Toryumon Mexico & CMLL in Monterrey!

Toryumon Mexico 5/13/06:

This was 'DragonMania', a highly publicized event by Ultimo Dragon that took place in Arena Mexico using a lot of foreigners. The card was such a big deal that some of the talent on the show even photoshopped their own pictures onto the poster! The arena looked really nice and the place looked pretty packed although a lot of tickets were given away for free.

Opener was Devon Moore vs The Hornet. Who? Exactly. The Backseat Boys were supposed to be on the show but Kashmere never came for whatever reason so I guess Moore took his place. Hornet is a local wrestler from Ontario who ironicially enough has a cousin that is good friends with my sister. I found this out like two days after he criticized me over at LuchaWorld for commenting that his match was going to be a dark match. I believe his words were something to the effect of: "Mexico doesn't run dark matches, we're on the main show. You really need to go to Mexico to understand who things work before you comment on stuff you don't know about."

Interesting.

Dark match, a non-televised match at a televised show used to warm up the crowd (compare "house show"). A dark match before the show begins is usually used to test out new talent (often local to the event).

Needless to say... Moore vs Hornet did not make the taped version of this event. In fact, there was a t-shirt released listing all the matches from the event on the back and his was the only one not included. Chris Hero and Claudio Castagnoli had a similar exhibition match on the previous Toryumon Mexico show and I'm sure both would have no problems admitting they worked a dark match and in fact would be proud they were included on such an event. The moral of the story? This is an example of why some wrestlers will make it and some won't. You don't need to live in Mexico to understand that lesson.

On with the actual event...

Arkangel/Jorge Rivera/Negro Navarro vs Hayato Fujita Jr./Kanjyuro Matsuyama/Shinji Nohashi: Billed as a teachers vs students match of course. Joined in progress with some nice work going on. Navarro was SUPER OVER and getting pops for anything he did to the Japanese kids. Nohashi blew a double team spot with Arkangel and Rivera but Rivera took over and covered nicely. Then the teachers took over for a short time before the students fought back and there was some more nice work. Navarro busted out this CRAZY submission on poor little Nohashi which the crowd went nuts for. Fujita Jr. wasn't too impressive and kinda stayed out of the way. Matsuyama ended up shoving Navarro into the ringpost but then got nailed by a pescado from Arkangel. Nohashi followed with a bullet tope suicida. Rivera got a nice nearfall but then fell victim to a satellite choke type maneuver by Fujita. Crowd did not enjoy that the students went over. Good opener though.

Dark Angel and India Sioux vs Hiroka and Mima Shimoda: One of the better tags I've seen from the women in Mexico so far. Dark Angel in particular was on top of her game and busted out this CRAZY handspring onto Hiroka's shoulders into a spinning armdrag move. TEN BILLION STARS! India also looked great and her wrestling was acceptable as well. Crowd was really into this and cheered all the participants when it was over. As if I even needed to say it - MILLION TIMES BETTER than the Nidia matches on the past shows.

Dragon Scramble: This was quite the mess. Lots of veteran luchadors involved so Dragon could remember his old UWA/Hamada's UWF days but they were mixed with some Japanese rookies and the fact this was a Dragon Scramble instead of a straight forward match didn't help. They were some highlights like seeing 60+ year old Matematico limp to the ring but then bust out two nice armdrags. Cuchillo blew up just trying to make it down the steps at Arena Mexico which is bad since he was booked to survive till the end. El Hijo Del Fantasma looked the best and nailed Black Terry with a tope suicida plus he survived to win the match. Unfortunately his win didn't get much of a pop b/c he was facing Cuchillo who was a mess and couldn't even be bothered to execute the finishing small package correctly. Crowd couldn't understand why the ref was counting even though both guys were clearly on the apron(pretty much) during the small package. Fredo lists Mano Negra in this match although I don't remember seeing him.

