1996 CMLL

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ADDENDUM: Mr Niebla vs Guerrero De La Muerte popped up on a random YouTube channel. Well, at least the third fall did. But what a fall! Tremendously entertaining. GDLM takes a very out of control sallida de bandera followed by Niebla hitting a fakeout tope suicida. GDLM gets in a huge plancha of his own. Some nice nearfalls. GDLM excapes before La Neblina was locked in & puts Niebla away clean with a sit-out power bomb. It was clear this was, in fact, a non-title match. Wish we could have gotten the full thing but I'll take this bonus.

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

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

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

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

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

CMLL Vault Guide

When CMLL started up their "membresia" on YouTube one of the promises was historical content. So far, we've got none. There were specific mentions of rookie Volador Jr. matches which would be from the 10/17/00 & 10/24/00 shows respectively. Do these actually exist on video? Yes. They do. On Alexis Salazar's podcast with Volador Jr. he spliced in clips from both matches. They exist.

Why haven't they been uploaded? Your guess is as good as mine. Or maybe mine is a bit better understanding the psychology of some people involved with the project. I believe, as with many things in CMLL, it all comes down to self-interest of those involved. The original commentary tracks for all these shows include voices CMLL isn't affilaited with any longer. Speficially Leobardo Magadan who left on bad terms & has said negative things about both Julio Cesar Rivera & Alexis Salazar. My feeling is neither of these two want to publish anything with Magadan's voice. There is precedent to this as during the pandemic CMLL dipped into their archives for content & released matches never seen before from some major events in the early 2000's. The audio was re-dubbed with JCR being the lead voice. If I'm correct in my guess here, this is a huge stumbling block to any footage ever make it out. The amount of time it would take to re-dub audio for 20+ years worth of shows from a company that runs 3+ times a week is... well... incalcuable. Especially combined with having to still do live commentary 3+ times a week. There just isn't enough time in the day. Relationships change over time so maybe the two sides will re-unite some day... who knows.

Either way I want to make it clear - I don't expect to see the CMLL archives opened up in my lifetime. This is a long way down the road thing when somehow all the content in digital form ends up in the hands of someone who both wants to do something with it & has the ability to do so. Since I won't be around to see this ever occur - I'm taking it upon myself to put together a content list for future crazy CMLL hardcores who didn't live through these eras. A cheat sheet basically to know what to request when the time comes. I consider myself an expert on what has aired, what hasn't or what only partially did. So this is the equivalent to someone like a Richard Land who documented all WWWF/WWF/WWE TV over the years so when the archives opened up he knew exactly what to ask for from the people in charge of distrubuting it. You can't just assume those in charge of doing so will be aware what is considered "new" or what the real gems are. Aside from it all being overwhelming, they just may not know.

The obvious question is - how can you be certain CMLL even has this stuff? Well, I can't say 100%. But I do have a pretty good idea + some actual hard evidence as to what content is available. There could be more than I know (Puebla? GDL? All Sundays?) but I am restricting my list to the timeline of footage I know is sitting in the archive instead of making wild assumptions.

I believe all footage in 1999 & on from Tuesdays/Fridays were recorded for the purpose of TV distribution. 1999 was the year CMLL started airing on Fox Sports (International). So the announcers would do commentary for the entire shows whether matches ended up on TV not. I have enough Fox Sports footage to know this as true, these were not post-produced shows. CMLL's TV format has never changed in this sense. They never really had any outlet for the Sunday shows until late 2005 when 52MX began airing lucha libre after the ENESMA fiasco the previous year.

 Before I get on with the list:

1) All Tzuki matches. Any minis matches from the 2000's really. This would be too easy. So I'm not gonna do that. Of course I'd go straight for those if I had access but the idea here is to provide a comprehensive list of the more important/rarities that the masses would probably want to see, not my personal preferences.

2) If CMLL is going to hold a grudge against an announcer who left, clearly they are going to do the same for many former wrestlers. I don't expect any CMLL service to ever put up video of something involving El Hijo Del Santo or the Munoz family. However, time heals all wounds. I can't see into the future so I don't know who will or won't be friends by the time any of this footage comes to light. So I'm just including everything but will make notes along the way of likelihood of seeing certain matches.

3) This is not news. I don't know who even checks on this blog, hopefully nobody really. But I do know that weirdo Cubs has robots all over who can track when things get updated. This is not news, Cubs. There is no need to link to it or share it anywhere.

 With that said...

 

CMLL ARCHIVES REQUEST LIST:

1/15/99 @ Arena Coliseo: Mini Rey Misterio Jr. & Ultimo Dragoncito vs Los Espectrios I y II

Rob, you said you wouldn't only list Tzuki matches or your personal preferences! I lied! Well, not really. This is actually a match that the magazines said got not only a huge ovation but also lots of money thrown which was *very* rare for the minis. Mini Rey Jr. in particular was said to be a sensation so considering this is his third-to-last appearence here, one would assume this was the match where someone in CMLL realized we need to create our own gimmick for this guy.

3/19/99 @ Arena Mexico: Blue Panther vs Rodolfo Ruiz

Rodolfo Ruiz retirement match. Possibly a lightning match although reports differ. Photos made it look like a typical exhibition match with no actual finish, just two veterans rolling around. Not even a single clip made it to television.

3/19/99 @ Arena Mexico: Torneo Pasado y Presente

Special tag tournament booked in a way where every match was legends vs current stars. Clips of each match aired on TV although mostly just the finishes. There was also a ceremony either before or afterwards where the legends all got plaques.

4/2/99 @ Arena Coliseo: Gran Alternativa

The semi-finals & final aired on TV, all JIP but none of the other matches have ever been seen. The Gran Alternativa was always a yearly highlight & considering this was the year Ultimo Guerrero won which started his rise in CMLL - it seems like a no-brainer easy archive pick. Especially with his partner being Blue Panther who is a forever CMLL legend.

4/27/99 @ Arena Coliseo: Flor Metalica & Marcela vs La Andromeda & La Amapola

Marcela's CMLL debut so the first of a million matches working opposite La Amapola.

5/25/99 @ Arena Coliseo: Ricky Marvin & Sombra De Plata vs Fugaz & Sangre Azteca

Considered the four most promising rookies of their time, this was a revancha from the previous Tuesday. Being in the 2nd match was an incredibly high spot on the card for these guys at the time so you have to assume they went all out. The magazines raved about these guys who were just about to go on one of their early CMLL Japan tours so you know they must have been amped.

7/2/99 @ Arena Mexico

Nothing from this Friday show ever made TV. It features a good looking Super Astro/Blue Panther lightning match as well as another match with the four promising youngsters of Ricky Marvin/Sombra De Plata vs Fugaz/Sangre Azteca, the first time but not the last that raved about tag match would be held in this building.

7/16/99 @ Arena Mexico: Ricky Marvin & Sombra De Plata vs Fugaz & Sangre Azteca

Yep, these guys again. Word had started to spread about how great these matches were so they got put in a rare tag team lightning match on a high spot (4th!) on the show. A clip or two ended up on Momentos Estelares, specifically an amazing assisted springboard corkscrew plancha by Marvin.

8/3/99 @ Arena Coliseo: Atlantis vs Villano III (CMLL Light Heavyweight Title)

At this point CMLL was already going strong on this feud that wouldn't climax until March 2000. This one ends in a DQ so presumably played into whatever was going on & is another puzzle piece that led to the mask match a few months later.

8/13/99 @ Arena Mexico

Another Friday show where the TV was pre-empted that weekend so nothing from it has ever existed on video.

9/17/99 @ Arena Mexico: El Hijo Del Santo & Negro Casas vs Blue Panther & Dr. Wagner Jr. (CMLL Tag Team Titles)

Aired on TV but brutally edited. Live reports had it going 20+ & TV airs less than half that, cutting each fall at random times. Hard to imagine this wasn't a classic tag match.

9/24/99 @ Arena Mexico: 66th Anniversary Show

The top half aired on TV w/ usual editing, the bottom half - including another Marvin/Sombra vs Fugaz/Azteca lightning tag - never saw the light of day. Footage of the undercard was used in the CMLL Fox Sports bumpers though so one has to assume it aired internationally although this was the very early point of some of us starting to have access to the Fox matches.

11/19/99 @ Arena Mexico

TV show pre-empted in Mexico (& thus not aired in US either) but aired internationally on Fox Sports. Sets up the Liger vs Shocker match the following week...

11/26/99 @ Arena Mexico

Another TV pre-empted so the only available footage is from the Fox Sports airing. Loaded show as well w/ Shocker vs Liger & a 3 way hair match between Pierroth/Porky/Dantes. Also has a much loved Leyenda De Plata torneo cibernetico won by El Hijo Del Santo which was edited down for TV purposes.

12/17/99 @ Arena Coliseo: Gran Alternativa

The second Gran Alternativa of the year although this was basically the 2000 version. Semis & final air in purely only finish form on TV. Would be great to see entire tournament as the rookie class was pretty loaded & most of the favorites unfortunately went out in the quarterfinals.

