may be thinking looking at the above. There is no Cowboys vs Ola Blanca match. We actually start out with the usual Tuesday Arena Coliseo match but we don't have any results in LuchaDB at the moment for that show. Honestly I didn't know or had forgotten the bonus match existed via a Roy Lucier upload that isn't linked to any of these matches. The quality is not too hot but as someone who grew up in the tape trading era - that kinda shit doesn't bother me! So thanks to Roy Lucier, who else, we have the Tuesday semi-main of Ringo Mendoza/El Hijo Del Solitario/Hayabusa vs Bestia Salvaje/Espectro Jr/Mocho Cota. Another poor Tuesday turnout as you'd expect. Surprised to see no Jaque Mate here considering he's currently feuding with Solitario. Hayabusa looked much better here than he did in his previous TV appearence. Rudos were working hard to keep him in line. Lots of tecnico shine for the first part of the match before the rudos take over. Their beatdown continues deep into the third fall where we then get a long lost lucha finish. The kind of finish that anti-lucha people would point to as how silly lucha libre is but the kind of finish you kinda needed to bust out every so often when you were working 6-7 shows per week & needed to conserve yourself. Basically each tecnico gets in the ring & starts hitting each rudo. Then they do some sort of evasion move over & over until they tumble outside the ring. The bumbling rudos are chasing & get progressively more & more angry they can't catch the tecnicos. It's supposed to build to the final tecnico trying it & the crowd knows at some point they're gonna get caught & be outnumbered inside the ring so they scream. Well... it worked perfectly here. Ringo was the one who got caught & the rudos triple team pinned him for the easy win. Perfectly fine wrestling. Next up we move to Arena Mexico where we quickly find out Americo Rocca/Javier Cruz are feuding! Makes sense the way CMLL booked around this time. Americo Rocca coming off a hair match win over Kung Fu & Javier Cruz over Ciclon Ramirez. First fall gets lots of time which is usually a tell when a match is only going two falls. It also features both a rudo beatdown & tecnico comeback which is another red flag when a match is going two falls. Felino was working hard but just a background player here. Super Astro got to do his dancing shtick but it was so weird b/c he just kinda stopped when surrounded by the rudos & time stood still as he waited for one of them to hit him for the cut-off. Felino takes a cool bump to the floor & Demon Jr hits him with a tope suicida. Super Astro does his awesome slingshot somersault senton onto Popitekus. This leaves Rocca & Cruz which ends quickly when Cruz drops him & hits a senton for the clean win. Cruz is on a roll! We get full entrances for the semi-main. 80's rock blasting as each wrestler comes out one-by-one is my happy place. After the entrances everyone from the undercard files out as we get a minute of applause for Bobby Bonales who recently passed away. That was nice. On paper aside from Vamp being involved this match looked fine on paper but in reality it was a bunch of nothing. I was shocked at how little they did for a Friday semi-main. Poor Black Magic got stuck working with Vamp a lot in this one. I know they are friends outside the ring but surely he must have been frustrated at times in the ring because Vamp was on a different page throughout this one & would compensate by just throwing Norman around very unsafely at times. Rudos end up going over without any real thought seemingly put into the finish. Quite the disappointing outing for all six. Main event is a rare tag team match - Mexico vs Puerto Rico. Lots of "Mexico" chants throughout. There was nothing particularly wrong with the match, honestly it may have been the best match on the TV show somehow, I just couldn't get into it. Maybe lackluster show so far had dampened my spirits. Rayo has his mask torn up & Perez is bleeding by the third fall. We get lots of nearfalls, tecnicos hit multiple dives, rudos attempt to cheat. Santana pulls out a foreign object which the announcers catch & start screaming about. At first Santana gets away with using it but then he passed it to Perez who gets caught so the tecnicos win by DQ. Post-match they keept attacking the tecnicos. Crowd pretty hot for this. Unfortunately it goes nowhere for now. I just read a magazine explaining this. We don't have an attendance number for this show but I'm presuming it wasn't good. AAA is on their way into Mexico City to run Gimnasio Juan De La Barera on 7/15 - a Friday. The idea is CMLL was going to load up a show to defend their territory. The plan was to headline with a Mexico vs Puerto Rico double apuesta match. But they get cold feet after the turnout for this show & bail on the idea, basically forfeiting the day to AAA which disappoints the magazines. It makes sense from CMLL's POV if you know how their business runs. Paying two guys to lose their hair means added expenses & if you can't guarantee a reasonable turnout, it's pointless to spend that money. Both these guys would eventually get their hair payoffs but we'd have to wait a bit on that.

Fancy new poster layout. Look at all those names & matches you won't see. We open with Tuesday's main event in front of another small crowd which is a Brazos comedy special. It dawns on me how CMLL seems to have specifically been seperating Negro Casas & Mocho Cota since heating them up back in March/April. They always seem to find themselves on opposite shows (Tuesday/Friday) since. RED FLAG. I forget his full name but his first name is definitely Raul - one of the Televisa announcers - he is in HEAVEN any time Super Porky is wrestling. His laugh is contagious. LOL Porky is doing all his bits here & leads his brothers to victory in the first fall by sitting on Bestia Salvaje. More Brazos domination in the second fall until the rudos take over to win it. The third fall is where the drama picks up. El Brazo seems to intentionally not be coming in to help Porky or extending his hand for a tag. There is no WWE style extreme zoom or announcers screaming to call it out specifically but if you're paying attention you see what's going on. Neither of the other Brazos play it up as a big deal immediately. They make their comeback & it seems all is well. We get La Estrella for the finish. Porky chest bumps Cota down onto El Brazo... goes for a splash... and you guessed it... squashes his own brother! Rudos quickly cover & escape with a victory. El Brazo is up almost immediately & right in Porky's face. He even slaps him a few times & Porky starts crying. Brazo De Oro seems to be staying out of this one. So the teased Brazos problems we saw after they lost the titles in May have resurfaced here. Will it go anywhere? TBD. Moving to Friday we start with the segunda which continues the Rocca/Cruz issue. The match seems JIP even though we get a first fall graphic on-screen. Pantera/Felino are just spectacular working together except for the messed up first fall finish. At one point Felino challenges Pantera to get in the ring & they do this big dramatic showdown....... only for Felino to bail to the outside which gets huge heat. This is a two fall special. We end with a dive sequence - Apolo tope, Felino assisted into a plancha & Pantera running somersault plancha. Really great stuff. Rocca traps Cruz in the mousetrap as it's known these days & that's that! The rivalry rages on. The Ultimo Dragon match doesn't air so we skip forward to our one night trios tournament. No battle royale airs so we'll never get to see Benoit's face having this two minute seeding battle royale explained to him. It's announced this tournament is for some trophy but we never see any trophies. I just assumed it was for a CMLL Trios Titles shot next week but that doesn't make much sense either since the actual champions are in the tournament. They're up first actually - La Ola Blanca. If you ever wanted to see a lucha squash match - this is it. If you know your CMLL tournament tropes well enough you know 99% of the time the person/people being eliminated will get in all their offense before exiting. In this case Los Cowboys controlled the entire way & won easily in sub 6 minutes. WTF? Spoiler: They get the title shot next week so it makes sense they'd dominate the champions but this seemed excessive. At one point Wagner is booted into the crowd & lands in the second row. The way it's shot allows us to see how empty Arena Mexico is. This had to be a sub 2,000 show just seeing all the empty ringside seats. Keep in mind the World Cup is going at this point so I don't know what games were happening this same day but clearly nobody had any interest in coming out to watch some wrestling at Arena Mexico. A quick Google search reveals no games on this day but Mexico had been eliminated on Tuesday. I hope CMLL didn't run heads up vs that game. Maybe people were still depressed on Friday. They lost to Bulgaria! I used to have an on & off thing with this girl from Bulgaria. I'm getting off topic here. Cowboys win & advance to final. Our other semi-main has Chris Benoit returning to Mexico! They start him off with the perfect opponent here as Negro Casas (who is wearing full black tights maybe for the first time ever???) is bumping all over to make him look good & fit right in. It's another tecnico dominated match almost start-to-finish. Benoit does his suplex into a Hotshot on Mano Negra which did not look very fun to take at all. So our tecnicos vs tecnicos final is announced as 2 out of 3 falls. I thought I heard wrong but nope. Vamp is getting boo'ed mercilessly any time he steps into the ring. In 1993 you had all these crowd shots of hot girls just there to see Vamp and/or you'd hear screams any time he was getting beat up. Not so much in 1994. With the downturn in business you only have the hardcores coming out & they *HATE* Vamp. Silver King was having fun egging on the boo-birds. It was clear how far Vamp's stock had fallen at this point & I wonder if this night in particular played into his decision to try to jump to AAA in August? I'm sure the empty building & thus low % payoff played a bigger part. Solid work for the most part as Benoit can work with all these guys quite well. Rayo even tried to keep up his end of the deal by working harder than usual. His team took the first fall clean. The second fall went on a while until out of nowhere they did a spot where Vamp went for a leapfrog but Silver King didn't get all the way under & ended up headbutting Vamp in the dick. That's a DQ! A very famous cop out finish back in the prime UWA days - especially in title matches. The old accidental DQ because someone doesn't wanna take a fall or submit. It's played up as a total accident but we still get the teams jawing at each other & then fighting some more post-match. I was confused because knowing Los Cowboys get the trios titles shot next week - why not just have them win this meaningless tournament? If anything it was the Rayo team that looked like they should be the challengers next week. If you're thinking this is some big long term plan to have Cowboys win the titles & then have these three tecnicos challenge - I'd think again. That's not how CMLL has ever booked.

