TWoLL: Television

The big topic of lucha libre in 2008 has been televised lucha libre. There may be more hours of lucha libre on TV than ever before. Critics of the WWE’s influence point towards the national airings of RAW and SmackDown! as keeping people from going to lucha shows, but the amount of CMLL and indy groups doing traditional available to the general public has increased noticeable instead. (It’s odd, and an indication of it’s strange and seemingly under appreciated relationship with Televisa, that a successful AAA has decreased at the same time.) Keeping with that idea, here are to anecdotes about similar issues in previous years.

First, the end of televised lucha in the 50s. The Televicentro show refereed to was a rival promotion to EMLL, formed primarily to be a television program for the network

Opposition to televised lucha libre seems to have begun with the Televicentro broadcasts. Before putting up the Televicentro ring, [the owner of the network, Emilio Azcarraga solicited authorization from the Secretary of Communications and Transpartion (which was in charge of television), but he neglected to consult the Commission of Boxing and Lucha Libre. In res ponce, Adolfo Fernandez Bustamante, the head of the Office of Public Spectacles, took Televicentro to court to block the broadcasts. Once the case reached the courts, however, the argument against lucha libre broadcasts was re-framed as mater of protecting underage viewers. Moreover, the subject of debate moved form the television studios to the live events, as the court decided to consider the question of whether minors should be permitted in the arenas.

The judge in charge of the case granted the Televicentro empresa a stay and ruled the minors could continue to attend the luchas. But he also issued a strong condemnation of the behavior of the rudo wrestlers and ordered the commission to clean up the event. He charged the commission’s secretary of lucha libre, Barradas Osorio, the EMLL, and the head of the wrestler’s union with negotiation a list of rules for lucha libre performance that made it impossible to perform the rudo roll at all. And of course, without the rudos, there is no lucha libre.

Meanwhile, the government’s attention shifted form the issue of minors entering the arenas back to the question of televised matches. This time, the city’s regent, Ernesto Uruchurtu, prohibited the transmission by fiat because many parents had allegedly complained that their children had been injured while attempting to imitate the wrestlers. Rafael Bararadas later justified the ban in his memories. “It was said even those little ones attended events, in those cases they were accompanied by adults who very probably explained to them what the wrestles were doing, and that didn’t happen in the intimacy of the homes where the wrestlers were seen by children to whom no one explained what was happening on the television screen, and from there came the danger that was involved with television wrestling. Children were also barred from attending the live event on the ground that they might try to approach their heroes during the match and accidental be squashed by the rudos fighting outside the ring.”

(p 183-4)

and the return of CMLL to TV in 1991.

From the start, many wrestlers and promoters expressed concern over the economic impact of television. Some veterans of the 1950s remembered that arena attendance dropped sharply when it was broadcast by Televicento. One journalist called Televisa wrestling an underhanded attack on Carlos Maynez’s Lucha Libre Internacional by the EMLL. Other wrestlers did not oppose televised broadcasts as such but were worried about its terms, especially the scheduling of the broadcasts. The two biggest shows at the arena are Friday night and Sunday afternoons, and many feared the Sunday broadcast would compete directly with the arenas. hence televised broadcasts immediately realized a host of concerns. Manny Guzman, president of the Sindicato Nacional de Luchadors (SNL) was in charge of representing the wrestlers’ interests in the EMLL’s negotiations with Televisa, but in the spring of 1992 several disgruntled wrestlers broke with the Sindicato, publicly accusing Guzman of selling out the membership. They were immediately blackballed by the union.

(p201)

Worth noting that this story is actually playing out right now, in ‘real’ time, as the Wrestling Observer posts old editions of it’s newsletter from this time period at this site.

One last piece, about how Anotnio Pena, Televisa and the formation of AAA changed the landscape once more. All wrestlers who jumped to AAA were immediately kicked out of the union, for betraying their principles and giving the power to a television network.

Some wrestlers followed Pena. The wrestler Justiciero took over as head of a new AAA-affiliated union to represent the now blackballed wrestlers. Meanwhile, the Sindicato, still led by Guzman, suddenly changed its position to oppose televised broadcast. The movement against televised lucha libre climaxed in June of 1993, when the Sindicato went on strike. The strike culminated in a march on the presidential residence of Los Pinos by a group of about three hundred wrestlers, many wearing their masks. The strikers hoped to get an audience with President Salinsa de Gortari to ask for his intervention in the matter, but the president was unavailable and the strike fell apart. As a result, the Sindicato lost much of it’s influence. One group of wrestlers left to join [the independent/referee/retired union], while others reached an accord with the EMLL to form an in-house union. Televisa agreed to continue to broadcast EMLL events (one of the demands of the strikers), but the strike failed to stop the televised transmission of lucha libre, or to wrest its control from the media conglomerate.

The book says there are now in-house unions for both promotions, separate from each other. There have been (and may still be) other independent unions, most notable the one referred to above which represents those who are retired.

I would suspect, but do not know, that when we talk about a wrestler belong to CMLL, we actually mean they apart of CMLL’s union and receive bookings with CMLL thru the union (and depending on their standing with CMLL.) In exchange, CMLL has first priority for all dates. Independent wrestlers are not union members and negotiate with CMLL directly over bookings. Wrestlers are free to leave, because they’re just resigning from their union, not quitting an employer. Which is why some have been signed to contracts. I’m totally guessing here and may be way off.

Even if I am off, I do think maybe a union is what the current independent wrestlers need. I keep thinking of this as a third major promotion (and I’m not saying no to that), but there really doesn’t need to be any promotion. Just enough wrestlers banding together and chipping into to create a central office for promoters to contact to get in touch with wrestlers while allowing wrestlers to pool information about trustworthy (and not) promoters. It could also serve as an accreditation service; I would imagine people get opportunities by claiming people trained them, who never actually did, but a union could prove or disprove where needed.

Hope you enjoyed this feature. Maybe I’ll get around to reading Dan Madigan’s book at some point and do something like this (or not.)