1/1/00 @ Arena Coliseo & 1/8/00 @ Arena Coliseo

A two-part special to celebrate lucha libre heading into the new century aired so these two weeks of Friday (1/1 was Saturday holiday show) never made it to TV in Mexico or US. Both shows aired on Fox Sports internationally but only select matches my source recorded made it into the hands of tape traders.

2/18/00 @ Arena Mexico

Another pre-empted weekend of TV in US (not sure if aired in Mexico or not) so this Friday show only officially made it to Fox Sports. Features a Tzuki/Espectrito I lightning match & a parejas incriebles match with Atlantis/Villano III vs Tarzan Boy/Satanico which officially sets up the two big upcoming apuesta matches. The TV show also had clips from the press conference where the Atlantis/Villano III mask match was signed.

4/18/00 @ Arena Coliseo: Olimpico/Ringo Mendoza/Safari vs Anifaz Del Norte/Lizmark/Tinieblas Jr.

Very rare for it's time tecnicos vs tecnicos match in a CMLL ring. It may not look particularly interested on paper but it stands out solely for the reason it was even booked at all. May have had something to do with the Friday show days later having an incredible partners trios tournament so due to splitting the bookings up not many rudos were available here. Probably the only time in CMLL Safari/Antifaz got to oppose each other & certainly long-time vets like Ringo & Lizmark who never had rudo runs.

5/30/00 @ Arena Coliseo: Ricky Marvin vs El Fiero (Hair vs Hair)

The first of a series of hair match wins for rising star (...) Ricky Marvin. This one over El Fiero (Mario Prado) which ends up being his farewell bonus after working for CMLL since roughly 1986. Ricky was the young pretty boy Tuesday attraction at the time but the entire run largely never existed on TV with how short the TV episodes were. May have aired on Fox Sports which still had CMLL until at least August of this year.

6/2/00 @ Arena Mexico: Antifaz/Felino/Negro Casas vs Satanico/Rey Bucanero/Ultimo Guerrero

I believe this was the match where the infamous AAA invasion occured. They did another one the following week which is the more memorable one solely because video of it exists from TV. A quick clip of this one aired as well but since the match never aired it's been somewhat forgotten. I think it was the Vipers who got involved in this one & ended up chased out of the building.

6/13/00 @ Arena Coliseo: Los Astro Boys I y II vs Super Cometa & Vaquerito

Confirmed to be Mistico & Argos as 19/16 year olds in their official CMLL debuts - matching gear & all! On the other side is Vaquerito (aka Inquisidor) who had just graduated from the minis division. For a while we thought this match was just a placeholder for names as we didn't have the full lineup but it was proven to be a real match & one that absolutely exists in the CMLL archives. They don't pop up again for months & Mistico as Astro Boy doesn't start his "official" run until late 2002. Gold level archival footage if it ever goes up.

6/16 & 6/23/00 @ Arena Mexico: Ricky Marvin vs Virus

Two straight Fridays of lightning matches between these always great opponents. First one goes to a draw so they run it back to determine a winner the following week. The start of their feud which would carry on into 2001. No Arena Mexico match between the two ever made video in any form.

9/15/00 @ Arena Mexico

The top two matches from this show aired on TV but the undercard did not. Very the norm for this time frame except the undercard on this show was VERY WACKY by CMLL standards of the time. The opener features Puebla locals Bobby Jack & Tarahumara somehow finding their way to Mexico City which is weird in itself. The 2da & 3ra were both billed as Mexico vs The World matches w/ Pantera/Ricky Marvin/Tony Rivera vs Nozawa/Ryo Saito/Secret Sasuke (Mazada?) & Antifaz/Felino/Safari vs Kato Kung Lee (Sr!)/Salsero/Super Kendo. I still don't believe these matches happened as written so I demand the video proof!

9/22/00 @ Arena Mexico: Leyenda De Plata Torneo Cibernetico

This entire show did not air anywhere due to Olympics pre-emptions. It'd be nice to have the entire show of course but in particular the Leyenda De Plata torneo was always a yearly standout in terms of putting all the best workers in one match. This one comes down to Negro Casas & Dr. Wagner Jr.

9/29/00 @ Arena Mexico

This is noted as the default Anniversary Show for this year as with business in the tank CMLL didn't really run a real major show. Negro Casas & Dr. Wagner Jr. have their singles final for the Leyenda De Plata here. The top matches air heavily edited on TV but it'd be nice to have the show in full just for the sake of consistency with CMLL "Anniversary" events. The undercard has another Mexico vs The World match, this time with Nozawa, Secret Sasuke (Mazada?) & Sanshiro (Takagi of DDT) as the foreigners.

10/6/00 @ Arena Mexico: El Hijo Del Santo vs Negro Casas

This aired on TV but with them having to combine weeks due to Olympics coverage it got sliced & diced down to sub 10 minutes. You have to think they went longer live, even with it being a special one fall match. Matches with these two are not to be missed so if a full copy exists somewhere, we have to see it!

10/17 & 10/24/00 @ Arena Coliseo: Volador Jr. rookie matches

As noted all the way above, these are definitely in the archive.

11/3/00 @ Arena Mexico: Neutron & Volador Jr. vs Fugaz & Virus

Volador Jr's Arena Mexico debut should be good enough to request this but also features Neutron's all-time scary plunge on a dive wrong. The mere fact he barely missed any time is a miracle to anyone who has seen it. Straight down. Hard. Such a spectacular accident they referenced it on commentary any time he made TV down the line.

11/7/00 @ Arena Coliseo: Arena Coliseo Tag Team Titles Tournament

CMLL decided to bring back those ugly looking Arena Coliseo Tag Title belts & put them up for grabs in a tournament with all their best young wrestlers who almost never made TV. Miraculously... this made TV! Unfortunately it was only the finishes of each match. Would be amazing to watch the entire thing which took up the entire show aside from a Negro Casas/Ultimo Guerrero main event.

11/21/00 @ Arena Coliseo: Mascarita Sagrada & Tzuki vs Fire & Pierrothito

The minis dream team! The original Mascarita Sagrada returns to CMLL for the first time since April 1992 to team with the guy who took over the gimmick for him in AAA. They still had heat at this point! I believe this was supposed to lead to a longer run but Antonio Pena threatened a lawsuit over usage of the gimmick (the 3rd version Mascarita Sagrada 2000 had already been wrestling almost a year at this point).

12/1/00 @ Arena Mexico: Octagoncito & Tzuki vs El Fierito & Fire

Similar reasons to the above match. This was supposed to be Mascarita Sagrada returning to Arena Mexico but due to the legal issues Octagoncito stepped in making his own return to Arena Mexico after 8+ years away. It ends up being a one-off of course.

12/22/00 @ Arena Coliseo: Ricky Marvin vs Virus (CMLL Super Lightweight Title)

This one actually did find a way to somehow squeeze onto TV! But as with the time period, it was edited down quite a bit. What aired was great... you can hear the crowd buzzing after a cut in the 3rd fall so clearly this was a fantastic match as you'd expect. Would love to see it in full as this was Ricky's big match to close off the year being the novato MVP of Arena Coliseo.

3/16/01 @ Arena Mexico: Ricky Marvin vs Virus (CMLL Super Lightweight Title)

Their only non-lightning singles match ever at Arena Mexico. I remember the magazines raving about this one but of course with 90 minute TV episodes at the time it never stood a shot of airing.

4/17/01 @ Arena Coliseo: Tigre Blanco vs Karloff Lagarde Jr. (CMLL Welterweight Title)

A somewhat surprising title change! Always good to have title changes on video.

5/11/01 @ Arena Mexico

If for nothing else we need this show unearthed because it's one we don't have full results or a lineup for! We know it's headlined by Satanico vs Ultimo Guerrero in a first-time singles match which made TV (edited). The only other match we know happened was the other match that made TV & had a very non-CMLL bit where Silver King refused to wrestle in his match saying he was too important to be stuck in a tercera. This was his write-off in front of the fans as he'd take on the Black Tiger gimmick the following month. What we also know is Ayako Hamada & Ai Fujita from ARSION were in for the weekend so they probably had a match on this show.

7/10/01 @ Arena Coliseo: Black Magic/La Fiera/Villano IV vs Black Warrior/Fuerza Guerrera/Zumbido

Norman Smiley aka Black Magic resurfaces in his old stomping grounds with WCW going out of business. He only did a couple matches, most on Sunday shows so this would be one of two Tuesday matches likely available in the archives. Pretty good mix of talent as well.

7/24/01 @ Arena Coliseo: Zeta vs Principe Negro

A newly implemented match around this time period would be CMLL giving two students per week a chance to do a singles match to open one of the Coliseo shows. This one sneaks onto a Tuesday show meaning it should be in the archive & features two wrestlers who we know by name but really never got to see have a match in a CMLL ring. Getting to see this would be a nice look into both & what kind of young talent CMLL had available but never really ended up giving a chance to.

