1993 CMLL

Entering 1993 CMLL is actually not doing too bad. Obviously nowhere near where they were pre-AAA's formation but it's not like the promotion was circling the drain. That would come in a few months time. The Pierroth/Supremo mask match to end 1992 drew fine & things were calming down with the jumps. The star power had been diminished greatly but they still had names left that could draw, it was just a matter of booking them in scenarios the fans cared about which ends up being an issue. There was also the issue that the CMLL style was still stuck in the 80's. *I* have no problem with that now watching in 2026. The RobViper who likely got a tape of this first TV show in 1998 or 1999 probably would disagree. It was a much slower style than AAA was presenting, far less spectacular & the rosters was still full of guys who to the average person looked like they had been wrestling for 20-30 years even though they hadn't (Mogur for example). It was very colorless. Later in 1993 they'd attempt to rectify that issue by attempting to push some new faces who did spectacular things but it takes a while for them to realize they are lagging behind big time. The good news is they at least realized it unlike the UWA which still exists at this time & is trying to draw using Canek vs (random D level guest)... and it only got worse in 1994.

I chose 1993 instead of moving into 1997 just because 1993 is a mostly complete year of TV, aided by the fact they lose TV by the end of the year. I say lose in the sense either nobody was recording it or we just haven't found the people who did. CMLL kinda goes dark post-September. So it should be a breeze to get through 1993. For the most part it's only Friday shows airing, usually 4 matches & they'd toss in a highlight or two of whatever happened on Tuesday. At one point they end up being in a situation where they can't show main event matches because they start working with UWA people & the matches with UWA wrestlers are not allowed to be shown. I wanted to move onto 1994 actually because that year is somewhat a blind spot for me. I've seen much of it but have little memory & there are certianly various matches I just never ended up collecting so it'd kinda be like brand new footage. But in going through the list I put together I realized I am also unable to locate much of the 1994 footage I need so I contacted the appropriate people & should have it by the time I finish up with 1993 CMLL.

The Tuesday match we get highlights from is Pierroth defending the CMLL Light Heavyweight Title against Pirata Morgan. The differences between CMLL/AAA immediately smack you in the face. The entire parts of the match we see are Pierroth working over Pirata's leg. Pirata sells it huge, almost can't get back in the ring to beat the 20 count at one point. It's a two fall sweep for Pierroth using the same figure-four leglock in each fall. We only saw about 180 seconds of it but I imagine the 15 (?) minute version would have been much of the same leg work. You can be a fan of these two & have no issue with the slower style but surely you have to understand why the average fan was gravitating more towards AAA which would never have presented a match like that, a match which wouldn't have been out of place on an Arena Coliseo show in 1973. Moving to the New Year's Day show we get the top four matches. Minis! Get used to them! 1993 is actually a great year for this division as they get almost regularly featured thanks to the 4 match TV format. It's hard to keep track of who's who when it comes to these minis since they get featured far less in later years. Orito is Mike Segura who had been an Arena Naucalpan & Mexico State regular since at least 1988. Felinito is the future Mach 1. He would be tied with Segura througout their careers so I'm sure he had a Naucalpan gimmick we are unaware of (Christian Diaz?). Gargolita would go on to become Guerrerito Maya & Bracito De Oro, yes the same Bracito who loses his mask at the Kids Day Arena Mexico show in 2010. Aguilita Solitaria is actually the second version of this gimmick. The first was played by the guy who would go on to become Super Munequito in AAA. This version sticks in CMLL until at least 1996. Why is it Pena got so much shit for re-gimmicking people but CMLL got a free pass when a bunch of their minis left & they just replaced them with a new Piratita Morgan (Virus) & Aguilita Solitaria? They beat Pena to the punch by years. This match is solid enough but FAR from spectacular. So the same narrative re CMLL vs AAA continues. You can't even compare these minis to the AAA ones. Like comparing MLB to single A ball. CMLL had a couple spectacular minis but these guys (aside from Orito) were the bottom ranked ones & you can see why in their performances. The good thing is they had a hot crowd who stayed into the entire match. The lighting for this show is very amateur. You can see the giant lights set up in each corner of the building to try & illuminate the ring completely. Again, a far cry from AAA's production at the time. In the third fall we get a plancha to the outside by Aguilita. Felinito then takes a sallida de bandera & goes for a stroll for some reason... but Orito doesn't seem to notice & takes off for an intended huge somersault plancha... UH-OH! Thankfully at the last second he notices Felinito is nowhere to be found so he dives to nowhere but hooks the rope to somewhere land on the apron safely. More embarassing than anything painful. He improvises by giving Felintio a spinning backbreaker (kinda) outside the ring. Mini tecnicos win the match by countout. Not the hottest start to the year! Next up we have Mogur in a tercera! Dude this was their big young star of 1988! What are you doing in a tercera with Shogun??? Send help! Shogun is an Octagon knock-off character. Felino is also slumming it here even though he is so talented & should be way higher up but don't worry his time is coming very soon. The match is full of instances where the rudos end up hitting each other & getting progressively more & more angry at each other. It's a funny bit 80% of the time. I thought they were over doing it a bit since the minis match had similar spots but it actually was leading somewhere. America had a cool submission to win the second fall for his team. We get a couple dives in the third fall that come up a bit short like Incognito's twisting plancha off the 2nd rope & Plata's backwards dive off the second turnbuckle. This leaves Mogur vs Felino & Felino submits him for the rudo victory. A good enough effort for this crew. Semi-main is a two fall special due to an angle! Yes, an angle! Eat your heart out 2026 CMLL! Rudos take control right from the start & win the first fall. Tecnicos make a comeback. We see even more spots where the rudos accidentally hit each other & I'm readying in my head to blast the repetitive nature of these matches already except... then comes the big moment. Out of nowhere by accident Dandy hits Mano Negra! Tecnico friendly fire! Very rare! Negra gets knocked outside. Dandy no-sells the mistake & just keeps dominating. The rudos turn the tables & put him in La Careta. Mano Negra enters to make the save but instead of saving Dandy he just decides to low blow Solitario standing on top of the mountain so the tecnicos lose 2-0. Dandy & Demon are very unhappy with Mano Negra afterwards. He claims he was just so angry at getting hit by accident, he lost total control. Yeah, I don't know if I buy that one but we'll see how it plays out next week! Main event has the weird tecnico trio of Pierroth (top tecnico), Brazo De Plata & Oro (rising young star). Unfortunately they don't have much to work with here as Blondy is very charasmatic but not a great in-ring guy, Markus Jr is passable at this time & Emilio Charles Jr was totally mailing this one in. Blondy is doing the USA bit that Sam Adonis would steal/borrow/emulate during the dead CMLL period of 2016-2018. It's a good gimmick to get easy heat but it also wears on you having to see it over & over again. Anyone with that gimmick should be in for 3-4 months to lose a big apuesta match & then get out of town. Right? Right. Nobody can disagree with me on a blog nobody knows exists. You're a genius, Rob. Tecnicos take the first fall. Oro hits a gorgeous moonsault or so I assume since one of the referees stepped right in front of the camera as he was flying in the air. Rudos take the second fall. Comeback in the third fall by the tecnicos. Get used to these match recaps, CMLL certainly had a preferred formula around this time! Porky mocks Blondy's strut. Very flat finish where the rudos just grabs the tecnicos & beat them very unconvincingly. I was caught off guard since the video is like 29 minutes long & this happened at the 19 minute mark or so. I thought maybe I confused a non-finish earlier & this was just the second fall ending but nope. Game over. There are like 5-6 minutes of pointless replays & the announcers get a few words from the tecnicos including Oro saying he wants a mask match. With Markus? I don't get it. Then we get a Dia De Reyes video that is not exactly a production masterpiece. 1993 CMLL... off to a.... erm... tepid start.

No Tuesday highlights available online & I was not gonna bother paying Jeff Lynch for the DVD just to see 90 seconds of a Brazos vs Markus/Aguila India/Cro-Magnon match described as "awful". Somehow we'll just have to use our imagination. No opener here which sucks because it looks much better than the segunda to kick things off which is Filoso & Kato Kung Lee Jr. vs Mestizo & Panico. Panico looks absolutely ancient. Like someone picked up from the 70's & dropped onto this 1993 TV show. Mestizo looks double Panico's age. Do you see the problem CMLL was facing competing with AAA here? For the record Panico was *only* 38. Mestizo may have been around the same age. We cetainly aged differently back in the 90's, that's for sure. Tecnicos are both young, both very green. The rudos are clearly here to help guide them along which is a tough task. Kato Jr does all his dad's spots of course only a bit slower. He got dropped hard from an electric chair position on the finish. Rudos take it in three falls of a very bland match. Next up was the MOTN! If Ringo Mendoza is in your 1993 MOTN, you got problems! No Cachorro here, Ciclon Ramirez steps in which improves the match! His segments were exciting. At one point Guerrero Del Futuro takes a flying armdrag from Ciclon & sells it with a huge backwards bump over the top rope that you don't really seen done any more these days. Make a note. Or just do another Destroyer, I dunno. Guerreros work well together doing the miscommunication bits. Ringo had a 30 second bit where he looked awesome with them bumping & being afraid of his spin kick. Finish kinda comes outta nowhere, Mogur just submits Maya, Ciclon pins Damian & Ringo for no reason submits Futuro even though the match was ruled over. The gentleman's rating has lowered for 1993 CMLL. We're going with **3/4 here. Semi-main continues the Mano Negra turn. Lasertron is Hector Guerrero. If you didn't know that, it's OK. If you watched this first fall & didn't realize Lasertron was not a Mexican - re-evaluate what you know about wrestling. He & Kahoz were having a hell of a time getting on the same page. Finish of the fall is fantastic in idea but the execution was actually too good which ruined the rest of the match! Oro is throwing MS-1 around. He gets backdropped onto the apron & goes for a springboard something......... but slips & burns HARD on his shoulder. Rudos immediately take the fall. BOTCHAMANIA! Not so fast! Upon replay you see Mano Negra very clearly shake the ropes to throw Oro off. Oro's fall was so realistic... maybe too much... he's done after this. The doctor checks on him & he leaves. Next week he gets replaced so it stands to reason he got legit injured doing this great spot. This means the match has now gone off the rails because clearly they had more stuff planned with Mano Negra. Instead we get a very clumsy Lasertron dropkick that hits both Kahoz & Mano Negra who both sell it although I think he was just trying to hit Mano Negra for the big oops spot. Mano Negra has had enough, turns on Lasertron, rudos win in two falls. Post-match is a somewhat extended beatdown of Lasertron of everyone. This is the official Mano Negra turn after weeks of teases going back to 1992. Crowd was very into the turn. Main event is the start of the first big CMLL program of 1993 - El Brazo vs Fabuloso Blondy. Please, please, don't go running to skip forward to that hair match. I know, very exciting stuff. Very Negro Casas vs Sam Adonis 2016 vibes. There really isn't much to say about the match to be honest. Porky/Magic did a couple decent things in the third fall. Porky did his plancha off the apron which got a huge reaction. The big thing is Blondy fouling Brazo which somehow the refs miss even though it was very blatant (more Casas/Adonis vibes!). The match goes on for another 30 seconds or so, Brazo gets back in the ring very upset & fouls Blondy right in full view of everyone so a DQ is called. Post-match he challenges Blondy to a singles match & delcares this a Mexico vs US war. This is nearing the end of Blondy's run in Mexico, he'd been a somewhat regular for close to 5 years. He had lost his hair, he had done the Mexico vs US bit, El Brazo is not a very appealing guy to be defending Mexico's honor... I wasn't feeling any of this. Second straight below average TV show for 1993.

Tuesday highlight is final of a one night tag team tournament (very common back in the day) featuring mostly undercard wrestlers. The final is Filoso & El Metalico vs Arkangel & Guerrero De La Muerte. It's just a minute or so. Weird finish where Arkangel takes off his boot at ringside to clock Filoso who then gets pinned easily. It was set up so poorly the refs just had to look away at nothing to avoid seeing what was happening. The good thing is noody saw it since the turnout looked abysmal. Erm... except for the fact they felt the need to show this on TV. Moving onto Friday we have a four match show - the women get cut. What's that TV show theme with the lyrics that go "those were the days..."? Kicking things off we have a tag match with four eternal opening match guys. Angel De Plata would hang out in CMLL from 1992 to 1999. Probably just a guy who went through the school & they figured they owed it to him to give him bookings even though he was never gonna turn into anything... kinda like a Volcano type. He's very average. Halcon De Plata only sticks around for a bit under this gimmick, surely found a new one. LuchaWiki has him as the eventual Super Mega but also has his birthday as 1977. Late 1977. Which would make him 14 or 15 years old at the time of this match. Either the birthday year is wrong or there's been some gimmick confusion because this was no teenager. At this time CMLL had Aguila De Plata, Angel De Plata, Halcon De Plata & Brazo De Plata... plus Plata & Platino. Let's not even count the minis as well. El Fiero is the ex & future Mario Prado. Eternal undercard solid hand & musician! His career eventually ends in 2000 when Ricky Marvin takes his hair. Ricky retired a couple older gentleman that year. Finally we have La Garra. A mystery man! I don't know who this was. I just posted some clips on my IG before coming to write this so maybe someone will identify him for me. He's very good so I doubt he was a rookie. Best guy is a Raul Reyes circuit guy since he was on the smaller side. It's a pretty good match, rudos were bumping around well. Halcon did a couple interesting things by 1993 standards, probably not with 2026 eyes. Clean win for the tecnicos after a Halcon plancha to the floor on Garra & second rope diving tope by Angel on Fiero inside the ring. Lucha Libre Weekly had this at ***! I'll go **3/4. Let's not see the bar too high this early in the year! Next up is the Cavernicolas in action. A very fun rudo trio who doesn't get their due. It was always weird to me seeing Popitekus part of this crew because he was a legit singles star there for a while including being the Mexican National Heavyweight Champion. A very prestigous title they didn't just give to anyone. Then come 1992 he's tossed into this trio & stays there for the next couple years until he fades out of the lucha libre scene. The first fall is full of rudo miscommunication spots which the Cavernicolas pull off perfectly mixing in some big bumps. Metalico takes out Popitekus with a huge asai moonsault. Shogun goes for a tope suicida on Cro-Magnon... I don't know what happened... but he managed to overshoot him which wasn't the main issue... the main issue is in trying to grab hold of him so he didn't crash Cro-Magnon tips over & ends up falling onto an upside down Shogun. It looked real bad. Needless to say Shogun is done after this. We see him laying on the ground in pain to start the second fall & then never again. It becomes a handicap match. They handle it as well as possible with the rudos in control & the tecnicos only getting a quick comeback in the third fall before succumbing to the numbers advantage. Metalico even had his mask ripped a bit. Too bad it got derailed because this was going well early on. Semi-main is decent enough, carried by Ciclon/Felino. You can still see Hector Guerrero is having trouble working with certain Mexican guys. The stuff with Kahoz was not good. The highlight comes in the third fall when Ciclon knocks Felino off the apron & obliterates him with a tope suicida on the side of the ring in Arena Coliseo where you'd NEVER expect a dive to hit. He goes upside down into the third or fourth row as the crowd screams. Vintage Ciclon! All these celebrities attending CMLL shows in 2026 should count themselves lucky they weren't around when Ciclon was! Unfortunately for Ciclon his teammates let him down as they get dispatched soon afterwards. Main event changes a bit as there's no Oro or Triton. No explanation on Triton although I think he was in Japan at the time? Oro is out with a shoulder injury after what happened last week. So El Brazo steps in for him & Ultimo Dragon subbed for Triton. Rudos go on the offense immediatley & take the first fall. Tecnicos comeback in the second leads to a fun finishing sequence where we see a picture perfect asai moonsault to pin Negro. The intensity Negro brings any time he steps into the ring is incredible. He had amazing exchanges with both Dandy & Dragon. This was Mano Negra's first match back on the rudo side so you know he had to win. He ends up picking Brazo for a back suplex & dropping him onto the turnbuckles. It was supposed to be a foul but Brazo messed up the landing. Either way it was the finish so rudos win. This is the startof warming Mano Negra up to lose his mask later in the year. At this point in time the destination was Oro who was being groomed to be the new young CMLL superstar. If you know your lucha history you are aware that changes. Will we identify the moment it changed as we go on? I'd say there's a good chance of that. Best of the three episodes so far this year!

The weekly Tuesday highlights if of Blue Demon Jr./Filoso/Metalico vs Arkangelk/Guerrero De La Muerte/Satanico. Why? Don't ask me. If you said pick one highlight out of what they showed I'd have no answer for you. It was a bunch of nothing ending with a DQ when Arkangel unmasks Metalico. I didn't even notice he did & had to rewind. No opener from Friday, we go straight to the segunda which just feels like an opener. Filoso & Kato Kung Lee Jr vs Babe Richard & Cortado. Cortado has a really cool mask. The kind of mask where you see it & think this guy is going to do some cool things. Spoiler: Cortado does not do cool things. Babe Richard even less so! He looks like your out of shape lazy uncle decided to be a pro wrestler. But the worst guy in this match is Kato Kung Lee Jr. He was just so not ready for prime time & the crowd is all over him all match long. A prime example of why using your connections to skip the process working your way up can be a negative. He doesn't last long in CMLL & in lucha libre in general. He was so robotic in this match. Messed up the finish so badly he ended up injurying himself coming down on his own ankle. The crowd definitely let him know about that. Another match with no real highlight. In the intro for the show we are informed Platino has arrived to bolster the Metalicos now that Oro has decided to go on his own path. At one point Chamaco Valaguez was playing Platino. I don't believe that's the case here based on how Platino is moving around. He reminds of someone (Fantastik?) but can't put my finger on it 100%. Rudos start in control & take the first fall. We come back from commercial as the tecnicos have already fought back. This is a trend with these matches on TV, I think this is how Televisa is shaving time to make sure it fits into two hours. Nice dives by Bronce & Platino as the tecnicos tie it up on a Plata flying reverse top. Third fall is more rudos in control. They eliminate Bronce & then dangerously throw Plata over the top to the floor. He didn't land on his partners so there's no DQ. They just win convincingly by countout. Decent enough but I was expecting a little more here. Before the semi-main we get a fantastic old school music video for Fabuloso Blondy as he walks the streets of Mexico City & people look on wondering why are cameras filming this person? He cuts a promo blasting Atlantis, Vampiro & El Brazo. This takes us into the semi-main which is just like the previous match... rudos immediately on top & win first fall, JIP second fall with tecnicos tying it up on a rolling cradle by Lasertron & awesome pop-up huracanrana by Ciclon. We get a great tope suicida by Ciclon in the third fall - this week he does it in the aisle so no fans get harmed. Blondy ends up pulling something from his trunks to KO El Brazo. We are hair match bound very soon! Main event is Intocables vs Infernales. The announcers claim this is the first time these two teams have wrestled. I'm skeptical. Let's check! *loads match finder* IT'S NOT! But then I rewound & listened again... the claim is this is the first time these two teams have wrestled in Arena Coliseo. I'm still sketpical. Let's check! *loads match finder* IT IS! Cool little thing. That's something I honestly used to love about CMLL... so many people looked at the booking & just thought it was throwing random people out there in random matches that kept getting recycled. Far from it. There was a method to the madness that you see the more you pay attention to the weekly lineups. It really is a booking office, they have a system making sure people hit all the arenas & matches aren't being recycled in front of the same audiences. These days not as much but up until roughly 2 years or so, absolutely the case. This is a two fall match, most of it brawling with the teams taking turns being in control. I'm sure others liked it more than me... like if you're one of those "the punches were great!" people, you must have had a blast. Didn't do much for me though. Felt very directionless & lacking energy at times. Pierroth has his mask ripped & bleeds. The finish is easily the highlight of the match for me. Masakre is eliminated so the Infernales grab Jaque Mate and attempt to triple submission him in addition to ripping at his mask. He fights it off for a bit. Outta nowhere Pierroth Jr comes in with a sunset flip on Satanico... FOR THE THREE COUNT! Satanico was the captain! The crowd knew that! And they ERUPT! We even get crowd shots of delighted fans standing up & cheering. Captains rules aren't insignificant if you have people who understand them & wrestlers who pay attention enough to do finishes like this. Satanico sells the defeat fantastically, absolutely perplexed at how he got caught not paying attention. A so-so show. Nothing I'd say you absolutely need to see. Maybe the Blondy video.

Unfortunately this week's TV was only a partial recording so we missed whatever aired from Tuesday + the mini's tag which is a bummer. Moreso since this ended up a very weird TV show as they had time to re-air the tercera from last week. So this will be a short one. The show is JIP during this week's tercera & there's literally nothing to say. Rudos win. That's the extent of what we see. Bummer. Straight to the semi-main which is Oro's return from injury (+ Japan I think...). The announcers say we have rivalries here with Oro/Mano Negra, Triton/Titan & Apolo/Solitario which is interested since I know where we're going & we are not going towards any of those matches... in fact we're headed towards Apolo Dantes vs Titan (Comando Ruso) strangely. Not much to the first two falls here. Pantera isn't hiding his moveset in any way to prove he isn't Triton. The finish of the second fall is a triple finish but Solitario poorly bases (shocking!) for Oro's torito causing them to almost land on poor Apolo Dantes' face. Big somersault plancha from Triton taking out Solitario. Very cool finish where Titan counters a Victory Roll dropping Dantes right down & Mano Negra gives Oro a shoulderbreaker (called a martinente by the announcers) which plays into his injured shoulder from weeks ago. He then submits him clean as Titan pins NWA LHW champ Dantes. Main event has the Brazos entering wearing pink baseball t-shirts but the haha here is Porky's shirt is a size too small for his body so his gut is hanging out. I chuckled. I guess you would say this was the best match of the TV show but it wasn't great shakes honestly. Porky/Magic had a fun bit. Blondy is just no fun to watch... very Sam Adonis in 2016-ish which I've said before. I get the gimmick but the work just doesn't fit a promotion like this, especially a promotion struggling to draw & competeing against a company that comes off much more exciting. The finish comes out of nowhere as Blondy cheats to beat Brazo & then bails out of the ring. We get a bunch of replays of this shitty finish. Another bummer of an episode. Maybe 1993 CMLL wasn't just a blind spot to me, maybe my brain was protecting me from trying to remember any of this? Slightly regretting my decision at this point but maybe it'll pick up... we are close to the Arena Mexico re-opening.

