SoCal News & Notes 10/05/2018

In today’s SoCal News & Notes we have the latest on GCW, WOW, Lucha Underground, FIST, Bar Wrestling, EWF, and a listing all of this week’s Southern California pro-wrestling and MMA events. Click for today’s update.

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Earlier this week, Game Changer Wrestling announced that their first show in Los Angeles on November 16, 2018 would be titled Joey Janela’s LA Confidential and take place at The Avalon in Hollywood. This is not the first time there has been wrestling at The Avalon. The venue, which first opened in 1927 as the Hollywood Playhouse, held a few XPW events in 2000 (when it was known as The Palace), was the location of Kaiju Big Battel’s first Southern California event in 2004 and more recently was the location of a few of KnokX Pro’s Territory League shows a few years ago.

As tickets for the event went on sale on Tuesday, GCW has begun announcing talent for the show. The first wrestler announced for Joey Janela’s LA Confidential was Nick Gage. This will be the first Southern California appearance for the current GCW Heavyweight Champion and former (and first) CZW Heavyweight Champion. The second wrestler announced for the show is Japanese wrestling legend The Great Sasuke. This will be only the third Southern California wrestling appearance for Sasuke, having wrestled Jushin Liger at the World Wrestling Peace Festival in 1996 and having teamed with El Generico (Sami Zayn) against the Young Bucks in 2012 at WrestleReunion VI.

Brody King versus Bob Holly was also announced for the event earlier tonight. Tickets are on sale now and range from $30.00 to $100.00.

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There is a flyer out for Women of Wrestling’s television tapings on October 10 and 11 that says “featuring Lucha Underground’s Kobra Moon” that has had a few fans questioning if the character would be crossing over to WOW from The Temple. I can confirm that Melissa Cervantes, who wrestles as Thunder Rosa and portrays Kobra Moon on Lucha Underground, is in the cast of WOW but may not be Kobra Moon on the show. From what I’ve been told the rights are still being worked out and she will be playing a new character that is exclusive to WOW if they can’t get permission for Kobra Moon.

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Lucha Underground had 51,000 viewers this week according to ShowBuzzDaily. That is the lowest viewership for an episode since the show’s first season. The show has only broken 100,000 viewers once since the season’s ninth episode and the season average is now the same as last season despite the strong start. While ratings are only one metric, and one largely ignored by people in the television industry, the overall downward trend can’t be a good sign. The amount of buzz on social media has even greatly died down, with one wrestler from the show even commenting to us that their mentions used to blow up every Wednesday night but now they are only getting maybe 50 Tweets per episode.

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FIST Combat has cancelled its November 15 show in La Mesa and has pushed back the quarter finals on the King of SoCal Tournament to December 6. The tournament’s semi-finals and finals will be on January 17, 2019 now.

The wrestlers that are still in the King of SoCal Tournament are Matt Vandagriff, Hunter Freeman (replacing Dirty Doug), Peter Avalon, Danny Limelight, Royce Isaacs, Max McManus, Douglas James, and Michael Hopkins.

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Bar Wrestling has announced the lineup for its October 17 charity show for breast cancer awareness month titled Breastlemania. Scheduled to appear are DoomFly (Eli Everfly and Delilah Doom), Filip Bros (Stevie Filip and Tome Filip), Heather Monroe, Joey Ryan, Katarina Leigh, Kiera Hogan, Luchasaurus, Nicole Savoy, Penelope Ford, PPRay (Peter Avalon and Ray Rosas), RockNES Monsters (Yuma and Kevin Martenson), Ruby Raze, Sage Sin, Scarlett Bordeaux, Scorpio Sky, Shotzi Blackheart, Tessa Blanchard, Violence Unlimited (Tyler Bateman and Brody King), Indi Hartwell, Brian Cage, and Diamante. The event will be at 1720 Warehouse in Los Angeles.