I watched the entire run of Heroes of Lucha Libre. You should not do that.

(If you’re a person associated with this show, close this tab, forget this post exists, and manage your self-care. I specifically mean you, Sam. There’s nothing here for you.)

Heroes of Lucha Libre went up on Crackle last month. The 10 episode series (plus an additional show showing clips of previous episodes) was taped in 2017 and 2018. Not much had been heard of it for years before Crackle mentioned they were premiering it. The best way to explain this show is to endure the opening sequence.

https://twitter.com/luchablog/status/1336159164238794753

Is this Scientology? It might as well be Scientology. Heroes of Lucha Libre is a strange tail of power rings, spontaneously formed islands, and someone named All-Powerful H pasted on top of a standard US take on a lucha libre show. If you’re intrigued by the fantasy elements, you’re going to be quickly disappointed. It’s a lot of talking at you, almost no showing, and never goes much deeper than that intro. If you want to see a lot of lucha libre on a show called “Heroes of Lucha Libre”, you’re treated to cut down and oddly presented matches in front of an artificial sound track. This is not a show meant to be taken serious – it seems meant to be airing a weekday kid’s block, enjoyed best by ten year olds – but it’s not captivating to keep someone watch it. Heroes of Lucha Libre as a single episode pilot proof of concept before major revisions; ten episodes of people yelling about things we never see happening is boring and unnecessary.

The comic book mythology seems added long after the matches were taped. My guess is this was produced as a traditional lucha libre concept, then cut to pieces and reformed with an entirely new fantasy frame. There’s no evidence of the rings or the islands the show keeps talking about in the actual matches, and there’s obvious editing around the portions of the lucha libre portion which don’t work for the fantasy setup. The result is a show where the announcers are endlessly talking about a mystic setup which ceases to exist the moment they switch to the ring. The sound is just as artificial, with fake crowd noise turned up loud all the time and ring noises added. (There’s also plenty of repurposed fan reaction shots.) The wires and masking tape holding the two concepts together are often visible; the live event portion of the show desperately tries to hide an announce desk part of the original show, until it becomes impossible when there’s a Mil Mascaras angle there in episode 9. None of this fits together. The ideas for this fantasy world or the lucha libre concept aren’t strong enough on their own and combining them makes them both seem sillier.

The Heroes of Lucha Libre matches themselves aren’t much. They’re mostly two out of three falls, and those are edited to be short. That editing is for length more than quality; there are a couple of matches that fall apart near the end but are left untouched. Few look like they’d be anything worth watching, even if they were complete. Some of the brawls seem to work fine for the live audience, but the cameras have trouble keeping track of them. There are an immense amount of cheap finishes, usually just for the sake of getting a rise of the crowd. They lose their effectiveness quick.

There’s almost no narrative to the show outside of a scoreboard transferring rings and currency from unit to unit. Both are functionally imaginary; everyone seems to have a ring in their pre-match video but the prizes battled for only exist on that scoreboard. The announcers and video packages spend a lot of time building up the fictional world, but no one’s actually living in it. The wrestlers can’t, since that world probably didn’t exist when they were filming this. There’s a lot of talk about wrestlers losing and being banished, then being bought back, but it’s just talk – the banishment is just another item existing only on the scoreboard. Early episodes build a seeming season long arc around finding a traitor with a mysterious tattoo who set the show in motion. The show never reveals who the traitor is or moves much in the direction of figuring it out; an omniscient narrator suddenly reveals a fact (the traitor was a tecnico) for no particular reason near the end of the run.

There’s clearly a lot of money thrown at this show. It went to waste. This is no Lucha Underground, and I think Lucha Libre USA had more to offer. This is not some hidden gem locked in a vault for many years. This is a half baked action-adventure show that never got picked up any outlet for valid reasons. It’s not an interesting failure or bad yet ironically enjoyable. It’s just extraneous content. This deep dive started over a discussion of if Crackle funded this. After watching, I’m pretty sure Crackle just agreed to take it for a minimal price after everyone else said no. It’s a dead show on arrival.

Many Random Notes That Would Be Better As Paragraphs If This Was Really Worth Talking About

