Last night, at Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre, former Ring of Honor World Television, World Tag Team and Six Man champion Matt Taven defeated Volador Jr to win the NWA World Historic Welterweight title and in the process, ending Volador’s 1,337 day historic title reign.
This is Taven first title in Mexico, as he has been a regular in CMLL, with his epic rivalry with Ultimo Guerrero and having now an alliance with anti-Mexican, pro-Trump character Sam Adonis.
To put into perspective the huge win of Taven over Volador Jr, Lucha Blog put it best: “When Volador’s reign started, he still was wearing a mask, Lucha Underground had not film it’s first episode, and Neville (Adrian Neville at that time) was the NXT Champion.”
Indeed, Taven’s win came as a surprise, the Massachusetts native became the first North American to win the championship that was revamped in 2010, when the National Wrestling Alliance told CMLL that they couldn’t use NWA sanction titles since they were not part of the NWA. The early roots of the World Welterweight championship goes back to 1940s when the promotion was under the name of Empresa Mundial de Lucha Libre (EMLL), the championship would transition to Japan and other promotions, but when CMLL wanted to bring it back to it’s home, they had to use a new one since the original one was off limit by the NWA itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uehpAOxbFbw
Since the new incarnation of the NWA World Historic Welterweight championship, there have been six champions, that list includes La Sombra (now the NXT Champion Andrade “Cien” Almas), Mephisto, Mascara Dorada (Gran Metallik in WWE) and Negro Casas.
The Volador Jr’s reign was a historic one, beating all comers in a span of almost four years. The “Air Predator” bested opponents like Carístico (the original Sin Cara), La Mascara, La Sombra, Kushida, Barbaro Cavernario, Negro Casas, among others. Last Friday, as an outsider, Matt Taven shocked the world when Volador Jr. was going for a top rope Huracanada and he was caught in Taven’s Climax for the three count.
It seems that we’ll be seeing Matt Taven compete in Mexico in CMLL more frequently, as he has a huge title to defend from now on. Congratulations to the new NWA World Historic Welterweight Champion, Matt Taven.