The Tuesday main event is extended highlights although against of a totally inconsequential match which makes me question why these are even airing aside from letting the public know: a) shows are still happening on Tuesday & b) cameras are there so these are relevant events. Triton version Pantera does a great springboard somersault plancha before a total shit finish. We head straight to Friday's opener after an interview with Pierroth Jr & we continue the trend of shit finishes! Entertaining enough opener carried by the rudos, mainly La Garra who continues to look awesome. We really need to find out who that was & what happened to him. And by we, I mean me, of course. El Moro is a new name who only sticks around for a few months in 1992, largely in these opening matches. One stands to reason this was one of the sons of the famous El Moro (Andrade family) from Torreon. Commentary gives no indication, referring to him coming from Monterrey but those kids all worked in Monterrey as well so that doesn't discredit my theory. It's probably a young Kevin who would go on to become one of the Gemas Del Ring in AAA amongst many other gimmicks. He is responsible for the shit finish here where the tecnicos make a third fall comeback & his shoe falls off which he ends up using to hit Panico with a couple times. I think he was just improvising but the refs call for the DQ because that is not acceptable in a CMLL ring unlike a random show in Monterrey or Torreon. Crowd was at least very hot for this. Next up the crowd is still hot but our match quality is not improving because we have another angle going on. Notice how angle heavy 1993 CMLL is? Everyone is turning or teasing a turn or some sort of feud is going on. This ain't your 2026 CMLL where every match is by the numbers unless we're setting up a singles out of it. Here we have Mogur going rudo, a spot he'd remain in for the rest of his CMLL run. This isn't the official turn so they try to incorporate a real match out of it but it just didn't work for me. The bit where Mogur was pretending to make the save to end the first fall but took the long route around so by the time he arrived it was too late was pretty funny. I'll give them that. The tecnicos win the second fall & then get mad when Mogur wants his hand raised too. The finish is a complicated triple pin spot where Mogur accidentally jumps on his own teammates leading to their downfall. Crowd is very upset by this & Mogur's indifference. The semi-main is the match where on paper you expect your workrate match but... guess what... WE HAVE MULTIPLE ANGLES GOING ON! Oro vs Mano Negra + building to an Apolo Dantes/Titan title match. So this ends in straight falls. Most of it is Mano Negra working on Oro's damaged arm (which he discussed in a pre-match video package/interview). There's no real tecnico portion of the match as they keep getting shut down. Titan pins Apolo out of nowhere to win the second fall & then makes his title challenge. All I want to see is a good match. Is that too much to ask for? Apparenly so because the main event is more build to El Brazo vs Fabuloso Blondy. Again straight falls, again an out of nowhere finish where a bloody Brazo cradles Blondy & then makes his hair match challenge. There was one sweet Dandy/Emilio exchange & everything else here was totally forgettable. This is the last time I will ever watch this show. There will be no future re-re-watch. No need to.

Well this will be an easy one! As you'll come to find there is lots of missing 1993 CMLL, moreso in the latter portion of the year. This is a TV show that definitely aired (we have the Lucha Libre Weekly TV recap by Dave Scherer who sent the tape to Steve Sims so maybe Meltzer got a copy too but who knows if it has survived all these years?). So the only video that exists of this show is the segunda - yes all those stars down there in the segunda shows you how loaded up this return to Arena Mexico was + the title match with Apolo/Titan. No, I will not cry tears for missing out on Brazo/Blondy. The star-filled segunda comes from a random Oro compilation DVD (maybe originally tape) that had a couple matches we didn't have from TV. Seems like the kind of thing that would originate from people selling videos outside Arena Mexico who often had access to whatever CMLL recorded themselves. So it's a pretty rare match. Arena Mexico is hot immediately as we have the Oro/Mano Negra feud going on, Ciclon/Felino just starting up & the Atlantis/Emilio rivalry that goes back a couple years. It's a great combination as the announcers even point out you can't find this kind of quality anywhere else. Does the paper match live up to the reality? Well... somewhat. I liked it. It was not a blowaway MOTYC or anything but in comparison to everything else CMLL has offered up on TV so far this year - this is most definitely your runaway MOTY & it isn't even close. Rudos dominate right away & take the first fall with Mano Negra working over Oro's shoulder again. We get the tecnico comeback & a FANTASTIC 2nd fall finish with an Oro diving tope, Ciclon super high huracanrana & Atlantida. The crowd popping progressively louder for each spot is a thing of beauty that I very much miss in current lucha libre. We'll never see something like this make a comeback because sadly today's wrestling is all about conforming to one box & multiple pinfalls while submissions are also occurring is not something that has ever been done in WWE so it's gone. What can you do? Watch old wrestling instead of new wrestling I guess. Felino is hilarious here, a true rudo from days gone by. He first slips trying to get in the ring & crotches himself which the crowd eats up & then while running from Ciclon he miscalculates his trajectory & ends up sliding himself to the floor which gets an amazing reaction + one of the announcers completely breaks. The negative is the finish kinda came without any build, again a trait of these 1993 CMLL TV matches. Mano Negra hits the shoulderbreak on Oro & submits him as Emilio & Felino put Ciclon away. Mano Negra had his submission on for so long I thought they might reverse the decision for excessive violence but instead he just gets his hand raised. ***3/4 effort here. Semi-main is the title match set up over the last two weeks. Not a full match. This one aired on a Year in Review special so it's extended highlights including a commercial between the 1st & 2nd fall highlights for some reason. Too bad... what we saw was really fuckin good. Dantes wins the first fall with a nice tope suicida capped off by an incredible backwards bump into the 2nd row by Titan (Comando Ruso). 2nd fall goes to Titan after a kneedrop to Apolo's back off the second turnbuckle followed by a Campana. 3rd fall has a great somersault dive by Titan. Apolo drops him off the top with a back suplex which Titan takes almost right on the top of his head. He got folded in half. He seemed shaken up & didn't even kick out. Apolo just kinda rolled off him. The crowd seemed to notice but Apolo is a wrestling prodigy so he doesn't skip a beat, picks Titan up, hits the Northern Lights Suplex for the win before the crowd can even get on them for that weird non-kickout. Remember when wrestlers used to be able to adapt on the fly without waiting for the refs to pass on messages from the men behind the curtain? Good times. In the replays we see an edited out Apolo springboard plancha almost into the front row!

I won't lie - I'm ready to bail on 1993 CMLL already. LOL I'm sticking with it for a multitude of reasons going back to most of the year is a blind spot for me (or as I'm quickly realizing maybe less a blind spot more my memory protecting me), I know there are minis matches coming up & it's a short year with so much of the TV missing. This show was NOT GOOD! I needed 3 sittings just to finish it. Our Tuesday highlight is once again a total nothing match where there is little action & all story. Bello Incognito is not getting along with his partners. There's one slightly creative bit where he won't do a traditional 1 on 2 spot which I hadn't seen before & ends up making his partners look like a fool which plays into the story of the match. But otherwise it's just the rudos falling apart in the most obvious ways. Incognito helps the tecnicos pin both rudos to end the match in straight falls. Looked like a very poorly attended show. We jump to Friday where we have the debuts of Gedo & Jado! Just young boys here, who could have imagined what their future held? They get matched up with... Ringo Mendoza & Kato Kung Lee????????? My god. The match isn't a disaster because Gedo/Jado have experience working with luchadors from their Hamada's UWF stuff. But this had to be a joke pairing them with these two in their debuts. It's a lot of rudo miscommunication spots. They are the foils for the two veteran tecnicos who aren't selling much. Ringo used a neat little submission to end the first fall. More of the same in the second fall until the Japanese duo take over. They eliminate Kato. They then do a power bomb/flying headbutt combo on Ringo but refuse to let the refs count three. And again. And again. So the refs DQ them for excessive violence. What a weak finish. Next up is multiple debuts that were heavily hyped. CMLL understood they needed some new blood so they looked to the north & brought in Bronco who was a hyped up Monterrey guy & Latin Lover who was Carlos Elizondo's latest big sexy boy attraction. They got paired up with Oro who CMLL clearly earmarked as their future top guy. To keep this trio together Oro/Mano Negra had to be in seperate matches tonight even though they are still feuding. Dum dum dum. I'll just go ahead & spoil it... Latin Lover is gone by the end of March. LOL This is like watching Soberano Jr in current day CMLL knowing he will end up in current day WWE's AAA whenever he chooses. It's just not a fit. I'm sure CMLL wanted their own sexy boy to draw the women's audience & it's great they had that connection to Elizondo so they could get their hands on Latin but between the CMLL style & how long CMLL took in this era to start pushing young guys - this was never gonna work. Latin Lover didn't become a wrestler to earn his spot. He was a stripper in it to make quick money, more money than he could make as a strippergram (his actual real life job). I'm sure he immediately noticed CMLL was nothing like Monterrey where he got fed opponents who's only job was to make him look good. He was gonna have to work for it here, work multiple times a week & away from his home. Or he could answer Antonio Pena's phone call in a month or so & go get a better spot for more money travelling all over Mexico in the hotter company. The choice was obvious. CMLL gets burned but just like with Sagrado/Mistico, they try again the following year with Hector Garza to much better results. He was a wrestler, that's the difference. As for Bronco, he sticks around here a bit but also fizzles, only to return a couple years later to drop his mask. We get extended individual entrances here to really emphasize these are big debuts. Jaque Mate is a sub for someone on the rudo side, not sure who. Announcers even point out how strange it is because the Intocables have been tecnicos lately - in fact Pierroth Jr is about to wrestle as one in the next match. The goal of this match is very simple - the rudos are to shine up all the tecnicos. It goes well enough. Bronco is the only one who looked slightly shaky but nothing that screams Botchamania. Latin & Bronco get big dives at the end before Oro gets the win with his gorgeous moonsault bodyblock. A temporary success! Semi-main is joined immediately with Mano Negra attacking Atlantis so this guy is looking for feuds everywhere! Dum dum dum. Mascara Magica is debuting here. The original was Eddy Guerrero who infamously jumped to AAA a couple months back & revealed his identity in the middle of the ring. CMLL decided to keep the gimmick & give it to someone else. How come they didn't get the same heat Pena did whenever he'd do stuff like this? Ah, right. AAA, circus, CMLL, serious wrestling. Got it. The person under the mask from this point forward has always been said to be the ex-Talisman Jr... that would be the future Mascara Magica we all know. I assure you, this was not him. Talisman Jr is still on lineups through 1993 including going to Japan under that name. Hell, he was in the Tuesday opener I just discussed. This temporary stop-gap Mascara Magica does chops & has some size to him. It's the ex-All Star aka Cesar Dantes of the famous Dantes family. Almost nobody remembers he did this gimmick. People just go from Eddy to they well known Mascara Magica. They put him over strong in this match. He gets the winning submission over Negro Casas. Negro was the only true highlight of this match, as he usually is. The third fall - this will sound like a repeat - had two asburd random eliminations out of nowhere where Kahoz slammed Pierroth down & then got rolled up sloppily by Atlantis. These guys weren't in the business of putting together well done finishes. Kinda reminds me of CMLL 2026 - overworked guys just wanting to get home into their beds. Before the main event we get a Vampiro music video set to Welcome To The Jungle of course. That was the best part of the show. This main event was absolutely atrocious. Zero action to speak of. Just many things going on, none of it good, lots of no-selling & general confusion. A lot of referee heat too as we have Gato Montini trying to enforce things. I can't emphasize enough how much I disliked all this. Felt like it went on forever. Watching nothing happening is so frustrating because you're just waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting to the point you start screaming in your head DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING, PLEASE! Tecnicos win. A total waste of my time.

That's it until March. There's no TV covering the next week which is the start of a long tournament to crown new CMLL Tag Team Champions. It features many UWA guys who I don't believe are allowed to appear on CMLL's TV at this time due to contractual reasons.

I just inserted these graphics & then realized the Tuesday one is useless because it was just a placeholder lineup. I'm not changing it, at least you can see what didn't make the cut for TV including a match in this (mostly) unaired CMLL Tag Team Titles tournament that lasts many weeks. The Tuesday match that does air is a 3 way hair match between new rudo Mogur, veteran rudo Javier Cruz & VERY veteran wrestler Ringo Mendoza. We aren't seeing these Tuesday shows & we didn't have TV last week so it's impossible to know what set this up. That's what the magazines are for. You see, Javier Cruz/Huracan Sevilla were feuding, then Mogur turned rudo & got himself involved in their issue leading to this match being made. Wait Rob, there's a typo. You wrote Huracan Sevilla. Not a typo! This match was supposed to have Huracan Sevilla but he decided to opt out without telling the promotion. Probably a difference in how many pesos he was going to get for his hair. This put the promotion in a bit of a situation. They could go ahead & just do Cruz/Mogur straight up but neither guy was expecting to lose their hair & likely would have balked for the same reason Sevilla did. So what CMLL did was pluck good ol' Ringo Mendoza from his undercard match & they stuck him in this as an emergency sub for Sevilla. Ringo has always been a company guy & probably didn't care about losing hsi hair for the upteenth time for a cheap price. The match starts with a coin flip to determine who sits out first. In 1993 I'm sure this was mocked. When I was watching it in 1997/1998 I know I mocked it. Why not just do a cool 3 way match? You know, the kind of match style that was brand new & exciting at the time! Fast forward to 2026 where all CMLL does is 3 way matches that are all exactly the same & I just wish we could go back to coin flips. Funny how that goes. Ringo wins the flip so he sits out. The idea being you have the advantage. You get a tired person next & only need to win one quick match to avoid having to be in the apuesta match. In reality it never worked like that. It always ended with everyone facing each other because it's pro wrestling don't overthink it. So we get Cruz vs Mogur to start which Mogur wins very easily. Next up Ringo hits the ring & is pretty dominant but they do a cool finish where Ringo is about to counter a charge into the corner with an up-and-over sunset flip - a spot I've seen a billion times - but Mogur moves his body backwards causing Ringo to come down where Mogur holds his shoulders down. Roberto Ranger is a little slow to realize & tries to call a submission at first as the announcers plead with him to count which he finally does. Mogur goes 2-0, saves his hair. Javier Cruz hits the ring to attack Ringo & we have our hair match. Ringo does a tope & pescado. Cruz gets bloodied. Rewind... after the coin flip Ringo goes to watch the match from ringside but is met by the commissioners (& Javier Llanes in a suit!) to explain it is against the rules to be ringside if you are not participating. So he leaves. Fast forward... Mogur strolls to ringside to watch the rest of this hair match. The commissioners come over to inform him the same thing. Ringo is distracted by all this, turns around, Cruz grabs him & puts him in his swinging neckbreaker submission - EL VOLANTIN! That's that. Ringo ends up bald. As for Sevilla? I don't believe he ever wrestled a match for CMLL again. I'm also confident he knew that would be the case when he made the decision to not show up here. This show appeared to draw very poorly either way. The big question is why would CMLL even air this? It only makes the company look terrible in every aspect. No crowd, a wrestler no-shows, a not so impressive 3 way match... but you shouldn't question it. Lucha Libre companies are forever shown they will always have the 80's mentality of TV. It's just about putting random matches on & letting the announcers be stars. Even now in 2026 CMLL is all about adding zero flavor to their presentation no matter what channel. No editing. No post-production elements. No interviews. No entrances. It's kind of amazing. Moving onto Friday we may have been saved by that Tuesday match airing because it meant instead of the segunda airing we start with the minis opener! MINIS!!! Our second look at them this year & this crew is much better than the first one we saw. Both Ultimo Dragoncito & Cicloncito Ramirez are still regularly working for CMLL at the time I write this. Felinito is not. Piratita is! That would be Virus. Any Virus match up until the last year or two was must-see, so needless to say this match with young Virus is one you should look up. Starts with a funny Felinito fake low blow spot, then him & Cicloncito start rolling around the mat for control, end up on the floor, then roll into the crowd before being seperated. Very clever way to start the match off hot. It just keeps going from there. Cicloncito & Piratita have a world class all-time exchange complete with Cicloncito hitting the Rewind Rana many years before Dragon Kid & Rey Jr would bust it out. Imagine doing a spot in 1993 that many in 2001-2002 thought was out of this world & impossible? And getting zero credit for it? You just don't understand how great this division that we rarely got to see really was. Tecnicos take first fall in spectacular fashion. There's a long well set up one minute or so sequence in the second fall that is a thing of beauty. How often these days do you see one minute sequences? Rudos take control but not for long. Tecnicos make a quick comeback sending the rudos outside where Cicloncito hits a wild flip plancha (stole Dragoncito's thunder!) & Dragoncito goes over the post with a moonsault. Crowd is going wild. Tecnicos win in straight falls by countout & get a big ovation. Even with this being short & only two falls by far the best CMLL TV match of 1993 so far. ****.We skip the tercera so keeping Latin Lover off TV his second week in. I'm sure he found out about that. Cough cough. Straight to the semi-main where we immediately find out Atlantis & Mano Negra are the captains. Oh my. Has Oro lost his big feud already??? Stay tuned! Porky is hilarious early on working with Satanico. It's so funny to watch Porky's routine along with many others back in these days which in 2026 would be totally outlawed in CMLL. That's not serious wrestling! But right now CMLL draws the kind of audience that would eat that shit up more than ever. Don't get me wrong, in 1993 the fans loved it. But a guy doing Porky's bit in front of 5,000+ tourists would be more popular than Mistico. CMLL is really missing the boat here. Tecnicos take the first fall which ends with Rayo/Magic doing a very realistic brawl that spills to the floor. Great heat for this. The announcers not Black Magic looks great, he's always in the gym, it's just unfortunate he has very little technical skills inside the ring. HA! Finish of the match is great as the rudos have Atlantis trapped in that 2-on-1 ground submission where usually the tecnicos reverse it to make it 3-on-2 or one slides in to cover the rudos on their backs. Rayo tried Magic pulled him away which got great heat. He tried again but Magic yanks his leg once more. They do a spot which ends with Rayo doing a crucifix - very poorly because he's a fat fuck - but once he gets Magic's shoulders down the refs count three & that's it! Another straight fall tecnico win! Satanico & Mano Negra are very upset with Magic for costing them the fall/match. Rayo wants a title shot. Before the main event we get a sitdown interview with Masakre & Jaque Mate who explain they understand they are facing their teammates in Los Intocables tonight but it's all about the best man winning & there will be no hard feelings. Why do I feel like this isn't true? So this is a quarterfinal in the never ending CMLL Tag Team Titles tournament. First fall is worked clean. Masakre/Mate team up to eliminate Vamp only for Pierroth to then eliminate each of them one-by-one. Clean! Just like they said in the interview, may the best men win. But they seem upset by Pierroth showing them up. Vamp is getting heckled/booed mercilessly by tonight's Arena Mexico crowd. Maybe it was the horrific punches he was throwing. Second fall it all falls apart with Masakre/Mate ripping Pierroth's mask & bloodying him. They trap him in the corner & refuse to stop beating him up which causes a DQ. ANOTHER STRAIGHT FALL TECNICO WIN! Also, seemingly the end of Los Intocables. Mate calls out Pierroth over the mic for working with someone like Vampiro. Hard to argue with that one. Pierroth responds saying he isn't a tecnico or a rudo but if he wanted to be a rudo he's twice the rudo they are together. Good promo. Crowd was into this, Pierroth was very over at this time. A decent enough episode highlighted by the minis.

This should be a quick one! TV show we have on video is JIP so we probably missed whatever aired from Tuesday (likely) or this women's opener (unlikely). Middle three make TV since as I noted above I don't think CMLL was allowed to air matches with UWA wrestlers (Head Hunters). This segunda looked very promising on paper & ends up being a huge bummer as we get our first TV instance of CMLL refereeing that has plagued them likely since 1933. Rudos take the first fall. Tecnicos have their comeback in the second fall. A totally standard comeback. They send the rudos scurrying, follow them outside to keep beating on them. Metalico & Triton get back to their corner to set up for whatever the fall finish is supposed to be. Lasertron is still off outside pounding on the rudos as the refs keep counting. Finally he gets back inside. The rudos take a moment to regroup but before anyone can jump inside the refs have counted them out! Big negative reaction from the crowd. Metalico & Triton are none too happy their highspots are now out the window. It seems to throw everyone off in the third fall too so not much action. We get big dives from Metalico & Triton before Lasertron puts the remaining Guerrero away (I've already forgotten). What a letdown. Next up we have another very promising match on paper that ended up being quite middling. They tease Felino & Negro Casas having problems in the first fall but it's just a way to have them take over & attack the tecnicos. Ultimo Dragon leads the tecnico comeback by tripping Negro coming off the ropes which gets a big pop. Third fall has a nice Dragon/Casas sequence. Bestia takes a huge sallida de bandera & is then hit with a Ciclon tope of death sending them both into the crowd. Oro does a plancha over the ringpost onto Felino. Dragon/Casas trade nearfalls that have the crowd biting every time. Finally Dragon puts him away with a Dragon Suplex. Big pop for the finish. Nice little match, let's go ***1/2. I was expecting much more with this crew. I was not expecting much from the semi-main & I got just that! We are focusing on Rayo/Black Magic of course so even if they wanted to try they were gonna be handicapped by that fact. Two falls to the tecnicos with Rayo rolling Magic up with an inside cradle for the deciding fall. This sets up a title match between them next week that of course we don't have video of. I will not cry tears about not having a Rayo De Jalisco Jr match on video. See, quick & easy recap.

