1996 CMLL

 

A super rare for it's time FULL SHOW airing on TV! Start to finish so you get a rare chance to experience an entire CMLL show, even if it's the winter season so things are quiet. For unknown reasons the women's opener turns into Bracito De Oro & Cicloncito Ramirez vs El Fierito & Guerrerito Del Futuro. No complaints here! Decent enough match but nothing you need to track down. 2da was a total borefest as you'd expect with those four. Not much going on in 3ra either. Semi-main we finally get going as Pantera/Arkangel are building to a title match & those two always had great chemistry. Americo Rocca is headed to a rudo turn so this is one of his last matches as a tecnico. Arkangel gets the deciding pinfall which is treated as a big deal. Main event ends up with totally washed for the time El Signo stepping in for Universo 2000. Speaking of washed... holy shit Kahoz is still around. That's a guy who lost his mask & people realized wow this guy is ancient. I think he gets one more hair match before departing into the land of retirement. Not a particularly thrilling show but the oddity of a full start to finish CMLL show existing in 1996 is the draw here.

Close but no cigar to another full show! Just missing whatever the opener was (I'd rather not know now since it'll never turn up). TV opener is a rare look at Los Malditos! Opening match trio for the last couple years with the idea of teaming Rey Bucanero with two experienced rudos. I'd say it worked out well. They get put over strong here winning in straight falls over the hapless tecnicos. Next up is a match I would have hated back when I started getting into lucha. Now... I tolerated it. But it still wasn't anything interesting. Kato Kung Lee was always a chore to watch for me, no matter the time frame. Semi-main is back to the Pantera/Arkangel feud with Arkangel getting the best of Pantera once more... but still no title match set! Times have changed. Gran Markus Jr. took a couple nice bumps. Example of guy I always found useless until I saw his work as Tony Benetto. He let himself go for this Markus role but still knows how to be a professional. Did you ever notice how he runs the ropes? That's a guy who had the rope snap on him a time or two when he was younger. It makes him stand out at least. Main event was real good! Carried by Dos Caras/Dr. Wagner Jr. of course. But Porky has some excellent comedy moments. Better than the full show the week before even with one less match.

Yeah I don't know why there are no TV links here but the top two made it onto lovely YouTube with the assstance of Roy Lucier. It's hard to forget as both matches were excellent. The main event is the start of a Shocker/Casas issue. Everyone has their working shoes on. But it's the semi-main that steals the show. Total tecnico style match with everyone trying to one-up the other & ending in the mighty rare double pin draw! Easy ****+ performance of pure lucha libre. Highly recommended!
 

Only the top two make TV here. Another stage in the Pantera/Arkangel feud with Arkangel winning again and............ still no title match! Super Astro had a fun moment or two. Antifaz as useless as usual. Young Rob would definitely have not been thrilled with this crew showing up on TV instead of flashy AAA wrestlers. Main event was just there. Nothing memorable here.

This was a new find by Roy Lucier from Mike Tenay's tape collection. And what a find! Best of the January run of TV. Semi-main was setting up a future Garza/Wagner match so they are the focus. Awesome match as you'd expect with those six. Worked very tecnico style for the most part. Definitely a match to go out of your way to see hitting the **** level. Main event is a condensed Shocker/Casas match - Shocker winning in two straight. This is to set up a title match which does happen the next week unlike our Pantera/Arkangel saga! Casas puts over Shocker huge. Finishing run is awesome with the bounce off the ropes into the Reinera. Two matches with tons of rewatch value.

The final TV from January which means... yes... no Shocker/Casas title match & no Pantera/Arkangel title match which ends up taking place on 1/30. Sad sad sad Rob. What we do get here is the most 1996 CMLL Arena Coliseo 2da ever. Six guys who basically live in that spot. Maybe they knew they were getting TV? It's an inspired effort from a generally bland crew. I definitely remember having this saved on my VHS tapes of lucha matches I recorded & liking the outfits but being underwhelmed by the action. Years later I went in with less expectations, nobody here is Rey Jr. & Psicosis. The finish is rolling through a flying cross body! If any finish summed up this crew, that's it. Alacran does a very scary running somersault plancha he probably shouldn't have ever tried again. Next up was my first time ever seeing Tajiri! At the time I had no idea who he was obviously. Pleasant surprise when I eventually found out & recalled back to seeing this Japanese kid in Mexico. He even busts out a crazy asai moonsault in the third fall! Ciclon pins Mogur clean to win.

4 out of 6 made TV! Wait... a 6 match show? What's happening here? Women get the shaft... ahem. Main event did too for some reason which is a huge bummer. 2da is the usual crew of bland CMLL undercarders for the time. Babe Richard is about a year away from becoming a referee & has clearly given up on life as a luchador. El Supremo going from a headline mask match in 1992 to being here in 1996 tells a tale, doesn't it? Bucanero was the lone highlight on his side. Can't think of a highlight on the other side. Forgettable. Next up is the debut of Oro II who was Oro's brother. In the worst possibly fate ever - he does a dive in the third fall & eats shit leading to a major scare for all. Talk about bringing back bad memories. Fantastik always used to be a blast to watch but he's very background player-ish here. Rudos do their job. A decent if unspectacular match. Semi-main is where the Americo Rocca turns happen. He did a tope suicida last week & decided fuck this tecnico shit, I'm a 50 year old who looks 70. Feuding him with Ringo Mendoza... not exactly ideal for a company competing with the youthful AAA at the time. TV main & live semi-main was Santo's return here. Him & Casas are great together as usual. Casas getting kicked from behind & falling right into the laps of the commisioner & doctor had to be a rib on someone. The finish is a bit sudden with Casas just beating Santo clean with an inside cradle. Although the replays show his shoulder is clearly up & he protests it. Seems like a planned way to end it so he had an out for losing as we start to head into Santo doesn't wanna lose territory. Good match but not on the higher end, we're still in Arena Coliseo season.

No Garza vs Wagner! CURSE THE WORLD! But on the bright side a CMLL minis trios! My favorite under recognized division of all-time. We are heading to a Mascarita Magica/Damiancito El Guerrero title match so that should be the focus but... some things never change in CMLL... in this case the referees being clueless. They could an unplanned finish in the first fall which leads to be a minute of everyone being confused whether the fall is over or not. The rudos then wrap the second fall up in a matter of seconds so my gut tells me they were supposed to win the first fall, then the tecnicos the second fall but things got all messed up so they fast forwarded to the third fall. Of course this would happen in a rare mini's match & not a shitty 2da with Alacran De Durango! Damiancito submits Magica to win. Sucks to call a CMLL mini's match disappointing but you really don't need to see this one. As I type this I'm thinking that match & the following are from 2/6 Arena Coliseo since the eventual mini's title match ends up on a Tuesday. Next up is the start of a Tajiri/Mogur feud. Of all the things to do! Tajiri is actually very over with the Arena Coliseo crowd which is surprising. Very heated match. I enjoyed! Worth a watch. Now we move over to the Friday show which kicks off on TV with the Ringo Mendoza/Americo Rocca feud. Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. You know I'd voice my complaints about this back in the day on message boards & probably get shot down because "they have good punches" or some shit. No. Absolutely no. These two guys feuding in 1996 was not it. Rocca destroys Ringo setting up a hair match. Joy. This instead of seeing Garza/Wagner. Really? Main event is a good match as you'd expect with those six wrestlers. Shocker continues his rise getting an important win alongside the legends.

Good chance the opener here is from the Tuesday show. Our final week of the winter Arena Coliseo season. Imagine having to explain that to a 2025/2026 CMLL fan. Seasons. The three young tecnicos together vs washed up El Signo seems like a practical joke. But there's some good stuff when Astro Rey Jr./Felino are in the ring to take bumps. The finish is listed as a DQ but it's just a clean tecnico win. Next we have a two fall special with Garza - having not won the title the previous week - getting revenge on Wagner by submitting him clean. This is actual booking with a direction as it's leading to their match in the upcoming Copa Junior tournament. A short but fun & heated match. Worth a watch. Semi-main looks great on paper but wasn't so much in execution. You get one really sweet Santo/Panther exchange in the first fall & then it turns into a rudo beatdown with a DQ finish in straight falls again. Not really sure why. Bummer. Main event is... *sigh*... Ringo Mendoza/Americo Rocca having their hair match. This was a fascinating watch for one reason. It was so clear not only were these guys just two old men way past their prime - this was two old men way past the prime of the crowd in attendance. Zero heat. Zero emotion. Just a totally dull 1970's style match with a finish so flat 13 year old Rob would have a great joke here. It was very sad to see these two struggle to get any reaction. Rocca was an acquired taste as I matured in my lucha viewing. I never got Ringo. At any point. Very Tito Santana-ish in the sense I have no idea how he got over & he always seemed to have the exact same routine as long as he was around. If anyone ever watches this match & tells you it's anything more than "bad", they're probably the type who thought Ron Garvin/Greg Valentine at the 1990 Royal Rumble was a fun watch.

Hey it's Arena Mexico! Once we get the very competent but not very memorable opener out of the way & a segunda carried by Pantera once again (who of course jumps to AAA right after being put over strong here) - we move onto the show long Copa Junior. CMLL running a random tournament, who'd have thunk it? I actually loved that they did a live drawing of the matches with kids coming into the ring to pick the names & a giant board displaying the match-ups. Even a tumbler! Shoot tournament brackets will always warm my heart & win over the kid in me. The adult in me with a functioning brain has other thoughts. Namely... if it's a shoot drawing that gives everyone involved minutes to less than an hour to put their matches together. I mean... it's still a CMLL tournament so you shouldn't expect much but it seems like a handicap nonetheless. Which is why I won't break things down match by match. Garza is the star of this tournament but the match with Rambo was his worst. Silver King/Humberto Garza was the best of the bunch & even that was barely five minutes. No, that's not a typo... Mano Negra over Santo. It's a very rare finish by CMLL standards as Negra pulls out brass knux to KO Santo & pull off the shocking upset. This was a tournament designed for Hector Garza to win so naturally CMLL needed Santo out without running into their rising young tecnico star.