7/27/01 @ Arena Mexico: Averno/Fuerza Guerrera/Satanico vs Ultimo Guerrero/Rey Bucanero/Mascara Magica

The Infernales vs Infernales/rudos vs rudos issue was really hot at the time & this is a Friday trios that never found it's way onto TV. Mephisto had just shown up weeks earlier but got hurt almost immediately so Fuerza Guerrera steps in here for him.

7/29/01 @ Arena Mexico

A Sunday show! As I said, I have no proof CMLL has the Sunday shows until at least the 52MX era in late 2005 but this is an exception. This show was advertised on the bare bones CMLL website run by Rosalio Vera at the time. He explained the show would be recorded & for the price of $15 USD + shipping you could order it! Sounds great! We waited months for any word on how to get the video but alas it never came to be. One of the all-time hardcore lucha fans mysteries as to what the story was with this show. At one point I believe they had also advertised it as airing on Sky PPV but nobody has ever come forward saying they saw it or had a copy. The show is put together as a major event (I forget what name they used - maybe Juicio Final?). It's headlined by a Villano III vs El Signo hair match which CMLL had spent months building on the Friday shows, special appearence by La Parka & a Mexican National Trios Titles defense. This was a big deal for it's time & would be gold level footage to unearth.

8/14/01 @ Arena Coliseo: Gran Alternativa

Another Gran Alternativa where only the semis & final made TV - highly edited. Over the course of time someone uploaded the full tournament to YouTube (maybe from a slightly longer airing of TV in Mexico at the time? Which opens up the possibility we are missing lots of stuff that actually aired on TV?) but even that has each match joined in progress. Would love to see the tournament in full.

9/7/01 @ Arena Mexico: Satanico/Averno/Mephisto vs Ultimo Guerrero/Mascara Magica/Tarzan Boy

Another battle between the two Infernales sides, this time with Rey Bucanero missing from the equation. There were some TV pre-emptions at this time causing multiple weeks to air at once leaving this semi-main on a Friday out in the cold.

10/5/01 @ Arena Mexico: Leyenda De Plata Torneo Cibernetico

Another Leyenda De Plata that made TV but in an era where TV chopped everything up brutally. This one is JIP with some of the field already eliminated. Loaded up with all the best workers this year as even Ricky Marvin got to participate, a spot way above his pay grade at the time.

11/2/01 @ Arena Mexico: Antifaz Del Norte/Black Warrior/Felino/Rey Misterio Jr. vs Black Tiger/Juventud Guerrera/Nicho El Millonario/Virus

Rey Misterio Jr. & Psicosis make their Arena Mexico debuts! This aired on TV but again... you'll keep reading me type this... it was a heavily edited version that made it to TV. This would be gold level footage to unearth if it can ever be viewed unedited.

11/6/01 @ Arena Coliseo: Antifaz Del Norte/Felino/Rey Misterio Jr. vs Averno/Blue Panther/Nicho El Millonario

Now the Arena Coliseo debuts for Rey Misterio Jr. & Psicosis! If you can believe it, the TV (at least the one we had access to in the US) aired a Dinamitas match instead of this amazing looking trios. It was a rough time to be a CMLL fan following through TV outside of Mexico. No doubt these guys went all out to impress & if it ever sees the light of day this will no doubt be an unearthed classic.

12/7/01 @ Arena Mexico

Show was pre-empted in the US so nothing from it has ever seen the light of day except the segunda a week later when they had to fill TV with older matches since they couldn't air the PPV.

12/25/01 @ Arena Coliseo

Nothing from this show made TV so it would be all new footage. Has a Brazos vs Villanos match on top, Ricky Marvin working his first ever semi-main event & the opener has the debut of Brazo De Oro Jr. (future La Mascara).

2/22/02 @ Arena Mexico

Another one of those pre-empted TV shows leading to multiple weeks needing to be combined. This has the 3rd straight Shocker vs Tarzan Boy match on top but this one is a title match that never saw the light of day. The semi-main has clips shown on a future week of TV. Everything else would be new.

3/19/02 @ Arena Coliseo

Nothing from this show found it's way onto TV. Features the return of Vampiro... which I know isn't a strong selling point but it also has a Shocker/Dr. Wagner Jr. singles match which sounds like one of the best CMLL matches possible in this time frame along with a rare defense of the ugly Arena Coliseo Tag Team Titles!

3/22/02 @ Arena Mexico: Grand Prix Torneo Cibernetico

Even though it's billed as a Grand Prix, there are no foreigners included. This was just CMLL picking 16 of their best wrestlers & saying go have fun for an hour. Actually, it was a way to keep pushing Mascara Magica strong (he submits Santo cleanly at the end) but my way makes it sound better. This match made it onto TV but good luck getting an hour match onto TV unedited. It was JIP & missing some eliminations. The magazines at the time raved about this one.

4/9/02 @ Arena Coliseo

We have no lineup or results from this show so it could be a CMLL Mystery Vortex! This isn't an anomoly, we have quite a few Tuesday missing lineups/results but I am marking this one down because Shibata (yes, that one) & Watoru Inoue were on an excursion at this time so you never know what wacky match could exist on this show. Gigante Silva & Giant Singh were also around but I *think* it was just for the Friday & Sunday shows following this one.

5/24/02 @ Arena Mexico

A show that never aired in the US so we have to presume never aired in Mexico either. It does show up on Samurai TV which was airing CMLL at the time! The top 3 air although it's unclear how edited down they were since the Samurai TV version would vary in time from an hour to 90 minutes.

5/31/02 @ Arena Mexico: Volador Jr. vs Averno (Lightning Match) & Atlantis/Mr. Niebla/Solar I vs Blue Panther/Dr. Wagner Jr./Fuerza Guerrera

A major Friday show with a double hair match & tag title match as the headliners. That left no TV time available for a very strong undercard which included the first Volador/Averno match in Arena Mexico which of course would turn into a long time rivalry. Solar I also pops up randomly for a trios match, he had been mostly away from CMLL for a while now & certainly not booked at the level of the others. The Panther/Wagner/Fuerza team were on a strong run at this time & those are some opponents they could definitely have made magic with.

6/14/02 @ Arena Mexico: La Fiera/Ricky Marvin/Tony Rivera vs Arkangel/Heraclys/Zumbido

This would qualify under the DEEP DIVE portion if the archives ever get opened up. This never aired match is the debut of Heraclys. Who? I don't know. Nobody has ever seemed to know. A gimmick that pops up here & is gone by October after getting a decent number of bookings. Never even came across any photos in magazines of the gimmick. The closest explanation we ever got was "brother of La Fiera" which makes sense name-wise since their dad worked as Hercules Poblano. He disappears around the same time La Fiera does so maybe they packed up & went home together.

6/16/02 @ Arena Mexico

Another Sunday show! Another big Sunday show! We don't even have the full lineup for this one, only the top. An undercarders cage match where Solar II loses his mask & a CMLL Trios Titles match that had been built up for months on the Friday shows. It's *possible* this aired on SKY which is the only reason I'm throwing it in here. If it didn't, highly unlikely this was a recorded show.

7/14/02 @ Arena Mexico

Same as above... another Sunday show I'm only including because it may have been a SKY show. CMLL loaded up Sunday once again - this time with a double hair match on top & guest appearences from Tinieblas w/ Alushe, Mascara Sagrada & Trio Fantastia. It doesn't look like an overly stellar card on paper but the main event was a key part of the generally awful Boricuas vs Mexico feud so if we had to suffer through months of that we should at least get to see what the payoff was like. (this is where Poder Mexica aka Rush's dad loses his mask)

7/26/02 @ Arena Mexico

Stop if you've heard me already... this show has the yearly loaded up Leyenda De Plata torneo which got edited severly on TV. Would love to see it in full. It's also the only match from this show to make it onto TV so unearthing this entire event would get us an unseen Santo/Shocker/Mascara Magica vs Guerreros Del Infierno match which sounds wonderful for it's time.

9/13/02 @ Arena Mexico

It's the yearly Anniversary Show so I feel obligated to put it here so we can see it in full some day but also it's not the most exciting lineup of matches that we haven't seen yet. They might be good, no doubt, but it wouldn't be in the top half of my personal must-see archived events.

9/16/02 @ Arena Mexico: Cage Match

Another loaded up Sunday show with a twist... this one did air on TV! Well parts of it. The main event cage match which may be the first time CMLL just randomly threw a bunch of people* into a cage as a main event sees guest star Bulldog lose his mask to Universo 2000. The opener has La Alianza who were a much hyped young trio in a time when CMLL wasn't interested in pushing any young talent who didn't have family connections. (* -> we are missing a bunch of Sunday lineups so it is possible the cage match had some kind of build)

9/20/02 @ Arena Mexico

With the special Independence Day show getting some TV time it meant the weekly Friday show was shut out completely. So this would be a brand new show to all & the lineups is loaded in terms of workrate! Mexico vs Japan on top, Infernales vs Guerreros, Santo/Casas/Atlantis vs Familia De Tijuana, Black Warrior/Felino/Virus vs Panther/Fuerza/Juvy... that's some quality stuff. One could argue better lineup than the Anniversary Show had a week earlier.

