2010s Lucha Libre Trends: Lucha Underground & FantasticaMania bridges a chasm between lucha libre and the rest of wrestling

third in a series. Previously: 

• Video streaming sites explode access to lucha libre
• +LuchaTV becomes the dominant force of independent lucha libre

The 2011 NJPW/CMLL FantasticaMania tour was an excuse to bring in Mistico for more than one date. He’d become a figure of interest in Japan over the preceding year. NJPW was reviving the concept of Mexican wrestling tours in Tokyo as a context to spotlight Mistico, augmented with other names from Mexico. NJPW didn’t believe the brand name of Mistico or CMLL would fill Korakuen Hall by itself but still gave it a try. (The second show instead had a Prince Devitt & Ryusuke Taguchi versus Kenny Omega & Kota Ibushi main event to help out.) the two shows would not have occurred if Mistico hadn’t been so popular, and even Mistico alone didn’t seem a sure bet. The shows were successful, but Mistico also left CMLL immediately after. Without him, it would’ve been reasonable if NJPW returned to regular tour shows in late January.

The first set of Lucha Underground tapings ended the weekend of October 19, 2014. The show was months behind schedule – AAA was telling people they’d be on the air six months – and everything remained tentative. The El Rey Network had ordered 13 episodes as a trial run, with the rest of the season dependent on the response. The early response was not healthy. Wrestlers went on Twitter to ask fans to show up after the first weekend of tapings was sparsely attended. Visa issues delayed some wrestlers from appearing that first weekend. Almost no one working on the show understood what it was going to look like when it aired. It wasn’t going to AAA, but it also wasn’t going to be WWE either. The few clues dropped created more skepticism than hype. The word from the taping improved as that first set wrapped up, but the first episode wouldn’t air until ten days later, and few had seen the finished product. El Rey was a network without a lot of properties, but also one with few shots they could take – it could’ve said 13 were enough and passed.

NJPW did keep running FantasticaMania without Mistico around, focusing on other stars who would become frequent guest players in their promotion over the decade. El Rey liked what they saw, picked up the rest of that first season, and agreed to a more over the next few years. Both FantasticaMania and Lucah Underground were highly visible attempts to export the Mexican style and aesthetics of wrestling in other countries. Neither presented lucha libre as in Mexico, but both did a tremendous amount to showcase specific Mexican wrestlers as stars in countries where they had were ignored.

Mexican wrestling did make it into the US and Japan before this decade. There were plenty of lucha libre shows in the US in the 00s too; I saw LA Park in and around Chicago plenty of times in front of a big crowd before he’d end up doing the same for MLW to end the decade. Ricky Marvin had a prosperous run in NOAH, and there were other attempts at reviving lucha libre tours before FantasticaMania. Those all felt like isolated events from the rest of the landscape, a separate world where lucha libre was taking place in the US, but the rest of US wrestling culture was ignorant of its existence. It took putting Mexican wrestlers in the same rings as wrestlers from other places to get fans from those other places to notice them and notice how good they were. The increase in Mexican wrestlers booked outside of Mexico doesn’t happen without people seeing them first on a native language broadcasted show. It’s a series of events to like Fenix & Pentagon Jr. from US unknowns to the most in-demand indie stars in just a few years. The exposure of NJPW took a guy like Mascara Dorada from a guy who only Mexican fans saw to an unlikely WWE signee. It’s cracked open the door wide enough to give opportunities even to those who weren’t part of those boundary-breaking shows.

The increased access to lucha libre, from places like +Lucha and the official promotions, helped Mexican wrestling expand outside of its usual territories. I’ve written about the effect that increased access has meant internal Mexican wrestling, but it’s also woken up the outside world to it. When it’s easy to pass around a link or a GIF of Hijo del Vikingo’s latest crazy highspot, it becomes easy for him to become a highly sought after star without even stepping foot in the US. It’s gone both ways too: this decade has seen a lot of Mexican wrestlers adapting moves and ideas they’ve seen elsewhere for their purposes.

That’s also been a consequence of Mexican wrestling becoming less of an island. Both FantasicaMania and Lucha Underground featured some modifications of the style. Lucha libre, as a style, has lost a bit of its own identity as it has moved closer to some merged common form. Fond concepts like piledrivers being illegal in Mexican wrestling died a death of a million Canadian Destroyers in the 2010s. The stigma of lucha libre being “different” and “wrong” still exists even while more of lucha libre than ever seems like an attempt to replicate a cool indie match seen elsewhere, just because it’s now easier to see those matches from abroad.

The business of lucha libre hasn’t kept up with the internationalization of the style. AAA’s attempts to export to the US, through both Lucha Underground and their shows, did not succeed. CMLL’s expanded little to the US outside of a sometimes strained partnership with ROH (which did not see the same benefit from brining in CMLL stars in the last part of the decade as NJPW had earlier.) The reality of Mexico based promotions not getting US Dollars as an additional revenue source (or much money from any other countries) has meant AAA & CMLL can’t compete for their top talent. The internationalization of Mexican wrestling has led to top stars once again getting offers for work from US promotion. The Mexican groups can’t outbid for their homegrown talent, and can only compete on prestige and location. The best and brightest Mexican talent generally was ignored by the rest of the world in the 00s, but have begun to be plucked away in the 10s. AAA & CMLL haven’t lost everyone, but it’s led to increased reliance on the people they’ve wanted, have relied upon both aging names with less US appeal while hoping to find and develop new stars. It’s a replenishment of talent tough to maintain; CMLL showed hints of not being able to replace everyone they lost by the end of the decade.

The demand for Mexican wrestlers elsewhere figures to increase in the 20s. There’s no big sign the Mexico based promotions will be any more able to keep them next decade. The Lucha Brothers’ return to AAA is the counterexample, which gives a little hope. The overall talent base seems deeper in Mexico than it was last decade, and the numbers leaving don’t are relatively few. There’s no immediate fear of a Mexican scene decimation like Europe was at the end of the decade. The fear instead is of the Mexico wrestling becoming second class in the eyes of their fanbase. If Mexico is just a feeder system for the very top names to go to WWE or elsewhere after they establish themselves, then perhaps foreign promotions will relegate Mexico in its market.