Our only set of official Tuesday results for the month ends up with two good matches on TV! You can never go wrong with a Damiancito/Virus singles match & Mascarita Magica (future Fire) is a well known all-time underrated guy. This is where Damiancito wins the mini's title in an excellent match. This crew wasn't as small or flashy as their AAA counterparts so they were always looked it as a lesser than but you won't find a better technical mini's match than this one. If you've never seen it, definitely hunt this one down. The other match is more of the Tajiri/Mogur feud. We get some blood here. The other four are just background players who jump in to do a dive or two before ducking back out. Heated match! As I said, Tajiri is loved for some reason.

TV opener is the 2da with the always fun Pantera! I was always an AAA guy while my lucha brain developed but Pantera was a guy who stood out from the "boring" promotion. Unfortunately this was match was more about putting newcomer Bronco over. Bronco SUCKED. I have no idea how he ended up coming to Mexico City from Monterrey but they realize quick enough he's a dud & just use him for a mask loss to someone better in the summer. Everything he did was so awkward. Tecnicos win a very average match. The trios is the speeding up of the Brazo De Oro/Rambo feud which is heading to a hair match. In this chapter Rambo takes off his belt & uses it to beat El Brazo bloody. El Toreo comes to Arena Mexico! This is part of a story that continues the following week. The big attraction here is the second stage of the Copa Junior. The night of Hector Garza! An incredible showing. He wins three straight matches over Wagner, Dantes & Emilio to take home the trophy. All wins via his big dives to the floor, the last one with the corkscrew plancha of course. You couldn't do better in building up a new young guy. Really it was booking perfection. Highly recommended viewing! Yes, a CMLL tournament!

WEIRDNESS! First off, the match is great. Really. It's mainly just Dos Caras/Dr. Wagner Jr. doing fantastic things together. If you've never seen them work together - run & do it right now! Start with this match. The weird part comes in at the finish where Wagner/Mano Negra suddenly develop problems. The match ends with the tecnicos making Negra give Wagner a huracanrana & pin him. Yes, he pinned his own partner & it stood. Never in current CMLL! But this was back when lucha libre had it's own identity. A finish you could never explain to someone who didn't see it with their own eyes. The weirder thing is this goes absolutely nowhere. Mano Negra stays rudo... Wagner stays rudo... and nothing ever comes of this beyond what happened here. Strange huh?

A JIP version of the 2da makes TV & it was better left unseen. Just a strong win for the very boring rudo trio. Next up was supposed to be another Pantera showcase but he left without giving notice so Filoso (Nitro) steps in. The big Bronco push continues as he continues to underwhelm. Scorpio Jr. ends up DQ'ed for refusing to stop beating him up. The rudos tried hard all match long to make him look good but it did nothing for me. Mr. Niebla looked much better but he wasn't on the 'to push' list at this time. The semi-main (TV main as the actual main event doesn't air) is more of the Brazo De Oro/Rambo build. You'll recall last week Rambo was DQ'ed for using his belt. So this week the refs make him take it off & the commisioner confiscates it! Continuity! But Rambo being a sneaky rudo is one step ahead & ends up pulling a weapon out of his boot to bloody up El Brazo this time around. Before that happens though I urge you all to watch the first fall... there is an INCREDIBLE build to the finish. The likes of which you'll never see today because it requires too much of a time investment & different kind of crowd. The Porky fake heart attack in the second fall isn't as bad as it sounds. It was just a way to get him out of the way while his brother was beat up.

Yawn. 1996 Rob & 2026 Rob would be on the same page calling this show boring. An edited down TV opener ends in DQ when Karloff low blows Ciclon as they head to a hair match we won't get to see. You can file Fantasma down in the same category as Ringo Mendoza - guys I just don't understand. He was so slow & plodding. Also, that inverted bearhug finish is very... uhhh... not a good look. Let's just leave it at that. I'm OK not finding out what other matches happened on this show so I don't have to feel bad about what we missed to end up with these two matches.

Starting off with an edited down 2da we get to see a Ciclon Ramirez tope into the crowd! Classic! Olimpico gets a big surprise win taking down Damian El Guerrero. Not the last time those two would get together this year. Fun stuff! Next up is more of the Bronco show I wish they'd just cancel. He gets the deciding pin on Scorpio Jr. saving the match for his team. I will admit the match was fine but no thanks to anything Bronco related. Mr. Niebla starting to show signs of the guy we'd all come to love before his problems took over. Strangely the final build to El Brazo/Rambo does not air. We get the main event featuring the current CMLL Trios champs against a ragtag tecnico trio. But that trio has Hector Garza who is receiving the monster push so guess what? They win in two straight! A dominant victory followed by a trios titles challenge. It's crazy watching Sangre Chicana here knowing he'd be around another 10 years. He looks totally washed. He was a mess at this point, constantly no-showing dates so I'm sure they were happy to get the belts off of Los Chacales.

The first official Homenaje Dos Leyendas! We get to see the top three matches. The aformentioned trios titles switch which is a bit disappointing to be honest. I just expected more from a major show title match. It's not bad but it's nothing you need to see. But it's okay because look at that semi-main! Surely that will make this a must-see show! Well........ erm........ not so much. I remember I found that match originally on a rare satellite TV tape from Ron Rivera so I was one of the few people in the world with a copy. I remember watching it originally & liking it a lot. Not sure what changed between then & now. The match was very slow & I kept waiting for it to get into a higher gear but it just never did. You even have a typical screw-up where referee Maya counts out Felino too early. Atlantis ends up winning so lots of names I'd have rather seen end up going out in rather underwhelming fashion. I think originally I rated this **** but I wouldn't stick to that rating watching it back. Paper did not match reality. The main event of what ended up being a disappointing show is the hair match that had been building for weeks. They bleed. They brawl. I was not a fan. The emotion wasn't really there for a major show main event apuesta match. Rambo wins in a slight upset so he can save his hair for at least another month. Not a very good show.

Top two makes it to TV. Semi-main is decent enough until a cheap cop out DQ finish. Our first chance getting to see Black Panther in action, he had good chemistry with Mascara Magica. Main event stunk as you'd expect. FUCK RAYO DE JALISCO JR.! He's the worst part of this 1996 rewatch. Everything he touches turns to utter shit. Put him in the Ringo Mendoza & Fantasma grouping too. Fucking fat ass forever living off his father's name. Him having a falling out with CMLL was the best thing ever. Imagine all the awful matches we'd have been enduring since he will never retire.

1 out of 5! Yes! 1 match from this show exists video - the middle one. Yes, Bronco is back to annoy me. These rudos weren't the types who were goona make him look good so he gets beat up a lot here. These also weren't the type of rudos who were gonna bump around for those other two tecnicos so it was kind of a match that was just there. Super Astro takes out Mr. Niebla with a big dive at the end which is the downfall of the tecnicos. This rudo trio actually sticks as Los Rebeldes for a short while.

Fantasma *AND* Ringo Mendoza on the same team??? What did anyone do to deserve this??? Totally forgettable match. Main event wasn't much better as you'd expect. This was a tough watch.

Main & 3ra make it onto T from this one. 3ra was actually pretty fun for all of 10 minutes before they shot the planned angle. The Silver King/Negro Casas stuff is must see. But the feud pushed here is Rambo picking a fight with Humberto Garza which is naturally not going to work out well for him. His belt comes back into a play for a DQ finish & Garza needing medical attention. It's weird to see this kind of continuity in CMLL no matter if you're looking at it through a 1996 or 2026 lens. Main eventw as an awesome match as you'd expect. I believe this is the first of many Santo/Felino singles matches. They go around 20 minutes with the majority being the first fall where they do a long feeling out process. Santo does an awesome Victory Roll on Felino taking him from the apron into the ring. Felino busts out a Splash Mountain which was a big move for it's time. Santo eventually retains his title in an easy ****+ match. Make sure to check this one out.

Only the main event airs & we only got to see it together recently because this was another new Roy Lucier find! Match was fine. Nothing great, nothing bad, falling somewhere in the middle. The fascinating part is seeing VIOLENCIA show up. But it's not THAT Violencia. This is Pirata Morgan's short run under the gimmick before he sells it to the guy we'd come to know as Violencia (ex-Lynx). It seemed like Pirata was trying to hide his identity by working a different style which I appreciated.

The middle portion of the show aired on TV so naturally no hair match or opener. Just like you'd have planned! 2da is actually pretty fun with Super Astro having a great performance. 3ra is what we'd call an all-star send the fans home happy match these days. Don't get your hopes up on a Santo/Panther exchange, Panther gets replaced by Satanico. The semi-main is exactly as you'd expect. Special appearences by guys who aren't normally here so it's the Mil & Alushe show. I recall seeing this in my early lucha viewing days, it ended up on the VHS tapes I mentioned earlier. I was absolutely convinced Alushe was a trained animal, not a human being. You have no idea how odd it was to have zero knowledge of this... thing... and no resource to look up what the fuck it is (pre-internet). CMLL 1996 was very weird & this lineup is the best example.

Opener was edited down dramatically. Finish is all fucked up when the refs don't count to three at the right time. At least you get a Ciclon Ramirez tope. That's always fun. Semi-main is quite forgettable. You are here for the main event & the main event alone. Also edited down but professional stuff from what we saw. La Fiera defeats Satanico again as they head to a title match we won't get to see. Skip this show.

3ra ends in the ever so rare these days... DRAW! For as many shows & matches as CMLL runs you'd think draws would be used more frequently just to switch things up. But I guess they want the tourists to cheer or boo, not politely clap at the two teams being so evenly matched. Not much to the match itself. Same deal with the semi-main. Main event is the only match here you need to see. Very good stuff, worked mostly clean. Garza continues to shine & the rudos job here is clearly to make him seem like a very big deal. Worth a watch.