10/4/02 @ Arena Mexico: Felino/Negro Casas/Virus vs Blue Panther/Fuerza Guerrera/Juventud Guerrera

Virus having just turned tecnico is in a feud with the Guerreras who enlist Blue Panther for this awesome looking trios match. Only one match from this show aired & everything else besides this one looks ROUGH so maybe this can be a hidden gem or something.

10/18/02 @ Arena Mexico: Virus vs Juventud Guerrera

This well built-up singles match did not make the cut for TV which was disappointing. To this day I have no idea how it could have went. Virus was in his prime & getting the biggest push of his career but Juvy could be up-and-down depending on what condition he was in. If he came to play, this probably is a hidden gem. If he came to fuck around, maybe Virus made him find out. Either way I'd love to see it!

10/29/02 @ Arena Coliseo: Atlantis vs Blue Panther (WWA Middleweight Title)

They had a singles match to set this up the week before which did make TV but go figure the title match did not! One would presume this would be as safe as a match as possible to be pulled from the archive with both ending up as CMLL lifers.

CMLL 11/12/02 @ Arena Coliseo: Marcela & Azumi Hyuga vs La Amapola & Comando Bolshoi

The women are in as guest stars for the week. Their Friday match ends up airing (JIP) on TV but there was no way both would be squeezed into the short TV time. What we saw of the Friday match was good so one would presume this was as well.

1/1/03 @ Arena Coliseo: Black Tiger/Fantasma Jr./Tigre Rojo vs Bobby Jack/Super Comando/Tarahumara

Maybe as a belated Christmas gift, maybe to make up for many of the regular roster guys being home for New Year's celebration, whatever the reason this is a super rare time the Puebla locals were called into action in Mexico City. For a couple of them it was their only taste of Mexico City action. This would be a very obscure match to pull from the archives. (No, this is not Santos Escobar, this is his older brother who started out before him & was on the main CMLL roster for a time.)

1/1/03 @ Arena Coliseo: Gran Alternativa

A completely unaired Gran Alternativa! We know the teams, we know Genetico (future Sagrado) won but that's the extent of information we have from this show. The only known Gran Alternativa in CMLL history where zero footage has ever been seen.

3/11/03 @ Arena Coliseo: Tigre Blanco vs Dr. X (Mexican National Welterweight Title)

Title change! This may have slipped through the cracks & made it onto TV if there was a TV show that weekend, which there wasn't. So the only footage we have are the top 2 matches from Arena Mexico which made it onto a Samurai TV CMLL airing. Always nice to see actual changes & these two probably had a hell of a match.

4/4/03 @ Arena Mexico: Tony Rivera & Terrible vs Ricky Marvin & Genetico

Finals of the Guapos U tournament as picked by a legit fan poll! Winning team immediately moved onto a singles match with the winner becoming the new Guapo. The entire "tournament" which was just random singles matches over the course of many months at Arena Coliseo aired on TV but this final never stood a chance with it being the 2nd match on a major show. A JIP version airs on the Samurai TV CMLL version but for the sake of closure it would be great to see the entire thing in full. Safe match to pull from the archives as well with Terrible being a CMLL lifer & this being his big breakthrough match.

4/30/03 @ Arena Mexico: Pequeno Olimpico vs Pequeno Violencia (Mask vs Mask)

Special Wednesday Kids Day show at Arena Mexico but we know the TV cameras were there because the finish of this match aired on TV along with other matches from the show. Two career CMLL wrestlers in their biggest match ever seems like a no-brainer selection from the archive.

CMLL 5/2/03 @ Arena Mexico

One of the skipped over Friday shows with the Kids Day festivities airing & shortened TV time slot. So everything from this one would be new even with it being a very run-of-the-mill lineup.

CMLL 5/9/03 @ Arena Mexico: Grand Prix

This version of the Grand Prix is basically Mexico vs Ultimo Dragon recruits such as CIMA, SUWA, TARU & others. At the time it was a huge deal for us online people who loved Toryumon. It made it's way onto TV in very edited form - many of the Japanese guys were eliminated by the time the match is joined in progress. Would be great to see in full as a time capsule of what a dream match looked like in 2003

6/20/03 @ Arena Mexico: Heat/Vampiro/Villano IV vs Ultimo Guerrero/Rey Bucanero/Violencia & Felino/Negro Casas/Sagrado vs Black Warrior/Mazada/Nozawa

Heat is Minoru Tanaka on a short excursion to Mexico. He'd wind up having a singles match with Dr. Wagner Jr. but this was his unaired debut & what wacky teammates they gave him! This match is pure spectacle & I for one would love to see it some day.

This is Sagrado's big debut! The original Mistico! He gets the full Fray Tormenta presentation & put over strong by according to all the magazine recaps he totally bombed in his first match. And second match. And third match. He was clearly not ready for this spot, nor what CMLL was looking for out of this gimmick. As the story goes due to declining attendance they asked a lot of the regular fans what they wanted to see. The common answer was we want our version of Rey Misterio Jr. who was a big hit in WWE at the time. So CMLL came up with the idea for a new Santo-esque religious character but who flew around like Rey. They pushed Genetico strong in the Guapos tournament but had Terrible win with the idea they would be the pushed young guys at the time opposite each other. For whatever reason they didn't pick Ricky Marvin who was the obvious choice for this gig. Or maybe he didn't want it since he was doing well in NOAH at the time. So they stuck Sagrado into the role & high flying was not exactly his specialty. Highlights of his debut matches end up airing on TV & even with the magic of editing you can see how poorly he does. Seeing the actual full debut complete with crowd reaction would be a great piece of lost history.

6/24/03 @ Arena Coliseo: Shocker vs Ultimo Guerrero (CMLL Light Heavyweight Title)

Considered perhaps the two best workers in Mexico at the time, they ended up booked against each on a random Tuesday show the week before. Was probably a fantastic match but TV time was instead dedicated to Cien Caras vs Pierroth! Yes! In 2003! Unless you lived through it you'll never know the true pain of living through this era of CMLL just via what aired on TV. A painful existence. Nevertheless, this match also slips through the cracks the week after so we always default to choosing the title match over the setup one!

7/4/03 @ Arena Mexico & 7/11/03: Block A & B Trios Tournament

A tournament? You're asking to see TWO pointless CMLL tournaments??? Well, yes. Only short clips of the matches aired on TV but the tournament is full of good workers so there may be some fun sprints. Maybe most notably Block A is the official presentation of a team called Los Havana Brothers! Rocky or Ricky Romero, Havana Brother II & Bobby or Rocky Quance depending what day of the week it was. Guest stars at the request of the NJPW LA Dojo who end up making quite an impact in CMLL! Most forget this was their actual debut & not the first in a series of matches with Ricky Marvin, Volador Jr. & Virus.

7/8/03 @ Arena Coliseo: Blue Panther/Fuerza Guerrera/Super Crazy vs Los Havana Brothers

I can't be the only one that wants to see angry Fuerza Guerrera vs any of the Havana Brothers, right? This seems like a delightful hidden gem type match to bust out some day.

7/15/03 @ Arena Coliseo: Atlantis vs Satanico

1984 & 2003... the *only two times* in the history of these two men's careers that they had a singles match at Arena Coliseo. Only once at Arena Mexico, if you were curious. It's almost unfathomable two guys who have spent 40+ years each in this company & had thousands of matches in this building only shared the ring alone TWICE. We actually do have the 1984 match on video! So naturally we must have the 2003 matches as well, even just for historical purposes.

7/25/03 or 8/1/03 @ Arena Mexico: Marcela & Azumi Hyuga vs La Amapola & Comando Bolshoi

Another year, another special visit from the Japanese ladies, another rare opportunity on back-to-back weeks for the women to wrestle on a Friday night. It must be documented in video form! These are true Easter eggs. 

8/5/03 @ Arena Coliseo: Ricky Marvin/Tigre Blanco/Virus vs Los Havana Brothers

Tigre Blanco steps in for Volador Jr & presumably the great run of matches between these teams continues. Maybe one day once the archive gets going they can do a supercut of all the Havana Brothers matches from this first tour. If you thought me making a list like this is crazy, you must think that last line is especially nuts.

9/5/03 @ Arena Mexico: CMLL Super Lightweight Title Torneo Cibernetico

We knew we were screwed as soon as this match was announced for a Friday night. No way it was gonna make the TV cut. We got a nice little surprise as the tail end found it's way into a highlight but more than half the field was already gone. The Havana Brothers were killing it & the rest of the match is made up with all these undercarders we never got to see but were getting rave reviews. That mix alone should have made this an incredible match that never saw the light of day.

