World Wrestling League (WWL) had their Summer Blast event in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico. The show was done on Sunday, which is a rare day for WWL, since they usually run on Saturdays and it had a low attendance compare to their sold-out show of Golpe de Estado last month.
The show was poorly promoted, featuring a roster without their big hitters, like WWL Heavyweight champion Mecha Wolf 450, Mike Mendoza, El Nazareno or Angel Fashion. Not even Vanilla Vargas, who is set to debut for AAA on July was at the event.
WWL is still running with their International Wrestling Association (IWA) revival feud, even after they had lost the elimination match in Golpe de Estado to the heel stable of Puro Macho. Many, hoped that in May that was the end of WWL trying to revive IWA PR, but yesterday prove that it was just the beginning.
The IWA PR Revival Is Getting Tiresome
The show’s biggest star was former IWA World Champion Slash Venom (Flash Flanagan) returning to team-up with Savio Vega in the main event against Manny Ferno and WWL Americas Champion JC Navarro. Again, the show was heavily emphasized by the IWA vs. WWL story.
Just went you thought that things couldn’t get more cloudy for the number one promotion in Puerto Rico, Huracán Castillo Jr., an IWA-Original and son of Cuban wrestling legend Huracán Castillo, returned to WWL to aid Slash Venom and Savio Vega (Huracán Castillo Jr. is better known to WWE fans as Jesús from Savio Vega’s Los Boricuas stable in the WWF Attitude Era).
A fan in Social Media posted a interesting argument about that return. “When World Wrestling Council brings Huracán Castillo Jr, they are deemed as old-fashioned and out of touch.” The fan later added, “because WWL brought him we are suppose to cheer for that?” That fan is right, WWC gets slammed – specially by me – for getting behind the times, but WWL does the same thing and we are expected to keep ourselves neutral and not criticize the product.
The IWA story was good for one night, but many fans felt robbed at Golpe de Estado, because they realized that IWA PR was never returning and that WWL had done the angle just to attract IWA loyalists to their event. By now, fans are turned off by the whole IWA PR Revival.
The Same Guys Are On Top
Another notable thing that fans have realized is that, as WWC does, WWL is still having veterans as their main focus.
Golpe de Estado was a great opportunity to elevate Manny Ferno and his stable. Fans loved the new arrogant, but vicious heel, but, they want him in fresh feuds, not with wrestlers past their prime like Savio Vega or Slash Venom, neither with Huracan Castillo Jr.
WWL seem to be willing to elevate Roxxy, who is the new face of intergender wrestling, but many fans know that she is not a finished product and has a long way to go. Morgan and Tabu (Westside Mafia) are getting their push, but when you have Mike Mendoza looking apart from everybody else and Angel Fashion exploding in the Florida indie scene, those young wrestlers aren’t looked as main eventers. WWL is running the trouble of pushing the wrong guys and doubling down.
Getting Trapped By What They Hated
Their next show is in Mayaguez, War in the West II, and they have advertised the missing wrestlers from last Sunday’s show, but, are they the main focus?
The company is desperate for a new angle and a different appeal, but they are slowly becoming a mirror of what they hated in WWC. Many fans talked that WWL is the alternative, but in the last few shows, the veterans are getting the main spots and slowly but surely, match quality is declining.
Before Konnan‘s relationship with WWL ended, he noted in an interview that the world is changing and match quality is getting more focus than the stories. In Puerto Rico, that’s in reverse, the tendency is always to focus on the stories. Many old-school wrestlers will tell you that fans need a reason, a good story to go to the shows. But in places like Europe, Japan, the US, Mexico and even Canada, the quality of matches is heavily emphasize and a good story will come with that match.
Konnan encapsulated perfectly the problem in Puerto Rico, “Why would I want to bring a dude to Mexico that only do rest holds and can’t work the strong style? Puerto Rico is very outdated, the sad reality is that if you’re a wrestler that wants to live off of wrestling, you need to get out of the island and do the style that the world is doing and not the thing that is popular in the island.”
If WWL continues this trend, they are doomed to repeat the same errors that are now hurting WWC and the wrestling scene in Puerto Rico.