 

Weird weird weird. A group of little clowns show up in CMLL! It's a Kids Day thing. I believe these were the group of minis who had just defected from AAA. One is obviously Piratita Morgan since he wrestles unmasked. The match is JIP & had good heat of course since it's a largely kids audience. But sadly there isn't much else memorable here outside of the oddity of it happening.

Oh joy it's Hijo Del Solitario! CMLL sure found some awful people to have around in 1996. Astro Rey Jr. (Mephisto) was moving up on the cards so he's here stepping in for Mocho Cota in Los Rebeldes. Some decent stuff with him working against Mr. Niebla but a largely unmemorable match. Semi-main was real good! Centered around a new Dandy/Felino feud - another singles match we'd never get to see on TV when the time came. Felino mostly ducks Dandy all match long until he's finally caught. It's really good rudo stuff as the crowd gets on him big time for not wanting to match-up with his rival. Great finishing run leads to a sunset flip bomb that Dandy sells big time & does a stretcher job for. In the slo-mo it looks like a bad bump but clearly this was also part of the story so happy coincidence. Shocker & Arkangel had some good momentos together. A match worth checking out! Main event not so much unless you love yourself some Mil shtick. He wins. You're stunned!

Only the tournament make it to TV. This was my first exposure to a CMLL tournament when I originally saw it way back when on Telelatino. I didn't quite understand what was going on in the sense of what they were fighting for. The fast paced short matches actually won me over as having being exposed to only WWF/WCW at the time, it was what I was more familiar with. I was also just figuring out who these guys were so it was a whole new world. I remember really liking Black Panther. This would be the first time I'd see the Fantastik somersault plancha to the floor which blew my mind at the time. Watching back all these years later I'd say this tournament holds up. Everyone is working hard as it's largely a group of underpushed wrestlers & Atlantico. It comes down to Magica vs Panther with Magica going over to advance to the final.

Only the 3ra & semi-main make the TV cut here. You can imagine sitting down to watch your newly discovered lucha libre hoping to see the cool masked guys & here come the Brazos, Ringo Mendoza & Mocho Cota. 13 year old Rob was likely very unhappy. Much older Rob is still not happy. A pretty boring match unless you're into people making mean faces & good punches. Acceptable things but not something I need a 20+ min match built around. Semi-main was more enjoyable as we continue the Dandy/Felino issue & Porky does some funny comedy. You can safely skip this one though.

Back at it with Block B of the tournament! This block was a bit less inspired than the previous one. Watching with my 2025 eyes, it's clear Felino was always winning this. 13 year old Rob did not know this. Far more innocent times. Felino basically steamrolls everyone including almost killing Angel Azteca with a super bomb which was crazy for 1996. Ciclon Ramirez gets to unleash a nice tope into the crowd in the final but that's the extent of the highlights here. In the DB Cubs has the main event listed as airing but I couldn't track it down anywhere & it's not on any list I've got.

Top 3 make the TV cut here. 3ra is the usual deal. Very unexciting guys having the most professional match they can. Crowd gets into some parts. I wasn't offended or anything but it's very unremarkable. Semi-main is much better. Brazos are in good form early on & match is moving along well until the usual second fall rudo beatdown & victory gets cut off with Roberto Rangel DQ'ing Wagner for excessive violence. Didn't appear to be a mistake. Felt like a very flat finish considering what they had been building to. Crowd disapproved. Main event is the infamous & very rare 4 fall match! One of the best CMLL matches of the calendar year. I don't think it ever made it onto US Galavision due to the length so we had to track this one down. It's a match bordering on 40 minutes with the first fall taking up the majority. Really great stuff. They do a high speed exciting third fall that ends with a disputed finish. This REALLY gets the crowd up as the commisioner gets in the ring & orders a fourth fall to decide the new champion. Tons of awesome nearfalls before Magica manages to submit Felino to a big pop. Easy ****1/4 match. You should check this one out if you've never seen it.

What aired from this Friday show? Exactly what you'd expect! Only the mini's opener! I presume we're just missing footage of the other matches for some reason. No way they only had time to squeeze the minis onto a TV show. Either way the bad luck streak of the CMLL minis making TV in 1996 continues. Very uneventful match that would not prove any point I'm trying to make about how underrated this crew was. However, I do believe a fun footnote here is this would be our first look at Mike Segura (Orito).

Finishing up May we get the top two matches from here. The semi-main is pretty good & starts a weird Dandy/Chicago Express rivalry. There is some very strong first fall work from everyone, especially Casas. One of these CMLL matches that was technically very solid but also fell under the radar compared to what AAA was producing at this time. Main event might be the best Rayo De Jalisco Jr. of all time if you can believe it. God bless Apolo Dantes! He works his ass off carrying the slug to something watchable. Very long match clocking in at nearly a half hour with most of that being the third fall. Crowd is very invested in the outcome but it must have been a long show because as soon as Rayo wins you can see everyone bolting for the exit. If anyone ever questions whether Dantes was any good, this is the match you'd use as evidence because not many would succeed being left alone in the right this long with fat Rayo. We always try to explain to current fans how the CMLL Heavyweight Title is not the most important belt in the company but on this night it sure felt like it was.

Opener doesn't air. Sad. Main event doesn't air. Suicidal. I have to imagine that match was absolutely incredible considering how good these two were at the time & it's criminal that match went unseen compared to what they did choose to show which is the tag tournament & 2da. There's nothing wrong with the 2da. Guerreros pick up a dominant win in the usual bland match. This tournament has commonly been mistaken as a Gran Alternativa but that comes later in the year (Rey Bucanero wins). This was just a tournament for two random tiny trophies & a way to keep pushing Chicago Express. You can tell CMLL has already gone cold on Bronco who absolutely would have won this if it was held in March or April. Santo being on the losing side in a semi-final was certainly a surprise. Yes, Atlantico goes further in this tournament than El Hijo Del Santo! All matches were very short & uneventful as you'd expect when Atlantico & Chicago Express are wrestling three times. Totally skippable show & probably all-time great unseen show!

Yone Genjin is over! He scores the deciding pinfall in his match & crowd cheers! Good for him. Otherwise nothing notable there. Main event was as solid of a lucha match as you'll get. Six pros doing their thing, nice callback to Rambo having issues with the Brazos. Worth a watch.

As you can see only the two early matches aired. Great for me... more CMLL minis action! A nice little match featuring Espectrito who is NOT Espectrito I as listed here & I don't think is Espectrito II either since he would have still been in AAA with his brother. It's a weird one. I'm unsure who it was. Ultimo Dragoncito tweaks his knee during the second fall but this isn't curent era CMLL where the ref & photgrapher both dramatically throw up the X even though they both have ear pieces & can communicate easily with people backstage. No doctor rushes out. So Dragoncito just tries to power through the third fall as best he can including getting his dive in before he taps out due to the pain. It doesn't bring the match down at all - you still see an excellent closing stretch with Cicloncito & Damiancito as usual. A total non-descript segunda follows. Olimpico is about at the end of his run in these type of matches as he's about to find someone to feud with & a way up on the cards.

Back-to-back minis making TV! This was more along the lines of what I wanted people to see from this division. A very fun Tuesday trios. Back in the day I did a 3 tape set of excellent lesser known lucha matches & this one made the cut. I remember having to manually dub it each time someone ordered. LOL So I have this match committed to memory! There's a hilarious spot in the second fall where the tecnicos set up a triple dive but for whatever reason they don't line it up correctly & both Bracito/Panterita end up leaping at Fierito in the middle leaving Pierrothito all alone to catch nobody! Somehow everyone survived & Pierrothito did the right thing not selling anything either. Very exciting match! Next up was another Guerreros dominant win. You get a wild out of control totally unexpected Ciclon Ramirez tope into the crowd near the end. Always fun. And the main event is kind of a slog. Casas tried but the other guys were just there to fulfill their booking for the night.

Just the tercera makes TV here but it's a notable one! We see BLACK WARRIOR for the first time - having recently switched over from his Black Panther look. He immediately gets into the mix by tearing masks with Bronco which should have immediately set off alarm bells. But at this point I think the alarm bells would have been for Warrior. Guy loses gimmick... guy gets new gimmick... immediately in feud with newcomer that had been getting a push... the math maths. But give it a couple weeks. The other four are here as background players but do a good job. Worth a watch.

Another Roy Lucier special! We had the main event but the segunda & semi-main are from Tenay's collection. A chance to see some undercarders we didn't normally get to see on TV. Kung Fu Jr. does an asai moonsault and goes SPLAT. If I clipped that out & posted it on lucha facebook I'd be a hero. Kundra's wife made me quesdillas behind Arena Naucalpan many times! This is the new Lynx as by this point the original Lynx has taken on the Violencia character ditched by Pirata Morgan. I found this match pretty enjoyable honestly. It's always fun seeing how people work who we can only identify by name most of the time. Semi-main is a weird mix because Negro Casas is working below his pay grade & Olimpus is way higher. It's explained El Dandy was supposed to be in this match but Olimpus stepped in. That explains it. That makes me very sad too. Casas is entertaining here, especially the way he takes the finish to the first fall. He made Olimpus look exciting! Match starts strong but does not finish well. There's the early tease of the Mascara Magica/Guerrero De La Muerte issue. Main event is nothing but ordinary, complete with nonsense DQ finish. Kahoz is about to lose his hair to La Fiera and go ADIOS!

Now we've hit the points where we are getting some direction. In the tercera we have the two main midcard feuds of this time - Bronco/Warrior + Magica/GDLM. So this match has some heat to it & two rudos working hard to make something out of their lesser tecnico rivals. I remain shocked at how little charisma Bronco has. Semi-main is a really good match! Maybe not hitting the **** level but coming close. Casas is in a mood here & thus very entertaining. He even steals food from a young girl at ringside! Insert inappropriate joke here if this were blog were private. Just six guys doing very professional lucha libre. You love to see it. Watch it!

