thecubsfan

There are a lot of luchadors who are not great but Octagon also specifically suffers (if that's even the right word) for being on the top of AAA for decades without being good. Octagon hasn't come off ever as being an interesting character since his early days, and he's had very few great matches after that tag match. AAA made Octagon one of their flagship characters after the '96 split with Konnan, but he's never came off as top guy - more like a guy trying to find the minimum amount he can get by doing. (Given the length of his career and his regular part of it, it's possible no one's had as many ** or below quality TV matches than Octagon - at least in Mexico, that seems like a safe bet.) Octagon was an obstacle to more exciting wrestlers getting a shot, with AAA keeping him on top out of loyalty and in creating/maintaining an in-house legend. Lucha promotions keep their older company stars far longer than elsewhere and have no plan (or interest) to phase them out of the top matches, figuring most of the fans are nostalgia fans who will overlook bad performances, and Octagon's still pretty remembered and popular from fans who grew up watching him on TV every week and see him with those warm memories. If you don't have that context, Octagon is just out there having poor matches for a long period of time. It might be forgiven if Octagon was like Villano III, with a history of great matches to trade off of, but Octagon was just a guy who was considered dated two decades ago and is still trying to promote himself as being of the moment. There are some things that are out of Octagon's control but haven't helped his image. The never ending feud with Fuerza Guerrera, something that started as a mask match for 1991, is probably more Fuerza's fault for backing out of doing the match multiple times. Octagon might have had another epic match with the first Pentagon if he nearly died, and it took two more Pentagons and many more years to get to that match. Octagon might even be right about his claims about owning his name (though that seems doubtful) and shouldn't have to resort histrionics and stunts to gain attention to his issue, but the way he's behaved has made him very easy to write off as yet another bitter cynical old luchador.

They're Kairi Hojo, Mayu Iwatani and Io Shirai from Stardom.

I'm surprised this is a thing that wasn't guessed immediately. The other two Rabbit Tribe members are

The lag on this is so bad that the Paul London return was two months before the Kendrick one.

Ivelisse is probably getting a pin back over Marty if she's in this match, but it's hard to imagine her winning - the mixed tag feud they were setting up doesn't make sense for a title. Sexy Star/Johnny Mundo for the main title feels like it's got 11 weeks of build for it. Lucha Underground's never made money, does not appear to be a profitable business, but their (multiple/shared) owners have seemed OK continuing to invest in it. Someone could always wake up tomorrow and decide they don't want to keep trying, but everyone involved in the show is acting and talking like Season 4 is a given. (Still, we don't know when that would start taping - they've hinted at January, but haven't locked in dates and I'm sure half their roster has indie bookings in January already.)

I'm afraid of answering questions because I might spoil things, but I think I can safely say "it all works out in the end."

She broke her ankle in S1, she broke two bones in her foot in S3. I totally forgot she got hurt on Tough Enough too until trying to figure this out.

It was messed up on Comcast too and I think I saw people mentioning it was messed up elsewhere. Looked like an issue with the network itself rather than the show or the cable companies. My hunch is whatever substances London and the Rabbit Tribe are on have distorted their perception of time.

Dario's plan is the winner of the Texano/Cage Best of 5 is the host body. That's why he talked about having two strong candidates and that it might be decided tonight (Cage could've won the Best of 5.) It's their Ultimate Opportunity prize, though it may not be one they'd want.

I assume the woman on the right is Marla but I dunno. CMLL has lots of parts of their office which seem to work independently from each other and occasionally overlap each other and don't have a strong central authority.

CMLL is so weird and full of fiefdoms that I can totally believe they have two separate groups of women hired in nearly the same role (under different people in the organization), though it could be sponsorship like you guessed. These two are getting the jobs the regular women probably liked the least - traveling to/from Puebla late is a pain, and standing like a mannequin for those 90 minute press conferences seems not fun.

These shows being announced via press release on a Cricket's website on Friday, and Lucha Underground telling people to wait until Tuesday for news is like the whole problem with the business side of LU neatly summarized. For better (or the opposite of better), the creative side of LU has a lot of energy and drive to do things, and the business side either doesn't have the same interest or has literally no man power to accomplish simple things. (No wonder Netflix isn't done.) It's cool they're getting 40 episodes this season, but I would've taken 38 and that extra money spent on People Who Can Getting Things Done. They seem short on those and have been for two years now.

It's related to the sponsorship deal in some weird way.

can Phil be downvoted somehow for doing this the correct answer is "if there was a boycott of LU, how would you actually tell in the numbers? hahaha (cries)"

So late to this. I didn't like the match ending because the referee got fouled, and I really didn't like Volador immediately submitting Cavernario to his own hold, then blowing off the result of the match in his promo. I'm probably not giving enough credit to a rudo winning via rudo tactics, but I wanted to see Cavernario actually win, not him still looking like the lesser guy and winning on a technicality. If that spot is reversed around so that Cavernario tricks Tirantes into fouling Volador somehow to set up the pin, or maybe even if Cavernario's celebrating his genius instead of frantically waving his hands, I probably like that finish a little better.