Brazo De Oro/Brazo De Platino/Passion Hasegawa vs Nozawa/Mazada/Takemura: Crowd LOVED this. Your standard Brazo match with a ton of comedy and Platino taking Porky's place so he got to get over the most. Hasegawa fit in well and added his own comedy which the crowd loved. The rudos did an amazing job playing along and not trying to steal the show from the tecnicos. There was a dive train at the end with Platino doing an INCREDIBLE somersault flip off the top rope onto everyone. He won the match with that same move but inside the ring this time onto all three rudos as they lay on the mat side-by-side. I'm sure somewhere backstage were some U.S. indy guys watching this and thinking "my match was ten times better, I did a shooting star press!"

El Averno/El Mephisto vs American Gigolo/Trent Acid vs Brutte Issei/Shigeo Okumura vs Milano Collection A.T./Kazuchika Okada: Either Gigolo forgot to get a haircut or he was going for the Ric Flair 80's look. If it's the latter, he acheived it. Much to my surprise, Milano came out with TZUKI in the monkey outfit which was awesome to see. As usual the monkey provided a ton of awesome action and comedy during the match. He did two CRAZY dives as well. The early part of the match contained your usual generic comedy spots that are in these types of matches. The Americans were seemingly never allowed in the ring on their own early on and just allowed to participate in these comedy spots. Venezia(the monkey) ended up taking on Issei and giving him a frankensteiner sending him outside and then nailing him with a flip plancha through the first and second rope! Huge pop for that! Averno/Mephisto then took over and started beating everyone up. Not sure where the Americans disapeared during the beatdown. They ended up flinging Okada over the top onto his partner and got DQ'ed. Next elimination was Issei accidentally splashing his own partner in the corner and then he got rolled up by Gigolo. So it was down to Milano's team vs the Americans. Acid looked pretty good in the short time he got in the ring. He ended up taking a frankensteiner off the top rope from Venezia and then catching an asai moonsault! Once again, crowd loved it! Milano and Gigolo then got in the ring and they messed up a spot. Then Milano whipped Gigolo into the ropes and appeared to be going for his bridge into an enzuigiri but Gigolo just stopped running so Milano(seemingly frustrated) just smacked him hard twice and kicked him in the face, then slammed him down and nailed his asai moonsault twisting splash for the finish. Perfectly entertaining match as they didn't try to do too much, all the eliminations made sense and the guys that had no business being heavily involved in the match were kept hidden nicely. I've always been a fan of Acid(one of the few I guess?) and he looked good every time he got in the ring. Shame he didn't get more time.:( Why hasn't Gigolo worked for PWU yet? You would assume that was one of the conditions of Acid being invited over. I think Ultimo ended up working one or two PWU shows though... but I'm not sure. Too many promotions in PA to keep track.

La Mascara vs Hajime Ohara - NWA Welterweight Title Bout: Ugh... a singles match with La Mascara. Exactly what you'd expect. He did his swinging frankensteiner, his spinning backbreaker, his enzuigiri and his tope suicida. Other than that he just sold b/c he has nothing else in his offense and doesn't care to try. Ohara and his equally boring offense ended up getting the win. PLEASE: NO REMATCH!!!

Dos Caras Jr. and Lizmark Jr. vs Mark Jindrak and Johnny Stamboli: Much better than their previous match from March but not on the level of their work together during regular CMLL Arena Mexico shows. Moreso the fault of the Mexicans than the Americans though as Jindark was his usual awesome self and Stamboli used a bunch of amazing moves for a guy his size. I wonder if they were rushed for time as everyone just bolted after the finish. Where did Stamboli disapear to after his CMLL run?

Atlantis/Dr. Wagner Jr./Ultimo Guerrero vs Perro Aguayo Jr./Great Muta/Ultimo Dragon - Relevos Incriebles: Less focus on workrate here and more focus on just each guy doing their own thing... especially Muta. It all came together brilliantly though. Early on they tried to push the idea nobody wanted their partners aside from Atlantis and Guerrero. Dragon worked some nice spots with Guerrero and ended up nailing him with a plancha over the ringpost! Muta started acting wacky at this point and at one point walked into the crowd to have a staredown with a 3 year old kid who burst into tears! AWWWWWWWWWWESOME!:D Muta continued his rampage and stood on the ramp while staring down some other kids. Meanwhile the rest of the guys were brawling all over the place. Just an amazing atmosphere. The end of the match had Dragon do an asai moonsault onto Guerrero. Wagner did a somersault off the apron onto Atlantis. Muta and Perrito didn't seem to have much chemistry going and I forget how but somehow he nailed a silla off the apron onto Atlantis. The finish had Muta pinning Wagner with the Shining Wizard. Great way to end the show.