The first Grand Prix since 1994! I have this full thing on video & have tried to upload it numerous times but there's some error with the disc & I currently don't have a working VHS to DVD machine. Oh well. I remember watching the final 8 on Telelatino, my second CMLL tournament experience. I actually knew who Great Sasuke was from PWI magazines at the time. Seeing him wrestle for the first time was really cool. It was one of my earliest exposures to Santo as well. You could tell what a big star he was just from the reactions. Watching it back it's a fun trip down memory lane but not an exceptional tournament or anything of the sort. Hard to be when you're cramming in 15 matches in one night so nothing can go over 5 minutes or so. Love the big trophy they used to hand out for winning these things.

Not a TV show but eventually a commercial tape came out documenting Sasuke's trip to Mexico which included this match (& the semi-main I think but for some reason nobody uploaded that one). There's also a match from Pista Arena Revolucion on that tape if anyone wants to go digging. The Casas/Sasuke match is good but a bit weird since Sasuke is the booked tecnico but the crowd is clearly much more in favor of Negro... which is to be expected. They even have Negro cheating to try to turn the crowd but it doesn't really work. I did love the first fall finish where Negro FAKES BEING TRIPPED by Tiger Mask to distract the ref so he can then slyly low blow Sasuke. No doubt about it, Casas is a wrestling genius. Sasuke does the Rider Kick! That's wild for Coliseo. Pretty good match, worth checking out.

The other midcard feud shows up here - Olimpico vs Damian El Guerrero. So random. I guess they were about to do two mask matches so they figured might as well take a hair here instead of unmasking Feliciano or Terry. We get some blood, we get some brawling, we get a heated crowd. Which is good because the work of the two is not exactly world class. I enjoyed the background players more than the focused on guys. Let's skip the main event for now... the main event SUCKED. Holy christ. This is the end of the line for Kahoz & you can see why. Largely immobile & looking like he hasn't slept in days. Just a slow nothing going on match that even some blood couldn't salvage. Back to the semi-main event to end on a high note... FANTASTIC MATCH! One of the best of the year in CMLL. World class work from all six involved led by Dos Caras/Wagner. You should not be reading anything I say about this match, you should just be heading to watch it. In the ****1/2 range. Masterful.

I guess this would be a transitional show as the tercera & semi-main are all focused around the two main feuds. Everyone else is just along for the ride so YMMV depending on whether you are into these feuds or not. Warrior flying around to make Bronco look good is entertaining. The crowd is also clearly more into Warrior than Bronco which no doubt the people in charge had to be taking note of. I think the decision had already been made at this point to send Bronco back to Monterrey so he was dead man walking... and working like it. After we wrap up there, we move onto an all-timer main event. I don't use that term lightly. This match is unforgettable because it has things that you have never seen in Arena Mexico since! This is the re-igniting of the legendary Santo/Casas feud. They go at it immediately, even before the opening whistle. Most of it is Santo beating the shit out of Casas which of course earns him a few boos since Casas is beloved here. You can even look at this as the start of Casas' tecnico turn which comes not too long from now. They refuse to stop going at each other as their partners generally just stand to the side enjoying the show. They brawl into the crowd... a no no. They push the referees... a no no. They ignore the commisioner... a major no no that got both suspended. It's such a heated brawl it seems the police even get involved thinking it's real. They've clearly not been smartened up at least once as they are forcefully holding Santo back when he wants to get at Negro. Crowd is of course molten for all this. They brawl into the aisle, back to ringside, back up the aisle & eventually backstage. A BACKSTAGE BRAWL IN CMLL! They even cut to footage of other wrestlers breaking up the brawl in the hallways of Arena Mexico. Absolutely unheard of shit for this promotion. Finally the two are seperated. Santo is heading to Japan for a bit so this suspension covers for that & Casas has to take a week or two off for his actions. If you care at all - the remaining four guys end up setting up a tag title match. But this is an all-time Arena Mexico incident that should forever be documented. I think brains would explode if this ever happened in CMLL today.

One match from this show made TV! I think. The first time I saw it was a random YouTube video upload of a disc that had some mask matches so it's possible none of this show made TV but somehow a bootleg copy of the mask match got out. Either way. Black Warrior takes Bronco's mask in a very disappointing match. Bronco was just not cut out for this. Warrior tries his best but there's only so much you can do with a total sack of shit. Bronco is out the door right after this. Enjoy that flight home. The built up on TV tag title match is never seen & neither is Lizmark Jr. returning to action. He broke his leg badly on an AAA show almost 2 years earlier & steps in here for a no-showing Vampiro.

Just the tercera from this one makes it to TV. Obviously to continue the Olimpico/Damian El Guerrero issue. Olimpico gets bloodied up again. Another Ciclon Ramirez wild tope into the crowd is the highlight. The only highlight. One day I'll have to explain how Olimpico was never actually any good as a wrestler other than the time he was being carried by Guerrero/Bucanero. He was lucky he had a respected dad & eventually got so into steroids he won over the part of the CMLL office who is obsessed with bodies.

An almost full show! Only the segunda doesn't make the cut, poor Rebeldes. The opener is a total stinker. I have no idea who Reo Jr. is, I gotta just presume the son of the original who was not really a noteworthy luchador. Los Malditos are exactly the kind of guys you want working with youngsters for on-the-job training. They were willing to work with this kid but he was useless. Didn't appear to even know the basics. By the second fall they just stop working with him. It was honestly one of the worst singular performances ever by a Mexican wrestler in an Arena Mexico ring. He's never allowed back which is understandable & whoever he was he disappears soon after. Prinicpe Franky is another Monterrey call-up. Total dork. Look up a photo of him. I felt bad for the Malditos trying to salvage whatever this was. The tercera has Olimpico in for Bronco who has been shipped back to Monterrey. Sounds like good news for Olimpico but not really. In the third fall he crashes & burns bad on an attempted running somersault plancha. Such a brutal landing I'm almost positive younger Rob was telling stories of a new Olimpico coming in after this to replace the original. Yes, I was that guy. Look up video of this fall & you'll see why it was a totally believable story! Not much to the match other than that. Semi-main is pretty good. Very professional match with the main feud taking center stage & the other guys just doing their thing. Main event is out first look at Lizmark Jr. back in action. He's paired up with Black Warrior who has ascended to the main event level & is here to bump all over the place for a new tecnico this time around. Pretty good match with totally clean finish putting over the Lizmarks. I quite enjoyed.

Wrapping up July we don't get to see another pointless CMLL tournament... we get to see TWO MATCHES from a pointless CMLL tournament. Blessed. One of the quarter-final matches airs to further the Olimpico/Damian El Guerrero issue, then we skip forward to the final with Gran Markus Jr. & Gladiador beating the Lizmarks in a slight upset to earn a shot at the CMLL Tag Team Titles. Thrilling. Absolutely thrilling stuff.

We got the top three airing on TV here. 3ra re-ignites the Brazos/Rambo issue with Brazo De Oro taking up the cause this time around. Not very exciting stuff. Next up a decent looking trios as long as Rayo stayed out of the ring but alas he's the focus on the tecnico side. Garza is just returning from Japan/injury here. A very middling match you don't need to see. Finally it's the big Mascara Magica/Guerrero De La Muerte title match. Two guys CMLL was pushing as their young future stars at the time. Magica turned out alright before going into early retirement. GDLM just never quite got to that extra level. I think he's more known for his mask loss in Guadalajara in later years than any of this feud. The match isn't bad but it's also nothing you need to track down. If these guys were gonna be the two big future stars, this was not exactly them making any sort of statement by having a great match. It was more a vehicle to set up the apuesta match as GDLM cheats to win the title.

One of the undercard feuds wraps up here as Olimpico predictably keeps his mask over Damian El Guerrero who gets shaved. Bloody match, they needed it to make up for the work. Crowd is into it as this had been well built-up but it didn't do much for me personally. Olimpico's win is treated as a big moment in his career. The tercera is a standard trios match with some very confusing booking as young rising tecnico Shocker is just beaten clean at the end by Mano Negra who's best days were long behind him. Forgettable match. Main event... well... I'm gonna be honest with you - mysteriously person who somehow knows this blog exists - I did not watch this in full. I couldn't bring myself to do it. There was no Apolo Dantes to carry Rayo so this had waste of time written all over it. Maybe one day I'll be bored enough but today was not that day.

Another near full show! Just the tercera missing. Better opponents for Los Malditos this time around with Filoso (Nitro) & 16 year old Mano Negra Jr.! Such a weird story with him. He got started super young as you can see. 16 year olds weren't really running CMLL at the time. Obviously very green but he wasn't awful or anything. Just a kid learning the ropes. He winds up on a CMLL Japan tour come late 1997 & has some really good performances with fellow teenager Mr. Aguila. Even gets invited back for another tour in 1998. And that's the end of him pretty much. He sticks around working CMLL for many years... I think deep into 2004, maybe even a bit of 2005. Never seems to get an opportunity to move up & stories eventually came out that they were unimpressed with his work ehtic + extra curricular activities. He looked good in this match! Malditos are always a joy to watch. Next up was your standard undercard trios for it's time with Yone Genjin in for Damain El Guerrero. Nothing too memorable here although Fantastik looked good. Semi-main should have Brazo De Oro listed, not El Brazo. Two feuds going on here so lots of brawling if that's your thing. Main event is the best match of the show. Dos Caras/Negro Casas interaction is just wonderful. Casas puts on a rudo clinic you really have to see. This match would be one I'd put a star beside & suggest to any young wrestler looking to learn how to get over without having to do moves. You could work until you're 70 doing the stuff Negro was doing here. The type of match you may not appreciate at first but the more your wrestling brain grows the better understanding you'll have of why the things work the way they do in this match.

All the middle stuff airs on TV. Los Rebeldes are back doing their thing against the usual opponents. Decent enough match. Solid but not spectacular. A rare TV appearence by the women follows. Thank goodness these appearences were rare. Brutal match. Martha Villalobos is just utter trash at this point. Beyond fat & eating up anyone who tries to do anything with her. The type of match that sets back women's wrestling in Mexico. Everyone just looks so unathletic. These aren't athletes, these are housewives/grandmas playing pro wrestlers. Crowd couldn't have cared about anything going on. Semi-main has it's moments but is largely just a standard match you won't remember five minutes after you see it. Not a very good show here.