9/16/03 @ Arena Coliseo: Astro Boy/Sombra De Plata/Zeta vs Polvora/Sakura/Vaquero

Mistico as Astro Boy had already done a couple Arena Coliseo matches at this point, most of them on Sundays in the opening match rookies exhibition spot but this would be his technical debut match on the roster as he becomes a regular going forward. It's possible CMLL already knew the Sagrado gimmick was dead in the water, he was certainly being booked as such, so they already had it in their mind they were gonna try again next year with someone else. The story has always been they only chose Astro Boy after seeing how he began to connect with the fans & get over with his out of this world highspots. But maybe they knew from Day #1 (aka this show)? Video may tell the story, video we've never had access to.

9/19/03 @ Arena Mexico: Ricky Marvin/Volador Jr./Virus vs Los Havana Brothers

The famous trios match from the Anniversary Show. Stole the show, won MOTY in Mexico, remembered as an all-time classic. Yes, it aired on TV. But there is at least one very noticeable edit. This is the kind of thing that should have been up Day 1 on the streaming service, it should be one of the first releases when those archives are eventually opened up.

10/7/03 @ Arena Coliseo: Torneo Cibernetico

Doesn't appear to be any actual reward for this so just a random torneo cibernetico unless video shows otherwise. Features a group of established CMLL mid to upper card tecnicos vs lower ranked rudos like all the members of La Alianza, a much hyped young trio who never got any opportunity to move up. Randomness like this is why you hope the archives get opened up one day.

10/31/03 @ Arena Mexico: Neutron & Valiente vs Ramstein & Sangre Azteca

Valiente makes his Arena Mexico debut. Reason enough to want to see this never aired match. Would go well with a career retrospective or podcast interview. Most people have never even seen that original weird Valiente gear. He would have fit as a 3rd member of the Caligula & Messala Romans pairing.

11/4/03 @ Arena Coliseo: Alacran De Durango/Brazo De Oro Jr./Brazo De Plata Jr. vs Caligula/Messala/Reyes Veloz

Speaking of which... debut for Caligula! Romans united! Could be a nice video to share at some point in honor of Raziel on the Anniversary of his passing. Also features two long-time CMLL undercarders who at this time were rapidly approaching the point of extinction in Alacran & Reyes Veloz. I don't think Alacran makes it into 2004 & Veloz might but is gone soon after. The stumbling block to ever seeing this of course is the inclusion of Brazo De Plata Jr. (Psycho Clown) & Brazo De Oro Jr. (La Mascara).

11/7/03 @ Arena Mexico: Super Crazy/Virus/Volador Jr. vs Los Havana Brothers

At this point TJ Perkins has left Mexico so Ricky Reyes is brought in as the newest member of the Havana Brothers. They don't seem to miss a beat in matches we've seen & this lineup with Super Crazy stepping in for Ricky Marvin seems like a no-brainer great match. It would boggle your mind what CMLL was choosing to air on TV at this time instead of stuff like this. Hope you like end of his run rudo Gigante Silva matches!

11/14/03 @ Arena Mexico: Rocky Romero vs Virus (CMLL Super Lightweight Title)

Again... the pure disappointment of seeing what CMLL chose to air in their alloted 1 hour time slot every Saturday. According to records 2:41 of the 3rd fall of this match was all we were blessed with. Criminal. Even more criminal is this is sitting on a hard drive somewhere in the CMLL offices & isn't up yet! That must be fixed! Virus dethrones Rocky here in what was said to be a MOTYC.

11/21/03 @ Arena Mexico: Astro Boy & Sombra De Plata vs El Koreano & Super Comando

Mistico's official Arena Mexico debut & likely the debut of La Mistica as well! Super Comando was one of the guys entrusted with taking it properly at the beginning.

12/5/03 @ Arena Mexico: Atlantis/Shocker/Super Parka/Vampiro vs Black Warrior/Dr. Wagner Jr./Fuerza Guerrera/Perro Aguayo Jr.

Perrito had just joined the rudo side having his first official match with them the week before which did make TV. This one did not with it being the unofficial year end show so it was loaded with higher priority stuff. This seems like a real fun mix of regulars as well as guest star Super Parka. I can't even remember the story as to why he was inserted into this match but maybe video will tell a story. LA Park debuts the following week so maybe this was part of the deal.

1/20/04 @ Arena Coliseo: Black Warrior vs Emilio Charles Jr. (CMLL Middleweight Title)

Incredibly Emilio retains his title over Warrior here which tells you all about CMLL's mentality when it comes to a youth movement at this point in time. This didn't make TV nor did it make the KHWY 22 videos we've collected! The what??? That was a local LA channel that appeared to have struck a deal to air a 1 hour CMLL show. Here's the catch... it only started airing in 2005 but the matches were all from late 2003/early 2004. It was an incredible discovery when we found out it existed. So it's possible this wound up on one of those shows. It would track with some weird booking around this time where they seemed to be doing week-to-week Tuesday booking instead of just random matches. This could have been a fun match!

1/23/04 @ Arena Mexico: LA Park & Shocker vs Ultimo Guerero & Rey Bucanero (CMLL Tag Team Titles)

A classic! Never aired originally, showed up on one of the Year in Review shows but edited down of course. What we saw was absolutely incredible stuff. Tons of drama with Rey Bucanero going down to injury when his leg gets trapped between the chairs while taking a tope. Definitely a planned spot, not sure if the injury was as well. Tecnicos win the titles in a huge upset. This was a very memorable match for it's time & deserves the chance to be seen in full.

3/19/04 @ Arena Mexico: Astro Boy/Neutron/Zeta vs Hooligan/Ramstein/Sangre Azteca

The opener to Homenaje Dos Leyendas featuring rising stars Astro Boy & Zeta fresh off a Michinoku Pro tour along with forever future star Neutron taking on the all-star rudo team of La Alianza. This has the all-time Astro Boy asai moonsault to nowhere spot that made it onto Momentos Estelares. The most we've ever seen of this match that probably tore the house down. The rest of the show exists on video so why not complete it some day with the opener too!

5/21/04 @ Arena Mexico: Brazo De Oro Jr./Hijo Del Texano/Misterioso II vs Espiritu Maligno/Lobo Vikingo/Maximo

This was the final of the Guapos U (final edition) tournament. Groups were seperated into trios teams & it didn't get much TV coverage aside from the occasional clips of a finish over the many weeks. CMLL didn't play it up the way they did the previous years but it would still be an interesting match to see as Espiritu/Lobo have always been mysteries to us CMLL hardcores. We only much later found out this wasn't the Puebla Espiritu Maligno so his identity is largely unknown. Lobo Vikingo ended up becoming one of the many Pierroths.

6/25/04 @ Arena Mexico: Atlantis & Blue Panther vs Ultimo Guerrero & Rey Bucanero (CMLL Tag Team Titles)

Can you imagine the reaction these days if a match at this level on a Friday night just never got shown? You can't. Because it's unfathomable. But back in the days pre-cell phone recordings & CMLL only have an hour for TV, this Friday night main event got cut & never showed up on any secondary TV show or year end review. Another match that should be one of the first uploads when the archives open up.

7/19/04 @ Arena Mexico: Leyenda De Plata Torneo Cibernetico

The annual workrate match where we saw just under 20 of a match that definitely went double that. Cubs' recap notes "the first good match in a while" which tells you the dire TV situation for CMLL at the time. Mistico's first major match at Arena Mexico even though he's not a focused on guy yet.

8/6/04 @ Arena Mexico: Felino/Mistico/Ricky Marvin vs Averno/Mephisto/Violencia

There probably needs to be a special "unseen Mistico matches" compilation to be done but this one stands out to me from his early Friday appearences as it has him against two guys for the first time who would become his regular & best opponents. It also has him teaming with Ricky Marvin who has always claimed he was offered the role of Mistico but turned it down. This is the last real "normal" Mistico match. He has a lightning match with Virus the following week, then the Gran Alternativa (which we'll get to next) & it's all big matches going forward. Not so much for poor Ricky

8/20/04 @ Arena Mexico

Show was pre-empted due to Olympics  coverage so this event aired NOWHERE! Of course it would be the show with the Gran Alternativa where El Hijo Del Santo & Mistico team up which changes the future course of CMLL/lucha libre. A copy of the tournament (I think with one missing match) made it onto YouTube completely randomly, most likely from someone who bought one of the DVD's being sold on the street at the time. But if this footage exists in pristine condition, the show needs to be uploaded ASAP. Historic tournament which also features the first ever interaction between Mistico & Ultimo Guerrero.

9/7/04 @ Arena Coliseo: Shocker vs Damian El Terrible (NWA Light Heavyweight Title)

I'd call this a historic match in CMLL terms as it's the first time Terrible clashes with his ex-leader Shocker in a battle of the Guapos. Would have been a big test for him at the time against still one of the best wrestlers in the world.

9/24/04 @ Arena Mexico: Mistico/Misterioso II/Volador Jr. vs Averno/Mephisto/Olimpico

Revancha from the Anniversary Show the week before. The Mistico/Misterioso II/Volador Jr. team was like a prototype Sky Team group for it's very short time together & these would have been their best possible opponents at the time. It was actually pretty surprising this one didn't make it onto TV since CMLL had a little more time given to them & the match the week before made the cut.

