La Sombra has left CMLL and joined WWE

La Sombra, 2015 (photo by CMLL)

WWE announced today that Manuel Alfonso Andrade Oropeza, better known to you and me as La Sombra, has signed with the US company and has reported to their NXT Training Center.

Sombra’s always seemed like a guy WWE should be targeting. He had a well known tryout with WWE when the came in Mexico in 2011, but WWE passed him (and others over). The reason appeared to be the stylistic differences and his size. Sombra’s grown larger in the four years since, but the bigger change has been within WWE. The promotion, and especially the NXT brand, is just more concentrated on finding people who can have really good matches with them and not worrying if they fit the WWE mold. The long term plan for La Sombra has to be graduating to WWE at some point, but he’ll fit in well in NXT for now. Sombra will have to most work on fitting his style into the WWE’s limitations and improving his talking ability. Sombra’s believed to speak a little English, but not so much that he can consistently do great talking segments. Sombra’s speaking skills were concerned a weakness in Mexico, especially prior to the formation of the rudos, but it’s not something CMLL focuses much on.

The rumors of La Sombra joining WWE came up a couple weeks ago, first mentioned on MLW Radio by Konnan as the only person WWE found in Mexico who they deemed meeting their standards. Konnan said he didn’t know if Sombra was going to WWE and no one else knew who was talking either. The rumors of Sombra going to WWE built upon themselves, but Sombra kept doing interviews saying he hadn’t signed anything and no one else did. I’ve spend the last couple months pestering people to find out if they knew concrete anything about Sombra going to WWE, and no one could pass on any more than the same rumors I’d heard. They did say Sombra was a quiet guy who mostly kept to himself and to his phone, and anyone who did know must’ve done an excellent job of keeping it to themselves.

(NJPW probably didn’t know until recently; they were surprised about Sombra losing his mask. The bit about Naito teasing Sombra coming in as his partner and it not happening might be because CMLL hadn’t told NJPW Sombra was leaving.)

People obviously knew. Sombra lost to all the top CMLL guys on the way out. He lost his title to Ultimo Guerrero in Puebla, he lost his mask to Atlantis clean on the Anniversary show, he lost to career rival Volador Jr. clean on the Dia de Los Muertes show (and made a point of saying it ended the feud) and he lost to best friend Rush on his last night in CMLL. (He did beat Shocker! Poor Shocker.) The mask feud came out of nowhere on an August 7th Arena Mexico show and was a clear deviation from a plan to do Ultimo Guerrero versus Thunder. We believed that was happening because Thunder is a terrible luchador. It now looks like that’s probably when Sombra informed CMLL he was leaving and was willing to drop his mask. Everything that happened since that point makes sense if he & CMLL knew Sombra had a hard deadline to leave and they were trying to get in everything they could before he left.

Sombra should be the present and future of CMLL. He should be guy headlining Arena Mexico fro the next two decades. He’s going to be on another path now. As we’ve seen with Octagon Jr., Dos Caras Jr. and Mistico, that path can go off in many directions. Sombra could be back in Arena Mexico in three years, or he could be headlining WrestleMania. The fact that CMLL has little effect on that outcome is a big problem for the promotion. CMLL’s lucky to have access to a great deal of young talent and does a decent job of developing some of them into exciting luchadors, but CMLL’s potential is capped if they WWE can pluck them away whenever they want. WWE was able to do it with Mistico and now they did it with the guy built to be Sombra’s replacement. Maybe Dragon Lee or Titan or Cavernario or someone else will end up being the next Sombra, but CMLL’s business is going to have to change for this scenario not to repeat again in a few years.

The top CMLL wrestlers make extra money from big outside bookings, including NJPW. Sombra hadn’t been used by NJPW this year, outside of FantasicaMania, and so the jump to WWE was easier to make. Rush has also not been used by NJPW, isn’t on next year’s FantasticaMania and there’s no sign of him getting that extra income. Rush also would seem to fit with WWE. Unlike Sombra, Rush hasn’t really lost to anyone and there’s no real sign of him leaving. Yet. Rush is going to be the guy everyone wonders if he’s going to be heading to WWE next until something else happens. The future of the Ingobernables in CMLL is also a question – it was five man unit, but it was really coming of a Sombra/Rush led group with three other guys. CMLL’s aligned Rush with his brothers at other times. He’s better at being a rudo leader, but there’s no real logical way to fit someone in Sombra’s void. It’s a different Ingobernables going forward.

Sombra’s going to be missed in Mexico. I’ve watched him since the moment he came to CMLL. “Brillante” was fun from day one, but few have worked as hard to improve as much as a luchador as he have, and following his evolution from skinny trainee from La Laguna to Ingboernable has been one of the interesting parts of CMLL in the last ten years. I’m happy for La Sombra, because he’s where he wants to to be, but I’m disappointed that’s no longer in Mexico.