Starting off with the Tuesday semi-main we are thrust back into the Solitario/Jaque Mate rivalry. Solitario comes into the match with a taped up elbow which Mate works on early in the match. Rudos are in control for a long stretch. I should note before I go on attendance is still poor but looks much better than the dreadful weeks prior. Rudos take first fall. Tecnicos take second fall although the finish was scary as Hayabusa almost slips off the second rope (I know, I know...) trying an asai moonsault. He still manages to slightly graze Cachorro who sells it. Hayabusa clearly seems frustrated & so does a standing moonsault before getting the pin. I'm sure he improvised that because it got in the way of whatever Solitario/Mate wanted to do. In the third fall Hayabusa has another iffy moment & it looks like the rudos decide to shut him down for the night. He gets in a pescado which the rudos catch but Demon Jr takes out everyone with a tope suicida. This leaves Solitario/Mate. Solitario misses a charge in the corner & hurts his elbow. Even so, he catches Mate climbing the ropes with an armdrag & then submits him clean. We get a title challenge afterwards which hopefully means this lame feud is coming to an end. We get the top two matches from Friday. The semi-main only goes two falls & seems to start a Rayo Jr/Pierroth Jr issue. I guess not start, this has existed before, but it was more clearly being pushed here. Tecnicos take the first fall with an Atlantida on Bestia as Rayo does his grounded headbutts on Emilio. Benoit had taken Pierroth out with an ugly tope suicida. I'm sure the perfectionist didn't like that one. The second fall is not very long & ends out of nowhere as Rayo small packages Pierroth who is the rudo captain. Crowd pops for that. Another case of me not understanding why Rayo was so beloved. He indicates he wants a mask match with Pierroth which I guess is our unofficial first Anniversary Show big match tease. Main event is for the CMLL Trios Titles with Ray Mendoza in the ring to do the belt presentation beforehand. On paper this match had me really excited. In execution... oof... I dunno how to express my feelings. I think the best comparison are the UWA TV Imevision shows. The ones that had stuff from 1991/1992. Chalked full of known to be great workers (including most guys in this match) yet I can't recall a single match from that TV run that I would consider to be "great". It's a nice look into what UWA was around that time but the action most of the time... well... that word right there is the issue. I never felt like I was watching action. It felt like a TV version of some spot show with guys just kinda mailing it in. Very slow pace, no real direction for the matches, very little crowd energy (perhaps this part was a production issue), the entire thing came off as wrestling so behind the times. Again, not that it was bad. It was just very average. Much like this match. I felt they went to the ring with very little in mind as to what they were gonna do & were just kinda coasting throughout. Rudos took the first fall with a Tiger Driver from Wagner to Dandy who is the tecnico captain. An out of nowhere type finish. Even Rafa El Maya seemed to hesitate on the count as if he didn't know it was supposed to be a three. Second fall has a similar deal where tecnicos tie it up out of nowhere & again it seems both refs had no idea what the finish was supposed to be. The match picks up a bit in the third fall mainly due to tons of nearfalls. The more they did, the more the crowd got invested reacting bigger & bigger to each kickout. Which I guess is good but to me none of these were believeable nearfalls at all. It was just nearfalls for the sake of extending the match without having to do anything - again because it felt like little was planned out. The counter to all this may be - they were working old school style where this was the way. We got dual topes on opposite sides of the ring from the tecnicos. Then we get a double pinfall where both Markus & Silver King are eliminated. A flashback to the Arena Coliseo draws weeks earlier. And wouldn't you know it... we then get the same finish... almost. They were trying to sync up for the same spot that ended the draw but Gladiador & Dandy got a split second head start. So Rangel counted Gladiador blocking a Dandy cradle as Texano was hitting a crucifix on Wagner. I *think* the idea was these would happen at the same time so Rangel could count Gladiador's pinfall just as Wagner kicked out of Maya's pinfall. Instead due to the mistiming we got Dandy being pinned before Maya started counting so his pinfall was irrelevant whether there was a kickout or not. This is very inside baseball as they say since I'm not sure how many of these fans would have had that Coliseo finish in the back of their minds. Anyways, rudos retain their titles with Gladiador lifted up & celebrated for saving the match for his team. A very underwhelming match to me.

Better to just split Tuesday/Friday for at least this week considering what's happening on Friday. This show just has the semi-main air on TV. We are still stuck in this never ending Solitario/Jaque Mate feud but the end is in sight as there is no Tuesday match next week & then we get the title match in two weeks to put an end to this nonsense. I promise I'll watch it even though I have no interest. Gotta stay true to the deep dive! Mate submits Solitario clean in the first fall after working over his eternally injured shoulder/elbow. Tecnicos tie things up but it's the partners who get the wins. Third fall is all Solitario/Mate based. Mate signals to his partners to stay out of the ring. The 1994 equivalent of this "I got this, bro!" Naturally Solitario rolls him up to get the win which everyone treats as this big shock. Post-match he makes it clear it's time for a title shot. I'd say so.

A tournament! OH JOY! I will treat this no different than the Grand Prix - I will watch it but I will not waste my time going through it match-by-match. There's just no point & I feel terrible for the fans who bought tickets to see some lucha & ended up with a show like this. There's a bit of housekeeping to do before speeding through the matches though. This tournament is NOT for the CMLL Tag Team Titles. It's for a *shot* at the CMLL Tag Team Titles. Yes, we're devoting three full weeks of Friday shows just to decide challengers to our tag titles. Moreso, that match doesn't even happen until September due to scheduling...... and spoiler the winners of this tournament lose........... then the belts gets vacated soon afterwards. So this is an all-time time waster of a tournament. The current champions are Canek & Dr. Wagner Jr who won an overly complicated tournament early in 1993 & have kept the belts largely dormant since. So this portion of the TV show begins with the parade of every team coming to ringside. This gets considerable time. Almost 20 minutes between intros & then we have the drawing for matches. I'm gonna say something you'll roll your eyes at but I believe it to be 100% true........ this was a total shoot drawing. We have pieces of papers folded up, Vitorino is holding a pen & paper along with a walkie talkie & when the numbers get drawn he announces it, writes it down on his paper & communicates it to the back via the walkie talkie. I assume they were booking the tournament on the fly once they knew the match-ups. This wasn't overly complicated anyways - all the favorites go over. CMLL has always been very strict when it comes to the pecking order. It's slowly changed in recent years but you see it in terms of elimination order in torneos & such. Doing this shoot draw means the wrestlers have very little time to plan out their matches so they are largely winging it. The combination of that & very short matches tell you all you need to know about the type of match quality being delivered. This being a true deep dive I get to share a couple things that aren't noted anywhere - not even in LuchaDB. Filoso & El Hijo Del Solitario come out as one of the teams & enter the draw. But they aren't listed in the results. Why is that? Well, it's explained later when the Brazos hit the ring for their match that their flight to Mexico City got delayed & the promotion didn't know if they were going to make it or not. So they sent out a replacement team but thankfully the Brazos arrived just in time - it was claimed they changed into their gear on the plane itself which is hard to buy but makes for a good story. Another team that comes out but doesn't wrestle in Black Magic & Mano Negra. After all the teams have chosen numbers there is still one left but no team to pick it. We were told the Head Hunters would end up with the remaining number. They couldn't attend the show this week because their mom passed away the day before causing them to have to return home. I wonder if Norman still got paid? He showed up to work & it was a shoot draw. I wish I had watched this before I had the chance to sit around with him for an entire day recently. So unfortunately now it's time for the matches. Rayo/Atlantis win. A nothing match. Markus somewhat catches a Bestia tope suicida & slams him into the ringpost. Ola Blanca then team up to beat Felino. A nothing match. Cowboys & new arrival Japanese wrestlers Okano & Araya have a decent little match with a near disaster at the end. Texano goes to superplex Okano & you can immediately see they are having trouble figuring out who's foot goes where. Their feet start shaking, they slip... you think it's okay they've stabilized themselves but no... they both take a nasty tumble to the floor with Okano looking to get the worst of it. He doesn't end up getting back in the ring & seems to have missed almost two weeks of shows after this so I bet he was hurt. Cowboys pin Araya with a double stomachbreaker to advance. There's a move you don't see any longer. Team Canada of Vamp/Benoit advance. A nothing match. Brazos hustled just to do a 4 minute nothing match. They advance so I guess that part was important. Let me tell you a secret: Nothing here is important. Puerto Ricans dispatch of the Mendozas in another nothing match. Finally we have our main event which has Casas/Dandy teaming but not getting along at first. Then why were they teaming? Everyone is paired with their normal partners here. Did Dandy choose Negro? Did Negro choose Dandy? I NEED MY SEEDING BATTLE ROYALE BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!! The tecnicos keep doing things to cause Negro/Dandy to have even more issues. In the meantime they seem to be trying to have a decent match to at least give the fans something to justify their money spent. Hayabusa does a running somersault plancha onto Dandy after a Super Astro fakeout. Finally Dandy/Casas are able to get on the same page & advance to the next round. Please do not watch any of this.

