Last week we published an article by Deathmatch star Ciclope. He’s a former start of Destrucción Total Ultraviolenta (DTU) and founded Vanguardia Lucha Libre. He said about the company:
One day of living with Miedo and Draztick we wanted to do just one show, but Miedo said that if we were going to do things we had to do them well (…) This is how we decided to leave DTU to create something of our own. There is no reason bad for which we left DTU, only that we could not do anything else there and that we wanted to grow in another area.
Well, this week, the idea of having an Autoshow in Mexico, following the current restrictions of Lucha Libre in the country because of the pandemic, has been canceled.
Here’s the report by Lucha Blog:
Hidalgo based Vanguardia was to have the first drive-in show in Mexico on Saturday night. The show was originally supposed to air live on Mas Lucha, but switched late to airing on delay. Saturday night came and went without anything being said about the show. Ciclope, on his personal Facebook account, revealed the show had been shut down by the authorities moments before it was set to start. He apologized to the fans. Ciclope blamed an unnamed lucha libre person for alerting the authorities.
Comments by Vanguardia and others close to the promotion indicate they believe Crazy Boy & DTU are responsible for shutting down the show. Vanguardia is run by former DTU who left to form their own group. There have been occasional negative comments between the two promotions. It appears the younger wrestlers for both groups were told to pick one or the other. There’s not previously been sabotage. Vanguardia hasn’t publicized any proof Crazy Boy is responsible. Crazy Boy has said nothing. He is scheduled to appear for an interview on CuadrilateroTV tonight at 7 pm.
The other side of this is the Vanguardia show got shut down because it didn’t have the approval to exist. Vanguardia’s show was happening in a secret location, on a date announced very late, and not promoted much in the last day, seemingly in hopes of not getting found. Whoever called the authorities could only do it because Vanguardia was running a show they weren’t allowed to run. It’s was a bad idea for someone to call the authorities on them – DTU’s shows don’t appear to be any more legal, if it was them – but it also might be a bad idea to have wrestling shows during a pandemic. There is only unhappiness in what happened with this show but it was always a possible outcome.
Later in the week, Lucha Blog expanded on the topic:
There’s no definite conclusion to the Vanguardia shut down show saga. Crazy Boy appeared on CuadrilateroTV Facebook video show, saying he and DTU had nothing to do with it. Crazy Boy’s position is he’s so focused on his own work that he doesn’t even know what else is going on; he was contacted by someone asking if he was running a show but didn’t even know it was happening or who was running it. (This story also helpfully fits into the DTU narrative of the Vanguardia guys still seen by normal people as DTU stars and Vanguardia not having succeeded on their own.)
The Crazy Boy interview doesn’t seem to change anyone’s mind. The fanbases of those two promotions are polarized to see each other as the enemy, even while the promotions are making the case there’s room for both of them. (There is, because no one’s really making much money on all of this; if the business was the real concern, both would be making more out of their older content or working on any other way to make money outside of running shows.) The people who are publicly staying neutral are Mas Lucha, who avoided talking about the situation until late in their podcast and suggested many other possibilities for who could’ve called the authorities on Vanguardia. DTU & Vanguardia are two of the only Mas Lucha promotions left running at the moment, so the production outlet isn’t really in a position to take sides.
We’ll keep you posted if anything turns up.