Another quick & easy recap! We never had this week's TV on video for whatever reason. Dave Scherer didn't send the tape to Dr Lucha or Dr Lucha didn't send it to Meltzer or Jeff Lynch misplaced it... who knows. So what we have are the 2da & 3ra which just happened to be on a random YouTube channel in perfect quality. At one point Lucha Click stole the 2da but their channel got nuked. Someone should probably save these two matches before they disappear forever. The 2da has Pantera back from a long absence! So say the announcers! But we just saw him last week as Triton. As his story goes the Triton gimmick was Pena's idea, he never really liked the gimmick & Paco Alonso told him he could go back to being Pantera if he got the rights from the Moreno Family in Naucalpan. Pantera said he did. We would find out later he did not, or so they claim. Either way he's Pantera here & stays that way going forward. Decent enough match. Maybe the highlight is the lights going out in Arena Mexico twice during the third fall which the crowd takes great delight in. Pantera does an awesome tope over the top rope onto Gladiador. Lasertron gets the win for his team with his rolling cradle hold. I should note Latin Lover has already left the promotion by this point! Happened during the week, I presume he would have been booked on this show otherwise. Unrelated is the 3ra begins with Vittorino announcing Mascara Magica... very awkward long silence... then announcing El Brazo instead who comes out without wrist tape. So a very late substitution. Another decent enough match focused on Dragon/Casas. Dragon gets his mask torn up. He posts Negro really hard. Oro is back matched up with Mano Negra instead of Atlantis but there is no clear sign the two are still feuding here. DUM DUM DUM! Finish is a role reversal bit where it's Emilio & Mano Negra with the big dives instead of Oro as you'd expect. Oro's bump to the floor was pretty fuckin sweet. This leaves Dragon/Negro to settle the score & this time Dragon gets Negro with a Tiger Suplex for the clean win in straight falls. Crowd was really into it. I am not gonna shed tears missing out on the top two matches, not that the main event would have aired anyways.

Four match all Arena Mexico show this week. If you've been following along you know exactly which match was cut - no UWA wrestlers allowed! So we start at the begining with a bunch of regular undercard dudes having the most regular match you've ever seen. LOL Nothing good or bad about this one. They did their job, they filled time as people entered & they got some heat. The finish came out of nowhere with the rudos just grabbing the tecnicos & beating them. Bing bang boom. A gentleman's **. Couldn't even get that extra 1/2 by tossing in a highspot or two. Next up the Saeteas Del Ring are reunited! They were a popular TV trio in 1990/1991 but split when Pantera became America & then Triton. With him being back as Pantera it made all the sense to put these guys back together. Ciclon/Felino are feuding already so they are the focus of the match with Ciclon having his mask untied & Felino getting the same treatment later. Rudos get DQ'ed in first fall for excessive violence & it was pretty excessive! They were given ample warning to stop beating the shit out of Ciclon 3-on-1 but refused. Good call refs! Big pop for the tecnico comeback & Ciclon chasing Felino down. Aguila does a plancha to the floor, Pantera follows with a tope over the top. This leaves you know who. We almost have a disaster as Ciclon gives Felino a crazy fast spinning backbreaker but in the process Felino's mask goes flying off. He rolls quickly to grab it & put it back on. Tigre Hispano wants to call a DQ, Rafa El Maya stops him. Thankfully Ciclon just steps between them to continue the match because considering the finish if they called a DQ it would have really led to an awkward improvised ending with the falls tied up now. Instead Cilcon gets thrown for a huracanrana but Felino avoids it, spins Ciclon around & fouls him. Tecnicos win in straight falls. Enjoyable for what it was, which is pushing this Ciclon/Felino issue which is heading either to a mask or title match soon. Next up Oro is back opposite Mano Negra! YAY! They are even the focus of the match which is great for him, his feud has not been taken away! Yet! Dum dum dum. Oro has his mask torn up. Rudos take the first fall. Big tecnico comeback lead by Oro which the crowd is super hot for. He throws Mano Negra into the ringpost & the rudo bounces off so he can bump straight into a pretty girl sitting front row. She seems rather put out by this. Old wrestler trick 101. See a pretty girl in the crowd, make sure to land on her. Either she likes being part of the show & you have an in with her or she hates it & you get someone to bring her to the back afterwards to apologize... then you try to charm your way into her pants. Way to go Mano Negra! There's also the trick about pretty girls sitting in the front row wearing skirts but we'll save that for another time. Jaque Mate takes this absurdly cool bump you don't see any more these days, just wish camera got a better shot. You know what spot where Mr. Perfect is holding the ropes but gets his leg kicked out so he can take a flip bump? Well this is kinda the inverse. Apolo is holding the ropes & Mate goes to kick his arm but Apolo moves which sends Mate flying over the top rope with a spin bump! Love it! Finish is Oro/Mano Negra just squaring off as the crowd goes nuts. Oro rips up his mask, hits him with a spinning backbreaker........ and pins him! Just like that! His teammates congrtulate him. We don't see any challenges but spoiler - next week they're having a title match! We are back on track with Oro! Main event - in arena semi-main event - is Negro Casas defending the UWA Middleweight Title against Ultimo Dragon. Oh my. Watching this & watching a current day CMLL championship match like I did today is night & day. Like watching a different sport entirely. This match goes almost 25 minutes & in the time it took them just to get going the current title match was just about over. Moreso it's the stuff they do in this match that just wouldn't be accepted/acceptable (there's a difference between the two) at Arena Mexico these days. Long matwork to start mixed in with nearfalls. Dragon takes the first with a german suplex where technically Negro's shoulders were not down but Roberto Rangel counted anyways. Edgar would absolutely have stopped the count & just made them do something else no matter how awkward it came off. Second fall finish is something that you'd 10000000000000% never see these days as Casas is working on Dragon's leg - I could stop here - and puts him in a Scorpion Deathlock. Dragon fights to get the ropes. Casas pulls him back to the middle & locks it on again. Dragon fights again to get the ropes as the crowd screams. Casas slams him back down, puts on the Scorpion Deathlock once more... and this time Dragon doesn't resist, gives up immediately. This whole process took over a minute. Any hold being on for 10 seconds gets whistled at these days. Third fall is just fucking spectacular & the crowd heat is incredible. Casas moves out of the way of a pescado. Then Casas gets vaulted off the apron into the turnbuckles which is an amazing bump you may remember from Psicosis' ECW debut or WAR Super J Cup 95. Heck, Bayley/Mercedes used it in one of their famous matches. Studying tape works! Dragon does a cornerpost tope suicida & asai moonsault. Hey! That's his move! Fantastic nearfalls. Crowd on edge of their seat for everything. Fantastic moment where Dragon goes up top as the crowd is pleading with him not to & he jumps down into Casas' feet. Casas gives him a senton & then he starts climbing. Crowd is screaming at him too - he has his supporters as well! They don't want him to risk it! He takes a moment to think it over but resumes climbing........... AND SLIPS! He flips right over onto his ass inside the ring! Crowd is eating this up. Double pin almost ends it right there! I can't even begin to explain to you how genius this was & how you could never do it today. The whole "wrestling is serious business" aspect prevents stuff like this because the thought of doing something like this doesn't even enter anyone's mind. If it happened Twitter would immediately be all BOTCHAMANIA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Negro is just a genius & he knew what that moment called for. He played off the crowd reactions. Imagine that. Some more excellent nearfalls before finally Dragon hits an enzuigiri followed by a Tiger Suplex & folks we have a new champion! Big pop! Casas puts Dragon over big time afterwards, the entire put my opponents on my shoulders deal. A wonderful match. It looks like either Dr. Lucha or Meltzer went ***3/4. Excuse me? No. This was ****3/4. Maybe ****1/2 at *minimum*. A clear cut MOTYC. Gonna be hard to top this one in the CMLL calendar year. One of Dragon's best matches of all-time. If you haven't seen this one - do it immediately!

A four match TV show evenly split between Tuesday's incomplete results & Friday's UWA assisted lineup which makes TV match selection simple. Tuesday opens with the ex-Intocables colliding - Pierroth Jr vs Jaque Mate/Masakre. I'll be honest my notes are more on the commentary than the match. Sometimes people really don't understand that these announcers were Televisa people who did both CMLL + AAA & had no real ties to either group for the most part. Which leads to funny things like Mascara Magica being referred to as Mascara Sagrada (AAA). When the correction is made, we get "my mistake, it's just Mascara Sagrada is more popular so I thought of him." Imagine that flying on a CMLL show today! Or the moments where Arturo Rivera is so disinterested he just forgets the names of who he is watching. "As we see Titan choking.......... what's his name.......... that guy in the yellow outfit on the outside." LOL Not even a rudo bit, happened multiple times in the match. They were also all openly perving on some hot girls apparently sitting near the entrance for the luchadors. They couldn't stop talking about them wanting to meet the wrestlers after the show. Finish is a blatant mask pull by Masakre on Pierroth. That's all I got from this one. Next is a revancha between the Brazos & Infernales. A total brawl with Brazo De Oro in particular getting busted open & bleeding all over. At one point he goes to sit in an empty front row seat which is a funny visual with the normal older people just sitting there & a blood soaked overweight guy in between. Brazos take the match clean in two straight. They basically got beat up all match long only to fight back & win each fall dominantly. This sets them up for a trios titles match the following week & we stick around to see the challenges. In the old days they'd have the commissioner ringside to make the match official so Vitorrtino could announce it over the house mic as a way to convince the fans to return next week. Moving to Arena Mexico we have another match where the focus is on two guys & nothing else. Ciclon vs Felino. I honestly cannot recall a single thing Kato Kung Lee did in this match besides look annoyed when he couldn't get past Lasertron who was shaking hands with kids during the ring entrances. If you haven't seen the Gedo/Jado graphics, you absolutely need to look this match up right away. In the third fall Lasertron takesout KKL with a weak pescado, leaving Ciclon to get beat by the rudos 3-on-1. Post-match Felino tries to unmask Ciclon but almost ends up losing his own. TV main, live semi-main is Oro challenging Mano Negra finally for his NWA Middleweight Title. A largely technical match. Oro backflips over Negra, then trips him & smoothly rolls into a creative rarely seen submission to win the first fall. Sight communication issues in the second fall but I liked Negra slowing Oro down, giving him a few seconds ot regroup & then getting into the finish sequence where the rudo ties it up. We get a huge springboard plancha from Oro in the third fall. Crowd is really behind him. That's one thing about Oro people sometimes forget - he wasn't just this talented undercarder who could do wild things - he was over. The crowd really took to him. He had that "angel" on his shoulder. Speaking of shoulders, Mano Negra gives Oro a shoulderbreaker which is a callback to the start of the year when Oro hurt himself off the springboard that Mano Negra intentionally tripped him on. Negra then grabs Oro's arm & starts twisting it furiously putting all the pressure on said injured shoulder. Oro is clearly in pain, drops to his knees screaming & gives up. Negra retains. Excellent finish. ***1/2 match. It felt like this was just the start. Establishing Oro got his chance but the veteran outsmarted him. A learning experience. Negra did really well with the kid. Easily the best match of an underwhelming TV show.

This was a show that happened! Look at those star ratings as proof! We are back in Arena Coliseo for the Friday night shows for the time being. I think until June or at least mid-May. Attendance is atrocious if you just judge from the opener but it fills up as the show progresses though you can still see many empty floor seats in the back rows during the semi-main event. This was around the time CMLL attendance started to dip to concerning levels & payouts suffered since the wrestlers were getting a % of some awful gates. We start with maybe the most prototypical opening match possible. Gran Apache who is THE Gran Apache teaming with Ultimatum who is THE future Electro Shock against future referee Babe Richard & part-time referee (though not in Coliseo/Mexico as far as I ever saw) Comodin. The rudos are not exactly in top shape but they know what to do in the ring & how to guide the young tecnicos which was always a vauable asset once upon a time. Ultimatum needs ALL the guidance here, he's green as grass. Apache is not veteran but he has a few more years under his belt & is far more confident in his abilities. His shtick is he gets overexcited at times & just starts slapping anyone who moves including almost the referees. The crowd is really into it. He was easily the highlight of the match. Ultimatum does a tope suicida in the third fall, Apache pins Richard, then as they are counting Comodin out, Apache leaves the ring & slaps him on the head for one final pop before the tecnicos are declared the winners. Even though Apache was very over here, you can see why he never got a chance in this company. Aside from being under-sized, the slapping shtick is what at the time the "seria y estable" viewed as small arena shtick for kids, not for their very knowledgeable fan base. The reactions here would counteract those claims but what can you do. Next up is a minis tag! Yay! But with Ultimo Dragoncito & three largely forgettable minis. Boo! Most of the match is comprised of the rudos accidentally hitting each other or falling to the floor on top of one another. Again, more shtick. The first fall finish between Dragoncito & Pequeno Jaque Mate goes terribly wrong as Mate is not sturdy enough in the corner for Dragoncito's sunset flip so they fall one ach other & are lost. Dragoncito ends up just giving him a weak throw for the cover. A rare two fall special here as the tecnicos control the second fall as well after a very brief rudo beatdown. We get a dive train capped off with a wild long distance flip plancha by Dragoncito. Dual eliminations when they re-enter, then Dragoncito beats Pequeno America. ***1/2 on a **** scale seems a little over the top Meltzer or Dr. Lucha or Scherer or whoever was handing out the stars back then. Let's be realistic... a gentleman's **1/4. Next up are the second level Metalicos & Pantera taking on our Japanese friends & Mogur. CMLL not really fighting back against AAA's TV presentation by having everyone in these matches walking out together to no music. I've always liked the combined entrances but by 1993 you absolutely should have had theme music for everyone at all times no matter which building. This brings back memories of JCR pushing to do Sabados Retro in 2015. The idea being we would present old school wrestling which included no dancing girls, no music, wrestlers just walking to the ring. These shows would routintely draw sub 300 people to Coliseo on a Saturday which tells you all you need to know. I would honestly rather break down Sabados Retros than go into detail on this trios match though. There's more shtick, continuing the pattern set tonight, with the rudos doing bumbling let's hit each other spots including the classic everyone hits everyone until the last person hits the ringpost one. First fall finish was really cool with all the bodies stacked in the corner on top of each other. One of those only in Mexico deals that would get over like gangbusters in front of the tourists these days but certain people in CMLL are ashamed of lucha libre so that kind of thing is outlawed. As are bumbling rudo spots for that matter which would also get over huge to the tourists. As I said not much of note here... match ends with the refs not paying attention so Gedo or Jado hit Pantera with some object from the outside which allowed Gedo or Jado to get the win. Camera did not catch the spot very well. Crowd didn't like the finish. Join the club. Semi-main has a new name here - El Jinete. I had to look this one up. The ex-El Dorado from Guadalajara. CMLL was looking for more bodies, presuambly bodies who would work cheap, so I guess he decided to come back to Mexico City & give it another shot. His performance here is completely bland. Didn't stand out in any way. The only highlight of the match - if you wanna call it that - was Negro Casas' performance trying to make Kato Kung Lee watchable. It's a one man show because KKL seems very disinterested in the entire thing but Negro never takes a night off. Finish is them going at it when out of nowhere Negro fouls KKL for no apparent reason. That's that. As I said, a show that happened. No main event because remember Dr. Wagner Jr doesn't actually work here.

So as you can see the DB is a bit of a mess for these shows but it'll be cleaned up. Maybe by the time you read this. The KKL/Kung Fu match is the semi-main from Tuesday which ends up on TV. The top 3 from Friday also air along with the opener which for some reason is listed over on Tuesday. The Coliseo match is a big bunch of nothing. I'll say this every time - Kung Fu looked decrepit. His performance here is abysmal. It's wild to think they keep him around until 1996. They're doing the never ending martial artists feud here which is hilarious because both are shells of their past selves. I'll be honest I watched this show in two sittings & this was in the first one so I have limited memory of what the finish was. It's 1993 CMLL so go with a weak finish that comes out of nowhere. Moving to Friday we immediately see not many people in the crowd. Throughout the show it would grow a bit but just from the sound you can tell this building is pretty fuckin empty. They really had no attraction & the booking wasn't doing them any favors. Our opener is the recently unmasked Rey Barbaro & Tornado Negro against Talisman Jr (future most famous Mascara Magica) & Tigre Universitario who is a rookie from Monterrey. Barbaro's mask loss came a few days earlier at the Arena Coliseo Anniversary Show as part of a Ruleta De La Muerte he was not advertised for originally. It ends up being his second mask loss in CMLL as he's revealed to be the ex-Belcebu who lost his mask at Arena Mexico to Solar II in the 80's. This is another match I watched in the first sitting & didn't inspire me at all. I did enjoy the announcers talking about how this was not the original Talisman, this was the new version. Very honest. They said the original Talisman lost his mask to Atlantis & then retired. Not so honest! Rudos win in straight falls with the finish... you guessed it... coming out of nowhere. Very anti-climactic seems the theme of CMLL TV in 1993. Next up is somewhat of a squash match for the Guerreros Del Futuro. They easily win the first fall & then the tecnicos have a very brief comeback in the second fall before the Guerreros win that one as well. I did like the finish as it was one of those out of nowhere momentum changing deals where you think you're headed to a third fall but one side-step & suddenly the rudos are in control. It involves all six guys being on the same page which is why you don't see stuff like that these days. When the guys put matches together it's more often than not pairing off instead of a collective mind. The art of lucha is gone, what can I say. Semi-main is our match of the night. Dragon/Casas do their thing like only they can do at this time. The announcers are hyping Ciclon Ramirez & Mano Negra feuding which makes no sense because they're not. There's even a mention Ciclon wants a shot at Negra's title but that's a Middleweight Title & Ciclon is a welterweight. I am just gonna assume they swapped Oro & Ciclon Ramirez by accident. Good first fall finish for the tecnico win. Rudos take the second. We get some near submissions in the third fall before Dragon/Casas take a tumble outside. Ciclon demolishes Negra with a bullet tope. Then kinda outta nowhere the two guys who were background players the entire match end things as Kahoz power bombs Mascara Magica for the win. I hadn't even realized Magica was the captain. Very weird to have those guys as captains based on popularity/seniority in this one. Good enough match though. Won't go ***1/4 but let's settle on ***. Maybe that extra 1/4 was for the bullet tope, I can appreciate that. Main event is another Brazos vs Infernales match. This one did not have much heat. Small crowd & maybe people were already tired of seeing this combination. It was CMLL's go-to this year & we are only in April. The story of the match is Satanico constantly faking a foul hoping to trick the referees but being foiled every time. Until............? You guessed it. He finally gets one over on them in the third fall ending the match on a sour note. A CLEAN SWEEP BY THE RUDOS! I'm not against this kind of booking if it's setting stuff up... I think the basis of lucha libre is the tecnicos looking strong by winning a lot more than the rudos... but nothing was set up on this show. It was just rudo wins to do rudo wins & many flat finishes. When Pierroth Jr eventually gets the book in CMLL it was always noted how patterned his booking was. If the rudos were gonna cheat to win in the main event, he'd book the tecnicos to win every other match. In the mid-2010's CMLL had way more rudo wins than tecnico wins, credited to the programming department favoring the older rudos since that's what they were when they wrestled. So clearly there's something like this going on in the CMLL booking department here in 1993. A skippable TV show.

Tuesday's portion of this week's TV has the main event only. A veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery slow starting match with the rudos not wanting to get into the ring, then figuring out who doesn't want to line up with who until finally we get down to action. A two fall match used to set up the Ultimo Dragon vs Emilio Charles Jr title match next week as Emilio submits him clean with a submission you'd never see these days. There was a dive sequence before that where Jaque Mate somehow ended up upside down trying a tope suicida? Miscalculation. This Tuesday show did not look well attendned. Moving onto Friday - this show looked even less well attended. Oh my. Empty seats wherever you look. If you wonder why CMLL will forever hold the grudge vs Konnan - watch this show. The company hadn't seen dreadful turnouts like this in a long time & I'm sure even with their advantage of owning their own buildings it caused lots of stress as to their future, probably especially moreso while watching how far the UWA was sinking. Our opener is as listed except for one thing! When Vittorino announces Lynx, I immediately notice that's not Lynx! That's La Garra! During the match the announcers keep calling him Lynx as well. Me being a know-it-all I immediately messaged Cubs on WhatsApp informing him how hilarious this was. Who should be credited in the DB - Lynx or Garra? After I finished the show I grabbed these posters to save for later so I could write... well... what I'm writing right now. When I did that I had a thought so I checked the DB... and made a pleasant discovery. We now know who La Garra was! He disappears from lineups in mid-March... a week later Lynx appears in the same spot on the cards. La Garra became Lynx! Well, that's one less obscure lucha mystery for me. This is also Rey Bucanero's TV debut I believe. Both of them are great taking bumps for these very bland tecnicos. There's a misconception, especially from newer fans, that CMLL opening match guys are hungry rookies or new faces trying to earn spots when the reality is a lot of times over many years these opening match spots are just for guys CMLL want to keep employed but not in positions where they are making more money than people wrestlers CMLL is actually investing it. So today's examples would be Inquisidor, Disturbio, Robin types. Pegaso II & Kundra were just not that good. They were competent luchadors & that's about it. You can see it in the finish of this match where Pegaso II has seemingly zero idea of any move he can do to beat Bucanero so he just ends up crossing his legs & sitting down to pin him. Next up is Astro Rey Jr (in for Valaguez) & Olimpus vs Babe Richard & Mestizo. I believe this Astro's TV debut as well - the future Mephisto. What are the odds eternal CMLL wrestlers Rey Bucanero & Mephisto would both debut on the same TV show? This is another very low energy match. Rudos take it in two falls. Mestizo had a couple of funny sells but otherwise very unmemorable as a viewer. Next up we do see Chamaco Valaguez, he subs for Antar. This is another dominant Guerreros Del Futuro performance where they control 80% of the match. I thought we were gonna get out of 3rd two fall match on the show but the tecnicos managed to sneak a win in. They succumb in the third fall though with one of those great Guerreros structured finishes where the tecnicos appear to be in total control & are doing that triple splash spot but out of nowhere the Guerreros reverse everything & pin each tecnico. Momentum shifts! Gotta love it. You could have built something around how dominant the Guerreros were as this midcard trio but really that's all they were here. Veterans to work with the younger wrestlers & just deliver solid matches every time out. TV main is the Friday semi-main with the returning Chris Jericho aka Corazon De Leon who has a red streak in his hair for unexplained reasons. Did he get ribbed? Lasertron tags in early on & starts rolling around the ring very fast which confuses Titan. I'm gonna clip that one out. Very funny spot I think would get over somewhere in wrestling these days. Jericho/Cruz have some major communication issues during their exchange. And... that's all I got. The recording goes out before the first fall ends. I remember it being like this on the VHS I received as well. So unless Dave Meltzer one day opens his vault, and assuming any of those tapes are still in watchable condition, the end of this match will never be seen on video. Oh well. Spoiler: There's a good one with most of these guys coming up next week. Nothing you need to see from this TV episode but happy it finally cleared up the La Garra thing for me.

