2020 Lucha Libre Win/Loss Records and other related luchadb stats

(the 2021 Tapatia award voting is closing in a few days, vote now)

The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically changed the lucha libre landscape. The number of shows shrank nearly 70%, with lucha libre barely existing and going underground after March. This annual post about how many matches people wrestled will have a lot smaller numbers than usual as a result.

There were many particular data issues due to the set of circumstances in 2020. Most of these will carry into 2021.

  • I am unable to capture all events which take place in Mexico in any year; I can only find them if there’s some sort of promotion online. The special challenge of 2020 meant there were many shows purposefully not widely advertised in order to evade government detection. It’s unknown how many shows there were or how that compares to the normal amount of shows missed.
  • CMLL numbers are a mess. The amount of events is inflated three or four times compared to what took place. The matches are incomplete. Events listed in 2021 clearly took place in 2020, or different months than listed in 2020. CMLL ran all day tapings with no fans, and later gave no indication of when matches were taped when. I’ve chosen to list matches on-air date instead. It is likely possible to figure out which marathon day each match was part of based on factors like ringside worker’s clothing and announcers present, but it would be an extra amount of work to figure out which marathon day is which. Social media may be key. I’ve decided this is not worth my time to figure out.
  • Many other shows are listed under their Air Date instead of their actual date for similar issues.
  • AAA records are the most complete, but 2020 fall AutoLuchas shows are still airing and some unannounced substations will be found.
  • I’ve tried to mark matches as canceled (no match) on shows which did not take place, but that’s not complete. There are always shows which are advertised which do not take place, though 2020 likely set the record.

You can see the complete win/loss records and other data on this Google Sheet.

Shows for each year, over the last ten. (Number in parenthesis indicate the change since I ran these numbers a year ago – ‘new’ shows discovered or duplicates removed.)

Year: Shows
2011: 2717 (+2)
2012: 2901 (+13)
2013: 2859 (+52)
2014: 5588 (+10)
2015: 6420 (+4)
2016: 7111 (+8)
2017: 6104 (+6)
2018: 6345 (+12)
2019: 6927 (+47)
2020: 2157

I wasn’t going nuts adding lineups until 2014, and still most of those years have more recorded events than this year. I started this database in 2006; I’d have to go back to 2005 (all after the fact additions) to find a lower total

Events Actually Added In During The Year (No Matter What Year They Happened)
2015: 11553
2016: 9785
2017: 8642
2018: 9687
2019: 7705
2020: 5926

Punching in all of those old 60s/70s results gave me something to do and taught me a lot, but that’s a slower process. Definitely slower than the newspapers. (I could always use new ideas on archives to search.)

Most Matches

2008: Ultimo Guerrero (228)
2009: La Parka Jr. (211)
2010: Mistico (204)
2011: Último Guerrero & La Mascara (188)
2012: Último Guerrero (189)
2013: Último Guerrero (205)
2014: Atlantis (215)
2015: Atlantis (207)
2016: Atlantis (217)
2017: Último Guerrero & Psycho Clown (204)
2018: Último Guerrero (205)
2019: Caristico (223)
2020: Joe Lider (67)

There’s nothing more appropriate for 2020 than Joe Lider wrestling the most matches. A dangerous wrestler for dangerous times. He’s just high profile enough that people would actually advertise him, and not attached to any promotion that’d dissuade him from working for safety’s sake. Lider going back to DTU, who tried as hard as any indie to run regularly, added a few more matches.

wrestlers with more than 60 matches:

67 Joe Lider
66 Caristico
65 Fresero Jr.
63 Hijo del Espectro Jr.
61 Diosa Quetzal
61 Ultimo Guerrero
60 Baby Xtreme

These are all low enough numbers that a little more digging for cancelations would likely change the order. Or counting matches that didn’t air until 2021.

