El Rey Network Done Friday
El Rey Network will shut down early New Year’s Day morning. The network announced the news back on December 8th, but somehow everyone in wrestling seemed to miss it. Myself included: I only realized it because the never-ending stream of Lucha Underground repeats are set to end on Friday on my list of upcoming records and thought perhaps the show was done on the network. Turns out the network is done. I still follow their social media, and there’s been no mention of it there. The article above suggests it may live on as streaming content, which usually means they’re hoping some existing streamer will take their content. I can’t imagine they’ll be producing new shows under that name.
The end of El Rey Network had been coming for a long time; it was just a matter of when it was going to happen. The station was being dropped from cable, satellite, and streaming platforms even while Lucha Underground was still on the air. All of those are looking at ways to cut costs from their packages, and a network whose biggest hit was Lucha Underground (which was not a hit) is an easy cut. Univision cutting ownership ties a month and a half ago took away any protection the network might have; El Rey announced they were closing down but they probably would’ve been dropped soon in most of the 13 million homes left carrying them. It was over.
The amount of feedback on this news surprised me. El Rey has been gone for most people who had it for a while, many others never got it, so I was expecting a lot of “I thought it was already gone” sarcastic replies. It was more mournful, of people who liked the entire programming and people who knew LU was done but never got a final farewell.
Lucha Underground remains on Tubi, for now. It’ll disappear from there one day. Actually, it wouldn’t be a surprise if Lucha Underground El Rey disappeared on New Year’s Day – it’ll be tough to sell that content if it’s still available free somewhere.
El Rey Network shutting down is likely tied into the Lucha Libre FMV/PAPSA lawsuit. (I’m not the first person to make this connection.) The FMV in Lucha Libre FMV, Factory Made Ventures, also owns a chunk of El Rey Network. My hunch is FMV bundled up their share of El Rey Network content, Lucha Underground related material included, to sell to a streamer company and discovered what AAA had been up to in the process of getting it appraised for sale. FMV invested a lot of money in Lucha Underground and didn’t see it all back. They also likely invested a lot of money in El Rey and also didn’t get it all back, and are looking for ways to recoup those losses. AAA trademarks are unlikely to have a lot of value for a streaming company just looking to add more to their library, but they might get FMV back an extra million or three.
WWE will come up as a possible destination for this footage. I’m not sure if that works for FMV; it’s going to be harder to get someone to buy all their shows if they piecemeal out the biggest one. (It’s still not very big.) I’m also WWE would want Lucha Underground; the era of WWE buying whatever wrestling footage they can get their hands on seems to have ended. The primary use of the archival footage for wrestler documentaries, and most everyone featured in Lucha Underground either already has plenty of WWE footage or hasn’t gone to WWE. (If Fenix & Penta had gone to WWE, then LU would’ve been useful. They have plenty of John Morrison matches of their own and so on.) A lot of LU was also intentionally designed as content WWE would never put on the air, and those WWE standards haven’t changed much. WWE would like buy it just to have it if it was a minor amount of money, but others would probably be interested if it got that cheap and we’ve seen FMV hold out on making deals forever rather than settle for a low price.
Other News
El Sol de Salamanca reports Septimo Dragon was the victim of a hit and run accident on Sunday, and underwent surgery to fix a “destroyed liver.” He was said to be sedated and on a ventilator, with doctors waiting to see if they’ll need to do a second operation. A benefit show is being put together for January 2nd.
Both Damian 666 and his wife were hospitalized due to COVID-19 infections. Damian did make it home, his wife did not. Bestia 666 wrote on Instagram Tuesday about the passing of his mother, Guadalupe Lizárraga Ledón (54).
Tabasco luchador Furia (Enrique Hernandez Vera, 80), passed away Tuesday because of COVID-19. He was a wrestler in the 70s and had been honored last year along with Canek and other wrestlers from that state.
CMLL Informa has Terrible, Princesa Sugehit, Rey Cometa & Espiritu Negro, Stuka Jr. . That’s not quite the lineup I’d expect if CMLL was going to air the rest of Aniversario this week, so maybe have other plans. It’s also not the lineup I’d expect if they were going to actually air Templario versus Bandido this week.
