Cesar @ Box Y Lucha’s forum is great man. He transcribed many of the comments made by CMLL’s Paco Alonso in the latest Luchas 2000, all regarding the fallout with Santo. I encourage you to read them for yourself, as well as the people responding to them, but here’s some of the highlights:
– Paco blames the fallout totally on Santo, naturally. Alonso explains the only thing he ever required of Santo was to not work for the competition (who he refuses to name), and since Santo worked for AAA twice (on 12/05/06 in Puebla is one of them, Monterrey’s the other), he can’t work with CMLL. It’s one or the other.
Later on, Alonso says it was about Santo’s pay request. Alonso says everyone recieves good money, all dependent on where on the card they work, and everyone’s doing well. He’s not going to break that scale for Santo, by paying him more.
Alonso feels Santo is getting bad advice and hasn’t had a problem with him to this point.
– While the Dos Leyenda show will now honor a different wrestler each year – Black Shadow, Mil Mascaras, and Perro Aguayo are thrown out as possible future names – there will be no change to the Leyenda de Plata (which may happen in a couple of months.) CMLL has trademarked both names and will go to court to keep them.
– Alonso states a couple of times that El Santo is a legend, and El Hijo del Santo is a quality wrestler who has a legend’s name.
– Alonso says Mistico is a better draw than Santo, and other wrestlers receive far less than normal with Santo because his cost is so high.
– Mistico didn’t go to WWE and stayed with CMLL because Mistico has a “unshakable moral structure” and a greatful person for all CMLL has done for him. (That’s being Mistico’s reason is questionable at best, but the bigger point is if you get pushed by CMLL and leave, you’re an morally corrput ungrateful lost soul.)
This disagreement seems all about how much Santo gets paid per show, (and, relatedly, how much CMLL pays everyone else), and it sounds like it’d be immediatly over if they could agree on a number. As much as he backhands Santo here, if he simply didn’t want Santo at that price, he just wouldn’t use him and that’d be that. Things like isolating him from the CMLL workers and allied arenas, and continuing to use the Leyenda de Plata with him are Paco Alonso’s ways of forcing Santo make a deal before he loses more.
Or maybe Paco Alonso is just a vindictive dude. There’s a bit of evidence there. I hope he’s not mad at me!
If this was happening in the US, I’m sure there’d be some sort of legal fight over the Leyenda de Plata tournament name. Not sure about Mexico.
off topic: I’d like to point everyone towards a Luchas 2000 page or website or something so you can buy the issue with this interview (and more), but – they don’t have one. Come to think of it, you can’t actually buy Box Y Lucha on Box Y Lucha’s site or buy Super Luchas on Super Lucha’s site (and Guerrero del Ring’s message board seem to be have been close for a long time) – that seems to somewhat defeat the point of having a website that’s promoting the magazine.