lineups and notes from thirty five years of Guadalajara lineups

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I’ve been looking thru online archives are of Guadalajara’s El Informador for the last six months, taking screen shots of the advertisements for local lucha libre shows and transcribing them for my luchadb. The stretch I’ve recorded covers about 35 years of shows. That includes many events, most of them, which don’t appear to be listed in most event databases. I’ve been adding them in year stretches as I’ve gone along, and you can find all the complete run of lineups here. (Feel free to use it however, though credit back is always appreciated.)

I’ve talked about these before when I was doing posts on singles year, but in case you’re new or haven’t read the: Those lineups are great deal of information, but they’re also far from complete. I’ve going thru the paper from 1950 to 1986. There appears to be lucha libre in Guadalajara in the mid 30s, and “lucha amaetur” (which could’ve been worked) a few years prior. I expect I’ll go add the missing years at some point, but 1950 worked out as a break point. The paper starts printing the lineups in August 1986, not regularly listing them again until a stretch in 2009 (which seemed to be part of an advertising deal between Arena Coliseo Guadalajara at the paper.) If you’ve got a way of me getting 1986 to 2009 lineups, let me know.

Almost all the lineups are simply lineups – the paper didn’t cover the results – and almost all of them are the final few matches on the cards. It’s the announced lineup, so changes aren’t accounted for, and the shows with tournaments or seeding battle royales don’t list the matches. Shows scheduled on irregular days – like Solitario’s promotion – might be missed, as all are smaller arenas who wouldn’t be advertising in a paper. (Arena Jalisco and Arena Obeletos get their lineups in the paper on their openings, then never again.) There also days where a lineup wouldn’t appear for whatever reason, or rarely a day where the paper for the day wasn’t archived. This isn’t bulletproof data, but it’s a good starting point for a time span and a busy region that’s not well covered publically.

The most surprising knowledge I learned from all of this is EMLL came to Guadalajara as the invaders. It might have not started that way. Cursory looks at the 1930s show the Lutteroth family as introducing lucha libre to the arena, but it’s other promoters running events by the 1950s. The battle between the promotions lasted from Arena Coliseo Guadalajara’s opening (with a boxing show) from 1959 thru a few years into 1961. The existing promoters had the bigger names, with Santo mostly working for them and Rayo de Jalisco seemingly starting on those shows, but EMLL was able to take over the area. It’s one of three notable moments of competition in this period: a group was running in Parque Oro in 1956 and a Solitario led promotion in the mid 1970s which appeared very irregularly.

The Solitario group was a UWA backed one but the UWA name was rarely used on the advertisements. It only really comes up when a title was defended, and that’s more than the name came up for the opposition. There’s never a promotional name given for Arena Coliseo Guadalajara promotion. It’s obvious it’s EMLL and there’s no attempt to hide it, but the name just isn’t important enough to be used. Neither is the NWA name. Title matches there are listed simply as “Campeonato Mundial” or “Nacional”, outside a couple UWA title matches.

Most of the shows are just random matches, much like today. There’s some title matches and puesta matches each year, more so when there’s competition and more as the years have gone on. (There’s weirdly no title matches in the first fall 50s, even though people are billed as champions.) Luchadoras wrestle for a few weeks once or twice each year. There seems to be one or two foreigners every year for a while, until they just disappear from appearing. Famed California tag team Goliath and Black Gordman are on shows thru the 60s, but never as a team until the 70s.

I’ve have a couple most posts on this data set later this week.