Luchadores moving in to another promotion.

Yeah, I have to work on my titles, but anyway if the title is kind of misleading, let me explain. Due to the surprise appearance of Black Warrior  (former CMLL luchador) in AAA, I investigates some the most known cases of luchadores moving from CMLL to AAA or vice versa. 

Blue Panther

The things you found while you are researching. I must say that the history and stories in lucha libre are endless; there will be occasions that I might miss some data from that vast information, which is the case with Blue Panther. What I didn’t know about El Maestro Lagunero, was that his debut (at least in the center region of Mexico) was with Universal Wrestling Association (UWA) in 1981, where he worked until 1991 when he moved to la Empresa Mexicana de Lucha Libre, todaya known as CMLL. The motives he had to change to another company aren’t clear, but certainly it was for good, because in EMLL he became famous, reaching one of the highlights of his career in 1992 with the feud with Love Machine.

Despite the good moment he was living with EMLL, Blue Panther left the company to join Antonio Peña in his new promotion AAA, where he continued his rivalry with Love Machine.

Because he wasn’t being booked that frequently, Blue Panther left AAA in 1995, but this time he joined Fuerza Guerrera and created a new lucha libre promotion, PROMELL, later they changed the name to Promo Azteca. But at the end he left this promotion too, and returned to CMLL, where he became a one of the star luchadores of the company.

Hijo del Santo

Hijo del Santo’s history is a bit more known, since his beginnings back in 1982, he has worked most of his career as an independent luchador, originally working for WWA in Tijuana and UWA in Estado de México, as a matter of fact he worked for both this companies and EMLL during the 80’s. This pilgrimage continued until 1991 when he stopped working for WWA and started working full time with UWA. Al tough that didn’t last long, because in 1992 he left UWA to work for AAA.

After giving AAA their only five star match, along with Octagon, Eddie Guerrero and Love Machine. El Hijo del Santo left the promotion. The reason, basically he wasn’t keen on some things that AAA was booking, like having matches with mini luchadores, women and normal luchadores.

He migrated to CMLL in 1995 where a year later a highlight of his long career took place, he changed from técnico (face) to a rudo (heel). He worked for CMLL wrestling for indy promotions in Mexico until 2004, when he finally left CMLL for good. The reason, well El Hijo del Santo didn’t like that in CMLL they registered as their brand the tournament La Leyenda de Plata, a tournament created to pay tribute to El Santo.

He worked as an indy luchador until 2009, when he returned to AAA as part of the group of luchadores that were fighting against Konnan and Dorian Roldan for the company’s control, having his last match in AAA in Triplemania XVII. In 2010 El Hijo del Santo sued AAA for using his image without his permission on the DVDs of that event. 

Until November of last year, he was wrestling as an independent luchador woking in Mexico and the US, mainly with his promotion Todo x el Todo.

Shocker

The 1000% Guapo hasn’t changed to another lucha company as many times as the two previews cases, but he is one of the most talked changes in the last 15 years. Much of this had to do with the fact that when he left CMLL for AAA, he was one of the stars of el consejo.

 The announcement of his arrival to AAA, took place in April 2005, during the presentation of Triplemania XIII. According to el Guapo’s personality, anyone would think that this change, was the correct choice for his career… time proved the opposite.

In 2006 he left AAA to return to CMLL, apparently he couldn’t adapt to the constants trips that AAA does around Mexico.

This is all for today, I’ll see you all next week.

Francisco Arreola

@fcoarreola