http://www.thecubsfan.com/cmll/
Last night, on the Televisa Deportes Network, a show called “Tribunal Televisa Deportes” argued if lucha libre was culpable or innocent of being unable to compete with WWE. Speaking in defense of wrestling were Dr. Morales and Arutro Rivera, with Cibernetico and Silver King also involved. A Televisa Deportes broadcaster took the other side. According to this detailed recap (with video!), this AAA guys got absolutely killed. The prosecutors said CMLL & AAA had done poor jobs of promoting, the television shows weren’t good, and the Mexican promoters just fell asleep at the switch. The lucha representatives apparently had no point other than “mexican lucha libre is teh awesome!!! and WWE is no good!” Which is usually, and actually sort of distressing if they believe that and are that out of touch with their audience.
It was interesting to ‘watch’ this unfold on Twitter last night. The comments were about what you’d guess if you just read stuff on the internet: a lot of people said CMLL is the best, WWE had supporters and detractors, and AAA had no supporters. The popularity of people watching the show didn’t really match up with the amount of people who actually watch/go to these shows at all; it’s as if many people are a fan of CMLL but not enough to actually watch it every week, and the people who watch AAA have better things to do than watch a late night sports show.
The one thing everyone seemed to agree to, and this is something Cibernetico said on the show, is a CMLL/AAA show would put Mexican lucha libre back past WWE. I completely disagree with this. That is a short term solution and there are long term issues at play here. CMLL vs AAA is a great way to get one payday or a few months of paydays, but if you look at every other interpromotional rivalry, the bump burns out after a few months and whatever problems where there before will still be there after.
(And promoted by the networks as well as the WWE stuff. It’s funny a Televisa network had this debate and blamed it on the promoters, when at least part of the reason WWE’s popular is Televisa’s put a bit more company push behind it compared to the local groups. Raw doesn’t get bumped from day to day this much.)