A subcategory: the wrestlers with the biggest difference between their 2019 and 2020 totals

157 Caristico (223 in last year to 66 this year)
152 Psycho Clown (207 to 55)
149 Místico (181 to 32)
148 Atlantis (148 to 0)
147 Valiente (194 to 48)
134 Volador Jr. (185 to 51)
131 Hijo del Vikingo (131 to 37)
128 Último Guerrero (189 to 61)
128 Soberano Jr. (179 to 51)
119 Cuatrero (169 to 50)

Most Wins

2008: Blue Panther (97)
2009: Mistico (110)
2010: Mistico (128)
2011: Último Guerrero (90)
2012: Atlantis (93)
2013: La Mascara (102)
2014: Atlantis (99)
2015: Volador Jr. (113)
2016: Volador Jr. (120)
2017: Volador Jr. (120)
2018: Caristico (115)
2019: Caristico (126)
2020: Caristico (37)

The flip side to Joe Lider working a lot is results rarely turn up from those places. We’re still missing results from AutoLucha shows at this point. Big Ovett (23) has more recorded wins than anyone working for AAA. Arez got to 16 mostly outside of AAA. Psycho Clown took 15 and did take a lot of outside dates.

Most Losses

2008: Averno (84)
2009: Negro Casas (86)
2010: Negro Casas (75)
2011: La Mascara (72)
2012: Último Guerrero (79)
2013: Último Guerrero (84)
2014: Último Guerrero (82)
2015: Último Guerrero (80)
2016: Último Guerrero (91)
2017: Último Guerrero (92)
2018: Último Guerrero (99)
2019: Mephisto (91)
2020: Stuka (29)

It’s been nearly a decade since a CMLL tecnico was at the top of the list. Ángel de Oro, both a tecnico and a rudo, was second at 28.

Best Win % (with at least 10 known results)

2008: Psycho Clown & Zombie Clown (100%)
2009: Psycho Circus (100%)
2010: Tondar (GDL) (100%)
2011: Mini Monster Clown (90%)
2012: Rayo de Oro (Guatemala) (97%)
2013: Tinieblas Jr. (90%)
2014: William Rock/Pequeno Violencia (92%)
2015: Súper Muñeco (93%)
2016: Huracán Ramírez (85%)
2017: Huracán Ramírez (90%)
2018: Tinieblas Jr. (91%)
2019: Microman (87%)
2020: Muerte Extrema (90%)

Muerte Extrema mostly inhabits the halls of Arena Lucha Time, where I’ve not been consistently tracking results. He hasn’t been there since Sepembter, as best I can tell, but won a lot early on.

I cut it down further to 50 results last year. That doesn’t work well this year: only Caristico, Ultimo Guerrero, Forastero, Angel de Oro, and Negro Casas reached 50 decisions in 2020.

Worst loss % (with at least 10 known results)

2008: Carrona (0%)
2009: Espectrito (0%)
2010: Metailk II (GDL) (11%)
2011: Akron (13%)
2012: Mini Talisman (8%)
2013: Estrella De Fuego (5%)
2014: Psicosis I/Nicho el Millionario (0%)
2015: Lady Shani (5%)
2016: Nahual (Morelos) (10.53%)
2017: Pitbull I (Jalisco) & Flayer Boy (9%)
2018: Rey Muerte (Guerrero) (0%)
2019: Mije (0%)
2020: La Guerrera (CMLL) (0%)

La Guerrera is definitely the lowest woman in CMLL’s totem pole. CMLL’s mostly done singles and pairs matches since the restart and leaned heavily towards giving the veterans wins; it’s unsurprising she didn’t find a way to a win. She has a good chance this weekend: there’s a Silueta & La Guerrera vs Stephanie Vaquer & La Seductora that someone’s got to win.

There’s a lot of usual CMLL stats – which day of the week did people work? which of the main arenas? – which doesn’t work in 2020.

States WIth at Least 100 Events

370 Estado de México
258 Distrito Federal
162 Jalisco
156 Veracruz
148 Coahuila
111 Tamaulipas

There were 18 states with 100 events this year, compared to eight this year. Mexico City (49%) and Chiapas (40%) were the only two states who didn’t decline more than 50%. Quintana Roo declined 84%.

1966 EMLL Mexico City lineups and thoughts

Here’s all the 1966 Mexico City lineups and results that are now in the database, in case that’s something you need. I haven’t gone deep in checking it out. I can already see a date discrepancy over a hair match and I’ve fixed things after making that backup.

