Not kidding.
El Rey held a press conference as part of the summer Television Critics Association press tour. Among the announcements was a new Wednesday night of “original unscripted content”, to start on October 8th. AAA is one of two hours of programming.
The title of the show is “Lucha: Uprising”, though it’s noted in the press release to be a working title. (It’s not far off the name Pro Wrestling Revolution uses for their TV show.) There’s no mention of how many episodes, while the companion show (about eccentric barbers) is listed for an eight episode run. Here’s the blurb in that press release
Long a fan of Lucha Libre, a Mexican franchise that has an 85% market share on television, El Rey is banking on American television viewers being drawn in by the high-flying antics and colorful world of freestyle wrestling. Each week “Lucha: Uprising” (WT) will bring drama, excitement and action as the masked heroes and villains battle it out in the ring for wrestling supremacy. The weekly, one-hour series from the producers One Three Media serves as a foundation for a new sports entertainment business, with which Burnett has partnered with El Rey Network, its founder, Robert Rodriguez, Lucha Libre AAA, FactoryMade Ventures and Antonio Cue Sanchez-Navarro.
I don’t know where 85% of market share comes from but I really would like to know.
There’s not much else new here, not even an air time. Still, finally getting a start date for the show is a pretty big deal. This seems to point even stronger towards AAA will starting taping on this show right after TripleMania. AAA won’t need to tape again in Mexico for nearly a month and they’ll be able to completely focus on the US. (Some may suggest they’ve already pretty much been focusing on the US and that’s why the Mexico product has been doing a lot of coasting this year.)
Being on Wednesday is pretty important too. There’s wrestling programs on every other day week, but this gives AAA a night to themselves. That’s a good start.
I really hope they use the season format but the press release said “weekly”.
Do you think this will be a AAA/Pro Wrestling Revolution collabo in some way?????????
The 85% could be the total percentage of wrestling programming airing in Mexico that is lucha libre. In other words, 15% is WWE/TNA/NJPW, etc.
There are at least 5 hours of WWE airing in Mexico, so there would have to be at least 28 hours of lucha to make 85% work. I record a lot of stuff, but not that many hours.
I didn’t see AAA or even Konnan mention anything yet. Are they waiting for Triplemania weekend to release more details?
Dave been reporting 8 episodes but the press release didn’t say 8 episodes for Lucha?
“8 episodes” is a misunderstanding based on the other show going 8 episodes. KrisZ figured that mean AAA would at least get 8 episodes (and wrote at least) and Dave turned that into only 8.