Latin American Wrestling Entertainment (LAWE) held its second show, “Ascendencia”, last Saturday at the Quijote Morales Coliseum in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico. I attended the company’s first show back in November mainly to see the Lucha Brothers in the main event and came out with a good impression. This time, LAWE brought in Ortiz and Santana alongside Thunder Rosa for an event that while not perfect, it was a whole lot of fun. Besides the big stars from AEW, the other big event of the show is the start of the Heavyweight Title tournament.
There are two pieces of good news that we found out from this show:
1) LAWE will be on Puerto Rican television on Saturdays at 8 pm on Punto 2. This will be the weekly program that I assume will lead into big shows. As far as I know, the only other wrestling company on local TV is WWC, which has been on channel 4, WAPA, for over 45 years on the 11 am-12 pm Saturday slot. It’s a tradition and a staple, so we’ll see how LAWE does on Saturday nights.
2) Fans will be able to catch “Ascendencia” on Fite TV, on a date that will be announced soon on social media.
I’m going to applaud LAWE’s social media, specifically Facebook. A problem with indy wrestling in the US is that sometimes it’s hard to find the cards and find out what’s going on. Either they don’t care enough or you have to scroll through a million retweets and “Shut up and take my money” gifs. With LAWE, you can go into their social media and see who’s going to wrestle who. What a concept.
Also, since they don’t have TV (until now), they work really hard on making videos and promos outside of the wrestling ring to create feuds. You’ll see the next steps and how personal the feud between la Anexión (main heel team) and Star Rogers and his guys. There is a fun feud where el Academico (the Academic) wants younger pro wrestler JC Jexxx to take things more seriously and his solution is to follow and bother the younger man until Jexxx could not take it anymore and challenged him to a match at this show. Even NWA’s La Rebelión, Proud and Powerful opponents, threw a promo at them on how they aren’t real Puerto Ricans since they weren’t born on the Island. These are cool solutions for the “no weekly TV” and wanting to create feuds.
Let’s go to the show itself. Is it worth ordering on FITE TV when it comes out? All I say is it depends if you want to see growing pains.
Proud and Powerful had a really cool match with La Rebelión that went all over the ringside area, and strangely enough, PnP lost clean in the middle of the ring to the NWA team and then were gone like nothing happened. I guess Tony Khan is not informed on what goes down here. Thunder Rosa wrestled her friend La Rosa Negra (Black Rose) in a good match that ended with a post-match attack by a heel female team making their mark and the possibility of Rosa returning. The visiting wrestlers worked hard and seemed happy to be here.
The Heavyweight title tournament had its highs and lows. The main event, Star Rogers vs Mike Mendoza, was really good and the best match of the night, and they had the crowd in the palms of their hands proving how people are into their feud, even if it’s going to the trope of management interfering against the dastardly heels. Orlando Colón, Epico in WWE, is the figurehead, so of course, eventually, he will wrestle the main heels. Rogers and Mendoza went all over the arena and then had a killer match in the ring. The heel Mendoza won.
The other matches in the tournament included a great squash, a match I don’t remember that much, and one that really killed the crowd and never seemed to end. It’s up to you to find out by ordering the show on Fite TV since I’m not burying the wrestlers on what I call a 2 star match. It was meandering, did not have a point, people chanted “let’s go to the next match”, and even had one of those questionable booking practices of showing a video of one of the wrestlers being injured in Mexico over and over again as a distraction (which did not work since that wrestler won).
Unlike the first show, this one started with a match that killed it. JC Jexxx and Pulli la Bella vs El Academico and Jon Justice were really awesome and was the kick that the crowd needed to start off hot. A tag match of Olmo (who is at the NJPW Dojo this week) and Westside Mafia against La Anexión was an energy-filled high-flying hot match. There was even awesome energy on a mic segment between Damian 666 and local hardcore wrestler Rico Suave. The energy was not kept up, and here we go with the negatives.
There are still WAY too many video packages. I understand they do not have TV, but they either need to trust that the fans are up to speed with the promotion or just have shorter videos. More than once I heard fans yell “What’s up with the drama? Let’s go to the next match”. There is the stereotype that Puerto Rican wrestling fans are tough to please and they love nonstop action and blood and well….that’s true. They go to a wrestling show mainly to see wrestlers kick-ass and insult each other. What a concept.
Too many videos can kill a crowd, just like a long show. The show had a four-hour running time which was not needed at all. I think a new promotion should make a tight 2.5-3 hour show.
And a personal negative, Alberto el Patrón made a surprise appearance and promised to come back. Between him and Drake Wuertz being a referee, I worry that LAWE might become another safe haven for wrestlers with not so nice backgrounds. I understand people cheering for Alberto, he’s a known face and not everybody is up-to-date with wrestlers, but it’s a personal problem that I have. It’s just like Invader STILL having bookings in 2022. There are a ton of wrestlers that can be hired in 2022, just saying.
Also, the live experience was full of production mistakes that can be fixed on post-production. More than once the wrong song played, the wrong video played, there was an interview segment that played three times in a row which luckily was short. Hopefully, this can be fixed for future events.
LAWE “Ascendencia” was a fun night of wrestling. The last three matches were good, there was a fun opener, a cool high-flying match, and some hot segments that woke up the crowd when it went to sleep. I think there is promise in this new company and I hope that local fans continue supporting local pro wrestling. We have three companies with big names here, so hopefully and slowly the Island can become another option for wrestlers and Latino fans.
Powered by RedCircle