The 4pm show was the normal repeat, not the new episode. Not sure why Lucha libre retro isn't listed everywhere, but I see it on my onscreen guide and on TVGuide.com

The girl who got the amulet was the same girl from last season with Aerostar. It gives me hope when it's clear they've planned some of this stuff out in advance.

The wall behind the standing area above the stairs has windows, but they usually leave them covered up. Havoc/Matanza was the first match of the taped as far as I know. They may have not cleaned up from last season, but they also do go out of their way to make things look worn and grimy for aesthetic reasons.

Yea, they were definitely out of the loop. The difference is ROH's announced something and NJPW had not - they might have planned to bring him in for the tag league, but they hadn't told CMLL (and Sombra said talking the NJPW officials at the Anniversary show was the first time he'd talked to them recently.) I guess I could see CMLL being so dismissive of the deal with ROH that they would not keep them in the loop on something that would affect them, but it'd be strange even for them to do so in the earliest stages of it.

CMLL runs 4-8 a year. AAA does less. Indie promotions can be totally random. CMLL's done two mask/hair matches on most recent Anniversary shows, so this is expected at this point and it'd be a surprise if they didn't have two. WWE's cool with Mascara Dorada being masked and he's not losing his mask on the way out, so I don't think that would affect Dragon Lee's status. (A lot has changed in a year.) My hunch is, for the moment, the Dragon Lee to WWE window is closed - WWE's going to have plenty of cruiserweight people to sort thru for the next few months, doesn't seem to have any clear plan on how they're going to be used, and both Metalik and Mendoza have done well enough that they can already fill the Mexican slots - and this is a dead topic until the next Cruiserweight Classic comes up. I'd hope that Dragon Lee being announced to ROH is a sign ROH & CMLL have talked about their plans a bit, and CMLL wouldn't be sending a recently unmasked guy who's on his way out.

Cleveland's AIW has been bringing in luchadors, including these four guys from Chicago. You should check out the match:

On Twitter, Catrina implied Season 3 starts in September. Which would be great, but probably would've just announced that during the finale if it was that certain.

There's no repeats. It's gone from the schedule until whenever Season 3 turns up (though it's always on iTunes too.)

I saw it tonight. In ambitiously trying to tell the entire story of lucha libre, they get pulled too thin. It's really missing a narrative direction; it feels like an anthology of lucha libre stories, with the movie dipping into one or another but not really telling a story in full at any point. There's so many people who get face time and then disappear for quite a while, and then a half hour later are brought up again (or, like Faby & Sexy, are treated as important people early and then just disappear.) It doesn't feel like they hit on a deeper theme or get past a surface reality. Fabian el Gitano is a major character early on and they spend with his brother and Shocker and Strongman talking about Fabian dying, but all of them dance around it being a suicide and I'd have no idea what happened had if I hadn't written about it. (In a way, they point at his unmasking leading to his death, that he was unable to separate his luchador and real life, as to sell how hard it was to be a luchador.) It's not without value; it's pitched as a 101 to Lucha, but in some ways hold more value to the people who've followed it. The last 10 or so minutes jump forward to both Perro's death and to the 83rd Anniversary show, but most of it's around to 2010/2011 period - the first scene even is the CMLL versus Invasors press conference - so it's already sort of a time capsule of a previous lucha libre era, the end of the last boom. The old Lucha Libre Expo is shown, and there's mentions of economy failing and places being shut down due to drug violence getting out of control. It's a great movie for spotting random people you've forgotten about or to see people just radically change because they're just jumping around. (I spotted Titan early, then Palacio Negro about 25 minutes later. I saw young Dragon Rojo, I saw fat Dragon Rojo, and then I saw skinny again Dragon Rojo.) Perro Aguayo Jr.'s sort of wedged in here - when you have him in 2010 saying something along the lines of "you never know when it might end", you understandably end up using it and some footage of him that match - but there was enough footage of him in action to remind you that he was pretty great. (Not pretty great is having people say he died from Rey's kick.) There are some random inclusions - there's a scene of Strong Man pushing himself hard in the gym at one point back in California, seemingly long after he's been in CMLL, I guess to try and bring a conclusion to his character but really just feeling like another Thing That Happens. This movie is a lot of Things That Happen. It's crazy to think Shocker was a lead character on two reality shows (CMLL's En Busca de un Idolo and AE's El Luchador) and lead in a documentary at the same time. I feel like El Luchador, which was very clearly a semi-scripted reality show, got the most out of him. This one might have been been the best if they just committed to telling Shocker's story all the way, but there were too many character they were fascinated by and couldn't focus.

He's a created for Lucha Underground character.