Over the last year and a half Lucha Va Voom has become arguably the biggest indy promotion in the United States, at least in terms of draw and exposure, with the last four shows all drawing above the 1,500 mark, and articles in such magazines as Rolling Stone and Time, and an upcoming television series. On October 12 they ran their 5th Lucha Va Voom show.

Lucha Va Voom is different than any other promotion in SoCal, or in wrestling all together. Most shows are judged mostly on the basis of the quality of the wrestling, while Lucha Va Voom is more of an entertainment variety show, where the wrestling is the backdrop to the show. Judging the show by just the wrestling alone would be a disservice to the promotion, though there has been some pretty good wrestling at times.

I didn't feel the 12th's show was as good as previous shows. The opening match was hot, and the Gallineros are super over. The Gallineros on the show featured Scorpio Sky, Quicksilver, Charles Mercury, and Phoenix Star all dressed up as the chickens. Their opponents, who we'll call the Rednecks because I'm not really sure if they even had a name, featured American Wild Child, Chris Bosh, Angel, and Zokre as their pet dog (really!). The crowd was really hot for the match, popping for everything. Overall the match was fairly sloppy, but most of the crowd didn't seem to notice or care. The crowd was on fire for the dive sequences.

The crowd was also very hot for the second match featuring Chilango and Rosa Salvaje defeating Durango Kid and Profeta. Every time Chilango would get in the ring and get on offense the DJ would play his theme. Scrub said he played it a total of 17 times. It was hilarious. The commentators were really on for the first part of the show too. Patton Oswalt and Blaine Capatch do an awesome job, and at times downright hilarious. Chilango and Durango Kid always match up well together, but aside from when they were both in the ring this match got pretty sloppy at times, though not as much as the first.

After the match Kitten DeVille and Kitten DeVine battled it out, but were pulled from the ring resulting in a no contest.

Then came intermission. Up to this point the show had been pretty entertaining as a whole, but post intermission it started to go downhill.

First up came the minis match that was pretty much a huge cluster. The match saw Mascarita Sagrada and Piratita Morgan vs. Tsuki and Guerrito del Futuro go to a draw. Apparently Tsuki and Mascarita Sagrada didn't want to work together, which lead to a pretty bad match when the two were in the ring together, as little as that was. Since there was a rudo on each team the match first ended with a double DQ by the rudos. Here is where things started to really get bad with the match, as the finish was announced in Spanish, but a good portion of the audience only spoke English; so most of the audience had no idea what was going on. The match was restarted with five more minutes, and it went to a double pin. The same problem came up again with the finish being announced in Spanish and a lot of the audience not knowing what went down. The confusing end to the match seemed to do a lot to deflate the crowd.

The match was followed by three straight strip teases, which may have been overkill there just judging by comments from people sitting in my area. I'm not going to complain about three good-looking girls doing burlesque though. Actually, I'm not an expert on burlesque, as Lucha Va Voom has been my only exposure to it, but from what I've seen all of the girls have done an awesome job on the shows. I even plan on checking out "Broad Daylight" starring Kitten DeVille.

The main saw Solar, Super Astro, and Ultraman 1 beat La Morgue, Misterioso, and Kayam. The match started out pretty slow and with the confusing minis match and the slow start to this match, a lot of the crowd in my area started to leave the show, and it seemed like the main never got started. The team of Solar, Super Astro, and Ultraman 1 didn't realize the match was only one fall and was saving up a lot of their flashy offense for the other falls, so the match came off really slow and all together not very good.

Before I forget, throughout the night the Poubelle Twins, who are two French maids, were training new maids and a kissing bandit would run in and steal the trainees. Eventually the Poubelles took maters into their own hands and took the kissing bandit out. Both Poubelles looked pretty good in the ring for the limited amount of time they were in there, and one of them even did a huracanrana. The Poubelles versus the kissing bandit sequence was one of the most entertaining of the night.

All in all the show didn't live up to previous Lucha Va Voom shows, but all the pieces of what made the past shows a success were all there. The show started very hot and even with the match quality somewhat lacking, was very entertaining. Unfortunately the second half wasn't very good and a show that ends well always leaves a better taste in people's mouth than a show that starts well and goes downhill.

Attendance was up from the previous show, and the promotion is nearly at the point where they are going to have trouble fitting more people in the venue (if they want everyone to be able to see that is). Also, Lucha Va Voom will be running it's first two non-SoCal shows in Toronto next month. I don't think a below average show for the promotion is going to really hurt them in the long run, as they've only had five shows and are constantly learning and improving with each show, and I'm sure they'll take anything that went wrong with this past show and use it as a learning experience for the next.

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The other show expected to break the 1,000 attendance mark (aside from WWE Raw that is) is UPW's February 20th show in Anaheim. The show is probably the biggest non-WWE, non-lucha show in SoCal in years, with a card that is absolutely stacked with big names.

Kevin Nash and Scott Hall will be returning to wrestling on the show, which will also feature matches involving Ken Shamrock, Ivory, Jimmy Snuka, Jerry Lynn, and Evan Karagias. There was also the rumor that Bob Sapp would be on the show, after it was mentioned in several Japanese papers, but when I spoke to Rick Bassman on February 7 he said it was only about 50/50 that he'd be able to appear due to appearances he has booked in Japan before and after the show, and with Christopher Daniels being added to the main event it looks like the chance of Sapp being there is down to 0%.

The show is UPW's 5th Anniversary show, and is also a benefit for the Orangewood Foundation. Along with the big names on the show, several of UPW's angles that have been building for a long time look to have their climax, with Hardkore Inc. and the Ballards facing in a tables, ladders, and chairs match, and Rick Bassman and Pete Doyle facing each other for control of UPW.

For a in depth preview of the scheduled matches be sure to check out the UPW Weekly Wires that are posted on SCU. They really do a great job of giving the backstory to all the matches.

I should have my post show thoughts up next weekend or early next week.

In other UPW related news, UPW's new TV series has already been picked up on 34 stations across the United States, including stations in Los Angeles and Bakersfield in SoCal. The show will begin airing in September.

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Also on February 20 FMLL will be running a big show with Hijo del Santo, Blue Demon, Psicosis, Atlantis, Rey Misterio Sr., and more. EWF will also be running their monthly Knights of Columbus show in Covina.

On the 22nd Pro Wrestling Guerrilla will be running in Santa Ana. WPW should be running their weekly show at the Anaheim Marketplace as well.

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Speaking of PWG, they will be running two shows in March, on March 7 and March 27. Both shows will be at the Santa Ana Elks Lodge.

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Steve Masters has been invited to the February 16 WWE Raw taping in Bakersfield and the February 17 Smackdown taping in Fresno. This is Masters' second tryout with the WWE in the last year. UPW should be sending some wrestlers to the shows as well.

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Matalk is looking for a new co-host for their public access wrestling show, which runs every Sunday night at its new time of 8:00 PM on East LA Adelphia Cable. If you are interested e-mail your name, picture, and contact info to Barbedwire323@aol.com.

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Don't forget to check out SCU's lucha libre forum for info and opinions on lucha in SoCal and Mexico.