More of this pointless tournament. Due to missing last week's show the Head Hunters have to work twice tonight to make up for their missing opening round match. The announcers have either forgotten what happened the week before or are just bullshitting for unknown reasons & talk about the Hunters having their visa revoked preventing them from coming to Mexico because the immigration officers were worried what they'd do to the Mexican teams. Their worry may have been justified as this match ends with one of the Head Hunters crushing Normal with a moonsault for the win. Actually, Norman isn't a Mexican so my lame joke falls flat. At least it wasn't as lame as these matches. Atlantis/Rayo advance over the Ola Blanca. Nothing match would be me being too nice. Cowboys vs Team Canada is the first match where it seems the teams took things seriously & tried to work hard. So I have to give them credit for that. This match goes just over 15 minutes which is triple the length of most of these tournament matches. I just couldn't get into it both because I hate this tournament & it's still Vamp. He's awful. Cowboys advance which I don't consider an upset although the announcers treated it as such. The Puerto Ricans advanced over the Brazos in a very quick match that had zero heat. You could tell these guys were not really into these short rushed matches. The results above are incomplete but I've filled them in for my own records & this must have been a long show because they have a full undercard so I'm sure these top matches got cut down even more than usual for a shitty one night tournament. Finally we get the Head Hunters back out for their second match. It's an easy story to tell with them being at a disadvantage due to presumably being tired from their first match... but their first match went only a couple minutes. And anyways they didn't even bother telling that story. It was just a straight tag match with Dandy/Casas still not totally getting along but being forced into working together to take the big men down. They even bust out a double tope suicida onto one Head Hunter which may have been the first time that spot was ever done? I used to know these things for a fact, now I'm just throwing it out there hoping it's right. Casas ends up dropkicking Dandy by accident which leads to their downfall as the Hunters pin them both - Dandy after a Doomsday clothesline & Casas after they sandwiched him. Crowd just kinda got up & headed for the exits after the final pinfall. Lackluster ending but I'll leave a tease of something good - maybe we had to struggle through all this shit just to get to the gold? Good things come to those who wait (and suffer through re-watching this tournament).

A lot going on this week on TV! We start with the title match that has been building for weeks & weeks that felt like months & months. It's worked all technical style as title matches, especially NWA ones, tended to be back in the day. Jaque Mate proved himself quite useful here carrying Solitario who stinks. I wouldn't say Mate is an all-time underrated worker or anything but he's a guy who upon re-watching many things definitely upped his stock in my book. He lacked the extra flashiness to stand out but the technique was there & he would bust his ass when working with lesser-thans. Solitario takes the first fall with a........ standing moonsault??? Alrighty. He actually only got a two count at first. Mate convulsed or whatever which made Roberto Rangel stop counting. Solitario didn't move & Mate even waved his finger "no" but then never tried to get up. So Rangel just started over & counted to three this time. CMLL refs never change! Maybe we should stop naming them 'Guero' is my advice. Mate ties things up using his figure-four leglock - a nice wink to his previous gimmick of Enfermero Jr (the original Enfermero was credited as creating that move in Mexico). In the third fall Mate knocks Solitario off the top rope to the floor & follows with a plancha. Solitario comes up short on a tope suicida or Mate was standing way too far back. There isn't really much drama when it comes to nearfalls or submissions... Mate just puts Solitario away with an old school wacky lucha submission to retain his title. Well worked & didn't overstay it's welcome so no complaints on my end. Still only hits the *** level. Moving to Arena Mexico we put an end to this worthless tag team tournament in spectacular fashion - both good & bad! Cubs has a link to the first semi-final but it instead goes to the final. I couldn't find it in my collection or the secret Google Drives. Jeff Lynch has it but I'm hesitant to waste time Paypal-ing him & him converting a DVD just so I can see a sub 5 minute match Atlantis & Rayo De Jalisco Jr tag match. You'll have to forgive me for skipping this one. If some kind soul ever puts it online, I'll watch & surely give me hot takes on a sure fire classic. We do have the other semi-final & thank fuckin god! I will warn the future generation of people searching out old lucha videos (hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha) the Roy version is missing stuff. Not sure how much but I caught one edit & decided to switch to watch the Lover_Ice version that is the full match. You're gonna wanna watch the full version. This match is a long time favorite of people like Rob Naylor. Old school fans who know their shit & remember these one-off weird matches. I say weird because this is two foreign team against each other at Arena Mexico. It kinda makes no sense to book but that'll happen when you do a SHOOT BRACKET DRAW. The announcers proclaim the winners get the Cowboys who "upset" Atlantis/Rayo. I guess that's legit if you still think Atlantis/Rayo vs Puerto Ricans is gonna be the Anniversary big match so proper wording. This is the kinda match that had to get warmed up. Just like the crowd. It started slow & with no obvious team to cheer for you weren't gonna get much reaction. But when it gets going... does it ever get going! And this was exactly the kind of match that the longer it went, the more everyone (live fans & me) got more invested in the action/outcome. I won't do PBP because you really should watch yourself but the idea here is the Puerto Ricans are fighting from underneath constantly against the Dominicans. Every time they manage to topple one of the big boys the crowd goes crazy so they slowly become the fan favorites. It's helped by the fact the Hunters end up using spikes to draw blood. I don't know why this wasn't called a DQ, I assume the refs were warned about this ahead of time. The blood brings this match from a 5 to a 7 & then the work afterwards takes it from a 7 to a 9. We get a dive sequence capped off with one of the Hunters doing a running somersault plancha which is the spot everyone remembers from this match. Never before seen in Mexico & honestly if you ever used to see a guy that size do a dive it was stuck in your head forever. We get some desperation saves by the Puerto Ricans when it looks like they are done for. They manage to get it together enough to eliminate one of the Hunters by piling onto him which gets a HUGE pop & then the crowd breaks into some kind of chant I couldn't figure out. CHEERING FOR THE PUERTO RICANS IN ARENA MEXICO!!! Ricky Santana almost spikes himself trying a moonsault bodyblock. The remaining Head Hunter puts up a fight but eventually misses a moonsault & then after a series of splashes & backflips they once again pile onto the big man to get the win! Huge reaction for the finish. Announcers even marking out that they managed to defeat the heavy (literally) favorites. An excellent match built around the big men being big men. I can't remember if this ever got a WON rating. None appears above so I'm guessing not. I remember this match showing up on some comp tapes with a ****+ rating & that's where I'll land. ****1/4. Easily the longest match of this dumb tournament & almost alone made the entire thing worth doing if it got us this match that CMLL would have never booked on their own. Maybe the moral of this is........ more shoot bracket draws??? It's like how we used to joke a hat would do a better job than any departamento de programacion. The proof is right here! Except they had a tumbler instead of a hat. How do you follow a match like that? Well... that answer is easy. You don't! The announcers kept saying there is no disadvantage here because both teams wrestled earlier but that's not true. The Puerto Ricans are sporting large bandages from their cuts & their match was second so they are going back-to-back. The crowd is actually still behind them! This is notable for the finish. And oh my what a finish it is! After like 10 minutes of very lackluster action Texano throws Perez into the ropes & goes for a leapfrog but Perez runs right into his crotch. Texano goes down selling a low blow.................. and Rangel awards the match & tournament to Los Cowboys! Holy fuck. Talk about not reading the room. Crowd is very displeased as now they were fully behind Perez & Santana. Also, tecnicos should NOT be winning like that. Moreso... that's the finish you book for a tournament that lasted 3 Friday shows??? Fuck right off. They deserve these poor turnouts with that kind of booking. So we'll get Cowboys vs Canek/Wagner at some point (next month) for the CMLL Tag Team Titles which I've already spoiled do NOT change hands only to be vacated almost immediately. Horseshit booking. But hey... we got that awesome tag match so we aren't leaving the last couple weeks with a complete pile of nothing but dogshit.

