The most intersting story of the day was one I skipped over this morning; Ovaciones ripping WWE, and putting up big photos of Rey Misterio unmasked. That link takes you to the text version (which seem to show up in the afternoon), so you can google translate if you’d like.
The article is not written by the normal lucha libre reporter, but by Edgar Vallero Berrospe, who seems to normally cover national futbol. He seems pretty sure allowing WWE to air in Mexico will ruin lucha libre, will push out Mexican wrestling and the jobs it creates, and generally deceives the public. The last point is illustrated by the giant picture of Rey unmasked, going into detail about when and how he lost his mask and pointing out he was born in the US not Mexico, all the while calling him a fraud.
Berrospe goes on to accuse Televisa and TV Azteca of comitting treason for airing the WWE matches (which he states are fixed (!!)), because they’re paying for WWE TV while they don’t pay for CMLL or AAA. It doesn’t make a lot sense, because he notes at the same time that CMLL and AAA just make their money selling ad time during their show (which would be a lot of extra work for WWE.)
The article concludes something must be done to stop the WWE, or lucha libre will go the way of Mexican boxing and baseball.
The article has some issues
– they either say Ric Flair is nearing 70, or has wrestled for nearly 70 years (neither which has anything to do with anything else)
– Vince McMahon Sr. is prasied as the man who promoted “real immortal figures of wrestling” like Tiger Mask, Hulk Hogan, and Ring Fujinami.
This feels like a promotion (or two) inspired hit piece to build sentiment against WWE. I mean, it’s defintely a hit piece, but it seems odd this isn’t coming from a normal lucha writer unless it was prompted that way.
No one was writing these articles when they were on 52MX, which says as much for the compartive reach of the networks as anything.
I don’t get why people are being so paranoid about WWE airing on Televisa and TV Azteca. WWE has been airing in Mexico for a long time now, I don’t think that the fact they’re now on a major network is going to suddenly turn people off of Mexican Lucha Libre.
I think people need to ease off of the WWE and focus on the real threat the Lucha Libre: And that is a Cuban who goes by the name of Konnan who is destroying Lucha Libre in his attempt to “Americanize” it. Let’s get Konnan out of Mexican wrestling not Vince McMahon.
Daniel. LOL.
Cubs does make a good point that 52mx never reached as many homes, so there was less concern. At it’s peak, I’d compare 52mx to TBS in 1984. This was before their fight with Televisa/SKY/CablevisionDF.
I think he meant that AAA and CMLL have to secure sponsors on the ring mat and ringside logos to survive. Chui always thought WWE was actually paying to be on tv in Mexico. And I do believe that CMLL and AAA get nothing or very little from Televisa to be on the air.
Seems like CMLL is a little worried about WWE coming in. Maybe now they can tell their guys to stop mailing it in all the time. I know you say this Edgar guy is a Futbol guy but I have no doubts that he’s a CMLL fan because AAA wouldn’t be stupid enough to piss off Rey Jr.
That’s a horribly written article. There was no effort in writing it. You could probably find something better written (albeit in ALL CAPS) on a fan site or even myspace. Its hilarious. The writer doesn’t seem to realize wrestling’s a work.
BTW, off topic, but when did Halloween quit AAA? WON is reporting it. I hadn’t heard about it or I must’ve missed this news.
I know he got injured but I didn’t know he left AAA?
I think Valero is Hector’s son, who was the editor of El Halcon and some other lucha mags, so there’s no excuse for the “unawareness” and it was probably working for his own agenda.
If the peso keeps crumbling down, no one will have to worry about WWE anymore, I saw the us dollar at 13.40 a couple of hours ago, that’s nearly 35% in a span of 3 weeks or so. Except for guys like Vampiro, UDragon or the HHunters, foreigners are on their way out, if they get paid in dollars, their salary has just gone through the roof (and there’s no telling where it will stop) and if they get paid in pesos, they’re making less money, so now is their time to go back home. Same for the WWE tours, tickets prices ought to be 50% higher for the next tour, OCESA is surely unhappy since they won’t make as much money as they hoped for next week’s tour, good thing they canned the Aguascalientes show.
BTW, I was there last night and I can tell that ArMty is in the same sucky list from a few weeks ago: @xuisaw:
re: Halloween – he no-showed a taping in Pachuca the taping before VdE, but we didn’t know because no one posted results for that show. He showed up at VdE to lose the belts, but apparently that no-show was the last straw.
I wonder if Halloween ends up going back to CMLL because it seems like it would be their way to pay back AAA for the Rocky Romero defection.
It’s not really payback if AAA was getting rid of him for no-showing anyway, since he didn’t no show to work a CMLL show.
tvc is aring raw again, audio and video doesn’t match, the commentary guys are as awful as I remembered them (they should let the English guys in). It would be cool to watch them with other guys so we could make fun of how bad their grammar is and try to count the number of invented words they come up.
Well, they fixed that audio thing. No commercials save own stuff, so I guess they think they have lots of guys canceling mvs and buying whatever system carries tvc (I didn’t saw it in mty)
That would kill FdT if Halloween left for CMLL again, and I wonder will he rejoin the Perros?