Roy's version of TV from this week is via Jeff Lynch, just like me. Except his seems to have had issues during the dub from VHS to DVD so there are many blips & most of the minis match is actually missing so I had to upload my own copy. We start with the title match from Tuesday. I thought I heard "Mexico" chants early on which was weird to me because Ultimo Dragon was always treated as one of their own from the Mexican fans. I must have been hearing things because he's super over the rest of the way. Or maybe the fans of his shut down those chants? There's an awesome moment early on which is only awesome because of where lucha libre is in 2026. They are working the mat & the moment comes where they get to their feet to square up. The crowd responds by applauding the work of both men. No esto es lucha chants. No whistling from the tourists because people aren't flying around. Just a real group of lucha libre fans appreciating the traditional slow start to a lucha libre match. Yes, I wrote that with a tear in my eye. Never to be seen again. Emilio takes the first fall with a scorpion deathlock where he had it locked in for almost a minute before Ultimo finally couldn't resist & had to tap (he actually did the tapping). Dragon ties things up with a fisherman suplex in a quick second fall. Third fall has many nearfalls, a Dragon pescado to nowhere, finally Dragon puts Emilio away with a german suplex. A very rudimentary match. They didn't step it up knowing they were on TV, they didn't work it like they were in Japan. You could have moved this match to Arena Toluca on a Thursday night in front of 300 fans & they would have given the same effort. It was a bit disappointing in that sense. Switching to Friday we start with a minis tag. Yay! Four good ones too! Really solid work throughout. Dragoncito had an incredible exchange in the second fall. Felinito took some good bumps. The finish was the only sketchy part of the match. I really didn't understand it at all. Dragoncito backdrops Orito into a plancha on Ultratumbita. Looks like a standard dive but I noticed Ultratumbita didn't really sell it & Orito did. So I guess the idea was he countered it with a shoulderblock? Open to interpretation? Felinito then gets sent outside, Dragoncito climbs up top, then leaps off with a silla. Cool looking dive! But Felinito no-sells it, gets up onto the apron to do something which Dragoncito is unprepared for... time stands still... then he does an awkward flying dropkick off the apron. He hops back in where Ultratumbita is waiting fresh as a daisy & the rudos win by countout. Was the idea here the rudos would counter each tecnico dive? And if so - what was Felinito's counter gonna be to the silla? Catching Dragoncito & power bombing him on the floor??? That seems especially nuts. I guess there's a way to pull that off as safe as possible but it's still a risk. We'll never know. Next up is one of those trios matches that was just a paint by numbers style old school CMLL TV match. Someone like me cries about 2/3 falls needing to stick around & keeping traditional lucha libre alive - well this match checks both those boxes. But this match also went 20+ minutes & I remember little to nothing about what happened because not much did. It was almost like watching 6 guys just stalling for time until they were cleared to go home with a dive sequence. I have to imagine when I got this on video tape in 1998 or 1999 I was likely wishing I was watching an AAA show instead. Supremo pins Pantera with a power bomb & beats him up post-match. Not sure whether this is the start of a new feud or not. TV main is a really good looking match with Jericho making his second appearence here, first in a full match since we missed most of last week. Negro Casas has the honor of handling him in this one. They have good chemistry. No Mano Negra around so Oro gets to just work like the non-feud Oro which means being absolutely perfect with every single thing he does inside the ring. He would have been such a huge star. But of course the main focus is on Ciclon vs Felino. At one point Felino is ducking Ciclon ouside the ring but the crowd starts egging him on so he slides in like a maniac & attacks Ciclon. The crowd were actually the real stars here (Kids Day show) chanting the name of each of the tecnicos consecutively. Remember when the people who attended lucha libre shows were lucha libre fans & knew the wrestlers' names??? First fall finish is insane as Oro dropkicks Felino off the apron for no apparent reason, then applies a huracanrana on Cruz. Ciclon enters the ring and LAUNCHES HIMSELF near the post with an out of nowhere tope suicida taking him & Felino upside down into the third row. Security rushes over to clean up the mess. Jericho pins Casas with a moonsault. WILD! Rudos tie things up after a beatdown of all three tecnicos. Felino takes a comical bump trying to climb the ropes in the third fall. He was always so good at that. Ciclon teases a tope but gets cut off by Cruz. Jericho takes out Cruz with a wild tope over the top rope. Oro shoves Casas off the turnbuckles & hits him with a picture perfect moonsault plancha. Ciclon once again sends Felino out & goes for a tope but Felino slides in once again. Finish is hit with a video glitch but Ciclon ends up beating Felino & challenging him for the CMLL Welterweight Title. Really good match! I have no idea how the person handing out stars here ended up with **** for the minis & less for this main event. It was definitely better than the minis, maybe ***3/4 in my books. Too bad the actual show main event didn't air, looks good on paper. But overall an enjoyable episode of CMLL TV by 1993 standards.

Busy week of TV with 5 full matches. Starting off on Tuesday as usual but this time the semi-main where we're kick starting a Ringo Mendoza vs Javier Cruz feud! Oh joy! Hilarious deal pre-match where the ring announcer forgets referee Pompin's name & time stands still. The announcers even joke about it. Can you imagine what would happen these days if Omar or Ivan messed up like that? Their bodies would never be found. That really is the highlight of this match outside of a couple funny Gladiador bits. Clean finish with Lasertron doing his rolling cradle while Solitaria gets Tornado with his backwards tope off the second rope. Cruz runs from Ringo. I cannot believe you would choose to publicize in 1993 you are doing a Ringo Mendoza vs Javier Cruz feud but alas here we are. Switching to Friday we start with the women but I have a strange feeling they were actually the tercera & that random tag was the segunda. We'll just go in TV order. Rare appearence on TV for the CMLL women. The division has never been great, we're still waiting for a time where it's more than just passable if we're being honest. Pervs & "all women wrestlers are great" types are not allowed to weigh in here. It's hard to find normal discourse on women's wrestling with so many falling into one of those two categories. But I will say as an objective observer the names on the roster at this time seemed like they could hold their own. You didn't have fat Martha Villalobos & her friends running around ruining things & the washed up Irmas + Lola were rarely around to bully the younger women. Plus you had the Japanese guest stars every so often. These women had to deal with catcalls immediately & of course the announcers making the usual comments "blonde or brunette, which do you prefer?" & they weren't talking about the wrestling going on. But they powered through & actually had a good match! I loved the finishes to the first fall two falls which were those momentum change finishes where everything is going one way until it's not & BAM all two or three people get submitted/pinned at the same time. I thought Lady Apache looked great & Miss Janeth was trying hard but you could see how green she was at times. La Diabolica stood out on her side. Third fall was good, ending with a tapatia/surfboard from Apache on Diabolica which ends with both their shoulders on the mat for the double pin draw setting up a rematch next week. Crowd gave it a nice ovation. Very easy to watch ***1/2-***3/4 match here. You could only wish the women's matches CMLL was presenting these days could hit this level. Next up is the (I think) out of order tag. This could have passed for an Arena Naucalpan tag match at the time as all these guys were working regularly there, Arkangel/GDLM as a tag team even. I just hope they worked harder on those shows. For some reason El Metalico's graphic is of Oro with the name "Metalico". This goes two straight falls with the rudos cleaning up in each. Super super super dull match. Literally nothing going on. I thought maybe these guys would show out but no such luck. Even more convinced it went on before the women just because these guys would probably not have worked like this if they were in a Friday tercera. Waste of time here. Semi-main is an assortment of guys you'd normally see in a tercera but we are in Arena Coliseo & the roster isn't the strongest it's ever been so this is what you get in May 1993. Of course Ciclon/Felino are still feuding here & the highlight of the match. Pantera/Supremo II still seem to have an issue coming off last week so maybe this was a real feud that started but just never went anywhere. Much like the previous tag it's a lot of nothing going on until the finish which has a Titan tope suicida followed by a Pantera one except Supremo moves out of the way "unprofessionally" causing Pantera to crash & burn. Crowd gasps. He actually did it as safe as possible for that kind of spot. Also, if he's doing that spot it must be a real feud. Both Ciclon & Felino have masks dangling off their heads which makes the finish a bit difficult but Ciclon manages to catch Felino with a huracanrana & holds his mask to cover his face. Felino kicks out at two but in the process ends up with Ciclon's mask in his hands causing the immediate DQ. For good measure Felino beats him up post-match & steals his mask for real this time. These two are heading towards some kind of a singles match soon. Pantera takes a stretcher ride to the back. Main event is an interesting mix of guys. Announcers mention Atlantis & Kahoz are feuding. What??? How many people are you feuding with Atlantis??? Leave someone for Oro! Black Magic's voice is so unmistakeable... you can hear him taunting the crowd or other wrestlers while off camera. Casas is great here. He does the Flair Flop after taking Pierroth's chops in the corner. Crowd eats it up of course. He also worked great with Dragon as usual. The finish sees Ultimo Dragon get eliminiated but then Pierroth gets Kahoz with a small package out of nowhere to end things. Big crowd pop. Announcers say this is a huge deal & Pierroth now wants a mask match with Kahoz. Que??? What about that Atlantis/Kahoz feud you just told me about??? A decent enough ***1/4 main event. I'd say you should watch it + the women's match & not waste a single moment on anything else on this show. I should also note attendance looked VERY poor for this Friday show. They had a couple camera shots where you saw empty seats for miles on the floor.

6 match show!!! That's a lot of lucha crammed into 2 hours! We start on Tuesday with our first of two Ringo Mendoza matches this week. What a nice treat! But not so far! A clarical error on LuchaDB. No Cachorro Mendoza here. Instead we have Americo Rocca who is returning! From where? Well, if you believe the magazines he had to temporarily retire due to injury. If you have a brain, the Ponzona gimmick has come to an end. He finished up with it in April & is now back to being himself. He's on the tecnico side here but the rudos spend most of the match trying to convince him to join their side. I would too - he looked the best in this match! My lucha maturity level can be divided into the Rob who took one look at Americo Rocca & recorded over every match of his I had saved & the Rob who watched 80's stuff & realized holy shit Americo Rocca may be one of the most underrated luchadors in existence. LuchaDB also has this result wrong, it's the rudos who go over with Rocca being indecisive about which side he wants to be on. We also continue the Ringo/Cruz issue. Very standard match outside of Rocca's flashes of brilliance. Moving to Friday in the same building which has another poor turnout. The empty seats visible on camera stayed empty the entire way. We open with Pegaso II & Olimpus vs Escudero Rojo & baby Rey Bucanero! Such a baby that his mask doesn't even fit properly! As standard of a match as it gets. Escudero Rojo has to lead Ultimatum through exchanges like a baby. Bucanero clearly has some ideas on bumps he wants to take but is still scared to take them. I liked the finish where the rudos do the momentum shift & catch the tecnicos outta nowhere to get the win. **1/2 seems far too generous, let's take away that extra half star. Our other undercard tag has the indian duo of Apache & India vs Halcon Negro & Mestizo who is also doing an indian gimmick! You're on the wrong side buddy! That is, in fact, the entire story of the match. Mestizo is trying to work as clean as possible while Halcon is trying to cheat like a true rudo. This leads to their conflict. They fall on top of each other causing them to lose the first fall. We get an amazing Apache/Halcon exchange in the second fall ending with Halcon taking a wild sliding bump near the post to the floor. I will clip this for my IG & people will lose their minds at the basing ideas they can now steal. More problems on the rudo side lead to Mestizo flat out turning on Halcon. He even jumps on top of Apache & India to pin his own partner, then he lays down to hand the match to team Apache in straight falls. New tecnico El Mestizo! Enjoyable match/story. Ladies up next - a revancha from the week prior. The rudas are wearing match gear that makes them look like Las Infernales. The announcers even allude to it so it may have been a thing at the time. Don't tell Lluvia. This did not hit the previous week level but was still a pretty decent match. Crowd was way more into it from the start unlike last week. Once again I thought Apache & Diabolica were the stars. Janet was trying some stuff & Tania was doing her best to help out but they were hitting on a 50/50 success rate. Diabolica had this crazy flip plancha in the second fall that seemed to injure a fan who got hit in the shoulder. Don't move, pay the price. Finish has one of the rudas (I forget which) interfering from the outside to cause Lady Apache to fall off the ropes & get pinned. Crowd was unhappy with that. I will gladly take these women on TV weekly instead of more Ringo Mendoza/Javier Cruz nonsense. Speaking of... semi-main we have Ringo back on our screens. Forming a weird team with Blue Demon Jr & Plata. La Fiera is also here wearing a t-shirt which is strange. It also caused me to pause & hit up the match finder (a cool gimmick I bet few people know exists). This is only La Fiera's 2nd match on CMLL TV in 1993. He had one back at the start of February, then he worked a Friday show in March but his match didn't make TV. I don't know if he was serving a punishment or just having real life issues but his bookings appear to go way down during this time period. He looked good here taking stuff from both Demon & Ringo. The big moment of the match comes in the second fall where the rudos are finishing off the tecnicos... both Markus & Bestia whip Demon into the ropes, Bestia drops down while Markus appearsto have thought they were gonna do a double backdrop or something, Demon does the leapfrog, Markus picks him up for a flapjack or whatever but for some reason Demon tucks his head and comes down at a gruesome angle spiking himself. He's immediately not moving. He gets pinned but the doctor is already rushing over & the crowd is concerned. FWIW I think Demon was fine but playing it up since it got such an oh shit reaction. He just stays KO'ed even as he's kicked & dragged out of the ring. He just lays on the floor dead as the medics figure out what to do & the tecnicos try to keep the rudos away from kicking at him. Eventually they find the stretcher & take him away as we get fed continuous repeats of his near disaster. As was always the case in the past when an injury occurs - the team with the advantage takes control & ends the match rather quickly. Rudos go over clean. Main event is our final build before the Ciclon/Felino singles match - yes, it's finally coming! Felino keeps ducking Ciclon for the entire match leading to a great moment in the third fall where he's leaning on the top turnbuckle & Ciclon just bursts across the ring from his own corner to dropkick Felino straight down to the floor. It got a huge pop! Pantera looked good in the match as he always does. Atlantis was a background player which I'm fine with since he is seemingly feuding with every rudo in the promotion most of the time. Ciclon ends up pinning Felino with a wheelbarrow suplex & issuing the challenge for his title which will happen next week. But not here, we're back at Arena Mexico for a new season next week!

MINIS! YAY! Kinda. Always good to see the minis on TV here. But the performance here was less than stellar. Mascarita Magica screwed up the first fall finish, Cicloncito Ramirez immediately messes up a spot to start the second fall. It just wasn't clicking for them on this Tuesday night. The match is mainly brawling & rudos in control. Not what you look for out of the CMLL minis division at this time. Finish is kinda fun with them doing La Estrella, Cicloncito tricking Damiancito into splashing both his partners, then rolling him up with a Victory Roll in the center. The good news is we are on a run of minis matches coming up so they'll get the chance to redeem themselves. Switching over to the start of this Arena Mexico season we get the top three which comes with entrances full of new lighting effects, blaring loud music & Vitorrino intros. Peak! Our first match is the Brazos opposite the Chacales Del Ring. Rudos take fal one after lots of brawling. So much brawling that I looked up the match time & realized this was ending in two falls for sure. CMLL can be very patterned like that, even to this present day. Just the other day I had CMLL on (unfortunately, what a boring show it was) & within 30 seconds of a match beginning I put a message in the group chat mentioning this is going two falls. Of course I was correct. So the reason this goes two falls is because after the Brazos make their comeback Porky is doing belly bump spots on everyone but accidentally in his excitement gets his own brother El Brazo. He gets slapped & begins crying which renders him incapable of going over to break up the rudos pinning his brothers. Looks like the Brazos are splitting w/ El Brazo going heel. If this sounds familiar, it should. This happened numerous times including the exact same deal 2 years later in this exact same building. Semi-main is out all-stars match. It's your standard stuff in front of a hot crowd (although it's clear attendance is not very good). Jericho/Casas seem to have an issue going on or are trying to work themselves into one. It's fun watching the foreigners at this time working with the veterans in an era where everything wasn't so planned out. You can see Casas putting himself into spots for Jericho to do things & Jericho having to realize it on the fly. Same with Norman & Pierroth. The finish is really fuckin hilarious as Casas slams Jericho & he must have said "move" (or more likely "mueve") but Jericho either didn't hear or understand. So Casas does his falling headbutt spot which is usually met by two boots or the person moving... except he just comes down right beside Jericho who doesn't even flinch. The announcers couldn't help but break into laughter. Crowd was more confused than anything. Jericho goes up, hits a moonsault, tecnicos win. Shit happens. Speaking of shit happens... our main event! The Ciclon/Felino feud building for months finally get it's first singles match! Felino defending his CMLL Welterweight Title. Pre-match we get a skit in the CMLL gym where Ciclon/Felino get into it & have to be seperated. I'm sure many long time CMLL employees would be able to point out who the unmasked people breaking it up were. I do not recognize the person who was there as official commissioner for this match. First fall is pretty long & really good with lots of matwork building to the action speeding up & then followed up with a series of dives from each guy. Let me once again state CMLL two fall matches are very predictable! After an incredible tope suicida landing both he & Felino in the 3rd row, Ciclon rolls Felino back inside & manages to submit him. Now the fun begins. Negro Casas (Felino's second) is very unhappy. He kicks Felino & starts to berate him for dropping the first fall. Felino is upset about this. This goes on between falls as well to the point Felino tells Negro to just leave but Negro won't. So Felino shoves him to the ground! The second fall starts with some nearfalls & submission attempts. All is proceeding normally for a couple minutes without anything out of the norm seemingly taking place. Felino puts Ciclon in a standing octopus hold, has to re-adjust for a moment, then locks it on, the towel is thrown in to acknowledge the submission. But wait........ who's towel is that? That's the one Negro had in his hand! Roberto Rangel raises Ciclon Ramirez's hand! New champion in straight falls! Crowd actually pops like crazy when Ciclon's hand it raised. Felino is in shock not understanding what just happened. The announcers even seem surprised saying how can the guy putting the submission on who was in no danger end up losing? Negro keeps pointing to his own neck signifying he was concerned Felino was in pain when he couldn't lock the Octopus on properly so he threw in the towel for his benefit. Very rare CMLL finish! Felino is so unhappy he grabs his belt & just leaves with it & the towel. He does not come back so there is no championship presentation as we go off the air. Very very very rare finish for Arena Mexico. I didn't understand it at all when I was getting into lucha, I didn't understand it many years later but now I definitely understand it. You need to know the history of the Casas family to really understand what's going on here. Negro Casas was the first of the brothers to begin wrestling. Everyone acknowledged he was very talented. A prodigy of the sport. By the time he had already started to make it as a star, his two young brothers had begun. Babe Casas aka Felino was getting immense praise starting in 1988/1989 as possibly being even better than his big brother Negro. He eventually takes on the Felino gimmick but he's always positioned as an underneath guy. For his entire career really. He was never a main event like big brother Negro Casas. At this point in 1993, Negro appears to have some say in the booking of CMLL. So he knows Felino is about to get his first real main event & the seeds are being planted for his first major mask match. What does Negro do? He inserts himself, making it all about him. Negro had NOTHING to do with this feud or story until this match. The idea presented here is Casas/Felino are having issues, perhaps Casas is turning tecnico even. He does not. They do not split. They do not feud. This was just a way for him to steal the spotlight from Felino. It was the first of many times. Over the course of time it's come out that Negro actively sabatoged his brother's career. To the point Felino knew what was going on & that's why he finally decides to jump to AAA in 1999. He had much better offers & opportunities before but never had the guts to pull off the switch. Finally he did it & it goes as poorly as expected. He's back to CMLL within 6 months & instead of getting any sort of big welcome back moment or angle - CMLL suddenly does a Negro Casas Anniversary Show & Felino just happens to be there in the background clapping for his brother. That's his return. Back to the same spot he left, always below his brother. Negro clearly using his power at the time to make sure Felino understood he would always be below him. I know most people won't be able to comprehend this & say I'm imagining things. That's fine. I know it's hard for people to celebrate the wrestler from the human. Let's just put it this way... if you love Negro Casas as a wrestler, your best recourse is to learn absolutely nothing about him as a human being. Let's just leave it at that. As for the follow-up to this match - we'll see it in the coming weeks but don't worry a rematch is ordered & does take place. It happens on a week where we don't have CMLL TV but I'm pretty sure I have at least highlights of the match from one of the Year in Review episodes.