UPDATE: I found the 9/2 Canek/Wagner vs Cowboys match in a finish only clip on a 1994 Year in Review show. It's very strange. Canek looks like he'd rather be anywhere but in the match. Wagner ends up beating both Cowboys in rapid fire with a power bomb & powerslam so Canek/Wagner retain their titles which then promptly get vacated. I wonder if Canek was somehow forced into doing this match? He just walks off immediately after the three count. He had been working with AAA at this time for the Double Power shows. But if he was, why wouldn't you just beat him & take the titles off him? Very confusing.

With the Solitario/Jaque Mate feud out of the way it opens up what could be picked to air from Tuesday & we are instantly rewarded with a look at some guys who haven't seen TV yet this year w/ Mestizo/Legendario/Platino vs Los Malditos. It's funny how even in 2026 CMLL has kept this same format for airing TV. I mean, it's not funny. It's CMLL doing things the same way they've always done it because picking what matches to air on TV doesn't benefit anyone personally so it's low on the importance chart in the company. Nobody keeps track of it but on the Televisa airings they always have a random Saturday Coliseo match sneak through & sometimes it's a terrible opener with Leono. Thankfully this match was better than anything with Leono. Los Malditos are a blast to watch. I am convinced Bucanero got so good so quick by being attached to these guys for the first couple years. They taught him all the rudo bumbling bits & how to make chicken soup out of chicken salad against much less qualified opponents. Bucanero took some killer bumps early on including a wild hiptoss over the top rope. MUCHO OJO! Los Malditos hit an awesome triple team Doomsday Device to score a pin. They easily won the last two falls to win the match after giving the tecnicos the first half all to themselves. Very professional match. Starting off on a happy note! Moving to Arena Mexico we get the top two where Negro Casas is once again alligned with the tecnicos so the turn has been made official. This is also him paired up with Mocho Cota for the first time in a while. The Head Hunters running into someone their size is actually the early focus of the match as we get some big man vs big man confrontations. It's such a treat not only to watch big men working like big men instead of proving they can do flips but also the crowd reacting like crazy when they would leave their feet to take a bump or manage to be taken down by the tecnicos. It's something in wrestling that just doesn't exist any longer. Nobody really plays up the big vs little thing. Keith Lee is gonna work like Komander if he wants. Komander is gonna take someone double his size down easily early on just to do the generic fish out of water spot. Where's the charm, gentlemen? And yes, I know, the Head Hunters did flips. It was a novel concept back when they were two of a handful of flippy fat guys. But they also worked like fat men who wouldn't get knocked down so easily. So when you built up to a spot in this match where a triple dropkick took them down - you got that huge reaction. Or when Dandy failed at clotheslining one over the top - Porky stepped in to help & took a tumble over the top himself which got a HUGE reaction. It was a really fun watch. Porky even bodyslammed one of the Hunters which had Arena Mexico rocking. The Casas/Cota stuff doesn't even factor in until the third fall. Well, actually not true. Cota won the second fall for his side by faking a foul which the cameras didn't catch. Apparently not a single camera caught it because we didn't even get a replay from an alternate angle. This is important for the third fall so I'm glad the announcers harped on it (not sarcasm, they did!). There's a great spot where one of the Hunters is on the top rope and Porky is shaking the ropes from afar. Casas joins in & the rudo takes a huge tumble to the floor. Insane bump for a guy that size. I remember him re-creating this bump in a 1998 CMLL match to almost disastrous consequences. Dandy takes out one Hunter with an over the top tope suicida, Porky gets the other with a funny backwards senton off the apron. A few minutes later the Hunters take out Dandy with a Doomsday Hart Attack deal, then he gets squashed by an elbowdrop & pinned. But as the pin is taking place & the refs are distracted Casas fakes a foul from Cota. The crowd EXPLODES as the refs call the DQ win for the tecnicos. JUSTICE! A great tecnico can get away with that shit. Cota sold it great recognizing he got outsmarted by his rival. The Hunters were not happy & stormed off leaving Cota alone to be angry but not be able to do anything against three tecnicos. Another really fun match. Can we go 3 for 3??? Well it's mid-August so you know what that means if you know the CMLL schedule - time to heat up some possible Anniversary programs! So the Cowboys & Puerto Ricans are the focus here. We have blood which means it's a real feud! The main focus seems to be Texano & Santana. There's some subtle problems between Emilio & his Puerto Rican teammates but nothing big... yet. Match is mostly a brawl with the crowd pretty into it. I loved the Total Elimination variation from Los Cowboys to win the second fall. In the third fall we get more teases of possible issues with Emilio & his teammates. But the match ends in a DQ when Santana hits a desperation atomic drop on Texano which is considered a foul even though Santana pleads his innocence. Well, Emilio has had enough. Not co-operating was one thing but losing the match is another - he attacks Santana! Perez attacks Emilio! Silver King attacks Perez! Texano attacks Santana! It's on! The Puerto Ricans have to regroup outside as they are outnumbered. The situation seems calmed down but then the Mexicans come charging & we have a full scale brawl around the ringside area! Very hot crowd for all this. The Puerto Ricans may have been the default tecnicos last week but they are definitely back to being hated this week. So our Anniversary directions are set: Casas/Cota, Cowboys vs Puerto Ricans and/or Emilio vs one of the Puerto Ricans? A very fun episode of TV! As a bonus note: During the Coliseo match we got PIP which is a new technological advancement for this company! Bravo!

So we've reached the point in the 1994 CMLL calendar where the weekly TV starts to get iffy. I think it was airing regularly but the people who were recording lucha were not especially into the product & far more interestedin distributing the various AAA TV episodes as the company was far more popular in the US & it was Americans recording the TV shows. I was all ready to explain this week is just highlights of a few matches but then I realized one match did sneak through but it doesn't air until much later. One of the good things about watching 30+ years later is you can piece all this stuff together. But let's get the highlights out of the way first, it's all the matches that didn't make TV. A new bit CMLL introduced around this time I guess to get more guys TV exposure. We see Babe Richard do a pescado! America pins Mestizo. The only clip of that match. We see a Mascara Magica assisted plancha, Aguila Solitarioa tope suicida & then Solar pins Tornado Negro with a sloppy fisherman suplex. In the Tuesday main event we see the Head Hunters squashing a bloody Brazo De Oro in the corner over & over again until the refs finally DQ them. One of the Hunters then throws Rafa El Maya across the ring in anger. Moving to Friday we kinda see Mogur hit a tope suicida on his own partner by accident. Camera was poorly filming it. Out of nowhere comes Ciclon Ramirez with a bullet tope taking all three into the front row! Javier avoids a Sombra move off the second turnbuckles & pins him. He then gets Rocca as well with a simple counter to a roll-up. Loved the execution on that. Cruz is a on a hot streak! We don't see anything from the Brazos vs Ola Blanca except for a beaten down bloody Porky sitting on the floor & the rudos celebrating their win in two straight falls apparently. El Brazo is yelling at his brothers. So I presume the top two aired in full on TV because that's where the highlights end but no video exists sadly. Rewinding to the Tuesday show we do get the full semi-main! Except according to the listings I have it didn't air until October in conjunction with the Anniversary Show matches. I have no explanation as to why since it would have been very out of date by then. El Brazo is in the midst of turning rudo (where he'd be known as Brazo Hermoso although that name has largely gone undocumented over time). We get pre-recorded promos by both Brazo who says he's better on his own & Gladiador who says he has no idea what's going on with Brazo. Brazo isn't doing the I'm not helping my team bit here at first, he's actually participating but just for himself. Hayabusa hits an awesome rope walk huracanrana on Markus. Pantera hits a not so awesome springboard huracanrana on Gladiador. He hits a double jump moonsault bodyblock to pin Cruz as Hayabusa goes up........ and hits a shooting star press on Gladiador to win the first fall! This is where I would inform you this was the first ever appearence of the shooting star press in Mexico. But Roy Lucier dug up some Monterrey TV that hadn't been circulated from 1992 where we see Brett Como (Black Dragon/Ultimate Dragon) actually busting it out. I can't think of anyone who would have done it previously so that's the official debut & we'll call Hayabusa the first guy to do in Mexico City & on TV. More tecnico domination in the second fall for a bit until the rudos take over. Brazo now won't tag in to help his team so the turn is becoming more obvious. The tecnicos manage a brief comeback but without being able to even the odds they are easy pickings for the rudos to gang up on & defeat. A typical match considering the story being told.

UPDATE: I found another match! The Friday semi-main sneaks in during a November broadcast, I guess as a repeated match but since we never had access to it originally it's new footage. What would be a pretty standard trios match gets elevated by a motivated Ultimo Dragon showing up! I'll be honest in all my re-watching so far, Dragon is the guy who's stock has dropped. I just rarely see the same Ultimo I was seeing in his Japanese matches or eventually American excursions. Maybe if I ever get around to 91/92 viewing I'll have a different opinion. But whatever he ate before the show *ahem*, it must have done wonders because he was doing EVERYTHING here. Won the first fall with a cancun tornado & even busted out an asai moonsault in the third fall! I don't think he's done that in any older match I've watched so far. Wagner did his bit where his mask is dangling so any time he gets hit it exposes his face. The finish was super weak with Mocho Cota crotching La Fiera on the ropes for the DQ. Cota was about to get re-united with Casas in matches so this DQ wasn't heading anywhere, it was just a way to do a cheap finish.