7 things I took away from this year beyond the results:

  1. EMLL’s booker passes away midway thru the year. Nothing really changes. Referee Jesus Lomelin is said to be the lead programmer and had been for a long time when he passed away in June. There are slight changes; Black Shadow gets flipped to being a heel, there are some new pushes later in the year. Those might have happened anyway. There’s no huge change in direction obvious through the rest of the year, with the replacements sticking close to those who were already on top. This felt a bit instructive to the current day CMLL situation.
  2. Lucha libre movies were hurting lucha libre shows (in the short term.) 1965 was the Mexico City introduction of Mil Mascaras. 1966 should’ve been his big year. It was a big year for him to film two movies instead. Mil Mascaras is still around a fair amount, but EMLL never pushes him to the top. Santo is in and out filming movies as well. Blue Demon also spends most of his year filming movies, though it is unclear if he’s medically able to wrestle this year. Even Ray Mendoza is missing for a movie early on.
  3. EMLL had played the same hand too long. I’d like to have Box Y Luchas from this time period (or any time period) to balance things out; Lucha Libre is pushing for new blood at the top even before this year starts. As best as we can tell based on the one source, it seems like the fans have tired of seeing the same people at top. This is year six of Rene Guajardo being the perennial middleweight champion, the rudo who is also acknowledged as the best guy (similar to today Ultimo Guerrero) and some sort of change is needed. It should be Mil’s moment but being seen as the Santo replacement film star stops him from being the Santo replacement in-ring star for this year. Lucha Libre magazine stumps hard for Jerry London in that top spot, though it seems unlikely to go to a foreigner in that time period. The answer seems to be Ray Mendoza, but EMLL deluding itself into believing Gory Guerrero would come back to Mexico City and do a job delay his ascension. It feels a protest vote when Lucha Libre calls Mendoza wrestler of the year. Guajardo’s the one who has had actual success but they’re tired of him.
  4. This was a nothing year for Karloff Lagarde. I felt less positive about Karloff Lagarde’s Wrestling Observer HOF value. He’s NWA Welterweight champion without once defending in Arena Mexico all year. His only title match in Arena Mexico is losing the Arena Mexico Tag Team Championship. Lagarde’s only apuesta match is a hair loss to Jerry London, a setup match for the Aniversario. Lagarde is frequently in main events but typically only to be Rene Guajardo’s junior partner. He does get one singles win over Black Shadow early in the year, but he not main eventing much else on his own. It’s an accumulation year, but not one with any particular glory.
  5. There is help on the way. The year ends with Angel Blanco & Dr. Wagner on the way up. Solitario’s getting some notice as a future star, though he hasn’t jumped out of the pack yet. Anibal has just made the leap to EMLL. The stars of the 70s are on their way.
  6. Jerry London had one of the better years of an EMLL foreigner. Lucha Libre praised him so much that I was surprised they didn’t give him the wrestler of the year. It doesn’t look as impressive just in the results – a short title win, a hair match win and a hair match loss. It reads in instead like he was only supposed to be in for the title match, maybe not even the title switch, and he kept impressing enough that EMLL kept extending his stay. It appears to be his choice to leave, not EMLL letting him go when he loses again to Guajardo.
  7. There are so many tournaments. Very few of them go anywhere or mean anything but I guess it must be over as a gimmick if they keep doing it.

1930s Coahuila/Durango lineups added to the luchadb

I added 1930s lucha libre lineups, mostly from the cities Torreon and Gomez Palacio to the luchadb database in the last few days. This covers every year from 1930 to 1939. They’re integrated into the different pages of this site, and they’re also just available here. This is a slow continuing project to mine the El Siglo de Torreon archive for lucha lineups and results. The project is done! I can move onto other equally futile endeavors.

Really, it’s all done. I couldn’t find a reference of lucha libre prior to 1934. The Guadalajara newspaper had lucha libre mentions pre-Salvador Lutteroth. Torreon didn’t get it until a few months after EMLL was founded, or at least it didn’t come up. The lineups resemble the cards of the early days in Mexico City in style if not the same talent, with just one or two singles matches on early cards. It starts to expand to about four matches with the occasional tag match or battle royal by the end of the decade. With no more than 8 people per show, it was quicker to go thru a month of lineups than it is to do one card today, so this was quick to finish.

Shows added by year that include some link to El Siglo de Torreon

193X  255
194X  414
195X  979
196X  133
197X  268
198X 1169
199X 1730
200X 1575
201X   23
     6546 events total

This was very much a still figuring out how lucha libre worked period. There are only a couple title matches, there were no real apuesta matches, the shows are in venues which would quickly disappear. The posters would show up more days in advance than later years, probably because there was more space needing to be filled.