10/12/04 @ Arena Coliseo: Mr. Niebla vs Universo 2000 (CMLL Heavyweight Title)

Title change! Universo seemed to be given the belt as part of the exchange for dropping his mask at the Anniversary Show. It's only appropriate as Niebla had taken the title from Universo about 18 months earlier. As always you love to have any available title switch on video.

10/29/04 @ Arena Mexico: Shocker/Mr. Niebla/Mistico vs Ultimo Guerrero/Rey Bucanero/Olimpico

The infamous OOPS match! Whether intentionally or unintentionally CMLL booked Mistico to *lose* this match. He took the deciding fall. Whether they were testing to see how the crowd would react or they immediately regretted it... that part is unclear. Whatever the story was - this match never saw the light of day aside from some Mistico highspots on Momentos Estelares the following week. They clearly intended for it to air at some point because a Coliseo match that would typically never see the light of day ends up sneaking onto the Televisa TV broadcast. This match has always fascinated me simply to see how the crowd reacted to the hottest rising star getting beat. It was probably a great match too! Mistico & Ultimo Guerrero were doing some unreal stuff at the time.

11/5/04 @ Arena Mexico: Atlantis/Blue Panther/Canek vs Dr. Wagner Jr./Olimpico/Ultimo Guerrero

CMLL was doing an old school thing around this time. In the 80's/early 90's they'd announce something like "the order of the top 3 matches will be determined by a random draw". This was a way to put the bigger stars on earlier in the show if they had another show that same night or also as a face saving deal for top stars who didn't want to be advertised beneath other people. One would assume that was the latter case here. So because this went on 3rd, it missed the cut for TV. What does that have to do with wanting to see it? Well Wagner was starting to get red hot as a *tecnico* at this point which was not planned at all. Canek was getting very negative reactions for being Wagner's main rival but also fans feeling he unfairly unmasked Universo 2000 at the Anniversary Show. So that dynamic would be really fun to watch play out. 

11/30/04 @ Arena Coliseo: Shocker/Mr. Niebla/Mistico vs Ultimo Guerrero/Rey Bucanero/Olimpico

Sound familiar? It's the OOPS match from 10/29 except with the right result this time! No idea if it aired in Mexico, it certainly didn't in the US as Galavision had CMLL pre-empted for two straight weeks. The only matches that aired from those two week so Tuesday/Friday shows were on TLN in Canada which I recorded & this was not one of them.

12/10/04 @ Arena Mexico: Rocky Romero vs Virus (CMLL Super Lightweight Title)

Rocky returns to Mexico to regain his CMLL Super Lightweight championship. This made the TV cut but chopped to shreds to the point Cubs' recap says it was "only okay". Seems impossible to believe. Surely the full version is at least "good" or better.

1/1/05 @ Arena Coliseo: Mistico vs Averno (NWA Middleweight Title)

The big one! Should be match #1 uploaded when the archives are opened up. CMLL was busy spending two weeks on Year in Review shows so this Saturday (Friday pushed back due to holiday) show went completely unaired. It'd be nice to see it all of course but most importantly the main event needs to be salvaged. A truly legendary match because only legends of it exist! Said to be an all-time classic with the fans showering the money with ring afterwards & raising Mistico on their shoulders. This win gave him his first championship & cemented him as the new star of the company. The match was apparently so good, CMLL decided everyone needed to see it. Not only did they book rematches in Guadalajara & Puebla, they also booked it for Arena Mexico in February where by all accounts they just re-did the Coliseo match in front of a bigger crowd. No matter, I'd like to see the original version! This is a holy grail match.

4/5/05 @ Arena Coliseo: Mistico vs Rey Bucanero

Rare Tuesday singles match for new sensation Mistico & possibly the one time these two had a Mexico City singles match in a CMLL building?

4/26/05 @ Arena Coliseo: Mistico vs Mephisto

Same as above. Averno became Mistico's more regular singles opponent so we didn't get to see Mistico/Mephisto really go at it until much much much later in their careers.

5/10/05 @ Arena Coliseo: Black Warrior/Negro Casas/Tiger Mask vs Averno/Mephisto/Tarzan Boy

The legendary ORIGINAL Tiger Mask Satoryu Sayama returned to Mexico for a farewell tour & this Tuesday match ended up being his last match ever at Arena Coliseo. An excellent pull from the archives if anyone is truly paying attention.

6/24/05 @ Arena Mexico: Bronco/Electro Shock/LA Park vs Ultimo Guerrero/Rey Bucanero/Tarzan Boy

"Memorably awful" says CubsFan of TheCubsFan dot com. A truly infamous match in time. CMLL hyped Electro Shock coming in & the then hardcore CMLL fan base reacted as one would expect to an AAA lifer walking into their building... it was hostile territory. Electro could have had the match of his life & they'd still have boo'ed him. The problem was, he did not. He had a very poor performance even with CMLL feeding him the best rudo team possible. There was some silly rumor at the time the Guerreros purposely sabotaged Electro which is clearly untrue if you watch the video. Yes, this made it to TV but highly edited. That's why it makes the list here. Would love to see the full version of this disaster. This was also Bronco's debut aka Silver King under another new gimmick to hide the fact he was bald & thus didn't want to wrestle unmasked. Unfortunately for him he is on Electro's team so the crowd jumps all over him too at various points. Something totally unlike you'd see from the current CMLL audience.

11/8/05 @ Arena Coliseo

Nothing from this Tuesday show aired on TV even with a full 2 hour slot available. Main event looks tremendous & very loaded for a Tuesday with Dr. Wagner Jr., LA Park & Mistico vs Atlantis, Rey Bucanero & Ultimo Guerrero. Semi-main is a CMLL Tag Team Titles match with Averno & Mephisto retaining over Negro Casas & Heavy Metal.

12/30/05 @ Arena Coliseo

Nothing particularly noteworthy seems to be happening here but as usual with Year in Review stuff airing on TV not a single match from this Friday show makes it onto video which makes it a rarity.

1/29/06 @ Arena Coliseo: Astro Boy & Flash vs Cyber Black & Dr. Karonte Jr.

By now Sunday shows are on the table for the archives as CMLL is airing on 52MX & in a couple months more Fox Sports as well. This was the "lucha de regalo" which is basically CMLL sending out students to do an unofficial opening match on a Sunday or Tuesday. Features Flash's debut, he'd become Fuego down the road. Astro Boy re-appears, probably hoping his brother's success would give him an immediate spot, he becomes Argos down the line. Dr. Karonte Jr. is another family member, the future Argenis. Cyber Black was a guy who seemed to be a CMLL school lifer & eventually disappeared. He did many lucha de regalos. This would be an archive deep pull.

2/10/06 @ Arena Mexico

The women's match from this show aired on 52MX & the main event made the rounds in tape (DVD by now) trading circles but othewise this is a rare mostly unseen Friday show during a very hot period for the company. 

6/9/06 @ Arena Mexico: Dos Caras Jr./Dr. Wagner Jr./Mr. Niebla vs Damian 666/LA Park/Misterioso II

An interesting match that never ended up making TV, the semi-main of this Friday night show. Misterioso II is here as a reward for winning the Gran Alternativa. Wagner & LA Park just had their split on the tecnico side & were building to a singles match so perhaps this one got a little too out of control for TV? If that's the case, very wishful thinking it ever shows up in the archives but I'm still noting it either way.

6/30/06 @ Arena Mexico: Blue Panther/Mr. Niebla/Silver King vs Kenzo Suzuki/Ohara/Okumura

WEIRDNESS! Silver King pops up out of nowhere without either the Bronco or Black Tiger gimmick. Also, he's a tecnico! This Friday semi-main never made TV & really stuck out as being a very strange match to have been booked. Perhaps it was filmed for other reasons (TV show? Documentary?). A long time lucha mystery match.

10/6/06 @ Arena Mexico

Another rare mostly unseen Friday show. With some matches from the PPV airing on a delay, only the main event made it onto 52MX.

10/8/06 @ Arena Coliseo: Mascara Purpura vs Hooligan

I remember this being very odd & I'm always interested in seeing odd CMLL things. This was not an announced match nor was it a lightning match. Best theory is one or more of the main eventers were running late considering the busy schedules they had during this time period so CMLL sent out a filler match & told them just to kill as much time as possible. Something that would be unheard of in current CMLL.

12/22/06 @ Arena Mexico

With PPV matches airing this Friday show got left in the dust. Not a single match made TV anywhere. Features the first big Volador Jr/Averno singles match on a Friday night for the CMLL Middleweight Title which no doubt was a fantastic match. Should be a high priority archive upload. Very Friday where Mistico was working mid-card!

1/30/07 @ Arena Coliseo: Lizmark/Sagrado/Satanico vs Eclipse/Efesto/Misterioso II

We didn't know it at the time but this would end up being Lizmark's final match in CMLL & basically his retirement match in general. He had looked very rough in 2006 & was very much a relic of the past with the direction CMLL was heading in but he was still a legendary figure in CMLL's history so it'd be cool to see his final match.

