On October 15th and 16th this year, WWE will make history by taping Raw and Smackdown in Mexico for the first time — an event that many have credited as the primary reason Albert Del Rio took the WWE title in the closing moments of SummerSlam. While Rey Mysterio remains out of action, things look all set for a triumphant homecoming for Del Rio and at least one man under the Sin Cara hood. But is had been a lengthy journey for WWE to reach this point in its Hispanic expansion.
While WWE has performed in dozens of countries worldwide since first leaving its North American base in 1985 for a tour of Australia, it would be another two decades before the promotion headed south across the border. Some of the reasons for the delay were purely logistical: a lack of television exposure in the country and a belief that the country’s economy wouldn’t produce sufficient revenue to make the trip worthwhile.
But chief among the reasons to be cautious was the fact that Mexico retained its own unique wrestling culture, far more clearly defined than the regional tastes of the various US territories. As Phil Schneider explained in issue 69 of FSM, the Mexican wrestling business has a variety of distinguishing features, ranging from the prevalence of six-man main events through the explicitly-acknowledged factions of technicos and rudos, to the promotion of hair and mask matches as arguably a higher stake than championship titles.
Indeed, the culture was so established that the business thrived despite it not being until 1989 that wrestling received a strong regular national television slot, and even that came after a strike by performers who believed TV exposure would kill the business, with the union eventually forcing the broadcast to air early on Sunday afternoons rather than go head-to-head with the evening shows.
Ironically TV did come to hurt the dominant CMLL promotion three years later when booker Antonio Pena broke away to create his own promotion AAA, taking with him several younger CMLL wrestlers. The promotion was formed with the backing of CMLL’s broadcaster Televisa, which continued airing both shows. It’s safe to say that without television, AAA would never have got off the ground.
With the handicap of no strong television to speak of, WWE finally broke into Mexico in 2004 with single shows for the Raw and Smackdown crews in Monterrey, which lies around 150 miles from the US border and made a practical addition to its existing US itinerary. The Raw date comfortably beat out an 11-year record for the largest amount of money drawn at a single live show in the country, but it would be another two years before the promotion then stepped things up with a full-fledged tour from both brands, including sell-out dates at the 19,000+ seat Palicio de los Deportes (Sports Palace), a government-owned indoor arena originally constructed for the 1968 Olympic Games.
The success came despite WWE only having exposure through cable channel Canal 52, though in reality those viewers who could afford premium television were exactly the audience WWE targeted with its high price tickets. But with the TV exposure limited to a tiny percentage of the population, there seemed no immediate threat of WWE being anything other than an occasional novelty in Mexico.
Indeed, despite the “invasion”, the local CMLL promotion barely skipped a beat: the very next night it ran its traditional Friday night at Arena Mexico, drawing a near sellout crowd of 15,500. The semi main event for the night featured Luis “Mistico” Alvirde, a then 23-year-old who would become a main event regular throughout the next few years, becoming one of the few grapplers of his era who could be relied upon to add several thousand paying customers to a show, despite appearing dozens of time a year in the same venues. Within a year WWE was offering him work, though it would be 2011 before he debuted for the company as Sin Cara.
In early 2007, WWE began fleshing out plans to truly become an international franchise, with newly appointed Chief Financial Officer Michael Selick telling Financial Week that “one idea we’re exploring calls for building WWE organizations around the globe, creating a localized WWE product for each international market.” The plans involved setting up several regional territories around the globe, with one being based around Mexico and Latin America. Stars such as Rey Mysterio would be assigned permanently to the region and the company would create original TV programming for the countries and run a regular touring schedule of live events.
The question at the time was whether WWE could truly make a permanent business in the are rather than be a touring novelty. That prompted speculation that the only was the project could succeed would be to heavily raid the pool of existing stars from the Mexican promotions and do what it took to snatch business away from them. In the end, the plans were quietly dropped as it became clear they were simply too ambitious to carry out without losing focus on the core US market.
