1997 Tournament Rey de Reyes Final

Last Sunday took place another edition of AAA’s competition Rey de Reyes, taking that in mind, in today’s entry we will remember the first occasion that this tournament was held back in 97, among some curious stuff related to it.

First of all the curiosities, any similarity with WWE’s King of the Ring is no coincidence, yeah, pretty much it, the only difference is that the luchador that gets to win this competition doesn’t earn the title of the king or a opportunity for a championship, instead they get a big ass sword, which is kind of cool if you compare it to the cheap crown or the trophy they used to give as a prize.

Anyway, moving on here are a couple more curiosities:

- Three foreign wrestlers have won Rey de Reyes, Jeff Jarret in 2004, Vampiro in 2006 and El Mesías in 2013.

- Only one luchador has been capable of winning Rey de Reyes in more than one occasion, La Parka (not the original, the one who replaced Adolfo Tapia when he left to the US) who has won Rey de Reyes five times, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2014 which he won on Sunday.

Back to the match, I must say it’s really good and a quite weird fight, mainly because of the fact that the four luchadores that made it to the first final are técnicos (face).

Lets add to this match something I don´t remember ever seeing in lucha libre, El Tirantes (on of AAA’s referee) came to this match using a microphone that allowed everyone to listen his dialogue with the luchadores, not annoying at all and well used, I bet this match would have helped Abraham Washington in what to do and say with a microphone during a match.

Lastly, the way El Tirantes conducted the match, if you’re not familiar with the story of this referee, well basically he’s a heel referee, in most of fights he was in, he used to side with the heel wrestlers. Well there’s no such thing in this bout, well for the obvious reason that there aren’t any rudo wrestlers in the ring.

What I didn’t like was all the técnicos teaming up to bully El Tirantes, he wasn’t bothering anyone or doing anything wrong… ok no, he has a bad reputation that doesn’t help in his case.

Any who, there is nothing more I can say about this match, so I give to you the first final of Rey de Reyes from 1997, with Latin Lover, Heavy Metal, Octagon and Hector Garza as the contenders of this fight. See you next week.

Francisco Arreola

@fcoarreola