Latin American Wrestling Entertainment made their debut last Saturday, November 20, 2021, with “Orígenes” in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico. Since I live in Puerto Rico, and the last wrestling show I attended here was back in 2019 for a Hugo Savinovich sponsored event called “Fight Forever”, I decided to make LAWE my return to local pro wrestling. Even Penta and Fenix were making an appearance in my backyard.

When I found out that the Lucha Bros were coming here for the debut of a new wrestling company whose one of the heads is Orlando Colón—known as Epico in his WWE days and the nephew of Carlos Colón—I just had to go and find out what this was all about. This is another Colón making his mark in Puerto Rican wrestling with a whole new company, which is interesting since Carlos Colón has been one of the main people running the territory here since the ’70s. That must be an awkward political scenario, but I have no idea how awkward it is since I’m not an expert of Puerto Rican wrestling.

Statement: Before getting into my thoughts and review of the debut event, let me say that my knowledge of Puerto Rican wrestling is very basic. I grew up with WWE and ROH, then my fandom moved on to Japanese wrestling, so I’m what you can consider the mythical casual fan, but for Puerto Rican wrestling. I say this since if I say something wrong, I ask forgiveness and correct me on Twitter.

Now that I said my previous statement: Puerto Rican wrestling has been kinda dead. I lived through one of the hot periods, when IWA and WWC were fighting it out weekly, but that lasted from like 1999 to 2003, I think. If you see Puerto Rican wrestling from the past few years, you will notice that the events are barely attended. There is always a new company popping out and disappearing due to politics or lack of funding. I hope that LAWE gives the island the shot that it needs to get better and make the fans happy and going back to the arenas.

On to the show:

As a way to promote the show without TV, they started shooting angles and interviews on Facebook and YouTube. They are of pretty good quality and some of the angles are kinda fun. There is a feud that takes place in a wrestling school, another in a house break-in, and even an old school wrestling guy trying to teach a youngin’ how it’s supposed to be done.

The event was supposed to start at 8:00 pm, but there was a long ass car jam outside the arena. I got there at 7:50 pm and there was an announcement in the ring that while they planned to start the show exactly at 8, they were going to start a little bit late due to the car jam outside. There is nothing I hate more than events that start an hour later without any reason, so I was happy that they announced that we were starting late and for legit reasons. I respect that.

The event started with a tribute to the namesake of the arena where the show was taking place, Mario “Quijote” Morales, a legendary basketball player from Puerto Rico. (I definitely recommend the documentary “Nuyorican Basket” to learn his story and of other legendary players of the legendary 1979 Puerto Rican National team). After his presentation, they showed the LAWE World Heavyweight championship which will be in a tournament soon. They also opened the space for the pro wrestling press in the area, which was really cool.

There were eight matches on the show. The main event was the best match of the night, with the Lucha Bros, Pentagon and Fenix, wrestling the NWA tag champs La Rebelión, Damian 666 and Mechawolf, who is Puerto Rican and was known here before as “Mr. 450” Josh Hammet. I can happily say that the Lucha Bros did not phone it in and the match was really fun and the crowd was on fire. The match ended at first with a DQ when the established heel team, La Anexión, interrupted the match. Orlando Colón came out to say that it’s bullshit, that it did not count, and the Lucha Bros and Rebelión turned it into a three-way tag match and demanded the match to restart. The Lucha Bros won by beating La Anexión.

The rest of the card was pretty fun. There was a lot of focus on younger talent, with the guys with more experience being the heels and the younger guys the babyfaces. There was a six-man tag where the heel team of La Anexión, which is composed of Mike Mendoza, Angel Fashion, and Mark Davidson, beat the veteran Star Roger, a new face called Samuel Olmo, and another one I did not know since they did not present him. This match established La Anexión as a force to be reckoned with and since they are some of the best young talents here, they are great in their role.

La Rosa Negra got the second biggest pop of the night in a decent women tag match. A wrestler called El Academico (The Academic) wrestled against JC Jexx, a young guy with a cool demeanor who even made out with a woman in the audience, in a match that stole the hearts of everybody in the arena. There was a five-minute squash match where Balthasar Bruno killed Athan The Immortal with powerbombs, which is always an awesome visual. The first match had a booger spot that paid off later in the night. And yes, to me these were a lot of new faces.

I have to give it to the crowd. For the first event, they were loud. When there was a face they did not recognize, they chanted “Who are you?” and then applauded them after the match. The biggest pops were for the Lucha Bros, La Rosa Negra with her dynamic entrance, Mike Chioda, and El Cuervo de Puerto Rico. I even detected some inside wrestling fans who were booing Drake Wuertz.

There were some miscues with the music and lights in the event, but that’s normal when it’s the first day of a big production. I gotta give it to the production, everything looked really good and professional, with even a cool-looking entrance stage. The sound was perfect since I understood every promo. The video packages recounting the feuds from their Facebook and YouTube were cool.

Let’s go to the negatives.

It’s the running time. The show ran from 8:30 to after 12 am and even though I had a good time, I was worn down. Some fans started to leave after the three-hour mark. They also showed a video package for every match, which was a bit excessive and started to wear thin in the audience that just wanted to see wrestling. When they started the show with a video package to then go to a presentation to then go to another video package, it took like 20 minutes to hear the bell ring for the first match. I think that future events should start straight with wrestling to then move on to promos and whatever they have planned.

LAWE’s “Orígenes” had more positives than negatives, and I had a good time.  With the event only having one great match and with the rest being decent, I would not recommend going out of your way to see a specific one. But if you are a Puerto Rican fan that is tired of the same old same old or a Latino fan wanting to check out wrestling from another country, I would recommend going to a future show or streaming it, which is happening soon.

I like that LAWE is focusing on the younger talent and giving chances to good wrestlers that did not have it before in other companies, like Star Rogers and the members of La Anexión. Let’s hope that LAWE is a positive for Puerto Rican wrestling and let’s see if the Puerto Rican fans soon start going back to filling out the arenas.

This card will be streamed this Wednesday but I did not catch the name of the service, so I recommend visiting their Facebook for more info.

Hey! Hope you enjoyed this article! I released a novel in Spanish called “La tercera venida”, an end of the world comedy. If you read in Spanish or know someone that does, the novel is a good time, hopefully. At least that was my goal. Read it or share it around!