There also isn’t much news on lucha libre outside of lineups and results. There are occasional stories about lucha libre in Mexico City and the odd wire story from New York slips through. Even in the 1930s, there were recaps of shows complaining about how silly things had become.

I got a lot of lineups in this project. I didn’t get many results, but the lineups alone were helpful in getting a sense of what lucha libre looked like in Torreon and Gomez Palacio during different points of time. This has always been a busy area for lucha libre, and the newspapers gave indications when the business was going up and down. I felt like I learned some, and also learned that I, even more, wish there was a public newspaper archive like this for a Mexico City or Monterrey paper that covered lucha libre. I do have plenty of magazines which did so, and I should go back to figuring those out.

1940s Coahuila/Durango lineups added to the luchadb

I added 1940s lucha libre lineups, mostly from the cities Torreon and Gomez Palacio to the luchadb database last month. This covers every year from 1940 to 1949. They’re integrated in the different pages of this site, and they’re also just available here. This is a slow continuing project to mine the El Siglo de Torreon archive for lucha lineups and results, which is finally nearing completion.

I had been hoping to finish this in August. It is now October. It didn’t go quickly. There was a lot of lucha.

1970s: 323
1960s: 258
1950s: 909
1940s: 415

Not as bad as 1950s. It still turned out to be a lot, though it varied quite a bit per year.

1940 24
1941 15
1942 4
1943 4
1944 13
1945 23
1946 80
1947 83
1948 83
1949 86

I think the pattern is no one pays much attention if there’s only one promotion, but pay a lot more attention if there are two or more groups. (Until today, where shrinking newspapers mean no one pays attention.) There also weren’t as many sports to cover in 40s, so wrestling was covered as a way to fill up one of those eight pages they were putting out a day.

Another reason the shows might have gone up starting with 1945 is that was the year Palacio de los Depotes was opened. That building, or others with the same name, have been in use since that year.

The other thing that helpfully filled space in the paper are reports of fights around or after lucha libre shows. I suspect they were no more common here than any other decade, and it just got brought up more. There’s issues with thrown objects, a wrestler getting into fight with police (and later hauled in front of a judge), and just a general brawl outside of a show. There’s an uproar about lepers coming to a show, in a truly random bit.

There’s also a 1948 article complaining how wrestling has gotten too silly and isn’t like it was in the old days anymore. This article has a nice illustration of Japanese (?) wrestler Taro Sato.

My favorite find is buried in Casos Deportivos column, which occasionally mentioned lucha libre at this point. In 1949, there’s a mention that Salvador Lutteroth was looking to put together enough money to build a Madision Square Garden level arena in Mexico City to host boxing, lucha libre and basketball. This is the plan for Arena Mexico, which is still 7 years away from coming into existance. The story has always been the Black Shadow/El Santo mask match selling out while turning lots of people away spurred Lutteroth into building Arena Mexico. That was in 1952. It might have pushed him to finally do it, but the idea had been in his head for a few years by that point.

1950s Coahuila/Durango lineups added to the luchadb

I added 1950s lucha libre lineups, mostly from the cities Torreon and Gomez Palacio to the luchadb database earlier this month. This covers every year from 1950 to 1969. They’re integrated in the different pages of this site, and they’re also just available here. This is a slow continuing project to mine the El Siglo de Torreon archive for lucha lineups and results.

This was a terrible idea! It took me two months to get to this post. I was expecting more like two weeks.

1970s: 323
1960s: 258
1950s: 909

Lucha libre was covered like a sport in 1950, at least in the pages of El Siglo de Torreon. It’s not just that there were so many more cards listed, but results were fairly common in some years. My searching is a lot better at finding posters than articles, which means I’ve probably missed more cards this decade than any other. There were definitely shows that didn’t have a poster but did have someone writing the results up. I only pulled articles that mention lucha in them, and there’s probably a few more to be found if someone went back and read every paper for ten years in detail. I would not recommend that use of time, but you might want to try if you think see I’m missing something.

year events
1950 93
1951 106
1952 108
1953 54
1954 65
1955 175
1956 121
1957 84
1958 51
1959 52

Arena Olimpico opened late in 1954. The paper listed lineups for that building and Plaza de Toros (and sometimes a third building) for 1955 and 1956, which explains the high total for those years.  The volume of events probably never changes from that point, but the mentions of them in the newspaper drop until the 80s.