An easy one to recap this week. Only three matches! For whatever reason they replayed the Tuesday semi-main from the week before. Even with only three matches we somehow get both opening matches from Friday + the main event. No idea why they skipped the tercera but the semi-main couldn't be shown because Texano is contracted to the other station. But Rob, isn't Dr. Wagner Jr as well? He was... this is his official CMLL debut complete with pre-match video walking into an empty Arena Mexico & announcing he's always dreamed of wrestling here (since his arena matches had never aired on TV this made total sense to anyone just following on TV weekly). Atlantis ends up running into him & thus started a long running CMLL issue, well into 2008 & returning for a brief period in 2015. But let's rewind to the opener - another minis match makes the cut! Again this isn't a blowaway match or anything. I think Mascarita Magica may have gotten dinged up in the first fall somehow which effected things. Felinito was far away the best guy here taking great bumps & showing tons of charisma. I never understood how he didn't break his neck always taking that monkey flip where he lands upside down on the ropes. Dragoncito does an ugly plancha over the ringpost in the third fall, may have actually smacked Ultratumbita in the head coming down as he's never seen again. Magica submits Felinito with a figure-four leglock. Gentleman's **1/2. Next is a weird undercard tag. This has opening match written all over it but somehow ended up here on a Friday. Announcers plug Bronco & Triton making their returns next week. Was Bronco around before? I've already forgotten. Ah yes, he showed up in the Latin Lover debut. Then disappeared. Interesting. Not at all teasing something fun for next week! Nope! Not me! This match is a two fall rudo win which is another strange result for a Friday segunda. Bucanero once again showed he has some ideas but hadn't totally figured things out yet. Like he takes a backdrop to the floor where he got launched as Shogun was standing on the apron so nothing to hang onto coming down to the floor. I like it! Finish is a momentum change which wins points from me. This was better than the minis tag. Main event is pretty good. Crowd is hot for Atlantis/Wagner interactions. Haku & Norman working the mat was a sight to see. The crowd sure did love Haku. Not so much his opponents. At one point it looks like he stiffs Wagner with a clothesline & Wagner is down for a bit. At another point he's just not going along with whatever it is Norman wants to do so Norman relents & lets Haku throw him around. I'm sure in the past I'd have hated this but watching with 2026 eyes it just looks so different than anything you're gonna see today in the era of over-cooperation. Just seeing someone not going up immediately makes you sit up in your seat. Someone should study this aspect of current pro wrestling. Not me. I've given up thinking my opinions will ever be heard. The two teams split the first two falls & we get an extended third fall. It comes to an end when Dragon does a somersault off the apron onto Satanico, Atlantis takes Wagner out with a plancha & Haku gives Norman a sit-out power bomb. Announcers wonder if he will challenge for the Heavyweight Title + note he is the one who Norman beat in the tournment to crown a champion. Either way the crowd is far more interested in an Atlantis/Wagner stand-off going on outside the ring. Decent enough short show with somehow the minis match ending up as the weakest of the three.

The run of minis matches continues as we open with their Tuesday match. Definitely a step up in terms of quality from the previous matches but still I don't think it hit the level I know these guys can work at. Cicloncito/Piratita (Virus) were great together, they busted out the backflip off the shoulders deal that I haven't seen anyone else except Rey Jr (who else?) try. They went for a complicated many parts moving at the same time first fall finish & it almost fell apart but they just managed to keep it together. Dragoncito/Pierrothito had a great second fall exchange. In the third fall they did a series of dives capped off by a huge flip plancha from Dragoncito taking him 6-7 rows back. No joke! Thankfully it was in the aisle instead of onto some poor fans. Then they do this great brawl where everyone is trying to make it back inside but someone keeps thrwarting their effort. Somehow Dragoncito escapes from the group & comes in the other side to win the match for his team. Creative! Would love to see a finish like that these days but you'd probably need an explainer for the dumb tourists. Actually, you may need an explainer for the simple minded wrestlers. Moving onto Friday we get the opener for some reason which may sound like a replay to you reading this blog. It's Apache & Legendario (instead of Aguila India) vs Halcon Negro & Mestizo just like we had at Arena Coliseo the other week. Apache/Halcon do basically their same cool exchange in the first fall, the match goes two falls & Mestizo turns on Halcon Negro once again. This time the turn seems a little stranger but if you were a hardcore fan following CMLL around this time you knew the deal so they didn't need to build the entire match around teasing what was inevitably coming. Mestizo leads a comeback by himself, takes out both tecnicos who admire his work & shake his hand. This makes Halcon Negro very angry who gets into the ring & fights with Mestizo. This also leaves him prone to being attacked by the two tecnicos who jump on him for the pin while Mestizo allows himself to be counted out. Mestizo is OFFICIALLY a tecnico going forward this time. Now we get to some insanity! I wish the video quality was better to figure out what the fuck was happening here but I'll do my best to explain using words. So the rudos for the tercera are in the process of entering - Mogur & Jaque Mate have hit the ring. As Tornado Negro is about to come out we see everyone's heads turning & a giant commotion in the crowd. Police are running, fans are running, people appear to be being chased, it's aboslute mayhem. Tornado Negro makes his way out & has no idea what scene he's walking into. He seems perplexed as he gets in the ring & all the wrestlers are now staring at whatever is happening. It looked like someone being chased tried to jump into the ring to get away but got snatched by someone (security?). The Mendozas are out next & walk into the same mess with people running right by them. Bronco comes out last & by then we've kinda calmed things down although you can see people still glancing at stuff happening off camera. Honestly just before we get the hard cam shot of people running all over it does sound like a gun shot went off. I can't say for 100% certainty but there's a loud noise & that's when the chaos begins. Maybe sensing the crowd wouldn't be paying attention the rudos decide to jump the tecnicos to get the match started with a lot of brawling to win back the attention of the people. The tecnicos make a comeback which gets a nice reaction. Bronco gets to show off some of his work which is very hit-and-miss... which leads us to our second strange incident of the match. To wrap up the first fall Bronco goes for a moonsault bodyblock on Jaque Mate but since he's so unathletic he somehow manages to piledrive himself upon landing. FUCK! Looked gruesome. He also knee'd Jaque Mate in the head although that's the least of our immediate problems. Bronco is laid out & immediately the refs & other wrestlers are checking on him. Two bodies in the ring not moving after we may have had a gun discharged. And you still wanna tell me Arena Mexico in 2026 is better than 1993??? Ray Mendoza (commissioner), Javier Llanes (booker) & a doctor are out to see if Bronco can continue. He eventually manages to get to his feet as we see many replays. He makes his way onto the apron but seems very out of it so they help him to the floor. Meanwhile Jaque Mate has also made it back to his feet but is very wobbly as well. It looks like Llanes & Mendoza wanna call the match off but Ringo seems to indicate it'll be okay, lets us finish up. So like pros they get out of there as quick as possible. The rudos take advantage & after maybe 2-3 minutes of brawling they just yank off Bronco's mask for the DQ. Tecnicos win in straight falls. A wild ride that was! Skipping right to the main event which is pretty good! Honestly these are the kind of matches I'd skip in my older lucha viewing days because this CMLL style just didn't work for me. I wasn't watching lucha to see King Haku or Black Magic. But I can appreciate it a bit more now seeing the styles mixing together & how people adapt to working with folks they are not used to working with. Haku is still being Haku which means difficult. At one point he seeems to shoot pick Pirata Morgan up & throw him to the floor dangerously coming close to landing on a photographer. When Black Magic tries to start the rudo beatdown in the second fall Haku seems to ignore it & just headbutts him over & over until Norman has to start selling it. They even brawl into the crowd at one point which gives us a look at LOTS of empty seats. If you told me this was a Friday sub 3000 house I'd believe it. Hard to tell without seeing upstairs. At one point Bestia Salvaje takes a horrific bump over the top to the floor I don't think he was planning to be so hard. He just mis-judged his jump so he missed grabbing the rope on the way down. Third fall is pretty good with some nearfalls & near submissions. It ends with Dandy/Bestia (the captains) squaring off & Dandy eventually prevailing with the Dandina Cradle aka magistral aka Casita. In the notes from Lucha Libre Weekly it says these two are heading to a hair match but that's not at all what I remember. I guess we'll see. I'll go ***1/2 on the main which is good for this crew in this time period.

Final minis match in a run of them provides another somewhat underwhelming performance. No Orito here, Tritoncito steps in which I believe is his TV debut & maybe only one of a couple TV matches he ever had even though he was in this company for 8-9 years. First fall is pretty good with some nice action building a long match up. Rudos take over & win fall easily. Second fall has the tecnico comeback & you assume heading to tying things up but nope! Tritoncito does a tope suicida which I think is supposed to have had no effect with him landing hard but it was difficult to tell with how they pulled it off. The next one was easier, Cicloncito goes a pescado & Piratita just steps out of the way causing the mini tecnico to go SPLAT. This leaves Dragoncito alone & he appears to be about to tie the thing up but when he goes for an asai moonsault Piratita moves the ropes. Rudos team up 3-on-1 to put Dragoncito away for the straight fall win. I wanted more! Moving to Arena Mexico where we don't have full results, we presumably get to see the top 3. The tercera is heavily focused on Ciclon/Felino ripping each other's masks so it's obvious where this is heading. In fact, pre-match we get a contract signing for a rematch for the CMLL Welterweight Title which will happen next Friday based on the controversial finish a couple weeks ago. It should be noted Masakre, still a current wrestler, is there as the intermediary. He was the CMLL PR guy for a short time. There's a great bit during this match where Ciclon's mask is so ripped up he has to leave to go get a new one. Felino hides to the side of the entrance ramp waiting to jump him & the fans are warning Ciclon as he makes his way back to the ring. This includes one fan who is literally jumping up & down pointing down to where Felino is. Ciclon catches on & attacks Felino first which leads to a brawl in the crowd. File it under things CMLL would never allow today! Ciclon pins Felino clean to end the match & heading into next week he's the big favorite! Next up is a match I would have handwaved many years ago but this is why we are doing a re-watch! Pretty entertaining! Mostly due to watching Haku just randomly decide when he's tired of selling & how afraid the rudos are to push the issue. LOL Like at one point during the rudos being on offense Haku just randomly starts hitting them, they start bumping, then go to cut him off but he's not done throwing them around so Jaque Mate is like whatever & just bails from the ring. Pierroth Jr still has an issue with his old partners here. Masakre lays down to avoid letting Pierroth get to him to end the first fall which leads to a funny second fall bit where Pierroth mocks him by doing the same. It's mentioned on commentary King Haku is going back to Tonga for a while which I'm sure is pleasant news to all the CMLL rudos. Tecnicos take the match & Pierroth signals he wants a mask/hair match with Masakre. Main event intros are notable for the huge female pops both Vampiro & Jericho get. If you remember in later years Jericho on his podcast discussed Vamp being jealous that someone else was around who getting over with the female crowd at Arena Mexico. It's understandable, Vampiro literally had nothing else to offer except drawing in that demo. It's that exact demo that makes this match interested as they scream when the tecnicos are down & react huge to anything they do on offense. It turns a middling match into something a touch better. Ultimo Dragon/Javier Cruz seem to have an issue starting here which is leading to a title match in a couple weeks. Tecnicos go over much to the crowd's delight. An overall enjoyable episode of TV but with no high end matches.

An easy one to breeze through here! No CMLL TV from this weeks exists on video. So all we have are extended highlights of the main event which aired on the Year in Review special months later. The key note here of course is the seconds. Ciclon has Cicloncito Ramirez & Felino has Pequeno Jaque Mate. We join mid-first fall as Felino sends Ciclon outside & hits a plancha. I love how smoothly Felino moves around the ring during this. He rolls Ciclon back in & hits a moonsault to win the first fall. Second fall also JIP with Ciclon taking Felino out with a somersault plancha off the apron landing both in the crowd. He follows with a vintage tope suicida putting both into the crowd. He ties things up with his finisher - La Reinera. Third fall also JIP with both guys exhausted. Felino is going for covers using his arm, his leg or just collapsing onto Ciclon. He knocks Ciclon outside & goes for a dive but Ciclon escapes around the ringpost. Felino sticks his head through the ropes & appears bothered by something. Camera is late to react but we eventually cut to Negro Casas just strolling around ringside with a coffee in hand. As Felino is distracted Ciclon sneaks up behind him, plants him with a german suplex & retains the title! Big pop for the finish! Casas just keeps on strolling to the back indicating he was just taking in the action. Once again Felino's brother has gotten himself involved & taken the attention away from him. I wouldn't have had any problem with any of this if not for the fact I know the future & none of this ends up playing into anything. It's just Negro Casas showing his Paul Levesque qualities. Really good match from what we were able to see.

I was mistaken saying the run of the minis matches have come to an end. We sneak in this one extra match from Tuesday! Such a random pull. Even if we don't have the full lineup you gotta think there was something better to air with your precious TV time than this opener or segunda with the lower end (except Piratita) CMLL minis crew. Piratita is easily the highlight here taking some great bumps & leading the weaker mini tecnicos along. I love how he does that sliding bump to the floor just like Pirata himself used to. There's a clearly a trick to that only few know. They split the first two falls. Broncecito goes out first, then Pequeno America almost instantly. Piratita easily dispatches of Mascarita soon after so the mini rudos win. An inconsequential but inoffensive match. Off to Friday where we don't have a full lineup but have to presume the top three aired even though that tag match sticks out as something lesser than a tercera. It was pretty good! As you'd imagine with those workers involved. I could watch Oro move around the ring all day. Just so damn smooth. Pantera also looks killer here working with the very underrated Gladiador. My complaint about this one - much like the complaint I've had with other CMLL matches this yeaer - the finish being abrupt. These guys had a real good match going that they just needed to bring home. Instead we get the tecnico comeback, then immediately the rudos just put them away without much of anything in between. Very lackluster. The Oro/Mano Negra issue was not really played up so by this point CMLL appears to have different things in mind for each guy. Next is an issue we are not moving past - Ciclon Ramirez vs Felino! It really hit me in this match how much lucha libre has been fundamentally changed. Well, I should just say CMLL because that's all the lucha libre left in the world & even CMLL is trying to just turn themselves into more of the same wrestling worldwide. This match had mask ripping! Remember mask ripping? It's that thing that shows up twice a year - usually August & February when CMLL is suddenly putting together their two mask matches per year. Tearing at the mask, trying to make your opponent bleed, being violent in general... all things that we saw in this match just don't exist any more these days. Which totally defeats the idea of having masks, doesn't it? Farewell sweet lucha libre! Also in this match we had the Negro Casas/Felino issue where at first Felino wanted nothing to do with Negro on his team but during the course of the three falls they make up. So what was the point of all that then besides feeding Negro's ego? Bleh. DB has this as a DQ win for the tecnicos but it wasn't. Ciclon just wins clean with the Reinera. There was actually an elimination first as Atlantis gets pinned, then Cruz takes out Negro with a tope suicida by accident which is what left Ciclon/Felino alone to decide things. We get post-match challenges by Felino & Ciclon... or were supposed to... Negro won't leave Felino's side during the entire deal & appears to be fucking with him by covering his mouth & motioning he shouldn't say anything. The ego! And you thought Dalys was bad! She learned from the best. Nothing officially agreed to here but we know where this one is heading. Main event is one of those deals that'll happen when you have a skipped match one week combined with a pre-emption the following week. Apparently we missed a La Fiera/Sangre Chicana insta-feud! The announcers let us know they dislike each other & they spent all match proving it although it's not the blooshed you might expect reading those names. What was notable to me were the women screaming for Vamp the entire match. Throughout the show, in fact, they kept cutting to random crowd shots & noting the type of women Vamp is drawing to Arena Mexico. They even zoomed in from afar on this women's leg which appeared to have a vampire tattoo. Hopefully it wasn't specific to Vamp. Pierroth/Wagner are also having issues. The finish is super strange as Fiera/Chicana are brawling outside & the match appears to be continuing in the ring but for some reason the refs eventually start waving their hands indicated the two captains won't stop fighting outside the ring so they counted both out. I can honestly say I do not recall any other match finish like that in my time watching lucha libre since it goes against the idea that if you leave the ring anyone can replace you. Either way this is just fuel for the issue with these two which appears to be heading to a hair match as soon as next week!

So here's a random fun fact: El Dandy & Dr. Wagner Jr. have had two CMLL Light Heavyweight Title matches on Tuesday shows that have been taped. Neither match ended up airing. What a bummer since that's a rare singles match that we've never had the pleasure of seeing & never will. Instead we start off with the semi-main which was good! I don't know if it hit Dandy/Wagner levels of good but I was thuroughly entertained. Porky comes out with his newly won CMLL Heavyweight Title, having won it from Normal two days earlier at Arena Mexico. This has them immediately getting in a face-to-face confrontation that led me to wonder in what language were they speaking? My answer comes in the form of Porky mouthing the words "fuck you". Porky does a sequence sending both Emilio & Jaque Mate to the floor, then as he poses Magic gets in the ring to berate him & slaps him a few times which is the usual Porky cries spot. He does. Then he belly-bumps Magic down. LOL Good bit. The work was really solid here & crowd was very into the match. There was a weird spot in the third fall where Pierroth does this deal where he slaps Magic's nose. It's a slight of hand thing because Pierroth is clearly just slapping his own hand & not the nose. For some reason THIS is the spot they decide to replay twice in a row which exposes how Pierroth came nowhere close to Magic's nose. Lucha Libre production! Gotta love it! Tecnicos get the win with a Porky splash onto everyone. He brawls with Magic post-match. Moving to Arena Mexico we have a star studded tercera on this loaded show. Negro Casas is immediately trolling Vamp & it continues into the match where he keeps pointing to the mat & challenging him to get down & wrestle me like a man. Obviously a shot at Vamp's lack of abilities. But this isn't being unprofessional or anything, Negro clearly allows himself to be outwrestled by Vamp so the crowd goes nuts. What a great professional wrestler that Negro Casas was. It's as much about getting yourself over as it is your opponent. The Ciclon/Felino issue is here of course & we get into right away with Ciclon tearing the top of Felino's mask off first chance he gets. There's an awesome Atlantis/Bestia Salvaje sequence followed by Ciclon chasing Felino down when he gets caught rolling into the ring & smashes his face into the side of the ring. A beautiful 45 seconds of lucha libre right there. Rudos take the first fall. Second fall is more mask ripping from both Ciclon/Felino + Felino has his outfit torn up. The idea throughout the match is Vamp has been getting more & more frustrated by the rudos taunting him so he finally snaps & low blows both Negro & Bestia for the straight fall DQ loss. I must say, a very weird finish since ideally you wanted all the focus on Ciclon/Felino who are finally having their long awaited mask match next week to close out this season of Arena Mexico. Good match. Before the semi-main we get a shot of Ultimo Dragon arriving at Arena Mexico to prepare for his title match. This includes a gym session where two creepy attractive women are just staring at him from up close as he works on his shoulders, some cool neck bridge excercises & then a shiatzu massage from another pretty lady. All these ladies have painted out Ultimo Dragon logo tattoos. Or at least I hope they were just painted on. **** skit. A better rating than I'd give this match unfortunately. I don't think Javier Cruz held up his end at all. He was always a very passable worker, definitely not in the top half of best CMLL guys from the late 80's but he did not seem too motivated for this one. Lots of times he was slow to react & he didn't do a single impressive thing the entire way. At one point he appears to forget how to take Ultimo's top rope huracanrana so Ultimo has to fix his arms before executing it. There's a cut during the third fall even with it going almost 10 minutes so they must have went real long. Dragon retains with a german suplex. Not one for his highlight reel. The main event is our hair match that in another era would have been such a big deal it may have main evented an Aniversario. Heck, not even another era, maybe a year or two earlier. But it's 1993 now so it's just a random apuesta match to throw out there on little build. I think I am gonna put an asterisk beside this match as the new example to show people of a match that could NEVER take place in current Arena Mexico. There is not a single thing they do here that would fly with today's way of doing things. Right from the start where the first 4-5 minutes are just Fiera trying to reverse out of Chicana hold but not being able to & getting progressively more frustrated. Then we have Chicana delivering kidney shots to Fiera which was the story of the match. He kept attacking the kidney with these short punches. Roberto Rangel keeps warning him the punches are illegal but doesn't DQ him because the match is so important. Chicana takes fall one with the Chicana Stretch or whatever name I gave it in TNM. Chicana keeps leaving the ring to get into it with fans on each side of the ring. He runs Fiera's head into the ringpost to try to bust him open. He keeps going up to fans & taunting them or argue with them. He disappears into the crowd to do this but when he comes back he has a beer bottle in his hand smashes Fiera over the head with it! Instant DQ. Security & Rangel are quick to start cleaing up the mess left. From this point forward Fiera is totally out of it, a bloody stumbling mess. He lunges at Chicana on the outside & completely misses him - crashing to the floor. They get back inside and Chicana keeps punching Fiera in the kidney & throws in a regular shot to the jaw once in a while. Fiera finally mounts a comeback & knocks Chicana outside for his insane over the top rope where he comes down *fuckin hard* on his own chest as Chicana bumps into the second row! Insane! They get back inside and do a couple nearfalls. Finally as Chicana is punching Fiera, Fiera manages to reverse into a backslide (which had been blocked earlier in the match)... unfortunately he loses him at first & has to re-apply the hold properly... Rangel counts 1... waits for him to fix it... then re-starts at 1... 2... 3! Fiera defeats Chicana! Crowd pops like crazy. I really liked the match! It was a wild ride the entire way. Again, nothing like you'd see today. Everything they did had meaning & the crowd was glued to every punch, every momentum shift, every nearfall. The only knock I have is that finish. After the beating Fiera took, I expected a little stronger finish. It didn't help that he lost him on the backslide. It just didn't seem like it was a surprise pinfall as Chicana sold it as much as just it was time to go home so they did. Chicana didn't seem like he took enough punishment to stay down that long. But the crowd is thrilled & Chicana is back to arguing with the people chanting bad things at him. He gets his head shaved but just before they can finish it, he starts brawling with Fiera. They end up brawling up the aisle right to the back. I'll go **** on the match which is high end for 1993 CMLL. A really good TV show!