2/9/07 @ Arena Mexico: Molotov & Sombra De Plata vs Carrona & Cobalto

Yes, I do have a reason for including this! The only Friday night show those two rudos ever worked. But also to note a few months later there was a weird internet TV channel that was found to be airing random CMLL matches from this time period. Lots of matches that hadn't been seen before as presumbly CMLL was spreading out their footage as much as possible. So something like this may have made the cut but it was always a bitch to track down when the CMLL stuff would air or find a way with technology being what it was to record the stream.

2/27/07 @ Arena Coliseo: Brillante Jr./Stuka Jr./Valiente vs Apocalipsis/Arkangel/Dr. X

Brillante Jr. aka La Sombra aka Andrade's CMLL debut. You know they had big plans for him because he didn't walk in as an opening match guy, this was third from the top on a Tuesday show. At this point in time the Tuesday shows didn't have any TV outlet but highlights would air on some online sports news show.

5/1/07 @ Arena Coliseo: Atlantis vs Alex Koslov (NWA Light Heavyweight Title)

Another match on the Tuesday shows that had no outlet & a pretty fascinating match as Atlantis goes in as the rudo & foreigner Koslov is the tecnico.

5/8/07 @ Arena Coliseo: Dos Caras Jr./Lizmark Jr./Ultimo Dragon vs Atlantis/Ultimo Guerrero/Jushin Lyger

Grand Prix week so some special guests were around which gave us a rare chance to see Ultimo Dragon vs Jushin Lyger in Mexico! First & only time? I'd have to look it up but sounds about right since they were always both on the tecnico side until much much much later in their careers & at that point Dragon was out of CMLL. If nothing else a historic match to share one day.

5/18/07 @ Arena Mexico: Dos Caras Jr./Sagrado/Ultimo Dragon vs Kenzo Suzuki/Minoru Suzuki/Yoshihiro Takayama

A real match! A real match that never made TV! These were the guys left over from Grand Prix week. A very sketchy version aired on that weird internet show airing CMLL matches but all I remember of it was Minoru Suzuki beating up Kemonito. So now I guess reading that everyone wants to see this match??? 

7/13/07 @ Arena Mexico: Pequeno Reyes Del Aire Torneo Cibernetico

The CMLL minis divison was batshit insane around this time but they rarely got the chance to be seen on TV. This one snuck through the cracks on 52MX but of course it was heavily edited. Getting to see this match unedited would be a hidden gem for me personally but should be for everyone as well.

7/17/07 @ Arena Coliseo: Bam Bam vs Pequeno Damian 666 vs Pequeno Halloween (Hair vs Hair vs Hair)

Super rare 3 way hair match. I think the last time CMLL would have done anything like this would have been back in 1999 w/ Dantes/Porky/Pierroth. Traditional CMLL 3 way rules were a coin flip to determine a bye & then 2 singles matches with each match loser then having to do the apuesta match. Naturally you'd always end up with one person winning two straight matches as to not have to do a repeat match. As I said above for the Pequeno Reyes Del Aire - this division was on fire at this time & all 3 of these guys were fantastic. This is probably a hidden classic.

7/24/07 @ Arena Coliseo: Bam Bam vs Pequeno Damian 666 (Hair vs Hair)

Kinda spoils what happened above but you'll forgive me nearly 20 years after the fact. These guys had multiple hair matches but you never forget your first!

9/25/07 @ Arena Coliseo: Felino/Leono/Mascara Purpura vs Satanico/Ogun/Eclipse

Have I lost my mind? Perhaps. This match looks like utter shit. This is merely a curiosity factor pick. This is the final CMLL appearence of Eclipse. Arrived in CMLL in early 2006 as Rey Tigre. They loved his size, his body, his charisma... so within months he was re-gimmicked to be Eclipse - new member of Los Guerreros De La Atlantida. Got a big push including being a regular rival of top guy Dos Caras Jr. due to the size matching up. For CMLL to have gone that hard with someone new who wasn't a family member is very rare. Nevertheless, Eclipse only lasts just over a year. As the story spread soon afterwards he packed up his stuff soon after this show & flew back to his hometown in Cancun to never be seen or heard from again. Did something specific happen in this match or was it just the build-up of him being unhappy? Maybe video will tell the story.

10/2/07 @ Arena Coliseo: Reyes Del Aire Torneo Cibernetico

In their infinite wisdom CMLL booked what had become a favorite match of ours on a Tuesday Coliseo show - the one show a week that had no TV outlet that we know of. Highlights aired on that show I mentioned above but this would be awesome to see in full with a safe Valiente vs Virus final. 

11/9/07 @ Arena Mexico: Mascarita Dorada & Atomo vs Pequeno Black Warrior & Pequeno Damian 666

Not officially Dorada/Warrior's CMLL debuts as they worked the Sunday Coliseo opener days earlier but this is generally considered their welcome to CMLL. Also has the Friday debut of Atomo (future Mini Maximo). Clips of this aired on 3ra Caida. I thought it might sneak onto TV because CMLL was making a big deal out of Dorada coming in but it was not meant to be. The highlights looked incredible & naturally he got over immediately.

11/27/07 @ Arena Mexico: La Sombra vs Ohara (NWA Welterweight Title)

At this point the Tuesday Coliseo shows moved over to Arena Mexico as we were one week away from the CMLL Cadena Tres TV debut which puts us in the era of every CMLL Mexico City show having it's own TV outlet. So this match just missed the cut & was said to be very good! Basically Ohara's Mexico farewell if I'm remembering correctly.

12/4/07 @ Arena Mexico: Atlantis & Blue Panther vs Negro Casas & Ultimo Guerrero (CMLL Tag Team Titles)

We were not prepared for the CMLL Cadena Tres debut so even though this was the first episode to air - nobody was around to record it! They loaded up the show so I'd love to see it all but this main event in particular stands out as something that was probably pretty great.

12/7/07 @ Arena Mexico: Blue Panther/Mistico/Negro Casas vs Atlantis/Averno/Ultimo Guerrero

All the stars are here but somehow this Friday match slipped through the cracks of all 3 TV shows CMLL had designated to air Friday matches. No clue why. A missing piece of the puzzle for the unofficial 2007 year end show.

 3/25/08 @ Arena Mexico: Los Rayos Tapatios I y II vs Puma King & Semental

Official Arena Mexico debut for both Puma King & Semental (future The Beast Mortos/Black Taurus). Cadena Tres would sometimes sneak in an opening match but not this week so this one has sat in the CMLL archives since the day it was recorded. I actually didn't even realize both those guys started out in the same match. Bonded by that, and only that, forever!

4/30/08 @ Arena Mexico: Mini's Torneo Cibernetico

Incredible Kids Day show in front of a near sold out Arena Mexico on a Tuesday! The top two matches are super memorable. This match aired as well but was also cut to just the final 4 due to time constraints. Insane hot crowd. This is likely a gold level hidden gem.

6/8/08 @ Arena Coliseo: Catedratico & Soberano vs Corsario & Hechicero

The standard rookies lucha de regalo on a Sunday show but with a couple interesting names. Soberano is not Soberano Jr, it's Hijo Del Soberano who had a run in CMLL around this time before heading back home to Torreon. Hechicero... could be the future Rey Hechicero? We've never been clear on this one but video would certainly clear up whether this is a hidden gem or not! Hechicero is absent from Monterrey during this time period...

6/24/08 @ Arena Mexico

One of the rare early Cadena Tres episodes that nobody seemed to record so no footage has ever existed.

7/4/08 @ Arena Mexico: Shockercito & Tzuki vs Pequeno Damian 666 & Pequeno Violencia

Two small minis vs two large minis. Why wouldn't you want to see this? This is my one selfish pick I'm including because I'm still salty that this aired on Fox Sports & nobody managed to record it.

7/25/08 @ Arena Mexico: Grand Prix

A who's who of names involved in this one including the only Arena Mexico appearence of AJ Styles. This was during the short-lived CMLL/TNA working agreement so it's basically CMLL vs TNA. Very long match, nearing an hour. The TV version sliced it down by a good 15 minutes or so. CMLL loves boasting about now famous names who have come through Arena Mexico so this seems like a no-brainer easy early pull when the archives are opened up.

7/29/08 @ Arena Mexico

Another Cadena Tres show that didn't get recorded by anyone.

8/15/08 @ Arena Mexico

This Friday show got pre-empted on Televisa so it was moved over to Cadena Tres on a special Sunday airing. Of course no notice was put out so the usual people weren't ready to record. The main event of Dr. Wagner Jr. vs Mr. Niebla surfaced on YouTube down the line but the rest of the show has sat in a storage room since it was recorded.

9/2/08, 9/16/08 & 9/23/08 @ Arena Mexico

All Tuesday Cadena Tres shows that aired but weren't recorded by anyone in the DVD trading community or anyone who was sharing the shows in the early stages of this thing called YouTube.

