Since AAA's sale to WWE last year, the public face of the lucha libre promotion has become The Undertaker, a man who's lucha libre experience is limited to all the times he wrestled for WWE events in Mexico. But so far, Taker has been well received in the role, particularly following the El Grande Americano mask match at AAA Noches de las Grandes. And while chatting with Rey Mysterio on "Six Feet Under," Undertaker offered his thoughts on why the match worked so well; because it allowed lucha libre to incorporate storytelling into the mix."It's not just high-flying now," Undertaker said. "What I can see happening and what we're trying to do is have that lucha style and then also wrap a story around it. Instead of it just being a spectacle and having these two dudes do incredible moves, if we can wrap a story inside of it, make all that make sense, I think it's gonna be a win-win and a huge growth opportunity for people."Undertaker's AAA will have plenty of opportunities to wrap stories around lucha libre over the rest of 2026. The WWE subsidiary will have their next big event, Verano de Escandalo, on July 25 from Aguascalientes. That show will be followed by two nights of TripleMania XXXVIV, the first of which will take place on September 11 in Las Vegas Nevada, while the second night will take place two days later in Mexico City. It will be the first TripleMania to be run in the United States since TripleMania IV-A in Chicago, Illinois in 1996.If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "Six Feet Under" and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription
Since it happened, I have sat back and watched the glowing reaction to the El Grande Americano mask match and barely been able to contain my anger towards it. I get it; it was a high quality match. But sometimes match quality is less important than what the match represents, and what that match represented was WWE deciding they could stick two non-luchadors in masks and build the promotion around them, while making the lucha talent secondary. But in case it wasn't obvious that the luchador had become secondary in a lucha promotion, that Undertaker quote makes it obvious. Because in his mind, before WWE came to town, lucha libre was just a bunch of small guys doing flips with no psychology, no storytelling, and all that b******t American wrestling legends like to say about wrestling that doesn't conform to their small minds.Here's what Undertaker, savior of lucha libre, may not know; lucha libre has been telling stories, and in my opinion telling them better than American wrestling has done, for a long time. As AAA's new "face," Undertaker should know this, given that AAA founder and booker, Antonio Pena was one of the greatest storytellers in history, the creator of Konnan vs. Cien Caras, the Gringos Locos vs. El Hijo del Santo/Octagon feud, the telenovela esq story involving the Apache Family and Billy Boy, and other memorable stories. And that's just AAA; CMLL has Atlantis vs. Villano III from 2000, and Mistico vs. MJF from just last year, among others. IWRG did a mask match between Trauma I and Canis Lupus ten years ago, one of the best mask matches I've ever seen. And yet Undertaker is going to sit here, with Rey Mysterio grinning like a spineless coward, and tell me there's no storytelling in lucha libre until WWE rode in on a white horse and changed things, in between the two taking shots at CMLL cause they insecure dorks?Basically what Undertaker's words tell me are the same thing Mysterio's quote from Worlds Collide last year about how WWE put lucha libre on the map; these are men, and this is a company, that don't understand what lucha libre is, something really sad in Mysterio's case. If they did, you wouldn't get comments like this, and Undertaker wouldn't believe he had only just unlocked the secret sauce missing to lucha libre, even though it's been there the whole time. All I see here is a bunch of clueless individuals who don't know a thing about what they talk about. So if I were Undertaker, I'd stop basking in the credit and saying dumbf**k comments and maybe try to learn about the part of the business I'm now part of. Maybe then he'll learn how out of touch he sounds.
