Last week, we reported that one of the directors of Consejo Mundia de Lucha Libre (CMLL), Salvador Lutteroth would make a public appearance.
Last year, a family coup was orchestrated in the company. Sofia Alonso Lutteroth was toppled by other family members of the Lutteroth clan. Sofia was the heir of the CMLL dynasty, but now, one of the grandsons, Salvador Lutteroth, is running the show.
For many, Sofia was rumored to do some modernization to CMLL, while many of the old guards of the Lutteroth clan wanted to keep as it is.
Here’s the report by Lucha Blog:
The San Diego Comic Con panel on lucha libre went live on YouTube on Saturday. It was pre-taped, in Spanish with English captions. It didn’t have time to go deep: everyone on the panel got one moment to talk about their own history with lucha libre and a second to talk about the legacy and future of lucha libre. Both Rey Misterio Sr. and the Lucha Libe Musuem’s Mauricio Limon were particularly concerned about the future of lucha libre for the same reasons I’ve heard for two decades; people not getting enough training or quality training before becoming wrestlers, commissions not being strict enough, too much flying, etc. CMLL’s Salvador Lutteroth – the younger of the father/son team understood to be running CMLL for about a year – was more positive about the future. There was no big discovery from any of his comments, though there was a consistent pattern: the success of lucha libre, and CMLL primarily, is due to developing the talents and abilities of Mexican wrestlers. Lutteroth spoke about this in reference to his grandfather (Salvador Lutteroth Gonzalez) starting the promotion, to maintaining the support of the fans for 87 years, and to the future of wrestling. It seems rare for a wrestling promoter to say “our future is dependent on our luchadors having really good matches our fans appreciate“, but there’s a lot of preserving the tradition/seriousness that makes Mexican people proud in there as well.
That view of CMLL and lucha libre, depend on development and good matches, suggests the people in charge of training are the most important people to the promotion. It also says the promotion and lucha libre will struggle when those talents aren’t being developed. The closest thing to palace intrigue is Salvador Lutteroth referring to himself as the third of four generations involved in promoting CMLL, which either means Sofia Alonso still counts or maybe there’s there another Lutteroth involved. This Lutteroth seemed to be interested and proud of lucha libre and its place in Mexico’s culture, but also notably did not mention a single luchador by name. Not a past one, not a current one.