The story behind this show is more exciting than anything shown. As I've made clear - 1994 was not a good year for CMLL's business. Attendance was down, interest was at an almost all-time low & the general mood was a company fading away like the UWA a couple years prior. So this Friday show arrives & the poster comes out advertising a battle royale to determine all matches except the opener. This was a very common concept for the old days but hadn't been done on a Friday night show since the 70's. This decision wasn't made for nostalgia purposes. You can see the lineup doesn't even have many big names. This is a middling Pista Arena Revolucion show on a Friday. What happened was CMLL sold a crew of wrestlers for a show in Houston, Texas on this Friday. The money they would generate from that sold show meant more to them than whatever they would have made running this Friday show. Yes, it was that dire. So they sent the crew to the US & made do with what was left over. The idea being this battle royale elimination order determines teams for 2 tag matches & 2 trios matches. Eliminations were pinfall/submission so you had a ref trying to figure out how to make room to count in the mess of bodies. El Brazo never actually entered the ring for the battle royale & stood outside the entire time. That's how we end up with 5 guys standing at the end, he's the extra body for the "main event". We get quick highlights of the other matches, nothing worth mentioning. The only match we get to see is El Hijo Del Solitario/Kahoz/Jaque Mate vs Halcon Negro/El Hijo Del Gladiador/Tornado Negro. A main event anywhere in the world! Or not. This pairs rivals Solitario/Mate so you know where this is going. Solitario's partners want nothing to do with him. At one point he tries to save Gladiador for being submitted by Mate. Did I mention all these matches are 2 out of 3 falls? Why? Why not! Every match shown ended in straight falls because a team couldn't get along. Very exciting stuff! This one ends with Solitario getting attacked by his own partners & bloodied on the outside. Cachorro's team then easily puts Mate/Kahoz away. Dreadful stuff. Prior to this we got Tuesday highlights. Nothing much of note. Solar II somehow pinned Damian El Guerrero with a hair pull. Can't say I've ever seen that one before. Apolo Dantes also pinned Pierroth Jr cleanly which was made into a big deal. Waste of a week of TV.

Oh no Rob you missed a couple weeks! Yes, I did. There is no CMLL footage for the missing two weeks of TV. Not sure if the show didn't air or nobody cared enough to record anything. The Anniversary Show has been pushed back to 9/23 & 9/30 (two-parter for first time in a while!) so we'll have to play catch-up on which rivalries are heating up. Now if I made you guess which matches aired on TV, you'd probably get one right for sure (Friday main) & need multiple guesses to get the other. It's the Tuesday segunda. Yes. No idea why. I thought oh great I'll zoom through this recap but then out of nowhere I was hit with the weekly highlights AFTER the Friday main. They did not have any highlights of the Friday semi-main so my presumption is that aired on TV but nobody recorded it. So our Coliseo matches has the return of Los Malditos. This is a toned down version of their match from a few weeks ago. The tecnico side was just so very limited. Bucanero took a good bump or two as usual. In the third fall Reyes Veloz took this INSANE 360 bump over the top to the floor before getting hit with a tope. Bucanero catches captain Filoso with a power bomb out of nowhere to win the match clean for his team which he seems super happy about. Mestizo is not happy, he was trying to get his hands on Escudero Rojo but now the match is over. I guess that may be a feud we haven't seen on TV. Off to Friday where I have nothing to say about this god awful main event. Horrible. Who the fuck is this useless Kitahara fucker? Bring back Ishin Rikii I say. At least he looked awake during his matches. Some truly terrible stuff with Vamp & Kitahara. The only somewhat excitement during the match was when Atlantis/Wagner were ripping each other's masks. Certainly pushing the idea that would be an Anniversary match (it's not). Kitahara pins Vamp clean with a power bomb so maybe that's an upcoming match? God help us if so. I'll skip it. I swear I will. Our highlights segment goes back to Tuesday. It's Masao Orihara! Then we see the main event finish where the foreigners go over after countering a La Estrella attempt. Off to Friday we see a Solitario tope suicida, Sombra running somersault plancha & then Rocca scores a pin on Cruz to keep their issue going. That will be an Anniversary match! But we won't see it, naturally. The tercera clips are super weird because SPOILER next week is the Negro Casas/Mocho Cota hair match finally. But the finish of this match after an Apolo Dantes springboard plancha is Cota fouling *Dandy*. Why? I feel like we missed how this Casas/Cota match actually came to be by not having the last two weeks of TV. Was it supposed to be Dandy but Negro put himself in the spot? Casas was part of the CMLL booking department at this time for those unaware. So strange.

We have hit the Anniversary Show! And in the biggest twist - this is the week of 1994 CMLL TV that almost broke me! Awful episode! LOL Look at all those little icons, so many matches aired! Nope. So many highlights aired! We start the episode with the Tuesday main event. This is Pirata Morgan's return to CMLL after almost two years away. A total trash match. The definitely of clowning around. So much so that in the second fall Rayo in selling grabs Roberto Rangel's legs to drag him down, probably a rib. Rangel gets up and KICKS RAYO! LOL I think Rayo is a sack of shit so I loved that but also holy uprofessionalism. Crowd & announcers laughed. Rayo even tries to egg on Rangel again in the third fall probably realizing this is the only thing getting any reaction from this crowd. We also had a bit where Vamp/Magic brawled onto two attractive women in the front row. Old wrestler trick to line up your post-show entertainment. A going nowhere nothing happening match ends with Pirata fouling Rayo. We then get rapid fire highlights of everything that won't air. Escudero Rojo fakes a foul by Mestizo, those two are heading to a hair match. Pantera submits Tornado Negro after nice dives by Sombra & Olimpico. Solitario cleanly submits Jaque Mate, my god that's still a thing. Moving to Friday - El Brazo officially betrays his brothers. I feel like we already did that once or twice or three times. Rocca pins Cruz heading into their hair match. OR NOT! The refs fucked up the finish but this still HAD TO AIR in these 60 second highlights. They ignore & keep going. Cruz pins Rocca heading into their hair match. This time it counts. Bestia Salvaje gets assisted into a somersault plancha on Orihara but comes up short hitting his head on the ground. Emilio dives onto Hayabusa. No, I did not write that backwards. Satanico then cleanly beats Ultimo Dragon. We get the Cowboys vs Scorpio/Ricky Santana tag match. Why is Scorpio here? This is not the Jr, this is the very old dad who looks all of 70 years old. I assume this was supposed to be Miguel Perez Jr but something happened? Scorpio at least had good theme music. Long first fall has dives from the tecnicos including a somersault by Silver King that Scorpio barely catches. Just when you think they have the fall won, rudos turn the tables. In the second fall Scorpio fouls Silver King for the DQ. In the third fall both Cowboys are busted open, Texano getting the worst of it. This random match went from 0 to 100 with clear feuding going on. Rudos end up winning & we get Vitorrino in the ring announcing the Cowboys want a double hair match against the rudos next week! WHERE DID ALL THIS COME FROM??? It seems to be officially set before we had to commercial. I just read a magazine that did an interview with Scorpio where he explains he was "always a CMLL wrestler at heart", he just happened to be wresting elsewhere. Yes, for nearly 20 years. Don't wanna overexpose yourself, right? Says he isn't just back in CMLL temporarily, he's ready for another run & still has a lot to give. Well... spoiler folks... Scorpio loses his hair next week & then disappears forever from CMLL rings. About as classic of a case of getting that one last payoff before riding into the sunset. Speaking of apuesta matches... we finally get Negro Casas vs Mocho Cota! The feud building since March! The one CMLL felt wasn't hot enough to do back in April so went with Fiera/Emilio instead. Well, it's here for week 1 of the Anniversary & it draws a ~30% house. Oof. Hey, it's not my money, why should I care? I should just care about match quality, right? Cool. DOUBLE OOF! This fucking sucked. Cota is just in control the entire time until Casas makes a slight comeback, backflips into the ring & then starts selling like his knee gave out. So Cota goes right back on offense for what felt like an eternity. Did I mention this was a one fall match? Well, it was. Why? No idea. Casas had some say in booking & he always had some random ideas so I guess this was one of them. There is literally nothing else to say about the body of the match. It's just Cota beating Casas up. No spirited comeback, no blood, no drama. At one point Casas even fouls Cota when the ref wasn't looking. So the tecnico who is being destroyed all match long just lost all his sympathy by basically cheating to stop the guy who was beating him up fair & square. I told you Casas had some wacky ideas. Out of seemingly nowhere Casas catches Cota with a german suplex but can't hold the bridge. Doesn't matter, we get a three count. Cota kicks out a split second too late which confuses the announcers & seemingly the crowd - thus diminishing the pop for the finish. Casas wins & we go off air before Cota gets his head saved. A terrible match. Maybe one of the worst Anniversary main event matches ever. I looked ahead & attendance goes up next week which shocks me. If I saw this show I'd have said fuck that & found something better to do next Friday. Let's just hope something good sneaks onto next week's TV because the Texano/Santana & Silver King/Scorpio hair matches don't particularly interest me on paper.