I swear I'm not making this up... CMLL was setting up a Rayo De Jalisco Jr./Gran Markus Jr. feud. Yes. It actually ends up headlining the Anniversary Show although not in an apuesta match like most assumed. Just a title match. Maybe Markus should have taken whatever the offer was because he ends up losing the mask a little less than a year later at a failed UWA resurrection show at El Toreo De Naucalpan. Not a good match. Main event ends out final midcard feud of the summer as Mascara Magica unmasks Guerrero De La Muerte. A bit better than their title match but again nothing very memorable. The finish was very odd to me. Magica just grabs Muerte & starts doing the rolling cradle deal. It looks like it's leading to him stopping for a pinfall attempt which is the usual goal with this move but instead Maya just waves his arms as they are rolling signifying the submission. Not a huge pop from the crowd. I'd say moderate sized pop. Muerte would claim afterwards he didn't submit I guess & maybe he had a point. I assume he would have submitted minutes later to Magica's actual submission finish.

The CMLL minis make TV once again & as fate would have it the referees fuck things up once more! It's almost like the fix was in. They were having a good match & clearly building to a nice finish but the refs both just call off the match for no reason as they called a submission during a pinfall spot. At least nobody here had the pouty face deal & the rudos just celebrated their unearned victory. But it robbed me the viewer of the finishing touches of a good match. Such is life. The othe match on this show is so non-descript I've already forgotten it.

Two undercard matches from this Friday show wind up on TV. Usual fare in the segunda. Solid but unspectacular. At this point Ultimatum (Electro Shock) has started wearing his ungodly ugly colorful outfit. A convincing win for the Guerreros faction that is not long for this world. The tercera was much better. Lots of action from a crew that would get used to each other & be paired up quite frequently in the next few years. Crowd loved Super Astro. Mr. Niebla gets the big win at the end with the Neblina. It's mentioned both he & Rey Bucanero are heading off to Japan soon. Worth a watch!

Only the main event makes the cut for TV here & not only that - only the first fall! You will never understand the logic of the people who put together these shows because it's impossible to make sense of their decisions. Rambo ends up beating Brazo De Oro. That puts him at three straight hair wins in Arena Mexico this year. You'd think that mean someone big is getting his hair before year end. It ends up being Brazo De Plata to avenge his brothers (+ Humberto Garza Jr.). Except it happens at an Arena Coliseo show we don't have records from. Some plans must have changed at some point because that does not seem like an appropriate destination.

As you can see the middle portion of this show made it to TV. Segunda is about as bland as it gets. Astro Rey Jr. clearly had the talent but nobody to work with in this crew of ragtag men. Not worth watching. Tercera is much better. Bucanero is a bump machine here, a sign of things to come in his career. Unlike weeks earlier, Shocker did not lose to Mano Negra here which is good. Super Astro once again super over. Good match. Semi-main was of course very good. Funny to see a ***1/4 rating which in 2025 eyes looks like something bad, barely hitting average. As someone with a normal rating system I'd go ***3/4, almost hitting the excellent level. Worth watching.

It's Zumbido! A very young Zumbido, nothing like you'd imagine if you weren't following lucha at the time. It's very weird to watch haha. Very dull match with Ciclon not inspired at all & Atlantico being his usual dull self. A shitty finish didn't help things. Semi-main also makes TV with a decent looking lineup but match was nothing more than decent. Skip this show.

Here we get the segunda & main event. Lioness Asuka is in to set up a title match with Lola Gonzalez at the Anniversary Show. Uh... maybe 15 years too late for that match to be any good. It was funny seeing them try to set up a serious title match with fat as fuck Martha Villalobos waddling around doing her usual unprofessional shit with everyone else. Lady Apache seemed like she wanted to work & look good incase Japan was recording but what are you gonna do with this crew? Embarassing. Main event was heavy Rayo/Markus since that was the other big Anniversary Show title match. What a decision. Business was down so they had no reason to pay for a mask or hair & they exhausted all the apuesta matches with the midcarders over the summer. A rough weekend of TV.

What an awful looking Anniversary Show outside of one match that we will never see. Can you believe that opener made TV but Santo/Casas didn't? I have to think it was intentionally done as message sending like a lot of stuff that didn't make TV in this time. CMLL was drawing poorly. Business was in the shitter. So the idea is hey if you wanna see this stuff, you gotta come to the building because we're just gonna give you Olimpus on free TV. Opener is fine... it's a big show opener so they are moving 0.5x faster than usual. Escudero Rojo takes a fantastic bump to the floor to end the first fall. Malditos get a dominant win. I had no interest in that women's match, maybe you will. It was slow. It was full of painfully weak 80's offense. It lacked any drama. Crazy to think these two get matched up again next year at the Anniversary Show too. Mil Mascaras skipping out on the Anniversary Show is kinda funny. I forget the story behind that but I'm sure it's a very Mil thing. This match is the one that sets up Silver King/Emilio Charles Jr. in a hair match the following week. It was a very out of nowhere feud & maybe they decided on it too late to have it be an actual Anniversary Show match. Canek looks to be completely washed here & this is NINETEEN NINETY FUCKING SIX! Speaking of washed although Rayo was never anything so if you've always been nothing can you ever be washed? The main event stunk. Just an embarassing headliner to what is meant to be your biggest show of the year. Have you no shame CMLL? Well, in 1996 they did not.

Just the semi-main airs here. They beat Olimpico who was on the rise. Singular CMLL results often don't mean much so I didn't read anything else into it. He turns out just fine. I was not fine having wasted 20 minutes on this match.

Top three air on TV. Negro Casas back on the tecnico side (replacing Tinieblas) after having subtle issues with the rudos previous week & then getting the shit kicked out of him by Santo at the Anniversary Show. This was inevitable since that July match where the crowd sided with him over Santo. It also plants the seed for Santo eventually returning later this year as a rudo which nobody could fathom at this time. I wonder if there's some connection between Mil & Tinieblas both no-showing consecutive weeks? The failed new UWA group featuring them doesn't start until well into 1997 so it can't be that or maybe it was? Back to Negro... this match kickstarts a feud with Bestia Salvaje who is unhappy Casas switched sides. You know where that's heading! What's worse than a Rayo De Jalisco Jr. singles match? A Canek singles match! So that semi-main stunk although god bless Perez he was trying his best to salvage things. Main event was very good. It's not a blood heavy match, Silver King gets slight juice but that's about it. This was more a nearfall-fest after the first two falls. One of the most common misconceptions amongst even so-called "smart" fans is that lucha libre used to have very long matches & it was only during the Mistico boom where the style dramatically shifted to short falls. Totally incorrect. Yes, on average lucha matches went longer but most of the time they went like this. Silver King takes the first fall in a couple minutes, Emilio takes the second in rapid fire. Then a long third fall. This was not an Ultimo Guerrero invention. I liked Silver King's spot in the third fall where he first listened to the crowd by not going up top, then did it but outsmarted Emilio & finally let his cockiness get the best of him missing a moonsault. There was an amazing crucifix nearfall right before the finish which is Emilio uses the rana (created by his dad!) to get a somewhat surprising win. Crowd seemed to enjoy. I did too. A nice little ***3/4 main event here.

 

As you'll see as I keep updating this - October 1996 is a weird month for us results wise. We are missing A TON. No idea why it's centered on this month, it just is. So most of what we know happened this month is whatever aired on TV. This show has your usual crew of segunda guys doing their thing. It's actually a really funky finish that I loved where Filoso & Rojo go to a draw by pinning each other's shoulders down in a way you wouldn't imagine. For what this crew usually delivers I thought this was a solid enough ***1/2 match which sets up a revancha. The other match from this show is a match I couldn't watch! Because the YouTube channel got deleted! Always save YouTube videos is the lesson you need to learn here.

Not as exciting segunda on this show. Very slow paced & awkward at various points. Olimpus gets the big win & I am left to ponder if someone actually thought Olimpus was going to be a thing at one point in time. Next up a pretty decent ***1/2 trios match. Super Astro again... so over. It's remarkable these days nobody is just flat out copying his routine because it would get so over. I'm sure CMLL would put the ban hammer on something like that because it would distract from the referees doing rolls. Finish is actually Scorpio Jr. surprise rolling up Astro for the rudo win. Crowd is pretty steamed after that. Main event is mostly storyline as the Mexican rudos keep having subtle issues with their Puerto Rican teammate. It all leads to a wonderful miscommunication spot in the corner that finally ends that team for good. Easy win for the tecnicos. Post-match is great with Apolo/Miguel going at it & Miguel promising TWO SURPRISES are coming. That turns out to be the Head Hunters.

The big rematch! Did not draw well, lots of empty seats. But it was probably the only in the calendar year these guys got to do anything of note. I preferred the match the week before but this is fine. Although your eyes may fall out of their socket watching Ultimatum & America in the ring together in their alternate outfits. Main event is a torneo cibernetico to determine who will challenge El Dandy for his NWA Light Heavyweight Title. It's an edited match but honestly I expected more with this lineup. Very minimal effort match from everyone involved except Black Warrior (duh). He ends up beating La Fiera at the end so we have our match for next week. Skippable.

My goodness can you come up with more of a boring segunda? I know for a fact back in 96 I thought that match was fuckin trash. I can confirm it 30 years later. Sometimes you come across people on this lovely thing called the internet who like to play devil's advocate. You know the types. "Mark Henry was actually good" types. I don't even think those kind of people would rush to defend a match like this. Sleep inducing. Next up a quasi-revancha from the previous week. This time Shocker gets Scorpio Jr. at the end & everyone is happy. Shocker looked really good in this match. Semi-main is the TV main & more progression of the Casas/Salvaje feud. Salvaje really lays into Casas with some slaps & especially kicks. It's another one of those matches where the other guys are all background players. Not much of a show here.