Pretty good top-to-bottom show with a little bit of everything going on. Was DEFINITELY better than the Arena Mexico show that occured the day before, for those who remember it. Was definitely different from the Arena Coliseo T-Mon Mexico shows which seem to emphasize the trainees more whereas this show was all about star power and special matches. I wonder if there will be a DragonMania 2007?

CMLL 'Impacto En Monterrey' 7/1/06:

This show was WEIRD. The building was extremely dark and in certain matches the announcers would be announcing over the loudspeaker so the entire arena could hear and other times you would hear the announcers but no crowd noise so it seemed like nothing was getting a reaction.

Volador Jr. and Misterioso II vs Emilio Charles Jr. and Hombre Sin Nombre: Volador Jr. looked great. I actually barely remembered Misterioso II teaming with him.:/ Some nice spots and match got a little time but suffered from an odd clip or two during spots which shouldn't have really been clipped. Tecnicos won. Entertaining enough opener.

Mascara Sagrada/El Hijo Del Solitario/Maximo/Satanico vs Pierroth/El Hijo Del Pierroth/El Averno/El Mephisto: I found this to be pretty boring aside from when Maximo was making Averno and Mephisto bump around. Lucha by numbers all the way. If you're booking this show, why not at least fill the undercard with entertaining flyers instead of Sagrada, Solitario and Pierroth who are obviously not even going to bring half their normal workrate for this spot on the card. BAD.

Canek/Tinieblas/Huracan Ramirez Jr. vs Los Villanos III/IV/V: This is 2006, right? I didn't just get transported back to the god awful 1992 UWA days, right? Alushe came out with Tinieblas but barely got involved in the match as you'd expect. Horrible match from everyone involved. Four of these six can barely even bump any more and then there is Tinieblas who just plain CAN'T bump or he'd be dead. Huracan Jr. did a nice tope suicida at the end but then they did a crappy screwjob finish. The promoter who ran this show deserves to lose all his money as these guys are not fourth match type guys and thus there was no need for this match.

Rayo De Jalisco Jr./Mr. Niebla/Heavy Metal/Black Warrior vs Hector Garza/Mr. Aguila/Damian El Terrible/Damian 666: For some reason even though Warrior officially turned rudo MONTHS before this match took place, he was on the tecnico side and refusing to help them which is why they lost the first fall. Who booked this shit lineup? He eventually changed his mind and helped them to tie the falls up. There was a dive train in the third fall with nothing standing out aside from Garza's impressive corkscrew plancha. Rayo Jr. had no place in this match and nobody seemed particularly thrilled to be selling his lame offense. He looks like he put on at least 30 more pounds since his last CMLL TV appearence. Dive train couldn't save this from being awful as well.

El Hijo Del Santo/Dos Caras Jr./Dr. Wagner Jr. vs Atlantis/Blue Demon Jr./Perro Aguayo Jr.: Wow, that's a lot of star power. Maybe too much for one match if you ask me. These guys tried to save things and had a pretty entertaining match although it wasn't on the level you might have expected with these names involved. Santo seemed more toned down than usual and only did ONE DIVE which is unheard of from him in big main events. Lots of comedy in the third fall, especially with Perrito since he really isn't good for anything other than that.:) I think they were building to Santo vs Demon Jr.. Maybe that's gonna be the main event on the yearly big Monterrey show in 2007?

Really disapointing show although I wasn't expecting too much going in. Don't go out of your way to pick this up unless you need every Volador Jr. match there is! Yes, I'm refering to you Henrik!

RXLL + Toryumon Mexico!

RXLL 9/2/06:

No need to get too much into the backstory as you should all know it by now. This is(read: was) Vampiro's short-lived promotion which I'm sure he hopes everyone will forget soon. I believe the idea was to creatle a Mexican version of the upcoming MTV wrestling show called 'Wrestling Society X' but instead of it came off more as XPW Mexico which is no surprise at all considering who the main players were behind the scenes.

