a The Crash explainer

What is The Crash?

The Crash is a Tijuana based wrestling promotion. It’s owned by a man who goes by the name of Nacho de la O, with Konnan in charge of running the promotion. It’s a lucha libre promotion, but it’s heavily influenced by US indie style and brings in a lot of US based wrestlers.

The Crash has been around since 2011, and was just a typical local promotion who brought in CMLL or AAA wrestlers for most of it’s first few years. Konnan came aboard in 2016. The Crash evolved into more of a standalone group in summer that year and has been expanding in 2017.

Why should I care about The Crash?

As a fan: The Crash shows just tend to feature exciting matches with familiar names. The action is the most US indie influenced part of the presentation, with the matches resembling a style that would be more at home on a PWG show than an Arena Mexico one.

As a person following lucha: a viable third promotion is usually interesting in itself, and they’ve been destabilizing factors on AAA & CMLL.

(As a reader of this site: The Crash’s Anniversary show is this weekend, I’ve got a recap of their July show going up soon, and I’ll be attending a few The Crash shows in upcoming weeks. I was asked for a storyline update on Twitter, and this seemed like a good time to do a catchup.)

What’s the next big show?

The Crash’s 6th Anniversary show takes place this Saturday (11/04), with a hair match and two championships matches. It’s also a show two of eleven, taking place over a thirteen day tour.

What’s the big feuds right now?

This is the longest part.

Penta 0M, Daga and Garza Jr. jumped to The Crash on that show. Rey Fenix had jumped months earlier. Together, they formed a new group, La Rebelion. Rey Mysterio Jr. and El Zorro also came aboard in the following months (though Zorro isn’t around the promotion now.)

Everything went well until a four way cage match in June. Daga, Garza, Damian 666 and Nicho el Millionario (original Psicosis) were in the match, where the last person left would lose their hair. Daga accidentally hit Garza with a chair in the match, and Garza purposefully fouled Daga in retribution. Neither man would lose the match, but that seemed like the end of Garza in La Rebelion.

It was not. Garza pointed out he was the one who actually owned the trademark on the name, so he was going to create his own Rebelion. It’s left the promotion with two different La Rebelions, with the colors seperating them:

RED La Rebelion: Penta 0M, Rey Fenix, Rey Mysterio, Daga, (Zorro?)

YELLOW La Rebelion: Garza Jr., Bestia 666, Ultimo Ninja (Garza’s cousin), Black Taurus (ex-AAA), Black Danger

Daga versus Garza Jr. remains the big feud between the two factions. Konnan’s teased the 1v1 hair match happening soon, maybe this year, and it’d be the biggest match the promotion has to offer.

The Yellow group is a bit outmanned, but also have an alliance with an indie version of Los Ingobernables. (They’ve sometimes been technically unable to use that exact name, but that’s the idea.) That group is currently Rush, Pierroth and La Mascara. Maximo was part of the group, but turned tecnico after Rush arrived. Rey Escorpion was also part of the group, and left for AAA. The Yellow/Ingobernable partnership has been less stable since Rush & Pierroth arrived.

Long time local faction La Familia de Tijuana also remain, but in a greatly diminished level at the moemnt: only Damian 666 is wrestling, with Nicho recovering from knee surgery. (Bestia joined Garza, Rey Horuz left the promotion. X-Fly will show up from time to time.)

Most of the roster are unaligned tecnicos or rudos.  In normal lucha libre style, the factions have no issues teaming with whoever else they’ve been assigned with today. Most of the main events are red Rebellion members/other tecnicos vs Yellow Rebelion/Ingobernables.

One of the other more notable unaligned wrestlers is Jack Evans, who’s in the second biggest feud going on. He and Yellow Rebelion member Bestia 666 have been fighting most of the year, and have split two singles matches. They’ll have their own hair match on the 11/04 show, with the hometown Bestia being the favorite.

That’s it for the big stuff. Florida’s Oraculo was feuding with Tijuana’s Black Danger. Oraculo lost his mask to Danger in September and hasn’t been backed. Damain’s made some challenges to Pierroth. Demus 3:16 is going after Mascarita Dorada, but just seems to hate everyone shorter than him. Most of the matches are simply Mexico or US indie names set up against each other in ever changing combinations.