Anniversary Show Part 2! No Tuesday matches aired or are known. Actually, this was the week for whatever reason a Tuesday match from a couple weeks ago aired (the Hayabusa one) so who knows what happened to cause that. We actually have a couple video packages that air throughout this show running down the history of Arena Mexico. Also have new match graphics. Our first of two apuesta match is the returning Scorpio taking on Silver King. A pre-match video package shows a confrontation between the two participants in the Arena Mexico gym earlier that day. A sign of support for Silver King is ripped up pre-match. Much like last week for unexplained reason both these apuesta matches are only one fall. Even though the primera caida graphic pops up for both & the announcers call it as such. I don't understand why Cubs has multiple ratings for both these matches. LOL I may have to ask him about that. This match was strange because Scorpio was really busting ass - old fucker did a tope suicida! - but he's also a 50 year old man looking all of double that who can only move at a certain pace. I did like what he could do, if that matters. Silver King did his Silver King dive barely avoiding Rafa El Maya who had no clue where to stand. He also bled a ton. There were a couple weird moments where each guy would kick out of a big nearfall & get right up on offense as if nothing happened as if they were rushing. I liked Scorpio's old school Boston Crab variation. Scorpio used a clear foul off an atomic drop but Maya didn't call it a DQ. Maya was bumped so Scorpio could use a more blatant foul but it was only a two count. They really wanted you to believe Scorpio could win but in the end he got rolled up. He claimed his foot was on the ropes post-match but nobody believed him & I didn't care to rewind to double check. He got his head completely shaved. I'll go **3/4. We then get clips of other matches. El Brazo knocks Super Porky off the top rope onto Brazo De Oro leading to the Brazos/Dantes losing. Lots of heat for Brazo being an asshole standing on top of a fallen Porky. We see Satanico trip Emilio from the outside after already being eliminated so Perez can punch a bloody Emilio & pin him. But then Roberto Rangel reverses the decision & gives the tecnicos the match by DQ. We get an interview with Ricky Santana before the main event. Hot start with a Texano tope suicida knocking Santana into the front row. Both men end up bleeding as one would expect. Match was worked differently than the previous one. This was a lot of Texano putting Santana in holds & trying to get him to submit. Crowd actually really got into it with the high stakes kicking in every time Santana would barely get the ropes. Lots of nearfalls too that had the crowd biting. Texano went up for a flying cross body press but Santana rolled through & hooked the leg to get the upset win. I think everyone expected the Cowboys to clean sweep these matches & send both rudos packing. Texano gets his head shaved. I'll go **3/4 on this one as well. Not exactly the kind of Anniversary Shows we'd come to expect in later years but it is a down year for the company & we aren't done as they stil have one more hair match in their back pocket that we'll get to in two weeks.

Another week where we got an older match airing for some reason. That leaves us with only two new matches for the week as CMLL continues to live in the darkness to the general public. Our Tuesday match is a hair match between El Mestizo & Escudero Rojo. This is also a one fall match. I'll be honest - I had no recollection of all these one fall apuesta matches around this time. It's clearly an experiment, one that failed. I dunno if the fans were the ones who rejected them or something else. This is a very short match (9 minutes!). Rojo is almost immediately busted open badly. Very badly. Blood pouring down his body to the point the commission doctor comes to ringside with a cotton ball to wipe the blood off him. Uhhhhhh...... you may need something bigger, doc. Lots of spots where Rojo doesn't connect on things or just collapses from the blood loss. At one point Mestizo rams his head into the ringside seats & the fans go scurrying. But whoever was sitting in that seat then had to sit in a puddle of blood so have fun! Then Rojo flash pins Mestizo to win. Did that come off as sudden in this write-up? Just trying to capture how it felt. So sudden. So out of nowhere. So poorly timed. The crowd barely reacted & they had actually been into the match. Part of me thinks they thought it was just the first fall which contributed to the lack of reaction but maybe it was just the weak finish. Either way Mestizo gets his head shaved. This one was just weird. Moving to Friday all we get is the main event which is very heated. Emilio is not a tecnico but this is Mexico vs Puerto Rico.... and Satanico. The announcers note the Puerto Ricans have turned on all their partners so far, will the same happen to Satanico? Casas showed why it's one of the best to ever do it early on by not locking up with Perez & instead trying to float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, if you get that reference. Crowd loved it. Perez sold his frustration great. I feel like if I showed that clip to a whole new generation of eyeballs they would look at it as not cooperating. These days you rarely see any objection to a lock-up. It's just part of the dance. New wrestlers should have a mandatory class watching Negro Casas videos. Thankfully he came along during an era of wrestling that was less pre-programmed. Emilio/Perez trying to get at each other was the focus of the match since that's our big match to build up. I thought the Casas stuff was way better but he just had his hair match so he's done for a while. The second fall finish was sooooooooooooo awkward. Casas is getting pinned by two rudos but kicks out. They try it again, he kicks out once more. Then they hold his shoulders down & Roberto Rangel counts two but stops for some inexplicable reason. Would have been a great finish but then time stood still. Nobody moved so Rangel just started his count over once again & this time counted to three. Rudos won the match clean in the third fall when Perez pinned Emilio with a rolling reverse cradle. Post-match we got them both agreeing to a hair match next week. Emilio at this point has not lost his hair since going to a draw with El Dandy in 1989.

Another repeat TV match this week as that Tuesday Felino match is actually from Arena Mexico some time back. Rocca/Cruz both have hair. The main event aired & Texano has no hair so you know it's current. Holy fuck the building was EMPTY. If you told me there were less than 500 people in the building I'd believe it. Hard to tell exactly with the upper levels kept so dark. But the floor seats were a ghost town. The work in this match reflected the turnout. Nobody even trying. Just a totally dead match. Atlantis/Mano Negra were setting up a title match so they had to try in the third fall to get some heat but nada even with Atlantis' mask being ripped. Negra pinned him out of nowhere countering a roll through spot. El Brazo was so asleep at the wheel he almost broke up his own partner's pin which would have been a humorous ending. God awful. We then get highlights from the rest of this empty arena show with nothing being notable at all except another hilariously out of nowhere zero effort to the semi-main. Moving to Friday we get no highlights of any other matches so it's just the main event we see. This match made think of current WWE amazingly enough. In the sense the crowd is DEAD for the entire match before they explode for the finish. It could be the audio wasn't being captured well, some things never change in CMLL. But it never looked like the people were showing any emotion the entire way through. And the wrestlers certainly worked to the level of that as this lacked many things you'd expect to see in a major apuesta match. The first sign of life was a nearfall off an Emilio huracanrana right before the finish. They didn't even seem to react when Perez won the first fall. Yes, we were back to three falls for no apparent reason. He got DQ'ed for not releasing a choke in the second fall although the call was made late so by all accounts the fans should have been upset that Emilio lost but they didn't even react then. So weird. Perez gets his entire head shaved & then shakes Emilio's hand. What a bummer this turned out to be.

We've skipped forward two weeks & almost could have skipped more! Last week's TV show either didn't air or wasn't recorded or was so bad everyone taped over it. Either way, no matches exist in circulation. This week's TV had the same thing except this Justiciero/Felino mask match popped up on one of those random mask match compilation DVD's that made the rounds many years ago. I first saw it on YouTube many years back when someone uploaded it, probably the same channel I watched it back on. Can't really give any context to what led us here as none of the lead-in matches made video over the last few weeks. So we're thrown in cold & it seems this crowd was as well. The first fall goes 6-7 minutes & is a lot of nearfalls + near submissions.  There's nothing colder than two guys trying to do dramatic nearfalls only to get no reaction. Felino takes it with his submission, the same one he used to beat Ciclon Ramirez, like an inverted figure-four leglock. Second fall is Justiciero's with a crucifix out of nowhere. Third fall we get mask ripping & a little blood. It's a looooooooong fall clocking in at 14 minutes. Multiple dives. Justiciero actually messed both of his up. This wasn't a great effort in the biggest match of his life. And I have nothing against this man, he once let me into Coacalco when the promoter wanted to keep me out. Building owner > promoter renting building. There's a cool small package off a torture rack counter although that seemed to be Felino doing most of the work. Crowd is finally into it with all the nearfalls. Eventually Felino is able to put his submission on once more & get Justiciero to give up. It gets a nice pop. Justiciero unmasks & moves out of CMLL, starts running shows a couple years later at a flea market in Coacalco & eventually has to set up shop somewhere else - that famous place we'd come to know as Coacalco Square Garden. Not really a match you need to see here though. I'm disappointed the semi-main didn't air because it reads like a hilarious finish where La Fiera dives onto Jaque Mate but it's only Mate who beats the count back into the ring. YOU HAVE FAILED, LA FIERA! Looking forward I see we're about to skip another week of matches without TV before getting to ANOTHER tag team tournament that does air. 1994 CMLL TV determined to go out with a whimper!