This entire show is a comedy of errors. First off, the arena is really dark to hide the fact they drew nobody. Second, there is one announcer who sounds alot like Larry Rivera of XPW fame. Needless to say he is awful and had trouble remembering the names of anyone who wasn't an ex-XPW wrestler. More embarassing than that is they obviously had to insert him saying "we'll be right back after this break" in post-production so you had him screaming about a big move and all of a sudden in a quiet sleepy voice he says "we'll be right back in a moment". Very amateurish.

Los Hego Boys I y II vs Phoenix Star and Zokre: The latter team are wrestlers from California who I enjoy watching on PWG shows so I was looking forward to seeing them in Mexico. Of course I am not a paying customer and I'm pretty sure nobody who paid had any clue who they were. Waste of money? Check. Los Hego Boys are from Tijuana and are actually comprised of three guys. The two in this match are Luminoso and Iron Boy. An intelligent person may ask - why would they bring in two unknown from Tijuana? I would defend the promotion by saying they probably had big plans for them and wanted to focus a tag division around them. Of course in reality, I'm not even sure the promotion know why they brought them in. They weren't even identified seperately and we just "Hego Boy I" and "Hego Boy II", with each guy getting to place each number throughout the match depending on what Rivera called them even though Luminoso is twice the size of Iron Boy. Right away I knew I was in for an annoying 2 hours of TV b/c they were clipping back and forth in between moves with crappy music inserted during the cuts. Tons of flying as you'd expect and the teams worked a little better together than I expected. There were still a couple of obvious screwups though. Luminoso did a tope suicida early on. There was a really embarassing sequence where Phoenix Star did a fancy flip and then tried a backflip kick but landed on his head. He followed it up with a slingshot frankensteiner to the floor but Luminoso couldn't support the weight and fell backwards. The crowd laughed. Phoenix tried to clothesline Luminoso into the crowd but they were using taller than average guardrails so he couldn't clear the rail and eventually just jumped over. The crowd laughed. Iron Boy did a plancha off the ringpost into the crowd. Zokre then did a huge springboard moonsault into the crowd as well. They did some U.S. indyish moves for a couple minutes before the PWG team went over. Interesting dives but not much of a match. That was definitely an omen for the night.

Someone and Someone vs Someone and Someone: The deal here was to send four unknowns out there to start working a match and eventually get squashed by the Head Hunters. I guess the TV production crew was not informed of this b/c the graphic for the match said the Head Hunters were involved so it was no surprise when they did their run-in. One of the guys did a running somersault plancha and horribly undershot it. Another guy who looked like an American wrestler did a bullet tope suicida that the camera barely caught. I think the guy that did the undershot somersault got hurt so the Head Hunters ran out early and just started killing everyone. It was pretty bad so they just quickly set up for the big finish but as one of the Hunters setup for a moonsault, his brother came off the top with a flying elbowdrop which shook the ropes and the other brother slipped and fell backwards onto his opponent. He just laughed and got the three count. This was beyond awful.

Lacey vs Nic Grimes: Look... I don't like women's wrestling. It's just not my thing. But I will say this... *BEST FUCKING MATCH OF THE NIGHT*! Why? Simple. They didn't do dives, they didn't do crazy U.S. indy "holy shit" moves and they worked a straight tecnica vs ruda match. All of that wasn't available anywhere else on the show so this was a refreshing change. Only went about 5 minutes or so but the work was solid and the crowd enjoyed it. Good job by both ladies. I just wish they could have stayed out there for the rest of the show.

Vampiro vs Sean Waltman: This was the TV main event for the first half of the show. It was supposed to be an "extreme" match so a bunch of phony props were used and Vampiro bled after getting nailed with various weapons. The big spot was saved up as they had one of those old Big Japan style beds of barbed wire set up at ringside and when Waltman went for a kick, Vamp caught him and suplexed them both into it. It exploded. The crowd went "WHOA" and the referee raised Vampiro's hand for no reason at all. Another beyond awful match but Vamp definitely took enough punishment to earn his pay on this night.