Throughout 2007 and 2008, WWE continued sending both the RAW and Smackdown rosters on annual Mexican tours, but it appeared the initial novelty had worn off. Crowds began to decline, with most shows in Mexico City seeing the Sports Palace between a quarter and half empty. This was despite WWE doing its utmost to capitalise on the popularity of Rey Mysterio, taking liberties with the brand extension and even flying him to shows for in-ring interviews when injury had put him out of action.
But the situation changed dramatically in late 2008 when, after repeated reports that WWE’s Shane McMahon had been unsuccessful in attempts to negotiate a major broadcast TV slot in Mexico, the company in fact announced three separate deals. The first was a live airing of Raw each week on TVC Deportes, a higher-profile cable channel. The second was a Friday night airing on Smackdown on TV Azteca, a major broadcast network roughly equivalent to ITV or Channel 4 in the UK.
The third deal was merely a weekend replay of Raw, but it was this slot that proved most momentous: the show would air on Televisa (the other major network in the country) on Sunday afternoons between 3 and 5 pm — the slot that until then had been filled by CMLL.
As “Cubsfan” of LuchaBlog, one of the leading English language sites for Mexican wrestling news, told FSM, it wasn’t simply the fact that both CMLL and AAA now found themselves on a lowly broadcast station along the lines of Britain’s Channel 5 that was causing the domestic groups problems. There was also the matter of the priority the broadcasters gave to the shows. Since 2008, the Mexican groups have aired amid “a dumping ground for old reruns of Mexican shows and movies when they’re not airing sports, while WWE is on the same channel as the big Mexican weekly shows and the imported/dubbed US TV shows.
“Even if Televisa and TV Azteca weren’t already inclined to make the shows they’re paying more for seem more important, the WWE shows are sharing space with [US drama character] “Dr. House” making them seem upscale and the Mexican promotions are being bumped or cut for track and field competitions or diving competitions or whatever else can happen to make them come off as non-important.”
By modern TV standards, WWE viewing figures in Mexico soon proved a tremendous success. It’s not been uncommon to have cases where fully 10 percent of people with access to Televisa have tuned in, around three time the ratio achieved by the domestic groups — and indeed by WWE itself back in the United States. And while Mysterio appeared to make a distinct how-by-show difference, long-term ratings patterns that it is very much a case of the WWE brand itself being the main draw
While the additional TV exposure didn’t lead to an increased schedule, WWE crowds did start picking up. Within a year sellouts of venues, including the Sports Palace; were again common; a late 2010 Smackdown tour was the only visit to prove a notable disappointment.
The promotion even switched its US pay-per-view events from free broadcast on small cable television stations to the relatively new PPV capabilities in Mexico, where they’ve proven surprisingly successful and helped boost WWE’s worldwide figures even as US sales continue to slump. Cubsfan speculates the “big event” feel of pay-per-view may be a factor: “Maybe in a country where the wrestling culture is that you may get a pay off to a big storyline four times a year tops, being promised the resolution to a lot of story every month is extra appealing.”
Meanwhile the boom period of the domestic groups hit a slowdown as the decade drew to an end. To some extent the CMLL slump was a natural result of Mistico becoming overexposed, while the promotion failed to develop a natural successor who hit the same heights. But WWE clearly had some effect, with the exact issues depending on geography. In smaller cities the problem was the tours were directly taking away the customers who’d previously have attended major AAA or CMLL shows but now saved their cash for when the “major-league” WWE came to town.
In the major cities, most notably Mexico City itself, Cubsfan believes its neither the WWE live events nor money that is the problem. “The WWE TV is probably actually the bigger issue; it’s not that lucha tickets are expensive, but if you can get your wrestling fix just by watching the Raw, then you’re not going to the Arena Mexico show the next day, especially if it’s just some ordinary show. ”
That’s proven to be the case many times, with CMLL feeling the effects of running too many shows with reduced prices, such as deals where children get in for a peso (about five pence). The problem is that after a while this pricing stops being an effective novelty, but raising the prices back to normal levels now feels expensive without a special attraction.