Welp. The CMLL Tag Team Titles tournament has begun. We only have two matches from the first round, apparently I uploaded the video of them. My memory is fading so I can't even recall where I got these from, I *think* they were tacked onto a Year in Review episode as filler content. I'm not gonna be mad about missing any CMLL tournament matches since CMLL tournaments stink. There is literally nothing to say about these two matches. Both are instantly clipped even though they probably only went 4-5 minutes each. The Garzas shook hands & hugged Apolo/Vamp post-match, that's all I got to add here.

I was unsure if this Tuesday match was even from this week with all the repeat matches that had popped up but they mentioned Justiciero was making his first Arena Coliseo appearence since being unmasked so it tracks. A total nothing match. It's mentioned Kahoz is replacing the originally booked Bestia Salvaje. Not sure that change effected anything. This was mail-in city. No energy from wrestlers or crowd. Tecnicos won when captain Ringo made captain Gladiador submit to La Ringuina. Waste of TV time. Moving to Friday we get all the tournament matches which is not a good thing. My usual protocol applies here - I do not break down CMLL tournament matches. The only thing of note was the main event finish which was a bit clever as the rudos knocked Demon Jr into his own partner which caused Demon to "accidentally" pull Dos Caras' mask off leaving him unable to defend himself & easy pickings so the rudos could win. These ex-UWA guys knew all the tricks to get out of losing clean. Nothing else to note, a shame considering Shocker snuck into one of his earliest TV matches. I should note that segunda with the Garzas popped up on the Gambe Lucha YouTube channel at some point. I remember it distinctly because it had no commentary. That meant someone from production slipped someone a copy of the show or just the match. Gambe Lucha is a Monterrey guy so I'm guessing he got this from one of the Garzas at some point. Wish he'd have re-uploaded it at some point but so far no such luck. I remember the match was pretty great. It was the Garzas first real match together at Arena Mexico & they went all out doing tons cool things against rudos who were bumping all over the place. Hector busts out the corkscrew plancha for the first time in Arena Mexico & the crowd goes wild. I'd put it top tier for random new lucha discoveries on YouTube. A great lesson on always saving things that randomly pop up.

An almost complete show! Sadly this Garzas match was not as exciting as the one we may never seen again from the week prior. It was a fine opener. Nice to see Felino & Espectro Jr showing young Hector the ropes. Kato seemed a little motivated & did multiple rope walk spots to the crowd's delight. In the third fall Humberto did a tope suicida near the ringpost, then Hector pinned Cruz with a moonsault bodyblock with an ugly landing. Cruz had a very successful year here so that pin clearly showed CMLL had plans for Hector & I wonder if at this point one of them was inevitably Cruz's hair? Next up is another perfectly fine trios. The DB results are wrong - Gran Markus Jr was in Bestia Salvaje's spot. He took a brutal looking german suplex from Ultimo & later was on the receiving end of a Super Porky tope suicida. La Fiera won the match for his team with a small package on Magic but it was the post-match that was the story here. Magic attacked Fiera out of frustration. Even after coming back from a commercial break he was still beating him up. So clearly there's an issue here & we are heading to the year end show so......... hair match upcoming? Final two matches were the continuation of this tournament I don't want to acknowledge but have to. Vamp/Pierroth terribly fucked up a spot, then Pierroth countered a Vamp huracanrana with a power bomb which may have been what they were intending seconds earlier. He then power bombed Vamp again & that's that. One rudo team in the final. Next match was a bunch of nothing as well. Jericho slipped badly trying a springboard but in falling he bumped into Satanico who was standing with his back to him so he took the planned bump not realizing Jericho had fallen down. It looked funny & the crowd laughed. Jericho then missed a pescado & the rudos put Atlantis away giving us an all-rudo final next week. More importantly ending these awful short tag matches. Very skippable week of TV. Oh, one funny bit was during the main event Arturo Rivera brought up how Jericho looks & wrestles a lot like Pegasus Kid who is AAA's new signing. I totally believe Arturo was so out of the loop he had no idea Pegasus used to be a CMLL guy & they may not want it mentioned on their own show he chose to leave the company. But this is what happens when you have Televisa announcers & not in-house announcers.

Lucha DB has that Tuesday show as 11/27 but that's a Sunday & Sunday shows were not being taped at this time. So I have to assume it's from 11/29, a show we have no results from. The Jericho result we have no video from is probably from 11/27. Doubtful Markus worked two matches on the same night. A very uninteresting Tuesday night match that didn't seem to have any reason to make the cut for TV other than to show it existed. Brazo is taunting Porky throughout the match. Apolo did some fun stuff with Markus including a neat tope suicida in the third fall. Rayo put Bestia in a surfboard to submit him. Then in a spot I don't understand at all, Brazo was cornered by Porky but begged off & just lay down for him. Porky gave him a senton to complete the tecnico victory. This made Brazo look very stupid. Just a lazy finish more than anything else like pretending he was being a cowardly rudo. Moving to Friday we get the top two. A rare tecnicos vs tecnicos trios match! I guess to balance out the bookings as the main event was four rudos. This was one of those matches where in 1994 I'm sure it was held in high regard but I'm not at all sure how it would get over with newer lucha fans who expect so many more highspots. But beyond that this very much seemed like a professional match with six professional workers who didn't need to plan out every single little thing. There was a lot of give & take. You could see them calling stuff so I assume a lot was being done on-the-fly. When you do that everything doesn't look perfect, it's not supposed to. So I could see some newer fans who make their star ratings based on number of "botches" or how crisp everything looks very much disliking this or at least not being as high on it. I can turn my brain back to the late 90's (when I would have seen it) to appreciate it. I also thought it was good by my own 2026 standards. As it's a tecnicos vs tecnicos match there is no rudo beatdown segment so you get a lot of movement throughout the entire match. I liked the second fall finish where Negro Casas & Atlantis had a stand-off like two tecnico gentlemen once they realized the fall was over because the two partners got pinned. There was an incredible Casas/Silver King exchange in the third fall. Texano took out Dos Caras with a tope suicida. Jericho hit a moonsault on Silver King but only got a two. He tried another but Silver King moved & he ends up beating Jericho with a moonsault bodyblock from the top rope. My hand-written note beside the match on Jeff Lynch's tape list from who knows how many years ago now has this as ****. I'm gonna agree with my old self. I found that's exactly where it landed with my 2026 eyes. Main event is the final for the vacant CMLL Tag Team Titles. We don't get intros, just a PRIMERA CAIDA graphic before zooming in on the match beginning. As this is a rudos vs rudos match, it's paced differently than the previous match. Imagine that, different styles & match layouts. What a novel concept, eh 2026 CMLL? A lot of holds applies & each team trying to get the edge double teaming any chance they get. Emilio ends up taking Pierroth into the crowd with a tope suicida. This leaves Wagner & Satanico who end up with both shoulders on the mat so they both get counted down while the other two are counted out. It's the ever rare - DRAW IN THE FIRST FALL! So the third fall will decide things. Or is it? We go to commercial & upon returning are met with Ray Mendoza talking to Vitorrino who then announces to the crowd this match cannot end in a draw - there will be one extra fall! So I guess this was a one fall final for some reason? Makes no sense. You get to this same point even if it is a 2/3 falls match, you just lose the commissioner getting the pop for "re-starting" the match. I'm not saying that's the reason they did it, they were experimenting with one fall matches at this time but it just came off so weird. It's not like the crowd was getting up to leave or anything thinking the show was ending on a draw. So the extra fall only goes a couple minutes until Wagner/Pierroth team up to submit Satanico. This leaves Emilio alone & you know how it goes if you've been paying attention! He rolls up Pierroth to eliminate him & then makes the comeback complete by power bombing Wagner. Emilio/Satanico win the vacant titles! OR NOT! I could edit this all to make myself look less stupid but I won't. This was actually for the right to face Silver King & El Texano for the vacant titles on the year-end 12/16 show. I had to refresh my memory & go look up why Los Cowboys got to be in the final. This led me down a whole new rabbit hole because according to LuchaWiki via Pro Wrestling History - Los Cowboys are here because they won the previous shitty tag tournament back in August to earn a shot at Canek/Wagner. According to this that match doesn't take place b/c Canek quits CMLL. But according to LuchaDB results that match DOES take place on 9/2. Highlights of it even air on the Year in Review show for 1994. So that information is wrong. CMLL just put Los Cowboys in the final here for no apparent reason aside from MAYBE they were the official #1 contenders? I've never heard of a #2 contenders tournament but if anyone was gonna do something like that surely it would be CMLL! But why not just have Los Cowboys in the tournament & have the final be the two teams you want anyways? I'M SO CONFUSED! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. It doesn't matter. The point is they set up a match for the vacant titles that we won't even get to see in full, just quick highlights. Joy.