Looks good on paper! I enjoyed the semi-main. Garza super over, you can hear a sizeable pop from the females in attendance so he was definitely bringing in an audience not that interested in watching Negro Casas vs Bestia Salvaje. Rudos dominate most of the match until the big comeback & then end up losing clean in third fall when Garza submits Wagner to a big pop. Rock solid match. Main event was a weird match. It's pretty lengthy but I found it far too slow paced for my liking. It includes a very long figure four leglock spot where the ref has to struggle just to seperate the two guys who then sell it like their knees are destroyed. I've seen Dandy do this spot before (notably in the famous match with Negro Casas in 1992) but it just came off as selfish in this match. There was no leg work leading into it & they immediately just continued the match like normal afterwards. So what was the point then? The third fall just felt do disjointed with that spot in there & the finish just seems to come out of nowhere. Warrior submits Dandy clean to win the belt. A huge win for the youngster but not a great match or anything of the sort. Probably tops out at ***. Bummer.

Just the one match on TV here & it's the hair match. No blood. Not much brawling. Just mostly exchanging stiff shots. But a real hot crowd helped things out. Bestia Salvaje does a cornerpost tope suicida which is absolutely the first & only time he did it in his career. Aging is a funny thing... this was at a time where CMLL was very into TV graphics so you'd get mid-match split screen promos and/or stats. Bestia Salvaje was *30 years old* when this took place. If you had asked me back watching it initially in 1996, I'd have guessed nowhere less than 45. I actually remember watching this match at like 2am on a night I probably shouldn't have been up at 2am watching TV. Here on TLN we had a Saturday afternoon airing of lucha (could be either CMLL, AAA or mix of both) & then at some point I discovered more lucha was airing on Monday late night. I could never figure out the exact time & back in the VCR days you had to have the channel on what you were recording so I couldn't just set it to record 6 hours if someone else was still awake & wanted to watch TV which was usually the case. I had a TV in my room at this point though so I clearly remember being about to fall asleep & suddenly lucha libre was on TV. I couldn't run out to record it & expose I was still awake so I just had to watch it on mute. This was the match I remember watching. Anyways... Casas wins with La Casita. Bestia loses his hair for the first time his career. Good match. (feel free to refer back to my point somewhere above re: short two falls vs long third fall)

Boy does this stand out as a WTF is going on if you don't know your CMLL history. What the deal is here is basically the Gran Alternativa was coming up in November & CMLL decided to do what they do best - complicated tournaments. But I say that lovingly because I loved this concept. They broke it down into 4 groups of 4 wrestlers to do round robin style matches. The idea was the top 2 finishers in each group move onto the actual Gran Alternativa + get to choose their own partners. All these singles matches were one fall ten minute time limit ("lightning matches" in the future). It was spread out over Arena Coliseo & Pista Arena Revolucion shows so clearly a secondary deal as it never made it to Friday. But it changed up the norm on these shows & gave a reason for lots of these guys to exist such as fucking Kung Fu Jr. These were the opening matches in the league & the only ones to make TV. Filoso takes a tumble on a dive gone wrong & soon after Astro submits him with a cool reversal into a Boston Crab. Magica beats Kung Fu Jr. in an extremely dull match that barely hits the five minute mark. It almost felt like CMLL didn't want Magica giving Kung Fu anything & wanted people to realize it was a total mismatch. No graphics for the tournament or anything though in following weeks we would see them even if we didn't get any of the matches.

Tag Title switch! Kinda? This was an interesting match because you get the sense the crowd knew the tecnicos stood no chance here. Zero. They got in a quick second fall comeback to tie things up but it was mostly a Head Hunters dominated match start to finish. A fan throws a beer at one of them at one point but security is over there before the Head Hunter can leave the ring which probably saved that fan's life. It's a clean finish with the Head Hunters winning the belts but in a very non-CMLL thing they keep beating up the tecnicos afterwards including belt shots. Maya reverses his decision & gives the win to the tecnicos but the Head Hunters grab the belts & walk off. In an interview they claim they scored the three count & thus the belts are theirs to keep. The commisioner seemed unaware this was gonna happen or played his role perfectly because he seems legit pissed off. Good angle. The belts end up vacated in case you care.

A rare rudos vs rudos match to end the month of October. Although this is mostly an angle only as Satanico does not get along with his partners (Mexico vs Puerto Rico heat). It spills into a brawl on the floor which gets chaotic & is something the likes of which you'd never see in current CMLL with fans running away + a commisioner taking a spill getting caught in the cross fire. They make it back inside where all four rudos put the boots to the Head Hunters. Some angry promos afterwards. Very enjoyable!

Kicking off November with a 1 match show! There has to be missing TV here we'll never get to see because it doesn't make sense only two matches aired on the weekend. They had more than 1 hour time slot. Either way this match was supposed to have Bestia Salvaje but he got suspended for his actions in the hair match. This leads to a very un-CMLL thing (credit: Negro Casas, booker) where we get a Monday Night Wars era distraction finish as Salvaje distracts Negro from the aisle so Scorpio Jr. can pin him. Salvaje then declares he has a BIG SURPRISE ("MUCHAS SORPRESAS!!!") coming soon. Don't laugh, it really was a big surprise! Also notable in this match is La Fiera seems to get legit busted open having his head smashed into the ringpost & maybe a nail was sticking out or something. It's a lot of blood, the type you'd only get if he was in the middle of a feud with someone which he isn't. He's clearly out of it for the rest of the match too.

Before we even get to the matches - this is the TV show where CMLL embraces technology. We've already got the tiny monitor so we have graphics for intros & they've been inserting graphics with facts or mid-match interviews. This week we get the first ever Momentos Estelares segment hosted by Morales & Magadan. It's explained the fans will choose what moments were the best of the show & an address is put on the screen to send your suggestions. They've also got contests going where you can write a fan letter & win a mask or some part of a wrestler's gear. Hector Garza does a promo announcing this week's winner. This is a throwback to when the lucha TV boom was happening in 1990/1991 & they had a similar segment that ended up making Octagon really popular. It's an easy way for the promotion to see who is actually over. Now you have the internet where you can see how everyone gets buried equally by the haters. There's also a segment where Ringo Mendoza & Shocker explain how a submission hold is applied. I believe this segment would stick for a few weeks before disappearing. Momentos Estelares made it all the way to... mmm... I wanna say 2010? They brought it back on Cadena Tres for a while too in like 2012/2013. The final thing is we get brackets & standings update for the Gran Alternativa League currently going on. That was very cool. I'd like to see this concept return to give lightning matches some meaning. As for the matches on TV we get highlights of the semi-finals to crown a new CMLL Women's Champion. Even though they already had a tournament running on all the shows, it's hard for me to believe this was just a 4 person tournament held on one night. We have to be missing something somewhere. The Lady Apache/Asari final gets to air in full but it's barely a 5 minute match. Asari does bust out the Skytwister Press which was unfathomable back in 1996. I remember I had no time for women's wrestling but even that made my jaw drop. I don't think the people in Arena Mexico could even process it. Lady Apache wins the belt. Crowd really didn't care about any of this. Semi-main is focused on Negro Casas/Scorpio Jr. feuding. Casas rips up Scorpio's mask pretty good to the point you can see most of his face. He gets his win back from the previous week in two straight falls. Porky was very entertaining in this one. Then we come to the main event! An exclamation point because this is a real main event! I put this match on the same VHS best of comp I mentioned somewhere above re: a mini's trios match. This was one of the rare times even before my full lucha brain had formed that I apprecited the differently worked & paced CMLL style. You can see Garza benefitting from working with three great rudos like this. He doesn't need to be nervous, he knows they'll be there for him & will be working hard to make him look like a star. The third fall is just wonderful start to finish but let's focus on the finish. After Lizmark/Apolo get eliminated - something missing from current lucha b/c they don't see it done in WWE or AEW so it must be wrong - we get Garza taking Emilio out with a big dive leaving the captains Dos Caras/Dr. Wagner Jr. to settle things. They do about 3 minutes of very dramatic & beautifully done nearfalls with Wagner refusing to stay down. It leads to one of the most amazing finishing sequences you'll ever see. I'm sure they did this same thing a million times in the UWA. But guess what? We have none of that on video. We have this match on video. So I'm allowed to mark out! Wagner gets a big win heading into his match with the hyped special guest coming in next week - Jushin Lyger! ****1/4 main event. Absolutely go hunt this match down, sit back & enjoy!

 

I remember being very excited when we found the magazine with this lineup because up until that point we only had the final 4 teams since that's what aired on TV. So with this lineup not only came the full field but we also learned who advanced out of the Gran Alternativa League that took place over the last month! This is the kind of thing maybe 3 other people in the world even remotely care about, a sad fact I've come to peace with. The first Gran Alternativa semi-main has a great finish with Garza getting clotheslined by Karloff Lagarde Jr. but in the process flips over Satanico's back trapping him in an inverted Gory Special. As Karloff runs over to break it up, Niebla comes off the top with a plancha over Garza holding Satanico. Just a wonderful spot that you will probably never in your lifetime see again because very few current luchadors have any interest in studying older lucha as opposed to US wrestling clips on social media. The other semi-main has Mascara Magica take out Dos Caras with a tope by accident leaving him easy picking for Bucanero & Emilio. The final is a quick but fun 5 minute match. Garza/Niebla do cool ringpost topes. The way they booked this to end is so differen than it'd be done these days which is actually a good thing. It comes down to Emilio (the veteran) needing to win it all for Bucanero by beating Garza which he does. It was a cool surprising finish but it also didn't make it seem like Bucanero earned much of anything. The semi-main is actually more notable for the entrances over the match itself. Both Bestia/Scorpio come out in new capes that have hoods. Very fancy looking. Why is this notable? Well, keep reading I guess. This match goes only two falls with Casas getting the best of Scorpio & Bestia at the end + a first fall DQ. Bestia cries (literally... he was great doing this bit) how Casas only really won one fall & this was a best of three. Crowd really gets on him. He again says he's got a surprise coming & Negro will rue the day he messed with us! Main event is a very famous match. Liger is in for a short excursion. Shinjiro Ohtani was supposed to be here too but got injured. I have no idea what they were gonna do with Ohtani. Liger ends up with Flying Kid Ichihara (aka Onita Jr.) as his second. Dr. Wagner Jr. is crazy over as the guy representing Mexico here. They wanted to see him beat the famous foreigner. How crazy different is that from today's Mexico fan mentality? Match is very good as you'd expect although would probably be considered too slow by today's standards of what lucha libre is. Comes down to Liger trying to put on a figure-four leglock three times before getting rolled up in a small package and........... pinned! Crowd explodes! I'm not sure Wagner was the favorite going in so this really seemed like quite the surprise. It's always been noted this was the match that propelled Wagner to "idolo" status in Arena Mexico. Liger was always considered one of the top foreigners & beating him was no small thing. Especially cleanly on TV. Liger even acknowledges Wagner post-match. It's from this point forward that Wagner pretty much becomes the defender of Arena Mexico to all incoming foreigners.