9/19/08 @ Arena Mexico: Alex Koslov/La Sombra/Maximo vs Damian 666/Mr. Aguila/Texano Jr.

Anniversary Show opener that never made TV or random YouTube upload. I remember two different times buying DVD's outside Arena Mexico that had this show hoping to find this match (or the match below) but I guess the era of leaking production copies of the Friday shows had come to an end by this point.

9/19/08 @ Arena Mexico: Dr. Wagner Jr. vs LA Park

The infamous match. They broke every rule from bleeding to fighting in the crowd to hitting the referee to swearing on the mic. LA Park was naturally the one punished although Wagner wasn't long for this company after this night. By this point we entered the era where cell phones being able to record stuff in decent quality was a thing & many years later totally at random a copy of this full match showed up but by mid-2010 standards the quality was very substandard. The audio is good enough to hear the crowd losing it for everything they were doing. I'm not dumb, I know this will never be shared as CMLL wants to bury it's existence. But I have to note it for the record of course.

11/4/08 @ Arena Mexico

Another missing Cadena Tres show. This one hurt as it had Blue Panther vs Averno & a defense of the Mexican National Trios Titles by the awesome Sagrado/Sombra/Volador Jr. team against Dragon Rojo Jr./Misterioso II/Olimpico.

12/7/08 @ Arena Mexico: Mistico & Hector Garza vs Averno & Mephisto (CMLL Tag Team Titles)

Very surprising Sunday show title change! At the time we didn't quite understand it but it all made sense a month later (put the belts on Sombra/Volador Jr). This was around the time our access to the Fox Sports show was cut off aside from random YouTube uploads & this show never saw the light of day.

12/16/08 @ Arena Mexico: Pegasso/Rey Cometa/Stuka Jr. vs Arkangel/Nitro/Skandalo

Arena Mexico debuts for the ex-Fuerza Aerea members. They left AAA in early 2008 & had a strong IWRG run which put them on the CMLL map. After a few months of training they got their official debuts here but a shortened TV show that week left it in the unaired pile of matches.

3/15/09 @ Arena Mexico: Hector Garza/Hijo Del Fantasma/La Mascara vs Averno/Mephisto/Efesto (CMLL Trios Titles)

These teams always had great chemistry so would love to see this. We missed it when it (supposedly) aired on Fox Sports as nobody was recording the show at the time.

9/25/09 @ Arena Mexico: Electrico vs Pierrothito (CMLL Mini's Title)

Very rare for it's time mini's title defense on a Friday night show. Around this time CMLL had a couple month run doing LIVE matches from Arena Mexico on the early stages of the channel that would become TUDN. They'd basically join the Friday show at the beginning or in progress so you'd see the opener/segunda & *maybe* one other match before they cut away to boxing. It was so hard to find someone willing to record this show though so we only have a couple episodes. Not this one.

12/11/09 @ Arena Mexico: Diamante vs Escorpion

Two relative newcomers who would go on to have very differing careers get a shot to go wild on a Friday night. CMLL's own website actually aired highlights of this & it looked incredible with both guys obviously trying to impress.

12/13/09 @ Arena Mexico: Fuego & Stuka Jr. vs Polvora & Virus (Arena Coliseo Tag Team Titles) & Mistico vs Mephisto (Mexican National Light Heavyweight Title)

Two title matches that aired on weekend TV we were never able to track down so it counts as undiscovered footage.

1/12/10, 1/19/10, 1/26/10, 2/9/10, 2/16/10, 2/23/10, 3/16/10, 3/23/10, 3/30/10, 4/6/10, 7/27/10, 8/3/10, 12/21/10, 12/28/10 @ Arena Mexico

All Tuesday shows for Cadena Tres in a time period we couldn't find anyone to record the show & were relying on YouTube uploads. So this would all be new footage to anyone reading this & most in general.

12/25/10 & 1/1/11 @ Arena Mexico

Two almost completely unseen Friday night shows as the TV was pre-empted & nobody was recording the weeked shows. The 1/1 show has the yearly Reyes Del Aire won by Angel De Oro which somehow does eventually get inserted onto a 52MX show but everything would be new footage to all.

1/16/11 @ Arena Coliseo: Mistico vs Ultimo Guerrero

Mistico's Arena Coliseo farewell although nobody knew it at the time. He has one more trios match before leaving for Japan where he doesn't end up returning to CMLL. This aired on one of the weekend shows but we were never able to track down a copy. He knew he was leaving at the time so I wonder if this match got emotional at the end?

2/4/11 @ Arena Mexico: Hijo Del Fantasma vs Olimpico

The infamous Fantasma punishment match. They found he did a secret WWE tryout & immediately cut his push + feud with Mephisto. A clip or two aired on the CMLL website but the match didn't make TV.

3/25/11 & 4/1/11 @ Arena Mexico: Gran Alternativa

Spread over two weeks for the first time either, neither week made TV outside of clips of the semis & final of Block B. Lots of fascinating names in this year's tournament like Dragon Lee (Mistico) just starting out, Palacio Negro (Titan), Metal Blanco (Triton), Magnus (as a Misticlon) & Lestat from Puebla.

5/17/11 @ Arena Mexico

Another missing Cadena Tres taped show. At this point CMLL also had a version of Cadena Tres airing on a channel in Los Angeles - sometimes with a match cut out. This didn't air on that channel either so maybe it just never aired even in Mexico.

6/7/11 @ Arena Mexico: Soberano Jr. & Trueno vs Apocalipsis & Semental

Soberano Jr. debut at Arena Mexico although at the time we were none the wiser (since he didn't make TV for a while) & assumed this was the same Soberano as the one who was running around CMLL shows in 2006/2007.

7/17/11 @ Arena Coliseo: Torneo Cibernetico

This was a special show to honor Arkangel's 25th Anniversary so it opened up with a torneo cibernetico featuring all his students at the time. As you'd expect some names pop up who we'd all become familiar with months or moreso years later such as Flamita, Bobby Zavala, Warrior Steel (Volcano) & Yago (Enfermero Jr). Seems like a match that will never see the light of day considering certain other circumstances but still worth listing.

9/2/11 @ Arena Mexico: Mascara Dorada vs Volador Jr. & Blue Panther/La Mascara/Rush vs Felino/Negro Casas/Hiroshi Tanahashi

Tanahashi's return to Arena Mexico naturally doesn't make it to TV. Or perhaps aired on Fox Sports the next weekend but we never got anyone to record it. It doubled as a match honoring Felino for 25 years in lucha libre so maybe when the archives open up it can be snuck in under the guise of that & they can use AI to replace Rush with Fugaz or something.

9/23/11 @ Arena Mexico: Leyenda De Plata Block A Torneo Cibernetico

We probably would have not seen either block of this year's Leyenda De Plata if Block B hadn't been put on a major show which we got from Samurai TV in Japan. Block A ended up on Fox Sports which nobody was recording at the time. Loaded block too in terms of good workers! Volador Jr ends up winning & eventually facing Liger.

1/6/12 @ Arena Mexico: Stuka Jr./Titan/Triton vs Euforia/Misterioso II/Okumura

Did not make any TV shows we were getting at the time but clips from a Momentos Estelares style highlight package made this look like a good one. Titan & Triton had just changed into those gimmicks from Palacio Negro & Metal Blanco so this was their Friday Arena Mexico debut. Match got over so well they repeated it the following week.

4/10/12 @ Arena Mexico: Electrico vs Pierrothito (Mexican National Lightweight Title)

Much like their Arena Mexico match back in 2009, this one does not exist on video outside of the archives. Another match that got strong praise from people who saw it live.

6/24/12 @ Arena Coliseo: Diamante/Dragon Lee/Triton vs Cancerbero/Raziel/Niebla Roja

Although speculated but unconfirmed at the time - this two fall win for the tecnicos by DQ happens due to Niebla Roja destroying Dragon Lee which ends that character until 2014. Obviously because this Dragon Lee was about to switch gimmicks...

7/24/12 @ Arena Mexico

Another missing Cadena Tres show. Funny enough this meant no CMLL footage for the week as in one of the more rare occurances in our lifetime - the Friday show was CANCELLED the day of due to a protest taking place outside the building. The infamous Tony Rivera bus blockade. Over the course of time some conspiracy theorists have actually attempted to claim CMLL could have still ran the show but decided if they just cancelled it & honored all tickets for the following week they could have a bigger turnout for the debut of the new Mistico. It did end up being one of the larger Arena Mexico crowds of this time period.

At this point we have entered the era of streaming shows (Sundays) & eventually the Tuesday/Friday shows would catch up so the picking get slim. There are some openers & undercard stuff that fall by the wayside & a missing show or two but I think many newer lucha fans will be able to figure out what's what.

So there you have it. My CMLL archive priority list. As I've mentioned before I don't expect any of this be rolled out in my lifetime. In fact, I'm quite certain the day after I die Alexis will put up those Volador Jr. rookie matches or an unseen Tzuki match. That's just how it goes. When that happens, you all make sure to enjoy them for me!