The only simple part of this was these were generally short card to enter. Tag matches are uncommon for the first half of the decade, and cards may have as little as ten people on them before then. It’s a lot of the same group of people, with very occasionally appearances by national stars. The more noteworthy names are those just starting out, with Karloff Lagarde and Rene Guajardo showing up in undercards more at the end of the decade. The Norte Heavyweight and Norte Lightweight champions are the most visible titles, though it’s the usual bit of belts disappearing for months at a time (or being defended elsewhere in the north.) I have enough Norte championship info that I could put together a sort of title history page, but it seems pointless without the Monterrey title matches.

The one title bit I did get out of it was Mishima Ota winning the Mexican Lightweight Championship. I had it on one date, changed, it, and then read more and changed it back. Ota win what I now understand is a non-title match on September 29, 1957, then wins the belt itself on October 6. There’s also a women’s title change, with Dama Enmascarda apparently winning the title in 1958, as she’s billed as champion following this title match. The women’s title is a bit of funny money, with Gonzalez seemingly taking her troop around Mexico and maybe running similar bits in different places. In this case, Dama Enmascarda sure seems to lose her mask in a hair/mask match with GonzalezEnmascarada is instead wrestling under her real name a month later – but she would masked elsewhere for years.

Articles I found

I guess I need to start on the 40s next. I hope it doesn’t take two months.

1960s Coahuila/Durango lineups added to the luchadb

I added 1960s lucha libre lineups, mostly from the cities Torreon and Gomez Palacio to the luchadb database earlier this month. This covers every year from 1960 to 1969. They’re integrated in the different pages of this site, and they’re also just available here. This is a slow continuing project to mine the El Siglo de Torreon archive for lucha lineups and results.

Events per year:

year events
1960 9
1961 11
1962 3
1963 11
1964 11
1965 41
1966 40
1967 81
1968 43
1969 8

Again, that’s an inflated number, including events found from other sources (including the old magazines that I should’ve gotten back to by now but no.) There’s actually 133 posters in this batch, down from 274 in the last group. That’s why this one is a turnaround.

The events included are mostly ones at Plaza de Toros Torreon. Posters/reports from the period confirm there were other buildings holding events, but they’re not advertising in the paper. It’s also for certain not all the events at the Plaza de Toros, though the bullfights themselves seem to happen more often in this time period. There are fairly regular event listings from 1966 to 1968 and rare information otherwise.

That poster is maybe the most useful stuff I found.  It’s the September 25, 1966 lineup and appears to be a title change that’s usually been reported as being in November. It’s a small correction, but we can give Polo Torres an extra 40ish days for his title reign.

There are very few articles mentioning lucha libre in this decade in the paper. It’s almost never about the lucha libre itself; it only makes the paper when something goes badly and fulfilling the expected stereotypes. In 1962, two arenas are closed for not being properly licensedA car gets robbed outside of an arena. There’s was a protest about card changes in 1965. Gonzalo Gomez gets in trouble for his foreigners not having work permits in 1966. Los Espinos get into a fight with fansNeighbors complain about the noise from the late-running lucha libre show in 1966. And again, and a few other times, saying the same thing. There’s also the basketball players complaining about luchadors messing up the floor at the Auditorio article, something that gets repeated just about every year until they build a new Auditorio and don’t let anyone but AAA TV run in that building.

There are a few serious crimes that get mentioned. The most serious are the murders of Espanto I & Misterio Negro II in Monterrey, a shocking enough story that it makes Espanto’s hometown paper. Both are shot in a bar by the owner. The police note it happened so suddenly that they didn’t have time to defend themselves.

Karloff Lagarde misses shows with a spine injury in 1961, though there’s no lineup ever mentioned. Lucha libre from Guadalajara airs on TV at times during this decade. Santo wrestles a few shows during this time but also shows up on a variety show at the end of the decade.

At this point, I only have to do the 1950s (where there seems to be more), and probably not a lot in the 1930s & 1940s to be done with this part forever.