Just the one match for TV. A total nothing match. Rudos dominating 95% of it, winning in two falls clean humiliating the tecnicos but mainly Mr. Niebla who has his mask torn up by Guerrero De La Muerte. It strikes me we never did figure out who Jaguar was? Maybe I'll make that my mission after finishing 1996 up. He seems to be around by name starting in late 1992 but really only wrestles in 1996 & early 1997. He must have had a different gimmick, switched back into being Jaguar & then left the company. It's weird for a regular guy there is no record of who he was. Should also note before this match was the second ever Momentos Estelares & two weeks in they already appear bored with it. Of the 7 clips, 6 were from the same match. LOL

Only the top two air on TV but the main event is a biggie! But first the semi-main... not much happening here. Rayo is just a fucking waste of my time. Satanico must have felt the same watching Rayo no-sell Bucanero in his first high profile match. He goes after Rayo hard, maybe a bit too hard but it's not at the level of a shoot. Rayo clearly fights back not expecting this but I feel like it was just Satanico kinda trying to get Rayo to be a professional & act interested in the match. Lizmark Jr., who as noted earlier just came back from missing 18 months with a broken leg, does an asai moonsault way overshooting Bucanero & landed himself in the second row. Scary but luckily he was alright. Finish is actually surprising as Rayo gets rolled up by Emilio & pinned. Rayo claims low blow to save face. Of course he does. Then the main event which makes all the headlines the next day. Advertised as Dandy/Garza/Casas vs Bestia/Scorpio/FELINO. The tecnicos come out first. The rudos second. Except one is missing. Felino, by process of elimination. As the match starts with a brawl here comes Felino in this giant cape - the same cape Bestia Salvaje had on the week before out of nowhere. TELLING STORIES, version CMLL. Felino hangs around ringside for a bit watching as the tecnicos take control. Then he leaps into the ring, tears off the cape......... to reveal El Hijo Del Sanot! WHAT??? Yes, it's the Santo rudo turn. Though not immediately! He attacks Negro Casas but won't touch Dandy or Garza. The announcers (who BTW kept pointing out the mysterious guy had silver boots, not what Felino wears) keep saying Santo is not a rudo, he's just going after his arch rival. Midway through the match that changes as Dandy lays into Santo who fights back & we have the full rudo turn. Crazy heat. Wild match with lots of stiff shots, Casas bleeding, Dandy pissed off, heated promos afterwards, etc. It's hard for me to believe anyone reading this has not seen this match but if you haven't you should immediately do so. An all-timer lucha moment & one that kinda sets things in motion for the first CMLL Arena Mexico sellout since October 1, 1993 (that would be the 9/19/97 Anniversary Show w/ Santo/Casas on top). This is really good stuff that probably can't be duplicated today. The turn could. But the amount of violence & how realistic the fighting felt would not be allowed in front of the tourists. CMLL these days likes their wrestlers to do more performative work that trying to convey realism. I know... realism in lucha? What are you talking about Rob? Well folks, you've been listening to the wrong people explain lucha to you all these years.

More of the Niebla/GDLM issue here. Pretty hot crowd although not a well drawing show as you could see soooooooooooo many empty seats. Maybe worse than those Sabado Retro shows of the 2016-2019 era. The four guys who were meant to play background roles in this match were actually the most fun part of the match! Super Astro especially showed so much energy. Low blow finish as you'd expect. Not a match you need to see.

What a show! Mark this one down as a classic - a word I don't use lightly! Semi-main is a really good match with a nice mix of vets & youngsters. Bucanero shows signs of what we'd come to know down the line - he's a bump freak! Took some wild sallidas in this one. There's a fascinating moment in the third fall where Silver King & Rey Bucanero seem to get into it legit. I don't know what causes it, I think Silver King was just initiating Bucanero or maybe just trying to give him some cred in front of Arena Mexico fans by letting him show he's no punk. He throws some legit shots at Bucanero who gets heated and they have a couple seconds where it's very tense before Silver King front facelocks him & things get back under control. Nothing wrong with that. They handled it like pros, match finished just fine with the two even interacting again. You love to see it. But that wasn't the only violence you'd see on this show. Main event is the official Santo rudo debut. A match FOR THE AGES! You just gotta see this one. I could list off 10 things that happen in this match you will never see in modern Arena Mexico starting with blood of course. I don't wanna overstate this so I'll just say - the heat was off the fucking charts all match long. If you said this was the loudest crowd CMLL had in this building since Rayo/Cien Caras, I'd believe it. At one point Santo grabs a row of chairs and flings them at Dandy near the ring. Wild! So many stiff shots. These guys certainly wanted to make you feel they really hated each other. I guess most people take away from this match the finish where Garza for some reason only once in his life decides I need to do a shooting star press to the floor. He gets halfway... no... not even... maybe 25% of the way over before he bails & is lucky he had two rudos standing there to land on or he'd have gone splat. The entire sequence with the Santo tope, Bestia almost crashing & then Garza's attempted SSP is out of this world insane. The finish was so so so so so so so so good with Casas & Dandy stomping Santo's head in as he tries to cover up. A legit gang assault. They flip him over and pin him. That's it. THAT'S A REAL MAN FINISH! *****? Sure. I wouldn't fight you. An all-timer match. Afterwards we get Dandy asking for a mask vs hair match vs either one of the two. Negro says why wait for next week? They gang assault Santo agian & this time yank his mask off to major heat (tecnico cheers!). Bestia Salvaje who started this all promising a surprise is basically in tears which leads to Negro laughing maniacally & taunting him over the mic. It's glorious. Everything about this is. An all-time trios match stemming from a legendary angle. What we get next week is of course the 3 way apuesta match.

One match show according to these listings & a JIP match at that! Niebla & GDLM are feuding here. Niebla gets the win & then makes title match challenges which at least solves the mystery as to whether their upcoming match was a title match or not (it was). Super Astro was once again great in what we got to see. BUT WAIT! Here's an Easter Egg for anyone who is actually spending their time reading. I found the mini's match on this show aired on TeleLatino here in Canada so I had it recorded! Bonus mini's! It's a JIP match that only goes two falls but what we see is more than enough to call this a win. Some really great action. Orito/Felinito are starting their feud which would never end (both jump to AAA, presumably after finding out what their mask match payoff would be). The finishing sequence is so cool... something which (sounding redundant at this point) you'd never see today. Cicloncito/Damiancito end up eliminated. Dragoncito takes out Pierrothito with an incredible cornerpost flip tope! I never understood how he managed to pull that off. Never seems to be enough space to make that work. This leaves Orito/Felinito to do nearfalls before Orito (Mike Segura for those who don't know) traps his rival in a wacky upside down submission for the win. What we saw was no less than ***3/4.

With hindsight it's very amusing to see Bestia/Emilio/Scorpio teaming here as just random rudos knowing a few years from this point they'd become Los Guapos together & then Los Talibanes. I didn't do a check but I have to presume this is the first time they all teamed together. It's a two fall match ending with a weird DQ. Definitely planned DQ but weird in the sense you don't see a finish like this very often. They did the deal like Octagon/Fuerza where Emilio ties Atlantis' mask to the ropes so he's trapped. Emilio was beating on him, then ran to knock him off the apron but Atlantis went flying out of his mask so it was a DQ. The replay made it crystal clear Atlantis took off his own mask so not sure why they had to show that. La Fiera takes a nice sallida bump at one point but not much else happening here. So we move onto the main event or as the ring announcer says "the last match in this season of Arena Mexico". Yes, remember when Arena Mexico had seasons? Probably not. I'm old. This was the hottest thing out there when I was getting into lucha & had access to the internet. The "Hijo Del Santo Rudo" comp tape Highspots (well, Michael pre-Highspots) made was on every tape trading website you'd visit. So I definitely saw it back then, definitely re-watched it over the years, but even so watching it back now with my full lucha brain being matured you find a way to spot new things. Such as NOBODY knew the rules for this match except the wrestlers themselves. The ring announcer says "we will start with a battle royle (3 way match) where the winner is eliminated & doesn't have to be compete in the apuesta match". OK. So they have a short 3 way deal where obviously Santo is ganged up on & defeated. Then the ring announcer has to correct himself by noting "Santo will now have to put his mask on the line later against the winner of El Dandy vs Negro Casas". The TV announcers say this exact same thing. So after a very short match Casas submits Dandy. The ring announcer then has to announce "Negro Casas won so he saves his hair, it will now be Santo vs Dandy mask vs hair!" COMPLETE UTTER CONFUSION. Casas cuts a promo saying there will come a time where he & Santo meet. He was right. I was always a fan of the losers advance to the apuesta match because it makes sense... you want to protect your mask or hair at all costs so you shouldn't be winning matches to get put in the spot to lose the big match. But in a situation like this I can see where it made no sense for the losers to advance. Casas just looked like a coward after months/weeks challenging Santo to have won his way out of the chance to get what he was demanding. The crowd boo'ed him as he left. It came off very rudo-ish. Crowd reaction overall was fascinating because after 2 weeks of being booed like crazy, this crowd was very pro-Santo - especially against Dandy at the end. And that's the big match... Santo vs Dandy. A classic. Dandy hits a gusher at some point & is leaving blood trails anywhere he stumbles. Santo is laying his shots in. Crowd is rabid. I love the idiot facebook fans of today who talk about Mistico always winning & everything being predictable. Nobody thought Santo was losing his mask to Dandy on a 2 week build here but the heat was NUCLEAR at points. You see the disconnect? Santo attempts his camel clutch a couple times before finally locking it in and submitting Dandy to a huge pop. Fucking awesome. Let's go with ****3/4 but I wouldn't blame you for a full *****. I should also note the match was 2/3 falls even after the 3 way & Casas/Dandy match so in theory Dandy worked 5 falls total. A valiant effort. And that wraps up the 1996 Arena Mexico season! Off to Coliseo we go to finish things up.

