5 things I learned attending IMPACT Wrestling & AAA's "LUCHA INVADES NY"
Arguably the world’s premier Mexican pro wrestling organization, Lucha Libre AAA was founded in 1992 by Antonio Peña Herrada. AAA, as a live touring company, has more than 600 events a year and generates more than 260 hours of content annually.
Since its inception in 2002, IMPACT Wrestling has also been one of the world’s largest pro wrestling organizations. Known to often work with other wrestling companies, IMPACT Wresting promoted a September 15, 2019 event at "The World's Most Famous Arena," New York City's Madison Square Garden. Titled LUCHA INVADES NY, the star-studded show Hulu Theater show featured top talent from both IMPACT and AAA.
I had the pleasure of attending this historic event and below are 5 of my observations from tonight's exciting experience.
#1: The IMPACT Wrestling roster is incredibly versatile
Lucha is its own style of wrestling, to say the least. Not all wrestlers can pull off Lucha, especially if they have not worked extensively in Mexico.
While a lot of the IMPACT Wrestling roster does have experience in Mexico, a lot of that talent is not at all synonymous with the Lucha world. However, that is not something that mattered too much at this show.
With exception to the championship match between Tessa Blanchard and Taya Valkyrie, all of the matches featuring IMPACT talent also included AAA stars. In turn, Brian Cage, Sami Callihan, LAX, Michael Elgin, Chris Dickinson, and Josh Alexander all stepped out of their comfort zones, yet still put on entertaining matches.
Without spoiling anything, I had never seen Michael Elgin or Sami Callihan work an inter-gender match before and the match absolutely told a great story. If anything, it shows versatile, stylistically speaking, much of the IMPACT roster is.