Our Tuesday match of the week is the main event featuring the continuation of the ex-Intocables feud. Kahoz has stepped into Pierroth's spot so that's been a regular team going on here. Match is decent enough but nothing super notable. I enjoyed the finish just b/c it's so different from stuff you'd see these days. No big dives or overly choregraphed sequence... just guys being taken out one by one in different ways so that Pierroth ends up isolated in the ring & triple teamed. Initially the rudos are awarded the win but they refuse to stop beating Pierroth up so it ends up reversed into a DQ for excessive violence. Switching to Arena Mexico, it's the season ender! Shows move to Arena Coliseo until mid-August after this one so you know it's a big one. We get the top three here with one major switch. Having just lost his NWA Middleweight Title back to Mano Negra, Oro is out here & Atlantis is in. This has been a thing I've danced around since the first show of these 1993 recaps. CMLL clearly had their sights on an Oro/Mano Negra feud throughout the year, culminating in a mask match. It's been debated when that switched into Atlantis being put in the spot. You can see Atlantis kinda take over the feud back in February. But CMLL still has Oro/Mano Negra matched up after that & into June. Now in July they suddenly take the title off Oro *and* remove him from this Friday show so Atlantis can sub in directly opposite Mano Negra. My opinion is this is exactly the week they decided where they were going for the Anniversary Show later in the year & put their plan in motion. It's not like this entire match revolves around Atlantis & Mano Negra but they do match-up the entire way, tease ripping at masks, roll to the ring grabbing each other's masks & foreshadow the exact mask match finish to end this one. There's an amazing bit early on in this match where Javier Cruz interrupts Dandy's submission hold. So on the next spot Dandy is running the ropes & goes out of his way to smack Cruz who takes this bump right out of the camera range. LOL It looked & sounded so perfect. Crowd exploded. Everyone played it off so well. I think Cruz almost landed on a kid who was just in the wrong place at ringside which made it even better. Cruz made up for his piss poor singles match the previous week as he looked great in this one, especially working with Jericho. He took his forearm off the apron spot & ate a flying back elbow to finish the first fall so well. In the third fall the tecnicos get a huge reaction for their comeback. Jericho knocks Norman to the floor (literally they ran into each other), then follows with a huge tope over the top where Normal both almost ended & then saved Jericho's life as he side-stepped the dive but then stuck his hands out to make sure Jericho's crash neck first to the ground. SO SCARY. I remember when I first saw this match replaying that over & over to see just how close Jericho came to being paralyzed. Dandy follows with the exact same dive onto Cruz but much prettier & safer. Atlantis/Mano Negra trade nearfalls before Atlantis gets him in the Atlantida & even drops down to his knees for the submission win. Like I said... FORESHADOWING! Crowd popped huge. Really good match! **** in my book. Unlike our semi-main! Weird pairings. We join during Vamp's intro & he's so excited to pose for the crowd he no-sells Emilio trying to sneak attack him. Once he realizes it's Emilio he begins to sell a bit but it's just super awkward. The match has no direction & is just random brawling. Not even intense brawling, just time wasting brawling. The worst kind you can have. I didn't sense anyone involved was super excited to be doing this match & even though the crowd was hot it's not like these guys used that as motivation. I was just super disappointed. Vamp does a plancha over the ringpost onto Emilio to show off I guess. Chicana kicks Fiera's inside thigh, does it again, then grabs both legs so you think he's about to foul him but instead dumps him backwards over the top rope for the instant DQ. Tecnicos win in two falls. Fiera is stretchered out. I was not a fan of any of this. But now we get to the big one! MASK VS MASK! CICLON RAMIREZ VS FELINO! A video package starts things off going through their previous matches, confronations in the gym/press conference & just general mayhem the two caused leading up to all this. There are so many photographers at ringside! Alexis gets a lot of shit for being the one to eliminate all photographers except himself from Arena Mexico in the late 2000's which he probably deserves since it helped make matches & events more big time when you had tons of people trying to snap photos of the action as it happened. But also you see something like this where the camera can't even get a good shot of the intros because so many photographers are occupying the best spots & you totally get it why it can be a negative. Not to mention the first few rows of fans having to look around the bodies. Crazy heat for this match. Announcers describe it as a 50/50 split but I certainly heard more Felino chants than Ciclon. The story you need to know going in of course is Ciclon is the HEAVY favorite. Not many people thought Felino stood a chance. It was common knowledge he was a Casas so the "smart" fans knew his unmasking would reveal a face they recognize (Babe Casas) & the "normal" fans knew Ciclon just beat Felino twicein title matches. How could he lose a mask match to him? It's a very slow starting match with them working holds but this doesn't damper the crowd's excitement at all. Ciclon takes the first fall with a Reinera. Felino is very cautious in the second fall. He almost has it won with a Cavernaria at one point but Felino manages to escape. Felino begins working the arm & eventually gets Ciclon to submit to tie things up. The third fall is where things pick up big time with Ciclon just unleashing dive after dive onto Felino which is what the crowd wanted to see. It's basically the Ciclon show. Then he goes to put Felino away by climbing up top only for the crowd to scream NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO so he gives in & jumps down off the ropes. 30 seconds later he tries it again, this time doesn't listen to the crowd, crashes & burns! But only a two count! It's a weird finish because I wanna say it comes out of nowhere as Felino just slams Ciclon down, locks on his famous submission.......... and that's it. Ciclon submits! But it's so much more than that. As I explained, Ciclon was the heavy favorite. On commentary Miguel Linares is 100% pro Felino so he's living & dying with every move in the match. So when Felino locks the submission on there isn't much excitement. But then Ciclon isn't escaping.. then he appears to be struggling... now the crowd is buzzing thinking holy shit is he about to give up... so Linares starts getting over-excited (no way he knew the finish ahead of time, announcers never did back then)... Rangel drops down as if asking Ciclon "did you just say I quit?"... now the crowd is molten... and that's when Rangel waves his arms which causes the crowd to erupt. One of my all-time favorite pops for a match finish. It's a weird match look back on overall because I don't feel at all like they had their "epic match" as we'd say in 2026. Not at all. But I was into it the entire way & satisfied at the end. It was a ***3/4 match with a ***** finish. If your rating falls somewhere in between there I wouldn't argue either way. The match was still EPIC just due to the high stakes & buzz from the crowd the entire way. They didn't need to do 45 nearfalls to reach that point which says a lot about the build & the two as wrestlers. Felino celebrates his win with his son (future Tiger or Puma... I always forget which this was). Ciclon is at a total loss & just kinda stumbles around the ring before ripping his mask off & immediately exiting to the back which means he has to fight through the mass of people who ran to ringside to see the unmasking. Great visual. The end! Everything gets a nice little reset as we head into Arena Coliseo season with our first half major feud in the books. A very good TV show! Two in a row!

This is a one match show & it's impossible to really use words to describe the match, at least for me, so this will be a quick & dirty recap! From Tuesday we get a midcard (presumably) match with this band of misfits. I think this is Antar's TV debut unless I'm forgetting something. Rudos win a quick first fall out of nowhere in very 1993 CMLL TV style. Tecnicos are immediately on offense in the second fall. Good action carries over into the third fall & our finish is the old school La Estrella capped off with an Antar huracanrana right in the middle on Arkangel. **1/2. They hit all the basic stuff you'd expect but didn't attempt anything more than that. Friday's show has an opener (which I just added to the LuchaDB) but otherwise the entire show is decided by a battle royale. Very old school! CMLL used to do this kind of thing regularly since at it's core CMLL is just a booking office. Pick the 16 guys you want to use, stick them in a battle royale & let the pieces fall where they may. The twist in this battle royale is it's done old school meaning no over the top rope eliminations... you have submissions & people jumping on top of others. The elimination order determines who teams with who & who faces who so even when four guys are left & we know it'll be a tag match we have to keep going to decide who teams with who. Tigre Hispano seems to forget this & is waving the match off but the wrestlers smartly just continue on & we get two pinfalls to end things with noted rivals Dandy/Casas not being forced to team up. The tournament matches up to the main event aren't worth breaking down individually. They all end in two falls & all are very basic nothing going on matches except for the Cachorro match where the entire first fall is wrestled tencico style but once Americo Rocca outwrestles him, Cachorro snaps in the second fall & starts acting like a rudo including getting himself DQ'ed. Interesting bit to make this seem more than just a night of random matches. Our main event hits the ring with almost an hour left in the video of the entire TV show. So you better be prepared to get comfortable! I remember this match getting tons of praise in the magazines & even the newsletters which didn't really cover much lucha libre. Probably due to the foreigners involved. The early matches all going two falls makes total sense here & is actually kinda genius if you think about it. This match goes almost 45 minutes for three falls but the longest falls are the first & second. By having each match go two falls earlier, you get sucked into thinking this is going two falls as well... certainly due to the length you are justified in thinking that way. But nope. Dandy & Casas tie things up after over a half hour of action taking us to the decider. What is clearly evident to the trained eye about this match is how they didn't seem to prepare/choreograph much of anything beyond the finishes & I question even those. It's a match of it's time because you would never see anything like this *anywhere* in the world currently. It's four well trained guys just hitting the ring & feeling it. There are no complex exchanges. There are no dives (!!!). There are no real what you'd call highspots these days. It's a lot of give & take knowing you are in there with opponents who will see what you are offering up & go with it. Honestly it's mesmorizing action if you can handle something like that. Would be fascinating to see younger/current eyes watch something like this & find out what they think about it. I could totally see someone just saying this is boring, they're not doing anything. Casas/Dandy end up winning in just about 42 minutes. The finish was the only part of the match that got messy as Jericho goes for a moonsault intending to land on his feet but slips. He recovers quickly but Dandy has already moved so it looks weird when Jericho just goes for it anyways. I remember some people calling this the CMLL MOTY in the newsletter. I know it was picked as the CMLL MOTY in Box y Lucha. I think I land on a ****1/4 rating. Very high end for 1993 CMLL. Stands out as a match from a previous era (which is why I think ByL were the high men on it). It's exactly the kind of match that will define your tastes as a wrestling fan. To get anything higher than the rating I am giving it, I'd probably want more of a destination at the end & a little more in terms of a highspot or two leading up to it. Post-match fans throw a ton of money into the ring. The announcers absolutely loved all this & you could tell how much invested they were in a match of this length with these guys than anything else going on in some time. Miguel Linares calls this an all-time classic afterwards. That is a man who definitely lived through some 1+ hour matches in this building so he's just happy to see them almsot back in 1993. An easy must-see match for anyone who calls themselves a wrestling fan.

Why is that Tuesday listed as Arena Mexico? Need to send Cubs a note when he stops ignoring my messsages. Need to also make a note they referenced the women's match on that Tuesday show so I gotta go back & get the listing. It was noteworthy because apparently Lady Star suffered a bad injury. As for the match we saw - no serious injuries! A win! But not a match you need to go out of your way to see. Valaguez/Mogur seem to have an issue so the match ends with Mogur faking a foul to get the win. Crowd was actually really hot for this even though the show didn't look that well attended. Again, it's wild 1993 CMLL sounds so much better than 2026 CMLL. The other day I unforunately chose to watch a Friday show & going from this 1993 great sounding CMLL in half full buildings to full Arena Mexico but barely hearing the crowd... it's fucking jarring. We move to Friday for the top three but before the tercera airs we get a video introducing Tornado Negro. Usual cheesy music playing as Tornado Negro just does various poses & mean faces. Match is perfectly fine. Better than I expected honestly. Kung Fu looks decrepit, you'd think he is about to drop dead but he somehow still manages to be in the right spot every time. Remarkable. Antar looked good here, you can see why they thought he was a prospect at one point with his size & athleticism. Speaking of looking rough - Panico looks to be 80 years old-ish here & he was only half that. These are his in-ring days winding down so you know that's a guy who lived either a hard life or was a hard worker who didn't take a night off & ended up wearing out very early in his career. He's perfectly fine here taking all the moves correctly but he stands out as a guy lost in time. He's also bald so he offers nothing in terms of putting a young guy over in an apuesta match. Finish is a dive train followed by Triton doing a bridging suplex & referee Tigre Hispano does a full leaping somersault over the bridge to count the three! Got a huge pop from crowd & announcers. AND ME! This is the difference between doing it here & Olimpico or Edgar busting it out during a nearfall or the finish of a main event. You are stealing the show. Here the match is over, that's the finish, the tecnicos are going over, the crowd is ready to cheer & your showboating to put emphasis on the three ADDS to the tecnico pop - it's not just done to get yourself over. Semi-main is a rematch from last week. Pretty short two fall match just designed to establish Cachorro more as a rudo & the announcers to push the fact he wants to be called Cachorro Salvaje from now on, not Cachorro Mendoza because he doesn't want to share a name with Ringo any longer. I liked this one bump Oro took to the floor taking a shoulderblock from the future Trailer Asesino! Oro also hit a crazy springboard somersault plancha to end the first fall. The tecnicos won fall one, the rudos got DQ'ed in fall two for excessive violence. The problem is the violence wasn't that excessive if we're being honest. It just felt like the refs called it too early before the rudos could really start pounding on Rocca who was tied in the ropes. Before the main event we have Arturo Rivera sitting down with Negro Casas & Felino to work out their issues. Neither guy seems to want to do that & the segment ends with both ripping their mics off & walking away. This main event looks really good on paper but doesn't live up to the names involved. It felt like half the guys were really trying & the other half were just going through the motions. The big story is Casas/Felino having issues. We see Casas tell Wagner not to help Felino at one point, we see Casas get in the ring to stomp Felino at one point & we see Felino shove Casas at another point. The crowd is actually really into this so it keeps the match interesting even without any action taking place. The ending sees La Fiera with a scary over the top rope rope onto Felino who barely broke his fall. Then the rudos turn the tables on Dandy/Jericho to win clean & we get another story seed planted as Dandy is upset at Jericho for some reason. Lots of angry people post-match. Announcers openly pondering if Casas is going tecnico & whether Dandy will switch to the rudo side. Decent enough show but when Kung Fu is in your best match on a show with Oro & those main eventers you may want to re-consider things.

No Tuesday results available! So I guess another blog exclusive until I find the magazine & send them over to Cubs. Or maybe some of these matches are the Tuesday results? Show starts with the minis so for all we know that's from Tuesday. Maybe the entire show is. CMLL couldn't air a match with Hamada/Scorpio Jr who are still contracted to another TV company & same goes for the Cowboys trio in the main event minus Dandy. Shame because that main event looks fuckin amazing. So we start with the minis on Tuesday & honestly the first half of this match is awesome! The rudos are taking some fucking wild bumps like Felinito getting monkey flipped upside down into the ropes & Piratita (I originally wrote Damiancito here) taking a sick sallida through the ropes. They seemed to be setting up for a very creative finish but Orito or Felinito lost their position & everyone kinda froze so it ended up very messy. Back on track in the second fall. Our next incident is when Piratita (I did it again) throws Dragoncito onto the ropes for a hotshot but Dragoncito somehow takes a bump over the ropes onto the apron & then down to the floor. Landed real hard on his hip. So he's done for a while as medics check on him. In the third fall they started to yank Dragoncito's mask off so I thought we were just going home due to him being hurt but it leads to the tecnico comeback. Orito gets launched into a crazy somersault plancha. Dragoncito scores a nearfall with a huracanrana but then gets power bombed HARD by Felinito for the rudo win. Good stuff! Very enjoyable! Announcers indicated Felinito can now challenge for the title but there is no record of that match happening. Next up is the tercera from the above poster. You can definitely see why CMLL liked Antar a lot & had plans for him if injuries hadn't gotten in the way. He had size to him but could do some super athletic things. This was actually one of his best individual CMLL performances I can recall. He had some great rudos to work with. And all this came AFTER he landed on his face in the opening minutes trying to backflip out a back suplex. Aside from one disastrous exchange between Bronce & GDLM the match was pretty darn solid. Very exciting finish with big dives & then Plata hits Titan with a very sick belly-to-belly suplex off the second rope which I was sure was the finish - as was the crowd - but Titan gets a shoulder up. Plata then goes to submit him but Titan quickly rolls him up for the win! 2 for 2! No complaints here. We then get a cheesy video for the Guerreros Del Futuro. Not sure why, they've been around for months now. This takes us to the unlisted Coliseo matches - first up Guerreros vs Ringo Mendoza, Triton & making his return to CMLL rings - Blue Demon Jr! You last saw him spiking himself into the mat on a Gran Markus Jr flapjack. This is another pretty decent match. I loved the Guerreros doing a triple team hotshot on Triton to win the first fall. You don't see that any more. The rudos did their pinball all over the place deal for the tecnicos in the third fall. After a couple dives we get Demon vs Damian who picks him up for a tombstone! WHAT??? I guess playing off his neck issues? It's so weird because the refs warn him not to do it... he spins with Demon for a good 15-20 seconds... then just drops him on his back... and pins him. That's it. It looked like a total nothing bump. Only thing it accomplished was making Demon look weak. I'm fine with that but this was just weird. Outside of that, another fine match. 3 for 3! Main event is El Dandy, Chamaco Valaguez & Pierroth Jr vs Negro Casas, Black Magic & Mogur which continues the Valaguez/Mogur issue that I presume is heading to a hair match. But we also get the drama of Casas/Magic not getting along (Magic thinks Negro is turning tecnico) & Dandy being somewhat receptive to Negro's turn by showing him compassion at various times. Like between the 2nd & 3rd fall Negro picks a fight with Dandy on the outside & as soon as Dandy fights back, Negro leans in for a hug. LOL God bless you Negro Casas! Crowd was really into everything going on here. Finish is simple but effective... Valaguez finally gets ahold of Mogur & uses an octopus type clutch to pin his shoulders to the mat. No Destroyer. No crucifix driver. No poison rana. Yet the crowd still erupted! Boggles the mind. Post-match Dandy/Negro have a scuffle, presumably to take attention away from Valaguez/Mogur who are throwing challenges at each other. 4 for 4! A very good show for the lucha libre action!

This is not the actual lineup, this combines matches from Tuesday & Friday that ended up airing. I believe the first two are from Tuesday but eventually I'll get to the magazine I own that clarifies everything. Opener continues our Valaguez/Cruz issue. Can't the Javier's just get along??? It's a very basic match which is a comment I may repeat here before the recap is done. This was a very sleepy show full of those. It ends with Cruz running away from Valaguez which actually gets a lot of heat. Another thing that wouldn't happen in today's CMLL since they want the tourists to see definitive finishes & aren't booking for those watching week-to-week. Next up is another decent match with six fine workers that you'd be hard pressed to find anything else to discuss. I liked the Dandy/Wagner stuff, wish there was more. Atlantis gets Mano Negra in the Atlantida to end things so he keeps getting the one-up on him! Moving to presumably Friday we have a strange rudos vs rudos match. I was excited for this just to see how out of the box they'd work but it didn't deliver & had an all-time awful finish. The Guerreros did their cool triple hotshot move. Panico did a lot of very strange 70's inspired offense. No 70's lucha exists on video but I'm just assuming since it looked so completely out of place. Seeing Guerrero Del Futuro & Panico fighting each other made me wonder if that's how they settle arguments in the CMLL booking office. I'm just kidding, CMLL doesn't do booking. The awful finish I mentioned is a bit where the Guerreros first throw Arkangel over the top to the floor (which is NOT a DQ under classic lucha rules). Then they pick up Tornado Negro & throw him onto Arkangel (which IS a DQ under classic lucha rules but doesn't get called here). They then lift up Panico who has the look of a guy who is absolutely not taking this kind of bump. They parade him around the ring as the refs warn them not to do it... so they don't. They put him down. This for some reason causes the refs to DQ the Guerreros? For threatening to throw Panico to the floor? Or a delayed reaction to throwing Tornado Negro onto Arkangel? I was not able to figure this one out & neither was the crowd. Arkangel ends up taking a stretcher ride to sell being thrown to the floor. Our main event continues the Americo Rocca/Cachorro Mendoza (Salvaje) issue. This issue & the one from the opener are going to intersect soon enough, I promise you. Ciclon Ramirez has a rare error trying a ringpost tope suicida where his feet end up hooking the ropes. Match ends in two falls when rudos get the excessive violence DQ called for refusing to stop beating up poor Americo Rocca. Pierroth Jr tried to make this match entertaining at the start but I wasn't feeling it. Like I said, a sleepy show. Could be a few more coming up before we hit Arena Mexico again.