Tuesday match is just more Niebla/GDLM stuff as we literally start right away with Niebla's mask being all torn up. Now I'm less certain their match ended up a title match because we cut to commercial just as the ring announcer is saying "super libre next week". We may never know! A nothing match beyond the usual setup stuff.

Friday show starts with one of the dullest CMLL matches you can put together although I credit Lynx for trying to be entertaining! It is notable for at least one thing. The announcers point out two wrestlers are wearing neon green & pink armbands. This is to make it clear who the captains are. I wonder if this is the magic elixir to CMLL going back to captain's rules when the AEW talent are around? The other matches from this show are *part* of a one night tournament. We assumed based on what aired on TV it was a one night tournament & these were the final four. HOLD YOUR HORSES - BREAKING NEWS! Apparently this was a one night round robin tournament meaning all four teams had to wrestle against each other with 3/1/0 scoring system. Amazingly Alfonso Morales could not figure this out even though I'm pretty sure he's a soccer anaylst when not doing lucha libre. So basically this means they didn't do a seeding battle royale (no need - hooray!) & got the same number of matches they would doing a normal 8 team tournament. I'm trying to figure out how many missing matches that leaves us with on this show because that's a lot of matches & at least one went to a 10 minute draw. Based on the Momentos that airs the following week the missing match was Cicloncito Ramirez & Ultimo Dragoncito vs Damiancito El Guerrero & Felinito. Also, it seems Silver King & Brazo De Plata won the round robin deal. But hey here's another fun fact for you - this was Hector Garza's CMLL farewell. I doubt they knew it at the time but who knows. He had already made the decision to leave & is in AAA to start 1997. What a whimper of a way to go out. At the time this was considered a huge blow to CMLL. Garza was THE young guy they had been building up for at least two years.

From this we get to see the minis match & tercera. More armbrand discussion, it's the hot topic apparently. The minis match is actually a pretty run of the mill dull affair for the first two falls but we get going in the third fall thankfully. They were actually still doing the Orito/Felinito feuding deal but added in an issue with Cicloncito Ramirez & Damiancito El Guerrero (which starts the build to their EPIC 1997 title match). Two completely seperate minis feuds in one match! This ain't 2025 folks! Cicloncito ends up pinning Damiancito with an awesome spinning huracanrana. Good stuff. Tercera is wrestled 100% totally clean. It's one of these matches that 1996 Rob would have been bored to tears by. 2006 Rob would have hand waved it. 2016 Rob would have given it a chance but eyes would have wandered. 2026 Rob paid total attention & is going to give it a gentleman's ***1/2! Better than average, didn't hit that extra level. But the finish was fuckin awesome with Astro Rey Jr. exchanging nearfalls with Brazo De Oro before countering his monkey flip into a modified Boston Crab. This is actually done intentionally. Astro Rey Jr. had begun wrestling clean & getting wins clean over the tecnicos who would congratulate him afterwards. The rudos eventually got tired of it & within a month Astro Rey Jr. finds himself on the tecnico side. Nuance... how about that. Slightly different than the calendar hitting November 1st, 2025 & suddenly all these undercard nobodies in CMLL have nuclear heat with each other as we head to a cage match.

Closing time for us (TV viewers since the next week of TV is non-existent) but not officially for CMLL. We get to see the top two from this. Rambo shows up bald having lost his hair the previous Sunday to Brazo De Plata ending that Brazos vs Rambo deal from earlier in the year. Looks like the barber butchered him, he has some bad cuts on the top of his head. Decent little match but nothing above that gentleman's ***1/2 above! Finish is actually fucked up as Bucanero is supposed to power bomb Fiera to counter a torito but their momentum causes them to fall over. Bucanero still goes for the cover & Maya counts 1... 2... Fiera kicks out... but Maya knows this is the finish so he counts 3. The wrestlers wanna keep going but Maya won't let them. In a weird way this worked out just fine because the idea was to pin Fiera - we know this because of the post-match promo coming up. But it also was done to emphasize he had the armband on so he was the captain. You gotta pay attention to these things! Silver King grabs the mic & is furious Fiera let the team down. Needs to hit the gym & be more prepared! Sounds like a Busca De Un Idolo judge. This is the start of Silver King going rudo in early 1997 & wouldn't you know it... eventually having a hair match with FIera in April. How do we get booking like this in current CMLL? Nuanced, long term stories. Amazing. To close things off we join the main event just as the whistle blows and............ a big fight breaks out in the crowd. We don't see it but we see everyone's attention turned to it. Porky is hilariously trying to get the cameraman to film the ring & not whatever is going on in the crowd. Fat chance! This takes a while to calm down. Back to the real action - Casas uses an awesome armbar to win the first fall at the same time as Porky crushes Emilio with a sitdown splash. Match ends with the rudos unmasking Lizmark Jr. as this starts an issue that leads to a Lizmark Jr. vs Bestia Salvaje match in early 1997. Show ends with a Merry Christmas video from the Lizmarks.

And that's that for 1996! For now. Who knows what Roy may randomly pop up with as he goes through his finds. I had fun looking back on this time period where I discovered & fell in love with lucha libre. I was always more of an AAA guy for obvious reasons but I think the CMLL stuff holds up so much better over time. That's an explanation for another day. But the reason I started re-watching this stuff is quite honestly I feel lucha libre is completely losing it's identity these days. It's undeniable when you are watching this stuff from 1996 at the same time as stuff from 2026. I've never been more down on lucha in general as I am currently. Which I have no issue expressing here. If you're reading this blog, you found it yourself. If you made it this far, you care what I have to say. Which is cool. Thank you. I am not out there saying hey come read my blog & I've told the guy with the bots to not link to anything here. I am not looking to ruin anyone's current fun digesting lucha. I keep these thoughts off Twitter as much as I can aside from the occasional snide remarks. Watching & writing about this stuff has kept me sane & I've found it cathartic. There were many times I was updating this blog while 2025 CMLL shows were taking place & I found myself more interested writing about this 1996 match than anything going on live. It's not that I think all lucha sucks these days, there's still good stuff to find. It's just becoming less & less. The most unpopular opinion I seem to share these days is when I tell people I became a lucha libre fan to see lucha libre. If I wanted to see US wrestling or Puroresu, I had those options available. I chose lucha libre. So in 2025/2026 when that option is being taken away because there's only one way to do things & it's the WWE way - it stings. I know why it's happening & I know there's no going back. Once you tell people the way we were doing it was wrong, this is the actual right way - it's game over. You can't change your mind in 6 months & tell people haha we were just kidding 2/3 falls is great & Mexican talent is #1! It doesn't work like that. CMLL was the one place in Mexico that held out the longest, you have to give them credit for that. But they are also very much talking out their ass these days with the Orgullosamente Mexicana nonsense. At least with ex-AAA, WWE bought them. WWE can do as they wish. AEW has not bought CMLL. AEW won't buy CMLL. Yet CMLL is going out of their way to Americanize the promotion as fast as possible to satisfy their partner group. Tony Khan doesn't give a fuck if his guys have to do 2/3 fall matches. AEW talent doesn't care either. It's CMLL that is ashamed of their own history & traditions. So soon enough when all lucha looks exactly like any Collision episode you'd see, don't get mad at only WWE or Vince or Paul or whoever. Blame CMLL & those in charge for sacrificing their own tradition in the hopes of being accepted by America.

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Things I came across in my 1996 viewing that were just normal lucha bits but made lucha libre it's own unique thing, things that either don't or very rarely exist as we head into 2026:

- 2/3 falls matches
- blood
- nearfalls in the 3rd fall of trios matches
- multiple finishes at same time
- tag matches with drama where one guy has to fight back after when his partner is eliminated
- multi-person submission holds
- comedy spots
- tecnicos piling onto many rudos for a pin (always got a big pop)
- action outside the ring at same time as action inside the ring
- mask ripping besides just in August & September
- rudos being comedic foils for tecnicos
- dives out of nowhere without encouraging to clap along for 10 seconds

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Anyways... I'll probably go back to 1995 CMLL next & maybe mix in 1996 AAA along the way. I first saw CMLL in July or August 1995. I remember it clear as day. It was a match with Rayo De Jalisco Jr. - and yet somehow I still became a fan. Imagine that. But it was always the AAA stuff that caught my attention for the obvious reasons. It's fun to see what holds up & what doesn't. Also to see how unfairly CMLL was treated in these years when it comes to newsletter ratings or "smart fan" comments. I hope my opinion is considered of highly enough that if some random 13 year old like I was one day comes across lucha libre for the first time & decides holy shit this is cool I want to see more of it - maybe they stumble across this blog & get pointed in the direction of some cool lucha. The chances of this are very low as I mentioned because what lucha looks like in 1996 is not what that 13 year old will find in 2026 & onwards but there's always that one weird person who goes against the norms & isn't afraid to embrace something that is very different even if everyone around them says no that's the wrong way of doing it. I was that person & proud of it.