Just the main event turned up on video tapes. I have no doubt more from this show & Tuesday aired but such is life. 1994 CMLL was not a priority for people recording onto tapes that could only hold 6-8 hours of footage. Attendance here is listed at 2500 & I buy that. At one point Jericho keeps yelling "LET'S GO BABY!!!!!!!!!" & you can hear it echoing through the empty building. He even seems to mock the reaction it gets at one point which was funny. The one match we see starts off real good. It's a ***** first fall! But then they kept going. Not that it was a bad match or anything but it certainly leveled off by the finish. The first fall had some great work including a masterful Dos Caras/Dr. Wagner Jr sequence that should be stuided by every new luchador. Wagner runs himself into the ringpost & then falls onto some regular front row fans as a rib. Great finish with an Atlantis moonsault bodyblock, Dos Caras Victory Roll into a figure-four leglock variation & Jericho corkscrew splash off the top. Second fall was alright. Rudos took over & got the win. Third fall the energy just wasn't there any longer so it kinda turned into a slog for a bit. There were some teased submissions. They did the spot where everyone tries to unmask each other (those who have masks obviously). It led to La Estrella which Wagner countered by dropping Jericho onto Atlantis so the rudos picked up the win. I'll settle on ***3/4 when all is said & done.

1994 comes to a close in lackluster fashion on TV... & the box office as this show didn't draw well at all. The TV is already in Year in Review mode at this point so all we get are highlights of the top two matches & when I say highlights I basically mean the finishes. It's a shame because the tag titles match was called one of the best matches of the year & as we join it in progress the crowd is RED HOT so you know something special was going on. Satanico is eliminated which leaves Emilio alone. The announcers point out this was a common trend in the tournament they won & Emilio came back every single time. Well, every miracle story must come to an end. After surviving a few nearfalls - Silver King catches Emilio in a crucifix to win the belts for Los Cowboys. Switching to the main event we join with not much heat at all. They horribly fuck up some kind of roll-up spot which leaves them both in the corner awkwardly. Fiera wants the ref to count anyways but the ref refuses because they are both very clearly too close to the ropes. So time kinda stands still. Fiera just drags Magic to the middle of the ring & small pacakges him for the win. Awful. Norman immediately leaves the ring upset & walks up the aisle in frustration. There's a cut so we jump forward to Norman having his head shaved as the announcers talk about the commission having to get involved. Not sure what happened there.

So for the penultimate Tuesday show of the year CMLL handed the reigns over for a Cavernario Galindo benefit show, hence why you see all the random names. Only the main event makes TV - it pops up as an add-on to one of the Year in Review shows. But don't get too excited - Cibernetico had already decided to leave UWA & jump to AAA so he gets replaced by Silver King which puts all the Cowboys together. There is an older gentleman with white hair as referee who I can't identify but maybe Wolf Rubinski? Maya did all the counting during the match itself as this guy seemed more just there as a throwback deal. Not much to say about the match. It was just six dudes going through the motions. Lots of camera shots & brawling in front of this hot woman sitting in the front row. I think it was whoever the Queen of Lucha Libre was at the time. In the third fall Pirata Morgan gets eliminated but then comes back in to foul Silver King as he's trying to put a surfboard on Villano III so the tecnicos win by DQ. Nothing from the Friday Arena Coliseo made TV which is a shame because it was the Arena Coliseo debut of the Torneo Cibernetico match which got rave reviews.

Fittingly our final 1994 CMLL match that makes broadcast is the main event of the final Tuesday show of the year. We go out with a great one! Pantera defending his CMLL Welterweight Title against Felino. These two have always been rivals dating back to their Arena Naucalpan days as Pantera II & Babe Casas so the chemistry will forever be there. We start off with matwork & what appears to be a cut. Felino sneaks in a cup check on Pantera which was so funny they replayed it. Action speeds up ending with Felino submitting Pantera using a sprinning inverted Gory Special which looked great. Felino is in control during the second fall. We get a SHOOT EJECTION! Felinito, who is seconding his bigger counterpart, just casually reached in to move Pantera's foot. The crowd got upset so the commissioner walked over & told Felinto GTFO! It seemed totally legit b/c Felinito was arguing & didn't want to leave. The conversation went on a while which is another point towards it being legit. Pantera ends up making a comeback & backsliding Felino to tie things up. At the start of the third fall Felinito is back at ringside, presumably sent back by whoever was running the show. He is allowed to stay without issue so again this was probably the silly commissioner trying to look like he had some authority when in reality he did not. Third fall is just epic. Lots of dives, lots of great little things playing back to earlier in the match. I especially loved Pantera doing the climb the ropes slowly so the fans freak out deal but then he rolled through on his move, hit a rolling tope on Felino to knock him outside & then hit a great running somersault plancha. Great drama on the nearfalls. Pantera managed to get away when Felino went for his inverted figure four leglock move that won him the masks of both Ciclon Ramirez & Justiciero. Finally Felino gets Pantera in the inverted Gory Special again but Pantera reverses it! He then rolls forward while still holding the submission & submits Felino with his amazing looking grounded hold! Wonderful! Huge pop for the finish & money thrown afterwards. I remember loving this way back when & it totally holds up to this very day. I think originally I went **** but my 2026 eyes want to give it ****1/2. Maybe we split the difference & fall in-between? Can't think of a better way to go out for this CMLL 1994 deep dive.

I recently read something written by Ricardo Morales who is much smarter than you or I & has been around for everything. He called 1994 the worst business year in CMLL's history. The company made very little money & thus the wrestlers who worked there experienced a very tough economic time since they all work for a % of course. The AAA split happened in 1992 but the effects weren't immediate. You started to see it play out in 1993 but CMLL still managed to hold big events & sell out the Anniversary Show w/ Atlantis vs Mano Negra. 1994 was where things really hit. AAA kept getting hotter & hotter, CMLL did not. Mid-year there's a chance to have AAA/CMLL battling it out in Mexico City, but CMLL bails & concedes the night to AAA without an attempt to counter. That's just where the business was. They knew they were gonna take a bath so they just minimized how much of a bath they'd take. Both Anniversary Shows did poorly. The year end show bombed. It was not good heading into 1995. So much so that to start 1995 they drop ticket prices dramatically & institute a brief all kids enter free with one paying adult deal. They just wanted people to start coming out to the arenas again.

In terms of what the situation looked like going foward with talent - they clearly identified they needed some new blood. That's why they ran the (off-TV) new stars tournament which is where Shocker comes from & they brought in some guys from Monterrey which included Hector Garza. Two guys who would play important roles in the latter half of 1995 for the company. There was also a clearly stated initiative to focus more on the homegrown talent in 1995 instead of foreigners which only gets magnified as the peso drops in early 1995 which means people like Black Magic & Corazon De Leon can't stick around for extended periods any longer. The good news for CMLL, which there isn't much of, is AAA faced the same crisis & that opens up the gates for some people who left CMLL to work their way back into the fold. There is also a booking change (or two) in 1995 that freshens things up so you see guys like Javier Cruz/Mocho Cota/Americo Rocca types really phased out from the upper level apuesta match positions.

As for 1994's must-see stuff... obviouly the Pantera/Felino match to end the year. Puerto Ricans vs Head Hunters is high on everyone's list, even those who haven't seen a single second of other 1994 CMLL footage. Ciclon Ramirez/Javier Cruz is a great one. So is El Dandy/Javier Llanes if you can adjust your eyes to the 1970's style of wrestling. It's not a stand out year overall in terms of quality but also 75% of the matches did not make TV. The minis were non-existent. The women as well which is usually for the best but maybe with Reina Jubuki around often it would have been some good TV. Negro Casas was always a highlight but both his big matches were with Mocho Cota & both failed to deliver in quality & box office. He gets promoted to a booker next year, if that means anything to you.

Next up for me? I've already done 95/96 CMLL. I'd like to do 97 but I also want to go back even further to a time before AAA existed when it was very easy to follow the TV because a) there was none at first & b) it was Friday or nothing, no Tuesday shows were being taped so no confusion as to what is available. So I'm gonna go back to 1990. The year lucha libre returns to being available nationally although that doesn't happen until the February shows. But we have all the January TV from the US broadcasts so I'll start there of course. If it fails to hold my attention, I'll resume as planned to cover 97 CMLL which was still in my formative years of trying to understand lucha libre.