Only Friday stuff. Some of this didn't ring a bell so I wonder if it was a new Roy find? I have the Jeff Lynch stuff pretty committed to memory (which may be why I failed Grade 10 math) & there were bits in these matches I hadn't remembered seeing. *But* it was also a very quiet & not notable show at all so maybe I just erased it from my memory. We start off with what may as well have been the MOTN between Metalico & Legendario vs Halcon & Supremo II. I thought Metalico & Halcon looked good here, the other two not so much.  Legendario does an ugly tope suicida in the first fall. The rudos win the second fall by both doing combo spots that screamed 'we didn't plan anything out & are just gonna see what works' because boy did the spots look awful. Third fall moved nicely. Metalico did a ringpost plancha & then Legendario simply pinned Supremo after an ugly missed moonsault. Next up is as listed minus Antar who gets subbed by Bronce II so almsot a rematch of a previous week trios. Not much to write here either. Rudos took some nice sallida bumps. I was amused by more 70's inspired offense from Panico. First fall triple finish by the tecnicos was nice. Some dives in the third fall. I liked the finish where Panico caught Bronce in a kneebar submission out of nowhere. Still not enough for a gentleman's ***1/2. 1/4 less perhaps. Semi-main was fuckin brutal to watch. I saw that match on paper & was actually excited - especially having little memory of this show thinking maybe I'll stumble into a great one here. Not even close. No effort from anyone. Ciclon Ramirez was actively blowing spots. The announcers made a big deal about this being Oro's return (?) & he was practically invisible the entire match. Totally invisible on the finish in the third fall where the rudos just win out of nowhere & totally clean. I was just waiting for that big tecnico comeback & hoping they'd have a hot finishing run to salvage things only to be met with that disappointment of an ending. BAD! Main event is notable for a huge Vampiro fan club section in attendance apparently calling themsevles the "Vampiro Night Wing Club" according to the giant banner they had. They were very loud the entire match which at least gave it some atmosphere. I do kinda miss that in today's wrestling where crowds lean more towards going silent which is taken as "appreciating the action" but in reality they're just on their phones occasionally peaking up to see if it's time to chant this is awesome yet or not. This crowd was SCREAMING any time Vamp got hit & would not stop chanting Vampiro's name for even a second. Production was clearly loving it because they cut to people (women/young girls) in that section every chance they could. And did CMLL reward these people with a Vampiro victory??? Kinda. I didn't get the finish at all. The tecnicos appeared to be in the process of a comeback spot where everyone was in the ring fighting, suddenly the refs are waving their arms for a DQ on the rudos. I rewound 3 times & couldn't see any foul the announcers were screaming about. I thought maybe an excessive violence or closed fist punches DQ but the announcers were 100% certain there was a foul. Okay, whatever you say. I did enjoy the Dandy/Wagner sequence but the atmosphere couldn't overcome the lackluster action otherwise. A very skippable TV episode, again, maybe exactly why I have put this out of my head all these years.

We start at Arena Coliseo with many fans rushing the ring to get autographs from the Brazos to the point security is physically having to push them away. Something you just don't see these days. Match starts out slow. Rudos are in process of taking first fall & Porky actually signals to Masakre to leave him alone as he sees both his partners being submitted. Weird deal for a tecnico to do. Second fall has a long segment where the new Intocables keep putting Brazo De Oro in a headlock & he sells it each time like he's being suffocated. He eventually starts bleeding from the forehead (from a headlock?). I don't hate it, it's something you don't see at all these days. Just a little odd. The rudos are then fully in control from that point forward & end up triple team pinning Porky. This sets up a trios titles match next Tuesday (or so we think at this point in time). Switching to Arena Mexico as a new season begins we have a fun looking trios that ends up being a good match although nothing extraordinary. I liked the first fall finish where Ciclon Ramirez had the Reinera as Jericho leaped over with a flying back elbow. Fiera/Chicana was pushed on commentary as the big feud resuming but they didn't really go at each other hard. Ciclon does an incredible tope suicida taking him & Gladiador into the crowd in the third fall. Fiera then cleanly pins Chicana with a huracanrana. A solid enough *** affair. Semi-main is another good looking match on paper. Everyone looked great except Mano Negra who seems a step slow on everything. Atlantis was having to cover for him. Good thing this season isn't planned to end with a Mano Negra singles match - oh no! Felino was fantastic as a rudo taking big bumps & getting the crowd to crack up at his hijinx. His work with Dandy especially was just miles ahead of anything you'd be seeing in the US around this time period. Definitely gonna clip some stuff out for IG, explain why it's good & get zero responses from any current luchadors but many from the top US guys who love it. A nice sequence in the third fall has Ultimo do a cornerpost tope on Salvaje, Atlantis catapult Dandy into a plancha on Felino & then Atlantis uses a huracanrana to pin Negra. Same finish twice in a row. I'll go ***3/4 but that's mostly due to Felino's antics. Main event is the Negro Casas show. Poor Negro Casas. King Haku's bit is he doesn't sell at all unless it's a 2-on-1 or 3-on-1 attack. He also just throws people around without a care in the world. So Negro was here to basically be the recipient of all Haku's offense. I felt so bad for him by the end. In addition to that he also had to bump all over for the useless Vampiro. It was interesting that this is around the time the crowd seemingly starts to turn. Less women are coming out to see him as CMLL isn't drawing as well so you still hear the screams but when the screams die down you definitely hear lots of boos. You can also see this rattles Vamp on more than one occasion. Pierroth/Wagner kinda just stuck to themselves all match long. Tecnicos took the first fall when Vamp did a plancha over the post on Charles & Haku used a sit-out power bomb on Negro. A somewhat extended second fall just saw Haku beating everyone up until the rudos got some quick offense but then the tecnicos took over again. Match ends when Negro low blows Haku right in front of the referees. A very lame ending but I was happy to see Negro's night come to an end with him in one piece. Not the most exciting return to Arena Mexico here.

What a dramatically written up Tuesday main event note! But before we get to that the 3ra is missing a link. For some reason Mario Prado Jr who always wrestles as a rudo (& will become El Fiero soon) is on the tecnico side so he clearly emergency subbed for someone but it's not mentioned who. A totally non-descript match that had no business being put on TV. The rudos win clean in a match with very little action or emotion. I read a magazine article from 1996 recently where our friend JCR was very critical of companies that put matches on TV just to fill up time without a thought given as to how it makes the company look & this match would be the example you'd pull. Yes, I do see the irony in that quote as well considering some of modern day CMLL TV matches that make the cut but I digress. So we move to the main event. I remember sending Cubs this note for the DB. I didn't make it up, it absolutely said so in whatever magazine I pulled it from. But on TV none of this matches up. There is a title presentation pre-match, the belts get handed to the commissioners, they take their seats the entire match & post-match they put the titles around the waists of the winners. No contreversy to be seen whatsoever. Shrug. Do you trust the magazines or your eyes? I go with my eyes. Now I wonder what benefit a magazine would have gained from reporting that false story. As for the match - it actually very much plays off what happened last week. The rudos take the first fall once again & then attempt to suffocate Brazo De Oro with a side headlock like they did last week. This time he escapes, tags Brazo De Plata & it's the Brazos time to return the favor on Masakre. It ends with Oro twisting & twisting on the headlock until Masakre gives up! A SIDE HEADLOCK FINISH!!! Something tells me unless Bryan Danielson returns to active competition, you will not be seeing that finish ever again. Crowd popped! Imagine that, wrestlers controlling the crowd instead of vice versa. Third fall is a super quick fall... I think less than 90 seconds. It also appears to have a messed up finish where the Intocables do double sunset flips but for some reason Masakre rolls them backwards so the Brazos are on top & then he runs away from a charging Porky. That's it. Brazos retain. What I *think* was supposed to happen is Porky was supposed to put his brothers on top first, then Masakre would reverse it, Porky would fake a reversal & Masakre would then unknowingly put the Brazos back on top instead of his own teammates. A very common bumping rudo finish in the past. I *think* Masakre jumped the gun & then didn't know what to do so he kinda froze. It came off very badly. Especially Masakre acting SHOCKED that his team lost even though he was looking right at what he was doing putting the Brazos on top. I should also mention pre-match there was a skit where Brazo De Oro was stalked by the rudos while entering Arena Coliseo. They surrounded him in the ring but his brothers ran out for the save. A kid was watching on from the crowd while hiding from the rudos. Future La Mascara? Future Psycho Clown? Just a random? Top two from Arena Mexico made the cut (Brazos/Intocables listed again is a mistake). Semi-main looked good on paper but didn't really deliver. I'm not very into the build for this Atantis/Mano Negra match. It should have been Oro. I was happy to see Americo Rocca (very underrated guy historically) in a match like this but he didn't get to show much. Felino did more bumbling rudo bits like last week including walking into the ringpost. WHO PUT THAT THERE?!?!?!?!?!? In the third fall Rocca did a pescado into a dropkick on Bestia, then Jericho did a wild sideways plancha on Felino who made a great catch. Atlantis then quickly got Negra in the Atlantida for the win. He's just streamrolling Negra so far! A gentleman's **1/2. Throughout this episode of TV they kept cutting to the race track where AAA taped all their empty arena shows in covid times. I'm not sure exactly what was going on but people were racing on foot, bikes, cars, you name it. This appeared to be live cut-ins each time. I mention this because it meant the lucha fit in-between these cut-ins so by the time we got to the main event there was almost no TV time left. So the match cuts out after the second fall finish & that fall was even joined in progress just at the finish. Oh well. It was a nothing of note match from what we saw aside from Vampiro no-showing (boos last week hurt his feelings?). His replacement was either Thor or Kron who were 1/2 of the new Vikingos team CMLL found in Guadalajara. A very rare TV appearence for them. I think they only appear once more. Their run was legendarily short & comes with the funny story of one of the CMLL wrestlers (I think Americo Rocca) running into them at the bus depot one day asking where they're going & in tears one of them says they told us to go back to Guadalajara & never return. LOL Time & place thing. You had to know how to work in CMLL during this time period. They were green as grass. Apparently Salvador Lutteroth saw them, loved their size, insisted they immediately come to Mexico & get pushed. It didn't work out. These days it would be a totally different story of course.

Only half a TV show here but seperated them this time. We get two Arena Coliseo matches & it's a throwback to early in 1993 when we'd get to see the random undercard stuff kicking off with the minis! I have no idea why this made the cut to air but the announcers mention it's the one year Anniversary of CMLL debuting their own "pequenos estrellas" (they let AAA use the "mini estrellas"). This is also the debut of these two Guerreritos Del Futuro so maybe that played into it. It's a solid enough tag match in front of a very empty building but nothing that will help any argument trying to say the CMLL minis were better than their AAA counterparts. The mini rudos did a lot of stooging & bumping around but really had nothing to offer at all when on offense. It was clear the mini tecnicos were carrying them the entire way including walking them into positions for certain spots at times. I did like the finish where Cicloncito got Futuro in the Mecedora variation as Magica did a flip plancha onto Maya. Next up we have a midcard tag with the Apaches duo against the Malditos. These teams are currently feuding here although you wouldn't know that just watching TV of course. This is the final build-up tag before their double hair match the following week so you know what's coming. Blood! They split the first two falls & the third is a lot of biting the forehead to get your opponent to bleed more. Small crowd of diehards (easily a less than 1000 attendance here, no idea where Dave got that absurd number) is into everything & making noise. I loved the setup for Rojo's tope which came out of nowhere. We get a double pinfall between Mestizo/Veloz & then neither Apache nor Rojo will allow the other to climb back inside so this ends in a draw. We get our official hair match challenge afterwards. Not a standout match or anything but good setup for next week & nice to see these guys on TV.

The second half of the TV show has the tercera & main event from this show. Kinda. The tercera clips from the entrances straight to the second fall. It's also a trios with El Brazo & Mogur rounding out the sides. A very much CMLL 1993 match where you have five olderlooking guys in plain tights & that's just not gonna bring crowds in when you compare it to what AAA is offering. No matter how good the wrestling is. Not that this match was any good. It was nothing offensive but these guys weren't exactly putting forth 100% effort. The finish is Chamaco Valaguez missing a plancha & getting beat by Cachorro Mendoza (Cachorro Salvaje now that he's a rudo). They are heading towards a stip match (w/ others involved). Demon Jr gets stomped down by all the rudos post-match as well. Nothing special here. Main event was easily the best match of the show & it's no coincidence that means Vampiro is not involved. Jericho steps in for him & even takes his role as captain of the tecnicos. We get a pre-match video introducing the Nueva Ola Blanca so you can take a guess who is winning this match! First fall is awesome. Just a lot of good wrestling, mostly focused on Dandy/Wagner trying to one-up the other. The crowd is very into it & applauding their technical work. We go through multiple pairing before getting back to Dandy/Wagner who just resume what they had started. You need to be watching & paying attention because out of nowhere Dandy hits a crucifix on Wagner & pins him! Crowd popped huge. A very basic finish but got the pop because you had seen the struggle with each guy trying to pin the other for many minutes before the end. Second fall goes to the rudos. Third fall has the tecnico comeback & we go home pretty quickly. Pierroth does a pescado onto Markus. Dandy hits an over-the-top rope tope suicidaon Wagner which looked amazing. Gladiador then cleanly submits Jericho to give the rudos their first win as an official trio! I'd go ***3/4. It was really all about that first fall. As a totally random but fun side note - there's an encyclopedia commercial at some point which features a young Carlos Cabrera!

I don't wanna say this as a 100% fact but I *think* this is/will end up being the last newly unearthed full classic CMLL TV episode. Well, until Alexis opens up the CMLL archive lololololololol. Roy Lucier dug this one up as one of his final Tenay tape uploads & it's a brand new episode start-to-finish. We had the last minute or two of the tag hair match from a Year in Review show so was nice to see that finally show up in full. But before that we get a pretty generic trios from Arena Coliseo. They never seemed to take it out of second gear. Even the first fall finish was awkward with the rudos beating the captain (Pantera) but still trying to finish off the other tecnicos as the refs waved their hands saying it's over. The tecnico comeback comes out of nowhere & there's no real build to a finish. It was a very typical lazy Tuesday match in front of a small crowd. I know the schedule these guys were on so I don't blame them for a night off but if you are picking & choosing which matches to air, I think this could have been left on the editing floor. The hair tag match is next with NOT THE APACHES - they are Los Indios Bravos here vs Los Malditos. Crowd was really into this start-to-end. They should have been, this had weeks of build & these teams were almost always paired up even when they weren't feuding. Tecnicos take the first fall after a Malditos miscommunication. They do this nice fake out in the second fall where the rudos miscommunicate again & it looks like the tecnicos are gonna win in straight falls. But they let their anger get the best of them. Apache got busted open so he tried to return to the favor. This led to a 2-on-1 assault on Escudero Rojo & you could hear the crowd screaming for them to stop because the refs were warning them. But they didn't! So the refs DQ'ed the tecnicos to even things up. The crowd reaction totally made that extra special. I'm not really sure you could pull that off today with the CMLL crowds both not caring that much about the wrestlers themselves & in most cases with the fans who just drop in, they don't even know the individual wrestlers. This small crowd was here solely to see this apuesta match. Third fall has everyone bleeding & crowd very into every little thing. We get some dives including a huge plancha by Apache. It really felt like a struggle of a match as there aren't many moves being done as much as slaps & pin attempts. With one member of each team out Veloz is gassed & tries to crawl away from Apache who chases him down & hits a bridging german suplex (kinda) to win the match. Big pop! A very well done finish - broken record time - that wouldn't work at all today. We come back from commercial to see the rudos get their head shaved. Another commercial is followed by a debut segment for Faraon Jr. A very mysterious new guy who showed up for all of 2 or 3 weeks & was out the door just as fast. He's opposite Drako who is another debuting character that barely lasts longer than Faraon. You'd think for their debuts this would have been a good match to air but... no. This match sucked. Absolutely nothing going on at all except brawling. Bad brawling. Aimless brawling. Imagine a new unearthed Oro match (the only guy over at all) & he ends up doing NOTHING in it. What a bummer. The Valaguez/Cachorro Salvaje feud was pushed a bit & ended up being important to the finish which was an excessive violence DQ on the rudos. Our main event is all worlds colliding & setting up the next few weeks of big matches since the Anniversary has been pushed back to 10/1 this year. Atlantis/Mano Negra is a lock. Fiera/Negro pops up out of nowhere here. The actual finish of the match is Pierroth Jr. rolling up Black Magic which seems to indicate some sort of title match upcoming. Heated match with brawling but good brawling. Brawling that led somewhere. The difference from the previous match. Atlantis got Mano Negra with the Atlantida to win fall one which continued his dominance of Negra throughout this feud. I have to think this was intentional as generally the person winning the mask match would be the one going in beaten down or having been constantly humiliated. This was playing with that long established trope. Post-match they rip each other's masks to the point both their faces are just about visible. Meanwhile Fiera throws a bloody Casas into the crowd as security intervenes. Solid stuff. Accomplished it's goal by giving us clear directions. A 50% success rate TV show! One of the last real 1993 shows I think. There may be one or two more on the way but post-Anniversary CMLL 1993 TV all but vanishes with the odd match or two popping up but nothing really in full from either Tuesday or Friday. So enjoy it while it lasts!

A strange choice of matches to air with the majority of the show being Tuesday Arena Coliseo & just the main event from Friday. We kick off with INTROS for the OPENER! We never get intros for Arena Coliseo, let alone for opening matches! This does allow me to hear AHI VIENE LA PLAGA as Ponzona enters. Look it up on YouTube, great song. Some kids at ringside are dancing to it. Thank god for those kids because to say the house was light would be being very generous! A low point in CMLL + school back in session probably meant some very low payoffs being dished out here. Ponzona is Americo Rocca's old gimmick that Antonio Pena created. At this point in time Rocca is much higher on the lineups & involved in a 4 way feud leading to a hair match in a week or two. What that tells me is this was not Americo Rocca slumming it in an opener. If that alone isn't enough for you - this Ponzona took more bumps in this one match than most CMLL guys do in a month today. No way Rocca was an opening match guy bump machine. So good odds this was his son (or one of them) who was working as Xavier Rocca or Javier Rocca or Americo Rocca Jr depending on which magazine you were looking through. Don't ask Cubs to clarify, he seems annoyed enough when I bring it up. Pretty standard opening tag that gets a lot of time. These were designed to give people more time to show up & give the younger guys lots of ring time to work on their craft. And trust me, that's what Olimpico & Olimpus definitely needed here! Rudos did well with them. Olimpus crashed & burned on a tope suicida near the finish. Olimpico went up top for something but Ponzona cut him off with a press slam... except in doing so he also yanked off Olimpico's mask for the DQ. Next up is probably the 3ra? They must have snuck in a minis or women's match between here. Panico is in his full Fantasma De La Opera get-up. It's another match must like the opener where the idea is more experiencing rudos helping out the younger tecnicos. CMLL had so many veteran rudos at this time & due to the AAA exodus lots of younger tecnico faces they had to go with. One of those is Trueno who eventually is rumored to be the son of Mil Mascaras (he was not). I liked the bumbling rudo bits. I also liked the finish which was nothing more than the rudos continuing their domination from the second fall into the third fall & putting away the tecnicos easily & unspectacularly (is that a word?). They just beat the fuck out of them is what I'm trying to say. You gotta slip these kinds of finishes in to keep things fresh & this is what seperated the rudos from tecnicos back in the day. The rudos kicked, punched & used the numbers advantage to get their wins. That only made the reactions all the louder when the tecnicos would do their spectacular stuff. It was an integral part of how lucha libre was structured & it's sorely lacking in today's version of it. I'm not saying rudos CAN'T be spectacular, I just think it gets redundant if tecnicos & rudos are working the exact same way. No yin to the yang. Next up is what was probably the semi-main. A tale of two matches. The first & second fall really nothing much going on aside from a heavy focus on Valaguez/Cruz who are two of the four aformentioned guys heading to a hair match. Valaguez gets Mogur with La Valagueza to win the second fall. Third fall the match picks up as we get people pairing off like Pantera/Felino doing their thing & Demon baseball slide dropkicking Mogur into oblivion. He also takes Mogur out with a tope suicida as Mogur was facing away from the ring. Pantera then LAUNCHES HIMSELF with an absolutely stunning tope over the top rope onto Felino. This should be the prototype of what a real dive looks like. Crowd gasped! That's how it's done, folks. Valaguez/Cruz now both bloody hit each other with a double clothesline, then try again but knock heads. Both are down with an arm on top of each other... refs count... 1... 2... 3! EMPATE! DRAW! Really loved that finish with both guys laying there bleeding & exhausted. Off to Arena Mexico we go & immediately join in progress as the rudos are laying out the tecnicos. A replay shows Black Magic attacked Vampiro before the match was officially started. Before we talk about the match, we gotta address the real highlight. A random hot chick with an amazing rack is sitting front row wearing only a bra. SHE'S A MENACE TO SOCIETY! Seinfeld joke. Anyways, this isn't me being a perv. The production team took care of that themselves. They put the camera on her every chance they got including a slo-mo replay of her boo'ing! I can only imagine how something like that plays in 2026. LOL The idea the announcers kept making is she came just to see Vamp so they were showing how he brings a different type of crowd in. They're right. I'm not sure certain people these days who think calling a woman "hot" is degrading would agree with that POV though. Good thing this was 1993. She was hot. Now... the match itself. Really good! Seriously, even with Vamp! Very hot crowd for the big rivalries of the time. We actually cut away after the first fall so it *appears* the rudos won. So much so that when the rudos also win the second fall, the announcers call the match & are about to do their wrap-up after the replays only to be caught totally off guard that a third fall has begun. What happened is the rudos got DQ'ed in the first for excessive violence after the fact. Fiera/Casas take their fight into the crowd & around Arena Mexico as security follows closely behind. I couldn't help but think how incredible the Star Jr/Zandokan Jr feud leading into this year's (2026) Anniversary Show would be if those guys had this type of freedom. Zandokan Jr would thrive in a scenario where he could pick Star Jr up & chuck him into rows of chairs like Fiera did to Negro. Or both of them standing on the seats mid-screaming people just slapping each other. Vampiro was paired with Norman & hit him with some stiff kicks so he's begun his watching Japanese wrestling phase. They did the old school sallida de bandera where Casas launched Fiera as Fiera was running at him. That's the intended way to pull off that bump. Then Casas had the ropes pulled open on him by Atlantis so Casas tumbled to the floor. Mano Negra seemed to rip off Atlantis' mask unintentionally but they are all pros so they just go with it as Vampiro covers up Atlantis like the ultimate tecnico & takes the rudos stomping him down as the tecnicos win by DQ. Post-match Casas/Fiera continue to brawl. The heat & intensity really is what made this match. ***3/4 I'd say. One of the best CMLL main events this year that has made it to TV.