And in recent years, the competition from WWE has become even more direct, spreading to talent recruitment. CMLL heavyweight champion Dos Caras Jr (nephew of international lucha legend Mil Mascaras) became a pet project of WWE as Alberto Del Rio, helped no doubt by his height, build, looks and strong English speaking abilities, all characteristics hardly typical of a luchador.
But even with that caveat, Del Rio’s success may have led his fellow countrymen to conclude that, contrary to years of experience, WWE might now genuinely be an option with prospects for a Mexican performer, even without the superlative skills of a Rey Mysterio. That belief was bolstered by repeated reports that WWE was targeting the Hispanic market in the US as well as Mexico, with the company drawing disproportionately high TV ratings among the demographic dating back to Mysterio and Eddy Guerrero’s feud in 2005.
The combination of Del Rio’s grand entrance to WWE and the realisation that his own top-dog status in Mexico was under threat may well have contributed to Mistico’s decision to finally accept a WWE contract. That in turn had another consequence for the Mexican scene: it is now demonstrably clear that if WWE decides it does want to raid talent in the future, the chances are it will get its man.
But unlike when Vince McMahon raided the US territories in the mid-80s (devastating the AWA in particular), that in itself may not be a major threat to CMLL and AAA. Both promotions are well used to talent jumping ship, and CMLL in particular continually cycles both new and old stars into top spots to keep the main event scene fresh and avoid relying too heavily on any one performer.
And while Cubsfan notes that the Mexican promotions are somewhat delusional about how secure they are from talent raids, he believes a dramatic loss of performers is unlikely: “AAA only uses older guys on top (guys WWE would be unlikely to take) and CMLL has so many different guys at the top or the near the top that WWE would have to take a half dozen before they started changing anything.”
CMLL also has structural advantages that were lacking in many of Vince McMahon’s former “victims”. As well as benefitting from strong media coverage, it owns several of its key venues. This brings costs down so low that the company’s finances remain healthy even when business is down — and with around 150 performers on its books, any star who demand payoffs in excess of their drawing power can easily be replaced.
AAA meanwhile is perhaps more vulnerable to changes in the TV market. Although it runs major venue shows, a core part of its business is creating television stars and then hiring them out to the countless small independent promotions in Mexico’s smaller cities and towns. It’s heavy emphasis on soap-opera style storylines and promos may put it at more risk of coming across as a low-budget version of WWE, though AAA’s consistent use of “hardcore” blood, guts and weapons matches should mean few will confuse the two.
In every previous case where WWE has entered a new area with strong television and begun running shows, it’s been a question of when, not if, the established local promotion has met its doom. And there must surely be concern that today’s Mexican youngsters may be growing up with the impression that WWE is what wrestling means. But with its unique advantages of language, culture, history and tradition, there’s still every chance that Lucha Libre as we know it will survive the WWE invasion.
The Rest Of The World
WWE’s global expansion has come a long way from the days when Junkyard Dog vs Mike Sharpe was considered a suitable main event in 1985 for the promotion’s first major overseas show in Sydney, Australia. Satellite television exposure helped the company make inroads into France and Italy in 1987 before debuting in the UK in 1989 and returning for a full-scale tour two years later, having run a show on our shores every year since then.
WWE was particularly hot in Italy for several years thanks to a high-profile TV slot for Smackdown, though when repeat tours drew declining crowds, the promotion was quick to cut back on dates, leaving a void that was briefly filled by the Nu Wrestling Evolution promotion that later ran in other European countries that were under-served by WWE events. NWE has now faded away meaning that for most of Europe it is only the visits of Raw and Smackdown that regularly draw paid crowds in the thousands.
But while WWE has succeeded across the planet, with previous Raw episodes containing footage from the UK, Germany, Italy, Kuwait, South Africa and Japan, it’s not always been able to dominate. The promotion’s debut tour of Japan in 1994 bombed at the box office with crowds as low as 2,300, well below those achieved by domestic groups. WWE didn’t return for another eight years and even today it’s appearances are more akin to touring rock concerts than a serious threat to Japanese promotions.