Turbo vs X-Fly (wearing his Kumbia Kids outfit for some reason) vs Black Thunder vs Flash (CMLL guy) vs El Depredador vs someone I am forgetting: I feel bad b/c I know there was a sixth guy involved, I just can't remember who it was. Naturally this was the match I was looking forward to the most but they brutalized it on TV and just aired a bunch of highspots from early on, then skipped forward to the eliminations. I guess they were told to just do every highspot they know without even trying to pretend like they were trying to beat each other early on. X-Fly and Depredador had a nice exchange ending with a Depredador tope suicida. This cued everyone to dive. Turbo used a spectacular double springboard blind moonsault! Flash did a run-up-the-ropes corkscrew and a half turn plancha! Black Thunder did a running somersault plancha! The guy I'm forgetting probably did something cool. Lots of fancy moves when they skipped forward. Turbo was easily the class of the match as he was nailing all his complicated spots and kept getting the crowd into the match. For such a clusterfuck, he really stood out which makes me even sadder than he bombed in Dragon Gate.:( This could have used more Flash/X-Fly and Turbo/Thunder exchanges but oh well. The eliminations began but honestly... there were so many fancy moves I forget who did what and when. I know at one point it came down to Turbo vs X-Fly and Turbo took him to the floor with an insane run-up-the-ropes frankensteiner off the apron!!! FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK! That's an example of a crazy spot that takes timing and athleticism unlike Extreme Tiger who just jumps off high places onto others. Turbo won the match thankfully but even though the winner was promised a "contract", I don't think he appeared on any other shows. This was basically just a six-way spot exhibition to emphasize why Turbo and Black Thunder are considered good workers, why Flash is still too green, why Depredador and X-Fly are still in nowheresland and the reason I probably can't remember who the other guy was is self-explanatory.

Flash II and someone vs Aaron Aguilera and Kaos: The XPW guys cut a promo beforehand and nobody in the crowd gave a shit. The Mexicans came out and attacked them. This was probably the second best match of the night b/c once again they worked a fine tecnicos vs rudos formula building to the tecnicos fighting back but getting cut off and beat. Nothing fancy which was a refreshing change from the previous match. XPW guys win of course. That shouldn't surprise you at all. Mystery guy looked like one of the CMLL Guadalajara regulars but it wasn't Toxico or maybe it was a guy named Toxico but not the guy who works in Guadalajara as Toxico (ex-Guerrero De La Muerte).

Bobby Lee Jr. vs Ron Killings: I guess the promotion needed a favor from Bobby Lee so they agreed to let his son work. Remember when this was originally Blue Panther vs Ron Killings? I kinda wish that had happened just for curiosity's sake. Bobby Jr. came out to no reaction. Killings was over huge but started as a heel and kept playing a heel even though the crowd was on his side. Bobby Jr. started as a face but realized the crowd hated him and began working heel. Since Killings didn't switch too, it was just a mess. Lots of miscommunication but Killings was trying to salvage what he could. Thank god he ended it quick and didn't drag it out longer than it needed to be. AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWFUL.

Extreme Tiger vs Mortiz: They spent about 30 seconds pretending like they knew how to wrestle and armdragged each other about 20 times, then did a stand-off which the crowd was trained to stand up and cheer for. I was waiting for a 'RXLL' chant but no such luck. Tiger then did what he knows best... he blew a spot. Mortiz rolled outside and Tiger did a springboard tornado onto him which was nice. They came back in the ring for more clumsy moves and there was some clipping forward to Mortiz missing a running flip dive through the ropes and landing on a chair (and breaking it). Good for him. Tiger set up a table on one side of the ring which was the obvious finish the way it was set up. He tried a springboard move but slipped and fell to the floor hurting his shoulder in the process. BRAVO! Mortiz set up another table, not realizing Tiger had already done it. They did a couple more moves that didn't matter b/c I had seen them in the previous matches and finally... MERCIFULLY rather... went to the finish which was a Spanish Fly off the top rope to the outside through a table. No three count once again... the ref just raised Tiger's hand. I guess RXLL is going a step beyond admitting wrestling is fake and is just stopping the match when the planned moves are executed. Genius. Horrible match. Worse than Tiger vs Lider from DragonDoor if you can believe it.

