Per Mas Luchas, Wrestling Commissioner of Mexico City, El Fantasma, confirmed difficulty to reopen and have wrestling once again. El Fantasma sat down with +Lucha, talking about the loss of his son’s mask – now WWE Cruiserweight Champion, Santos Escobar – against L.A. Park. Plus, confirming that the return of AAA and CMLL depends on the state of Covid-19 in the city.
Here’s the interpretation by Lucha Blog:
… lucha libre commissioner El Fantasma said no shows will be permitted until the capital city reaches a yellow health light. Fans will likely not be permitted to shows until green. That fits with everyone explained recently. Mexico City is currently in orange conditions and those health lights will now be updated publicly on an every two-week basis, which may mean it’ll take longer for any place to reach yellow.
(I’m struck by the irony of Fantasma issuing the message of “no shows until Yellow!” on a platform that’s promoting and helping to produce many shows. But I’m writing about them too)
I think “updated every two week basis” means a new map this week, since there wasn’t one last week. I also think Mexico’s secretary of health is making that part up as he goes. It going to continue to change. Mexico City is still expecting to release their own health update on Friday, but are now breaking down the health color code by neighborhoods. This is not a positive development: while the city is in Orange, they’re moving areas back into Red. Those neighborhoods include Doctores (the home of Arena Mexico), though not Arena Coliseo or Arena Ciudad de Mexico. The entire Mexico City needs to be in yellow on Friday for any hope of it being open to fans on August 22nd for TripleMania. It seems unlikely that’ll happen. It seems likely the rules will continue to be modified, but we’re getting close to a month out and AAA should be announcing a new plan soon. Tickets for TripleMania remain on sale as of this morning.
Mexico’s secretary of health also endorsed the idea of a second surge of coronavirus cases starting in October. That’s hard to comprehend because there’s no sign of the first surge ending at any point. I think the best case of the current situation is shows opening up with fans in August. I think it’s also a real possibility that conditions do not improve by August, do not sufficiently improve in September, are crushed again in October, and there’s no governmental CMLL/AAA type show in front of fans until 2021 (and maybe not even early 2021.) This pause may not be half over. I hope I am wrong, I really do, but people need to prepare as if the current status quo will remain for a much longer time.