I definitely needed a memory on refresh on this week of TV. I could have sworn the Tuesday matches aired in full somewhere but I think I was confusing the Dandy/Emilio title match with one they have later on this year. The four way I remember seeing a coin flip because I remembered thinking how cool that concept was but I think it may have been for the 3 way earlier this year. Your mind will play tricks on you as you get older! So it turns out both the Tuesday matches are just from the Year in Review special. Dandy/Emilio gets a whopping 4 minutes which includes entrances for some reason? All we see of the match is a figure four leglock where Emilio barely gets the ropes, then Dandy tries it again but Emilio rolls him up. Dandy CLEARLY kicks out at two but Rafa El Maya must have had dinner plans because he hits the three. Crowd is confused. Announcers are perplexed. CMLL decided this needed to be seen by the world as one of our top matches of the year. Wonderful. The four way hair match gets a bit more time... seven minutes. But that's three matches. Rocca submits Valaguez to keep his hair. In our next match CMLL once again decides this is something the world needed to see- Cruz slips off the top rope trying something where it was clear Mendoza was moving out of the way. Except because of the slip Cruz comes down ON Mendoza. Thankfully we are all pros & this was in an era where wrestlers had self-autonomy so they just roll with it. Mendoza sells, Cruz sells but is clearly the fresher of the two, he submits Mendoza. In our final both guys are bloody. Rafa El Maya is distracted by something - it's Javier Cruz coming back to ringside. In that split second Maya isn't looking Mendoza fouls Valaguez & gets the win. Huge heat. Americo Rocca runs back out to protest but to no avail. Valaguez gets shaved. Moving to our Anniversary go-home show it says the top two aired but I could find no evidence the main event actually did. The semi-main definitely aired but all the links are broken. I had to track it down on some random YouTube channel that steals videos from others. In the end, I wouldn't say it was worth the effort. It's a two fall match where La Fiera beats Negro Casas twice in a row using the same german suplex. I did like in the first fall how King Haku was standing guard so none of the other rudos dared attempt to break up the pinfall. Benoit had a nice exchange with all the rudos at one point. Haku just threw everyone around as usual & sold nothing. So that's that. Anniversary Show is next week. I cheated & looked forward just to check if anything actually aired besides the mask match between Atlantis/Mano Negra. We get the hair match & an undercard trios. Better than I expected considering the state of their TV at the time. I guess I should note this two week period is notable for some people leaving AAA. Mocho Cota has returned here (& bailed on his upcoming hair match with Latin Lover) & Rayo De Jalisco Jr. is on deck which was very controversial at the time as it turned into a public pissing war between him & Konnan over his pathetic 3 month run with AAA.

The time has come! The CMLL 60th Anniversary Show! No secret CMLL business hadn't been good in 1993 but for at least one night they managed to pull off something special. This show sold out. Do not take that lightly. This was the first sellout since the AAA exodus & would go on to be the last show to sell out Arena Mexico until the 1997 Anniversary Show. You know it's a special night for two reasons. The first is obviously the production. They were taking every chance they got to pan the crowd & show off how many people were in the building, something that hadn't been done at all this year on the TV show. Also, the lighting was very bright. They wanted to make sure that place was lit up unlike the times they had 3000 people for a Friday & wanted to keep it as dark as possible so nobody would notice. Second, the crowd is ELECTRIC! For everything. Any punch thrown by Haku, any sign of life by Atlantis, you name it... this crowd went nuts. You could hear it perfectly too, another case of 1993 CMLL sounding better than 2026 CMLL. We get to see the top three matches from this show although once again I had to find that Pierroth Jr match on some random account. This is Pierroth's return to the rudo side although we didn't see his turn last week so there must be more to it as almost immediately him & Black Magic are not on the same page. Mocho Cota is taking full advantage of this full house to put on a performance from the 80's. Bumping all over the place for Haku who is having a fucking blast in front of this crowd. Big % $ night! He showed more fire here than any other match this year. Cota even jumps on Haku's back at one point trying to choke the life out of him & then takes the most comical Flair Flop you've ever seen. Vampiro doesn't do much but when he does the crowd explodes. Benoit seemed out of his element but still managed to try to do an exchange with Norman in the second fall. Out of nowhere Sangre Chicana comes to ringside in street clothes to attack the tecnios, in particular low blow Haku (the only move Haku ever sells here). Tecnicos win in straight falls by DQ & we appear to be done here... but just as they come back from commercial the crowd is going BALISTIC! NUCLEAR POP! It's Rayo De Jalisco Jr! Back in CMLL! He fights off the rudos including chasing Magic to the back as Cota/Pierroth Jr freak out. Rayo had left CMLL for 3/4 months, completely bombed in AAA, left AAA without giving notice to show up as a surprise here. Crowd was overjoyed. I'm not a Rayo guy at all but clearly he's a hit with the fans of this era. You could see how happy he was. He did not want to leave that ring post-match. Next up is the hair match. Fiera attacks Negro right after the introductions & off we go! Negro has his head smashed into the chairs & then gets flung upside down into the third row! He barely beats the count back inside but it's all for naught anyhow as Fiera gives him a german suplex to take the first fall. The crowd is very much 80/20 Negro which may tell you how many people just checked in for this show because Negro was absolutely the rudo in all the build-up. Big pop for his comeback & winning the second fall via submission. Third fall has some good nearfalls. The psychology of the match was both guys being exhausted & just attempting pins after anything they'd do. It was a far from cry from a match built around dives or big moves so YMMV. Fiera goes up top for something but misses as Negro dramatically rolls out of the way, in the process crashing onto the floor. He recovers & slowly scales the ropes as the crowd screams for him to change his mind. He debates it a couple times but then says fuck it... and leaps off the top with a plancha... WHICH HITS! HAHA! SWERVE! He covers for the... 1... 2... 3!!!!!!!!!! Crowd explodes as Casas gets the win. A very simple finish can work if you execute it correctly. Fiera raises Casas' hand post-match & crowd cheers both guys. Really felt like a big deal, so suck on that people who joke about Negro losing his hair at every Anniversary Show! (That would be true only 20 years later haha) I'd go ***3/4 on the match. Main event time! The match that should have had Oro in it! Instead it's Atlantis vs Mano Negra, a feud that started in January, got paused, resumed, got paused, the finally got back on track for the home stretch. Mano Negra has his father El Rebelde in his corner, Atlantis has the returning Rayo. From a purely technical perspective the match is nothing special. Mano Negra wasn't completely shot at this point but he certainly wasn't anywhere near what he was earlier in the year. The good news for him - aside from the fact this gate probably gave him a healthy bonus - is this crowd was so electric neither guy really had to do anything. Atlantis takes the first fall with the Atlantida which I like because if he didn't use that - you'd have absolutely known what the finish was going to be no matter what. Lots of Atlantis' masks in the crowd + a giant Atlantis cardboard head the cameras keep showing. Second fall has a weird spot where Atlantis goes for a double axhandle off the top but as he gets Negra, Negra's foot comes up in the process of "selling" to low blow Atlantis. It's a clear DQ & right in front of the ref (Roberto Rangel). He just doesn't call it but also makes no indication as to why. I understood their intention, they didn't pull it off well, but this is when the ref needs to get involved to cover for them & at least indicate it was a kick to the side of the leg or something. Instead Negra just pins Atlantis & the crowd is unhappy/confused. There isn't much time to take that all in though. Mano Negra clotheslines Atlantis a couple of times to start the third fall, misses one, then runs right into the Atlantida again! AND GIVES UP!!! Just like that! In under a minute Atlantis takes the third fall & wins Mano Negra's mask! Crowd is overjoyed as you'd expect, including the person with the giant Atlantis head running to ringside. Lots of people tried to approach the ring but somehow security held them back. It was great to see so much emotion though with everyone standing & cheering. You don't get that even at the biggest Arena Mexico moments this year because security has been so strict week-to-week making people sit their asses down at all times. Rebelde shows he still knows how to work because he's on the mat excercising his son's arms & indicating his back may be broken. Attaboy! Sell that shit! Mano Negra teases refusing to unmask so Atlantis attacks him & tears off the mask himself! Another huge pop. Negra bolts to the back as his details are being announced. An all-time meorable main event for the atmosphere & high stakes, not so much the match quality. Overall it felt like a huge show, which it was. None of CMLL's current problems were solved or even addressed but for one night we lived in a fantasy world where CMLL was hot & Arena Mexico was on fire!

Yep, from 10/1 we jump all the way to 10/22 with only two matches to discuss. I told you, cherish the times CMLL had full TV episodes because this is where we fall off a cliff. I am not sure if it was a case of people not caring enough to record CMLL TV or their time slot got moved so people just didn't know where to find it. Maybe a combination of both. One thing for sure is AAA was the more popular company so people were recording those shows & sending to any US sources. 1993 CMLL TV is almost non existent past this point & while more is available in 1994 - it's still just two matches per show most of the time. I'm sure there are people in Mexico who may have had recordings & just dubbed over them at some point thinking nobody would care or the footage was readily available. We could have seen Haku vs Pierroth Jr! Instead we get the Tuesday main event which looks good on paper but is just a brawl for the most part with a lame finish. At one point it looks to get on track in the third fall with a Pantera/Felino exchange but they fuck up a spot & the rudos just take over again leading to them getting DQ'ed for excessive violence & a long post-match deal where they unmask & destroy all the tecnicos. If a match like this were to occur on a CMLL show these days people would be up in arms about how little effort everyone gave. It was a very 2021/2022 CMLL match is what I'm trying to say. We move to Arena Mexico where we get the semi-main. The announcers are talking about the big Dandy/Emilio feud & how they really went at it the week before. Would have been nice to see! This is another generally aimless match. Rayo is taken out almost immediately by a sneak attack & sells it like he's legit hurt. He just lays there most of the match until before the third fall they bring out a stretcher to take him away (still in his entrance gear!). At one point Black Magic tries to give Vampiro a suplex onto the ropes & Vamp has no idea how to take it so he almost kills himself. Tremendous. Dandy gets busted open big time courtesy of Emilio. Rudos end up winning the match clean with Charles pinning Dandy & Magic pinning Vamp. Maybe Rayo didn't wanna participate because he wasn't going to be a focus? There's nothing to see on this TV episode. Bleh.

Well, we've come to this show. I assume I don't have to explain what happened on this night for anyone who may have stumbled onto this blog & has read up to this point. A tragic night for lucha libre. I won't do the blow-by-blow of the match. There's no point. I'll just touch on two things:

1) I find the entire discussion about Oro's death similar to the one about Perrito. Everyone is always looking to assign blame whether it be a person or a move or an incident. The truth that is hard for everyone to accept is sometimes the body just hits it's limit. Wrestling is a tough sport & wrestlers used to live very hard lives outside the ring. At some point it catches up to you & in these two cases it just caught up in front of a live audience while cameas were recording.

2) What if? What would the future have held? I've always been of the opinion Oro would have jumped to AAA. The economics point in that direction & all the stories about him wanting to work both Japan & US line up way more with what AAA was doing in 1994 than CMLL. I can only imagine his reaction finding out Liger & Tiger Mask III were coming to Triplemania. He'd have jumped at the chance to wrestle against them. CMLL had also just taken away the Mano Negra mask win which was originally going to be his. I'm not trying to say he was angry about it, nobody can know that for sure, but if the offers kept coming to leave you have to think that would weigh on his mind in terms of loyalty to a company that showed him none. My thought process is he jumps to AAA but eventually jumps back to CMLL. I don't buy the idea Konnan takes a shine to him & gets him into ECW, then WCW, etc etc etc Konnan was notorious for having his own boys. I think Oro would have made his way back to CMLL by 1995 when business started to go on the uptick & many AAA wrestlers made the jump back. CMLL then develops more strong Japanese relations & I'd bet Oro would have wound up doing many tours like a Dr. Wagner Jr for example. Perhaps the US comes calling, perhaps not. It's too murky to see anything beyond that.

Aside from the semi-main, we also get the main event which unfortunately includes clips of Oro's final bump many times as the announcers did live commentary for this one so they kept calling back to it. If I remember right the word is Oro was not officially pronounced dead until after he got to hospital but everyone who was there watching him get loaded into the ambulance knew he was already gone. So I have to assume someone passed a note to the announcers. They never make any official announcement but you can hear it in their voices. So the Pantera/Felino match sort of becomes an afterthought. The crowd is into it as the crowd clearly has no idea what happened. Pantera/Felino have a solid enough match with a couple neat Pantera dives & then it ends a double countout with both brawling outside the ring & ignoring Maya's count. Pantera actually slid in at the last moment but Maya still ruled it a draw. It felt to me like the two wanted to do challenges afterwards because they spend a long time in the ring but by that point I think everyone just wanted the show to be over so Maya/ring announcer/commission just waved them both to the back.

We start this part of the TV episode with Black Magic walking to Arena Mexico. Pretty cool footage of what the area around Arena Mexico looked like in 1993. It's a half music video, half just Magic promo on Vamp explaining how he's gonna humiliate him. May have been the last time CMLL ever did something like this. LOL This should be a match on Magic's mantle since he manages to make Vamp look passable at times. It's very clearly Norman leading the way & Vamp just trying some things he saw on the Japanese tapes he's now getting in the mail. The good thing is the crowd has the remaining Vamp female fans who still exist & travel to see him so you get screams any time he is in danger & loud shrieking when he goes on offense. The announcers claim some of his female supporters came from as far away as Monterrey & Torreon for this match. It should be noted there are zero zoom out shots of the building & the lights are dimmed completely. There was a belly-to-belly off the top rope which almost went bad in a way I thought someone was gonna snap their ankle. Vamp ends up retaining his title with a... get this... enzuigiri! VAMP IS TENRYU! It was such a weak finish even his screaming girls didn't react at all. Show of respect afterwards by the two friends. Let's be generous & go **1/2 on this. Next up is a very CMLL nerd thing... we see Miguel Linares setting up the Dandy/Emilio match with an intro from Arena Coliseo on Tuesday. During the undercard women's match. So that means CMLL knew they were going to air this match days ahead of time. Production was ahead of the game! When will 2026 CMLL catch up to this??? Not only that, they also flash back (!!!) to the two having a hair match in 1989 that ended in a draw. What kind of crazy CMLL TV is this?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? After the intro we cut straight to Dandy making his entrance to the Spanish version of "I'm Too Sexy" & let me tell you folks... I am HYPED for this match! Dandy has the mysterious Oso Negro as his second! Notable for later! This is a pretty good match! The first two falls are pretty generic by apuesta match standards but the crowd is into it & the work is solid enough. They even do nearfalls in the second fall which is something that a lot of current people forget to do (when 3 fall matches even still exist). Dandy takes a sick cornerpost bump with his shoulder in the third fall. The sound was gnarly. Emilio tope's Dandy into the 3rd row. They don't go all out on the blood like they had the previous week. Dandy puts Emilio in a figure-four leglock which is his big move at the time. Weeks ago at Arena Coliseo he kept Emilio trapped in it for a long time before Emilio finally got the ropes & then we got the weird finish with Rafa El Maya which plays into this match too as he's the ref again. Emilio keeps going for covers, even after moves that are clearly not gonna win, in the hopes Maya messes up again while counting. Or at least that's the storyline I'm going with in my head like many people analyzing old lucha tend to do. Dandy does a wild tope over the top where he lands really hard when Emilio barely catches him. They tease a double countout like the 1989 match. That's good! There's a VERY WEIRD DEAL where both guys have collapsed but Maya isn't counting their shoulders down like would normally happen in a match like this. Then he starts yelling at the seconds for some reason & when he goes over to say something - Oso Negro jumps into the ring behind his back & puts Dandy on top of Emilio! 1... 2... SHOULDER UP! It got a huge reaction but it struck me how weird it was to have the tecnico & his second being the ones openly cheating here. The finish is kinda clever as Dandy goes for the Dandina but Emilio very subtly fouls him out of the view of Maya who actually somehow (probably dumb luck) had his positioning perfect for the plausible deniability in not seeing what just happened. Emilio gets the win & the crowd is FURIOUS! It dawns on me that Maya is CMLL's resident rudo referee but without being overtly rudo like AAA does with Tirantes. But he's very clearly portrayed constantly (even in later years, see: Garza/Bestia December 1995) as a somewhat incompetent ref who's blunders always seem to work out for the rudos. I don't hate it. In some ways that's much preferable to Tirantes openly holding the tecnicos so the rudos can punch & kick them. The post-match goes on a while with Dandy teasing he will refuse to shave his head & wanting the commission to get involved. Eventually he gives in & we get the classic lucha libre GASP from the crowd when the first chunk of hair is cut off. Dandy then takes the razor to the rest himself. I'll go ***3/4 on the match. They did an Oro tribute in the ring on this show which I'm very surprised didn't make TV - or if it did it wasn't saved on the recording.

From 10/29 all the way to 11/19! And guess what? This match is just clips from the Year End Review show! Nothing sums up CMLL having zero lack of awareness in the ever changing world of lucha libre than drawing a big Anniversary crowd & following up with a Dandy/Emilio hair match, then Mocho Cota has a big title challenger. I assume this had to be a reward for Cota ditching AAA & screwing them out of a hair match they were building (vs Latin Lover) but my god Mocho Cota as one of your top pushed rudos in 1993 what are we doing here? The highlight of the match we see are fine... Cota was still at the point where he knew what to do but sometimes the body just didn't co-operate. It seemed good enough but the quick clips weren't enough to get excited about. Dragon retains with a german suplex.

Our next clipped match from the Year End Review show is the main event here... kinda. It's just Mano Negra vs Bestia Salvaje in a hair match. I don't know exactly why the advertised match was changed, nor what led up to it since we have no video. I just recently bought some magazines from around this time period that will eventually clear it up but at the time of this writing I have no idea & luchaDB has no info noted. Pierroth Jr & Jaque Mate are the seconds so I have to assume whatever the issue was - it was on Kahoz's end. The seconds seem to be more involed & get more heat than the actual wrestlers in the match. The action is nothing notable whatsoever. Mano Negra uses a crucifix & wins Bestia's hair. Crowd didn't seem very into this. I guess the notable bit from the poster is Terremoto who is John 'Earthquake' Tenta. His debut y despedido as they say. He showed up as Pierroth Jr's bodyguard, worked this one match & then caught the next flight home. The story I always heard was he didn't like his payoff which didn't sound strange - I'm sure whoever sold him on Mexico was selling him on the glory days where CMLL % payoffs were great. But this was not the glory days, this was December 1993. So I just assumed he got his first payoff & said fuck this shit. Something I read recently paints a different picture. According to Pierroth the problem was Tenta wanted all his money up-front after previously being told he would get half when he arrived & half when he finished up (the following Friday). He was not too happy with that, worked his one match, asked for his full payoff once again, was told no, that's when he packed his bags without letting anyone know. Pierroth buries him in Box y Lucha saying if he had just reached out & let him know the issues, Pierroth could have worked something out. Instead he chose to just leave which means technically he stole money from the company since half his full pay for one show ended up being CMLL overpaying.

Our final Year End Review show clips are of the top two matches on the year end show. Dragon/Felino gets extended clips which is nice but still not enough to gauge how good the match actually was in real time. It's a shame because this was the only time these two would ever share a ring together in a singles match. Dragon retains with a dragon suplex. The main event is utter shit. I don't need the full match to tell me that, the clips paint the entire picture. Kato is immobile, Cota isn't able to do much either, the crowd is whistling as they lay on the mat not doing much of anything. Horrendous. Cota finally puts Kato in a figure four leglock to end things. Kato gets his head shaved. I think Kato actually goes away from CMLL a bit after this so perhaps he tanked it on purpose or they punished him for tanking. Not like Kato could do much anyways but this seemed very intentionally sleepwalking through a match based on the clips shown. I guess I should note his second was Kato Kung Lee Jr who would go on to spend a couple years in CMLL doing nothing. Then a career doing nothing outside of CMLL.

And................ that's that for 1993 CMLL! The last two months are lagely gone to history with no video existing outside the highlights above. You can only experience it through photos in magazines. 1994 is more promising in the sense we don't have large gaps but also CMLL gets reduced to very minimal TV so you are lucky to get 3 matches per week, often just the top 2 from Arena Mexico or Coliseo depending where the Friday show is.

The 1993 highlights are few & far between. In terms of the best matches you've got the Jericho/Dragon vs Casas/Dandy tag, Fiera vs Chicana & a couple minis tags. It was not a very strong year inside the ring or outside. Those two things are often connected. Business was down throughout the year & would only get worse in 1994. What's very notable is CMLL's stubborness to make any changes. At the start of the year you think Oro is about to be turned into their hot young rising star, by the end of the year he's tragically dead but even if he was still alive he'd be working underneath people like Mocho Cota, Kato Kung Lee, Sangre Chicana, La Fiera, etc. All guys who's best years were way behind them. But CMLL leaned into the familiarity. Perhaps pushed more to do so by hand picking Latin Lover & Bronco as their new top young guys only for both to fizzle immediately. Or discovering Kron & Thor in Guadalajara, bringing them to Mexico City, watching them implode in front of their very eyes on the same events where Faraon Jr. & Drako showed up to zero reaction except whistles for their performances. How many times can you burn your hand touching the stove before you decide to stop touching it? I think there ended up being only one CMLL women's match on TV in 1993, that number goes up in 1994 but only to three or four. We got lucky with the minis in 1993 having a nice run of them on TV, that's all gone in 1994. I think they make the first or second TV episode & then disappear until late 1995. Sad times for someone like myself who is a minis enthusiast but sadder for anyone trying to follow Virus' body of work throughout his career. Heading into 1994 we have a very unexciting top of the card with many older faces & a foreign crew that leaves a lot to be desired. Is there hope on the way? Perhaps the choice of some new masked characters to freshen things up? Some names from earlier in 1993 returning to improve the quality of work? We'll see... because I'm moving straight into 1994!