thoughts on CMLL’s Universal Championship

Let’s start here: CMLL has announced a tournament of champions. The man on the right, the man covered with championship belts, is not in the tournament.

CMLL announced plans on Thursday to create a new championship, called the CMLL Universal Championship. This will be the 19th active championship in the Mexico City branch of CMLL. Not including this championship, there are 9 active CMLL World championships, 5 active National championships held by CMLL wrestlers, 3 active NWA championships, and 1 Arena Coliseo specific championships.

That 19 total does not include the 2 IWRG championships still held by CMLL wrestlers (Super Welter – Mistico, Middle – Negro Casas; considering the Women’s title as defunct), the 4 annual tournaments run by CMLL (Plata, Azul, GA, Rey de Aire – perhaps 5 if we count the minis), the Occidente championships (2 of which, the Light Heavyweight and the Tag Team, are worn on CMLL TV more frequently than the previous 18 official ones), the 2 WWA Championships which may not be official (Middle – Mistico, Perro & Hector – Tag), and Dr. X’s XNW Championship, which is at least as credible as the WWA ones. Counting these additional 11 championships, CMLL currently has 29 different titles in play. On June 19th, CMLL will have 30. Unless Yurijo and Naito get their titles back before then.

The actual CMLL announcement goes like this: they’re holding a tournament to decide the champion of champions. Both AAA and CMLL have done this before, AAA most recently with the AAA Heavyweight Mega Championship. This time, the winner will become the first CMLL Universal Champion. The champion is said to involve all National and World Champions. Announced participants:

– Ultimo Guerrero: CMLL Heavyweight

– Rey Bucanero: CMLL Light Heavyweight
– Texano Jr.: NWA Light Heavyweight

– Averno: CMLL Middleweight, NWA Middleweight

– Negro Casas: CMLL Welterweight
– Sombra: NWA Welterweight, CMLL Tag Team
– Sangre Azteca: Mexican Welterweight

– Mascara Dorada: CMLL Super Lightweight

– Volador Jr.: CMLL Tag Team

– La Mascara: CMLL Trios
– Hector Garza: CMLL Trios
– Hijo del Fantasma: CMLL Trios
– Black Warrior: Mexican Trios
– Dragon Rojo Jr.: Mexican Trios

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National/World Champions not included, who are not women or men
– Mistico: National Light Heavyweight, WWA Middleweight Champion

That’s it, that’s the list. I’ve read the box y lucha coverage, the superluchas coverage, and the notimex coverage, and I have yet to see an explanation of why Mistico’s not in this tournament. Mistico has consistently been consistently treated as the best wrestler in the company, winning the annual tournament to decide the best wrestler in the company (Leyenda de Plata, 3 years in a row!), and he’s MIA in a tournament to crown the best wrestler in the company, and no one thought this needed a little bit of explanation?

Obviously, the tournament is and was planned for someone else to win the championship, and it seems like Mistico isn’t here so he doesn’t have to take a singles loss. Those are the sort of things that make the hardcore fans dislike Mistico, regardless of how it happens.

Getting back to the tournament itself, it’ll be a near standard three week single elimination bit for CMLL. Group A of 7 wrestlers (not specified – why not?) will go down on June 5, Group B will take place on June 12, and the final will take place on June 19. CMLL’s designed a simple but smart way of handling the odd number; winning the seeding battle royal gives you a first round bye, actually giving that part of the tournament some more sense and an actual conclusion. (Without a bye, it’s always made no sense to participate – the first one out has to wrestle first, but gets the longest rest between matches and doesn’t have to wrestle the semifinal and the final back to back.)

The hype for the match brings up the possibility that partners could end up fighting each other, which is true though not necessarily all that interesting. They also emphasize that wrestlers of different weight divisions could face each other, as if this was not standard operating procedure for CMLL, and as if there was a great difference in sizes between all these wrestlers. Perhaps if Dos or Lizmark was in, this might be true, but the difference between Ultimo Guerrero and Mascara Dorada does not appear to be all that great, and those two squared off in a trios match just back on March 1st, on LATV. It wasn’t a big deal.

This tournament would be flawed and frustrating if it occured at any time of year. As opposition to TripleMania, it also seems like an absurd business decision. Tournament shows have never been more than uninteresting to watch, and usually fall to the levels of disappionting. The matches sound much better than turn out to be, because the time requirements of the night force most of them to five minutes of limited action. Perhaps it’ll be better with one less match in the tournament, but it’s not to be expected.

They’re also harder to sell as shows, because of the format CMLL uses to decide seeding. CMLL can’t hype any of the singles matches, some of which might sell some tickets, because none are determined until an hour into the show. It may work better this way to keep people from figuring out the finish (though we can usually guess pretty accurately even without the matchups), but it’s unhelpful in getting people in the building to see that finish happen.

This also means the time and energy that’s gone into building both the Rey Bucanero & Ephesto and Dos Caras Jr. & Shocker has been wasted for the time being, since it’s unlikely they’ll be main eventing any of these three shows with an additional big singles match (they’ll be doing six of those already), plus Bucanero will be tied up in this tournament for at least one of those weeks. This seems to indicate the plan for this tournament came at a late stage.

On first look, Ultimo Guerrero and Negro Casas are the clear strong co-favorites to win this tournament, with the second tier being Hector Garza, Averno, and maybe Sombra. There was a time where we could put Black Warrior in that second tier, but that’s passed. There may be a time where Texano Jr. or Hijo de Fantasma go on that list, but not yet.

I’ll break down the rest of the press conference tomorrow, and more on the tournament down the line, but it’s worth note that the announcement of Fantasma, Sangre and Dragon Rojo heading to Europe for the week of June 10th means those three have to be in Block A of this tournament. In addition, the latest Wrestling Observer mentions CMLL has been talking to TNA about bringing in two (unspecified) wrestlers to challenge Sombra & Volador for the CMLL Tag Titles on June 12. It’s not confirmed, but that would make sense as a main event over a tournament, and would mean those two are also penciled in for Block A.

More, later.