Cibernetico is doing twenty-minute private Zoom sessions with fans for 500 pesos, among other ideas. You have to connect him through Facebook.
La Parka made a list of famous Mexicans who passed away in 2020.
Lucha Libre Vanguardia’s latest show will air on Sunday.
Mas Lucha has a new edition of their podcast.
ESTO has a story about training continuing on in Arena San Juan, though the photos make it look like three or four people putting on a performance just for the camera. (I think there really is training there, though maybe not when the photographer could come by.)
NVI Noticias has a profile of Oaxaca luchador Aguila Imperial.
Lineups
VPR (FRI) 01/01/2021 Arena Mama Luchas, Cuautitlán Izcalli, Estado de México
1) Killer Crock vs Kronoz
2) Coyote Azteca & Hijo Del Ángel vs Dragosth & Vengador
3) Cyber, Judas, Mordock vs Big Brazo, Eddy Santos, Fly Cometa
4) Máximo, Skayde, Súper Nova vs Brazo Celestial, Brazo Cibernetico, Brazo De Oro Jr.
5) Blue Demon Jr. © vs La Máscara [NWA LH]
Why? Mas Lucha is streaming this show live as a premium show because – I don’t know why. Putting aside the deadly pandemic and the rules against running a show, this is not a particularly good show. Blue Demon is listed as defending a title he has never won; in fact, I’m pretty sure I had a conversation with Super Nova (also on this card!) a couple of months ago about how he’s the one who still holds this title. Blue Demon is defending a championship because maybe Blue Demon wants to be champion and maybe the promoters believe themselves it’ll help, but the only people who care are the ones slightly annoyed that it makes no sense.
This will draw less than a hundred live and probably have about the same amount of people watching it, though no one’ll be signing up to Mas Lucha premium to see it. I have to sign up soon just to finish out MOTYC stuff but I’m pretty sure I’ll be skipping this one. I feel like the two to four hours it’ll take to film this show would be better served to update the Mas Lucha Premium site, which appears to be not updated for at least six months. Or maybe remove the link if it’s never meant to be updated again. Instead of “more stuff”, maybe we can all try to make better stuff in 2021. Myself included.
Lucha Memes (FRI) 01/22/2021 Turf Zone Arena, Kennedale, Texas
1) Gino Medina vs Dante Caballero
2) Aeroboy vs Joshua Wavra
3) Ricky Marvin vs Tony Deppen
4) Arez vs Daniel García
5) Xtreme Tiger vs Wheeler Yuta
6) Aramis vs Jonathan Gresham
7) Blue Demon & Low Rider vs Fred Yehi & Mecha Wolf
Full card for the Mexico versus the World card. I’m not sure I would leave the fate of Mexico up to Low Rider.
The card is good and I would like to pay to see it live, but we’re dealing with lucha libre promoters who care about nothing beyond ticket sales so a live stream will be a pleasant surprise. This is like the perfect show for a WrestleMania weekend card, but it’s not WrestleMania weekend, it’s actually January in a pandemic, and the number of people who are going to travel to Texas to see this show (or any show) are very few. The amount of people who are going to happily RT the lineup is high and some of those people would pay to see the show live if they could watch it without exposing themselves to a deadly virus.
Since that doesn’t seem an option, this will draw based on how many people in the area feel like seeing Blue Demon on a Friday night and how many people in the area feel like going to a Martinez Entertainment show since those are usually pretty good shows.
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RIP El Rey
their promos were amazing
they could sell you on why some totally forgettable Golan Globus flick was actually really important in the history of cinema, why you should watch a movie you already saw a thousand times because this time it’s “Brush Up On Your Espanol With – Blade Runner!”, and why it was a rare privilege to watch a kung fu movie with people you’ve never heard of and is probably on youtube a half-dozen times
Kind of sad. I guess the hope was that LU would grow El Rey like GCW/NWA grew TBS and NBA grew TNT.
LU as content and a new brand for WWE Network makes sense. Or interaction with NXT to compete with AEW.