the Occidente championships have always been useless and need to go away

I shouldn’t even have a post here. The title seems good enough, but I might as well walk thru the case.

The Occidente championships – the championships of Arena Coliseo Guadalajara, basically – haven’t been used in much of a meaningful way for years. They seem like they may come in the 1940s, following the naming scheme of the Norte championships. The Occidente championships are still around. I can name a stunningly high amount of them (test at the bottom), but they’re rarely defended and frequently held by people who don’t actually wrestle in Arena Coliseo Guadalajara much, or by young luchadors hoping to soon stop wrestling in Arena Coliseo Guadalajara. There seems to be no purpose to them outside of making everyone feel better about the things they don’t have by giving them a shiny belt, and they’re never used as a draw or show any capability of being a draw. It’s not a lot different than many lucha libre championships, but the high rate of Occidente championships just being given up because the champion can’t be bothered/allowed to lose them in the ring makes them stick out in a negative way.

Perhaps, I thought, these were formally useful championships in times past and the best uses of them just hadn’t carried over to more modern times?

Nah.

These Occidente championships were never used in the main event or as drawing card; the national and world titles would, but also super libre matches. These were distinctly treated as third rate championships, and the titles either went vacant or mysterious changed hands without a title change many times. By title:

• Welterweight: four different tournaments for vacant titles (two ending where the winner never apparently defends the title), and one other unexplained title change
• Middleweight: five tournaments for vacant titles (three without clear winner), five other unexplained title changes
• Light Heavyweight: two tournaments for a vacant title (one with unknown winner), six other unexplained changes
• Heavyweight: one tournament (because champion wins better title)
• Tag Team two vacant title tournamnets, five times an unexplained title history.

The tag title belts are actually the best handled ones for quite a while. There’s plenty of defenses, the title changes are easy to follow. It falls apart later on. The trios title doesn’t come into being until the very end of the period. There’s a women’s championship which appears to exist for two shows seven years apart. Lightweight and featherweight (!) champions are mentioned earlier on, but completely disappear. And they’re not the only titles who disappear for a time. The light heavyweight title goes with disappears for two years. The tag team and middleweight championships are invisible for three years. The welterweight championship goes six years without a mention, and the heavyweight championship just vanishes after 1959 never to return. Life continues on, maybe better than ever in some cases, without these championships.

To be fair, I’m working off incomplete records. Maybe some of those missing title changes (and defenses) took place in the those early matches that aren’t recorded. Maybe the heavyweight championship or other titles changed hands at a smaller show in Guadalajara, or changed hands elsewhere in the region. I could imagine a loop of places like Lagos de Moreno, Tula, Tonala, Ciudad Guzman or wherever else got regular shows, and the Occidente championships have a use on those since they’re too small to get bigger matches.

Even if those things were true, which I’m not sure if they were, they’re no longer that way. The belts are rarely defended, in the top or bottom of cards. There is no loop of other towns, and they barely appear on shows outside of Arena Coliseo Gudalajara. No one seems to see Occidente title matches as a important item and it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to bring in an Occident title match to draw a crowd; they’re just some place else’s local wrestlers, not stars because they’re defending a prestigious belt.

There are solutions to this

• get rid off all the belts! Or, if you can’t do that, get rid of most of them. Pick an in between weight belt and just treat it like an open weight belt (like they do with all the titles right now), and then you’re less likely to forgot about them if you don’t have as many of them, and you don’t really need six belts when you’re running 2 shows a week.
• if you can’t just get rid of them, farm them out to other promotions – maybe htey’ll make more use of them they you can.
• obviously, none of the CMLL Mexico City roster members should hold one of these belts. It should be completely beneath them. They’re minor league championships and CMLL DF guys should come off as above that.
• if the belts aren’t going to be defended more than once year, than why not just run more tournaments instead? Single week tournaments are not great shakes, but most of the title matches happen with no plan for the future after the big victory at the end. Save yourself the embarrassment of having no plan by having a tournament that doesn’t need a follow up (and then there you can have the local guy beat the Mexico City guy without having to figure out how you’re going to get out of it next week.)
• make a list of who’s champion somewhere? Maybe so you’ll remember, maybe so the fans might know? You shouldn’t really be needing to rely on me for this info.

But if you are relying on me, the current champions are

Welterweight: Sadico (maybe), last defended July 19, 2015 at Arena Coliseo Guadalajara on a show where they didn’t post results.

Middleweight: Virgo, last defended May 15, 2015

Light Heavyweight: Puma, last defended June 23, 2015

Heavyweight: Diamante Azul, last defended May 6, 2014

Tag Team: Gallo & Esfinge, last defended July 18, 2015

Trios: Cuatrero, Forastero and Sanson, last defended November 11, 2015

The last one is pretty recent, but they’re also the guys who say they’re headed to the Mexico City roster pretty soon (and haven’t been around these shows much since the title change anyway.) Everything else hasn’t been defended in five months. Maybe they’ve beat me to it and got rid of the titles already.