The most common match in modern Mexican wrestling is the three person versus three person match. The match type dates back to the 50s, and often was used as the main event on shows without a major singles match. It exploded in popularity in the 1980s. El Santo suffered a heart attack wrestling (the not yet) Los Misionerios de la Muerte and inadvertently made the idea of set three man lineups a popular thing. Many other teams followed as the match type rose to dominance. 3v3 matches have lessened slightly in more recent years, with the increased influence of US and Japanese style lineups and match types, but it’s still the most common match type to see. The 3v3 matches are commonly referred to as “trios” matches, but the match type itself is technically called “relevos australianos.” The reasoning for the name had been mostly forgotten and instead guessed at. Maybe it was literally taken from seeing it in Australia. Maybe it was somehow inspired by the Fabulous Kangaroos, even though they were 2v2 team. People have asked me through the years and I’ve never been completely sure, and neither have been other people I’ve asked.
Clinch 225, an August 1956 magazine recently republished digitally by Box y Lucha, offers a contemporary answer. It also turns out to be a bit dumb. Relevos Australianos is Relevos Australianos because…someone just thought it was a cool exotic name to market a match. There is no reason beyond that; they’re Relevos Australianos for the same reason they’re Royal Rumbles, it was just a marketing slogan to sell a show. It’s hard to imagine now, but this was a point in Mexican wrestling where fans had never seen something as wild as “three people on one team against three people on another team”, and someone thought it needed a special name to hype this foreign concept. The someone was Televicentro promoter Jesus Garza Hernandez, who was looking for a way to hype up a match on their March 15, 1952 show. Medico Asesino, El Bulldog, and Lobo Negro defeated Tonina Jackson, Abel Krim, and Gorilita Flores in the first-ever Relevos Australianos match. “Australianos” was chosen to make it come off like a foreign idea coming into Mexico, no different than booking a masked man as being from another country.
Three versus three matches had been done before; that was taken to Mexico from the United States. The first relevos australianos were done with the same rules as 2v2 tag matches at the time, and what we think of as elimination rules now; the match simply kept going until everyone is defeated. Televicentro promoted their special relevos australianos again in April and June. On July 1st, EMLL’s Salvador Lutteroth promoted their first relevos australianos, keeping the name. It’s Lutteroth who came up with “Captain’s Rules”: a fall can be won by beating the captain of the team or the other two members. According to Clinch 225, the first relevos australianos under those rules saw Cavernario Galindo, Black Shadow, and Murcielago Velazquez defeat Emilio Charles, Raul Torres, and Murcielago Velazquez. (Clinch 225 does list Velazquez on both teams; he’s probably actually just on the winning one.) Televicentro kept with their rules. EMLL survived and Televicentro did not, so their rules became the definite ones.
There may be other stories to be told, but a 1956 story about a match type invented in 1952 is likely to have the definite version. Relevos Australianos is just a cool name. The history was lost probably because Televicentro was a short-lived promotion on the losing end to a war to EMLL and its history has largely been forgotten to time.