TNA Wrestling Remembers AAA Owner Antonio Pena October 6th, 2006 TNA WRESTLING REMEMBERS ANTONIO PENA
Everyone at TNA Wrestling would like to extend our condolences to the family, friends and fans of AAA owner Antonio Pena, who passed away on Thursday.
Pena was regarded as the greatest promoter in the history of Mexico’s Lucha Libre wrestling. In recent years, TNA Wrestling had formed a close and successful working relationship with Pena and the AAA promotion.
“Pena’s legacy will live on forever in wrestling history – he truly was a visionary that revolutionized Lucha Libre in Mexico,” Jeff Jarrett told TNAwrestling.com. “He will be missed by everyone at TNA who had the opportunity to work with him.”
Antonio Peña passed away last October 5th, at the age of 55 due to a serious Heart Attack.
Controversial to the end, Peña leaves a big legacy as a visionary in the sports entertainment bussines in Mexico, as
Amazing fact about the funreal I just heard. Take a look at the picture - notice the masks laying on the open part of the casket? It's lucha, so every masked man came wearing their mask, but as they got to the casket, they took off their Pena created mask (from their Pena created gimmick), and left it with the casket, to be cremated with him.
Pena was not a universally liked guy when he was alive. Like every other wrestler promoter ever, he had long feuds with unhappy talent - it was only a couple months ago where Vampiro ripped him while annoucing his own (ultimately failed) promotion. It's been amazing the last few days to watch everyone put all of those old issues aside and not only be respectful to Pena's memory, but distraught over his passing. Pena has a long feud with the original La Parka (the guy whow as in ECW/WCW), and yet Friday, it was the same La Parka who was leading a pre-match rememberance for Pena, thanking for starting him the La Parka gimmick and helping raise his famiily out of poverty.
I'm sure the nastiness will start coming back today, whenever the news about Pena's will gets out, but even then, it might just be people arguing who can carry on his legacy the best.
This sort of thing makes me wonder what it'll be like the week Vince dies. I'm sure it'll be unreal, and I supsect there will be more people willing to publicly say some not nice things.
One of the issues troubling me about the whole thing is, what is the future of AAA? IMO, the wrestling is pretty bad, and the television shows have much to be desired. But AAA is rich in Lucha history, and for better or for worse, has helped keep wrestling in North America in the spotlight in different locales.
I hope the industry down there will treat this loss with class and dignity, and keep all of the ugliness behind closed doors.
The future of AAA is an unknown on this point - on the admistrative side, Pena was doing everything. At the end of his life, Pena seemed to spend more energy covering up his health state (and trying to fix it) than preparing AAA for life without him. Family members (with little to no experience in the business) and Konnan are theorized to take over, but it's not a good bet that they'll be able to keep it together.
On the other hand, without Pena around, there are big money feuds which are now possible (but weren't before due to disagreements with Pena.) A La Parka (original) vs La Parka (AAA) feud is now possible, and could surely keep the company going from a drawing perspective. And since CMLL will never change from it's business plan of running major shows only in Arena Mexico, there's always going to be an oppurtinty for a promtoion which tours around the country.
AAA has 4 TV tapings in 8 days starting tommorow (they bunched them together to accomdate a planned Central America tour and a proposed US tour - who knows about them now?), so maybe that'll give an idea of what the situation is.