The three big feuds this year have been that Oraculo/Black Danger (done), Jack Evans/Bestia 666 (about to be done), and Daga/Garza (no clear end date). They probably should have new things kick off soon.

There’s no mention of titles there. Do they have titles?

They do. This is the part where they’re most like a normal lucha libre promotion: the titles aren’t really as big a deal in the US. They’re never main events, the title matches aren’t usually set up, and they don’t really drive the narrative of the promotion. Everyone would like to be the champion, but are secondary to the personal issues.

The Cruiserweight championship has the brightest history of all The Crash championships and is currently the closest thing to the group’s main title (though that may not last much longer.) The current champion is Rey Fenix, who’s defended it a lot against former champion Flamita.

The Junior championship is Aguscalientes native Arkangel Divino. The concept is this title is for guys smaller than cruiserweight, but the practice is this is a title for wrestlers who work the first couple matches on the show.

The Women’s championship is one of a number of belts Keyra holds. The Crash women’s division is small. Christi Jaynes is the only other woman working most of the shows. The Crash has had a lot of women come in for one or two matches, but haven’t been able to develop a steady group of women to build around.

There are The Crash Tag Team champions. Or, there were. The Hardy Boys won them, with the idea Fenix & Penta would face (and probably beat them) down the line. WWE signed the Hardys before that could happen, and there’s been no mention of these belts since the Hardys became unavailable. The Crash could decide new champions at any time, but there’s no urgency: there’s no set tag teams here beside Penta/Fenix and they’ve got other things to do.

The Crash is adding a Heavyweight Championship on their 11/04 show. There’s no enforced difference between it and the Cruiserweight belt as far we can tell. The decision match will have Rey Mysterio, Rush, Penta and La Mascara; at least two of those would have trouble passing as a Cruiserweight, but it looks like any cruiserweight could move up to being a heavyweight if the situation called for it. The names involved suggest it’ll be important championship, but all lucha titles are wait and see situations.

How do I follow The Crash?

This is the tough part. I was going to wait and do this explainer when The Crash got TV, becuase that obviously would make this a lot easier to follow. That hasn’t happened, even though everyone involved probably though it would’ve happened by now.

Instead, your best option is to subscribe to Konnan’s Patreon. The $5/month level gives you access to video links of the Tijuana shows. Each show goes up a few days after they air. The videos are originally from a handheld ringside camera, and eventually migrate to being a normal hard cam shot. There is no commentary; this is a bare bones presentation, but $5/month seems like a fair value for the quality of the shows.

This deal only covers Tijuana The Crash shows. They’ve put up a main event from Mexicali, but the other travels around Mexico do not appear to be filmed and definitely aren’t being offered. That goes for just results for the shows: The Crash’s social media will promote all their events, but the only shows where results are mentioned are the Tijuana shows.

The Crash shows draw the type of fans who are into watching wrestling on YouTube and so will be more likely to record and upload a show on their own. Still, it’s never consistent outside of the Tijuana shows, there’s no telling what/if anything else will ever pop up. The non-Tijuana Crash lineups are meaningful for their business, but don’t look at the lineups expected to see the matches – you probably won’t get that chance unless you’re there.

Accessibility is the obvious place The Crash lags behind the US indies it’s inspired by. (Even many ECW shows, another obvious influence, were easily more available than The Crash shows.) The Crash’s model is just different: there’s no independent tape/DVD selling company they can outsource the video production to in Mexico as there is elsewhere, and their goal is for a TV company to handle production of the show instead of them dealing with themselves.

One thought to “a The Crash explainer”

  1. This is what happens when you put comments in wrong post….

    “It has been so long since it started I can’t believe that can’t put footage out that isn’t just handhelds for $5(which given the price of a lot of indie VOD services is steep honestly). Even low tier promotions in the US can muster a two shot with commentary and edit into YouTube shows at best. I know the believe TV is coming but it seems like a pipe dream the longer this goes on. Sad b/c a lot of folks in the US would take to The Crash with it’s PWG style super indy shows. These shows could even be edited down with a two cam shoot for a pivotshare service if YouTube is too free for them and they could still charge $5-$9(avg price for those things). I just feel at some point this explainer will lead to a “what could have been” piece as far as the growth of The Crash goes.”

    BTW great write up though.

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