It must appear I'm being quite negative but you really have to see this show for yourself to understand how unbelievably bad it was. About 2 minutes of insane highspots mixed in with 1 hour and 58 minutes of garbage. Sorry... 1 hour and 53 minutes... the women were great.

If someone ever puts something like this together again, perhaps they could arrange all the wrestlers beforehand and go over what each wrestler plans to do so we don't see three matches that all have the Code Red as a nearfall, two matches with the Spanish Fly used, four matches with the same dives and three matches with the same generic stand-off spot. Also, perhaps the wrestlers could be told who is face and who is heel b/c otherwise it's just a stunt show as the six way match was. It would have helped if we knew to cheer for Turbo or Mosco at the end.

Worst show of the year in Mexico by far.

Toryumon Mexico 3/4/06:

Chris Hero vs Claudio Castagnoli: Did not air.:(

Banana Senga and Passion Hasegawa vs Daisuke Hanaoka and Toshiya Matsuzaki: I guess these guys were all making their debuts? Pretty good match. They kept it simple and didn't try to bust out 50,000 big moves to get the crowd to pop (*cough*!). They focused more on getting their gimmicks over and the face/heel structure was definitely there. I loved the finish.

Jorge Rivera vs Hayato Fujita Jr. vs Kanjyuro Matsuyama: Awesome as expected thanks to Rivera. At one point he did this crazy double leglock move I've never seen before and there are like a billion different spots you can do from that position. RIVERA - IS - GOD! Matsuyama went out first via the Riveracita I. At that point I knew he'd lose but he always does the job on these shows anyways. Fujita was unimpressive as usual but got the win with a choke. I have a strange feeling he will be super-pushed when he makes it to Japan.

Dos Caras Jr. and Lizmark Jr. vs Arkangel and Shigeo Okumura: By the numbers. Both tecnicos treated the rudos like they weren't on their level at all. This should have ended way sooner.

Hiromi Horiguchi and Kazuchika Okada vs Mark Jin... no... CHUCK PROMBOL! and Johnny Stamboli: It's been so long that I forgot Palumbo was even in Mexico for a short while! Highlight of the match was Horiguchi trying a running somersault plancha and Stamboli being too far back to make the catch properly so Horiguchi got hurt and stretchered. If the tecnicos won the previous match, it was really no shock who was going to win this.

Negro Navarro/Hajime Ohara/Amigo Suzuki vs La Mascara/Milanito Collection A.T./Shinji Nohashi: Just seeing Navarro work is worth the price of a DVD alone. It's amazing how bad he makes everyone else look on the mat and how good he makes them look when he's giving them offense. El Dorado needs to bring in Navarro, Rivera, Arkangel, Pantera and Blue Panther as a group of pissed off old bastards that want to school all the youngsters. I guarantee you something like that would be 10x more over and draw way more than 465 fans who had the "privelage" of seeing an angle revolving around a feud from high school. The big feud here was Ohara vs Mascara and since both those guys are extremely bland and can't wrestle for shit... the match wasn't too hot. Nice double dives at the end from Milanito and Nohashi followed by the predictable finish. I feel bad for Milanito. He is so talented but needs a new gimmick in the worst way possible.

Mistico/Silver King/Ultimo Dragon vs Atlantis/Black Warrior/Ultimo Guerrero: Rudo beatdown and tecnico comeback. Then each tecnico got to do some moves and they went to the finish. What I'm trying to say is... 100% by the numbers. At least Mistico had a cool mask.

Dos Caras Jr. and Lizmark Jr. vs Chuck Prombol and Johnny Stamboli: Really boring match. I at least expected a double dive from the tecnicos but it wasn't meant to be. Rudos cheat to win and Palumbo gets a cool bike to drive back to the States forever and ever and ever.

Pretty boring show overall. Could have used Nohashi down in the triangle match and Rivera opposite Navarro. I'm not too impressed with this crew of Ultimo's students. They seem more like average Japanese rookies with their basic offense and no charisma which is a far cry from the older group of Toryumon/T2P students. It seems like each year the talent pool gets worse and worse. Instead of running shows, Ultimo should just tape 2 hour of Rivera and Navarro working with the students. I'd buy 10,000,000 copies.