• I would not recommend watching any episodes in full. I am not that cruel. If you’re looking for specific matches to watch
  • Maravilla/Tormenta from episode 6 is an actual good match, though one I’d expect would be better if they tried it again in 2020
  • Rey Horus/Ocelot vs. Damian 666/Bestia 666 on episode 10 is a solid lucha libre match, though they have a CMLL stage dive moment (in that it takes way too long for everyone to get in position)
    • the Rey Mysterio/Trumposo match from that episode is not particularly worth watching
  • the Kraken/Mayan elimination match on episode 5 is one time where the show feels intriguing enough to be something, though the wrestling itself has suspect moments
• The Crackle show descriptions also list most of the matches’ results, which seems a little bit counter-productive.
• The announcers are Famous Big Time (great to see Famous B getting a check) and Kevin Cassanova (Kevin Cassidy.) They’re directed to energetically yell for an hour and achieve that goal, no matter how annoying it might be. Cassanova is especially aggravating, but that is the bit and I don’t slight him for it. They also seem to be watching the matches at some earlier point than the studio segments, as they’re surprised by things happening that they themselves explained a few minutes prior. They generally aren’t prepped well; they’re thrown any time a tag match turns out to be elimination rules (which is all the time.)
  • There’s also Caseer (Alina Nastase), who is never explained and never interacts with anyone else on the show. Her implied role is to update the standings after each match. Her actual role is to obscure how nonsensical this is by being stunningly attractive and making lots of hand movements. She’s great at her job.
• Whoever booked the original concept loved having ‘real’ people get in on the action. The opening episode includes a child armdragging Pierrothito to set up the finish. Chik Tormenta attacks a guy on a later show.
  • One of the final shows has a guy in a Lucha Wrestling Puroresu shirt (maybe the guy in charge of the LA promotion of that name?) run in the ring and punch Rick Knox for no reason. LA Park then runs at this guy outside the ring and cracks him with a wooden stool, sending shards of the chair into the crowd. The announcers did not seem to know this was coming and have understandable trouble staying in character. Either someone was dumb for using a wooden stool for that angle, or LA Park really stood up for his friend Rick Knox by grabbing the first thing he could.
• Many people show up about once and never again; they go through a lot of people for a promotion lasting three live events. The “our islands [teams] of luchadors” concept is a workaround to the lack of wrestler continuity, even if no one could possibly care about the islands.
  • Heroes of Lucha Libre had Rey Mysterio Jr. – the actual Rey Mysterio Jr. – and he’s nodded at in passing a few times before first really focusing on him on week 9 (where it’s presented as a surprise.) Less than ideal! It’s only one match, but they had enough with him to shoot a vignette. Rey Mysterio isn’t cheap, and they didn’t get much out of that price.
    • Rey did this promotion and did AroLucha, among other work during this non-WWE period. I can only imagine which things he turned down, assuming there’s anything Rey was turning down.
  • This show will exist as a footnote because they strangely/unethically decided to trademark Dragon Lee & Mistico’s names in the US. They each appear in one tag match and never again, but HOLL still owns the trademarks to this day. Meanwhile, they’re not so concerned with other people’s rights. One of the first group images includes Dr. Wagner Jr.’s pose from the AAA video game cover. Dragon Lee photos are recognizable photos from his CMLL run. Others (including the Rey Mysterio Jr. photo) were taken straight from the luchawiki or similar sources. It is bizarre HOLL didn’t have their own photographers take photos while they were there, but maybe no one figured out they needed them until the show changed.
    • Dragon Lee & Mistico may have lost the rights to their name, but they did win “most epic moment of the season” so that’s something. (Whoever produced the episode was sure they’d be a big part of a season 2, and also that there’d be a season 2.)
  • Heroes of Lucha Libre have many people who fit a traditional lucha libre show and not something meant to be more superhero-ish. Solar & Fuerza Guerrera goes surprisingly ok for this concept (thanks to both guys’ willingness to take bumps into the seats), but the other older wrestlers are odd fits for an action-heavy superhero show.
  • There’s also a lot of people who appear to be California indie wrestlers under one time masks. Ocelot is the one that’s going to frustrate me when other people reveal it. I’m going to feel dumb.
  • Between Trumposo, Russian Hacker, and Sam Adonis as with his flag, many Trump references have aged a bit by November 2020. That does happen when these shows sit waiting to air for three years. Adonis tries out a “man who wears an iron mask to protect his beautiful face” bit, which might actually work fine as a midcard family indie show bit. Better than the Trump stuff now, at least.
• It’s not hard to tell the difference between the three different tapings. There are just as many different mat canvases.
  • Another taping uses the smallest six-sided ring I’ve ever seen, along with oversized turnbuckles that must’ve made it impossible for any ringside person to see the match. Probably not a coincidence that this is the least used taping.
  • One taping features a ring with a whole bunch of logos and URLs on it, including HOLLPrime.com. If you click that link, you’re not going anywhere, they gave up the domain years ago because this is a dead dead dead concept.
  • If Heroes of Lucha Libre was always going to be the concept it ending up being, it would’ve been taped on a soundstage, not increasingly empty arenas; it’s too weird to refer to obviously different buildings as the same Luchadome.
• my favorite production errors
  • Someone has a good idea to put up a graphic for each eliminated person in that Kraken/Mayan match. It’d be a better idea if they waited until the person was eliminated instead of popping them up about a minute or two ahead of time.
  • Cassanova plays the guitar to mock Rayo de Jalisco in episode 8. He’s not really playing; someone was supposed to dub in non-Mariachi music. No one ever did, so Cassanova is just strumming his hand to nothing while Famous B reacts.
  • Trumposo is the HOLL champion in whatever the original concept was, but he’s not in this superhero context. He comes to the ring with a belt in one of his matches, which the announcers handle by ignoring its existence. Fair enough, except the finish of his match is a belt shot. (Announcers go with it being a fake title belt on the spot.)
• of all the Crackle ads that kept on airing during commercial breaks, the Mariah Carey Christmas Special is the one which will haunt me to my grave