Professional wrestling pay-per-view event
When Worlds Collide () was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event that took place on November 6, 1994, at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena in Los Angeles, California. It was scripted and produced by the Mexican "lucha libre" company "Asistencia Asesoría y Administración" (AAA), now known as Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide, and their American partner, International Wrestling Council (IWC). The show was produced by the technical staff of World Championship Wrestling (WCW). WCW Executive Vice-President Eric Bischoff had helped AAA secure the show to be broadcast by American pay-per-view providers, marking the first time a non-US-based wrestling promotion was shown live on US PPV television. The show was broadcast in both English and Spanish. Chris Cruise and Mike Tenay called the action in English, while Arturo Rivera and Andrés Maroñas handled the Spanish announcing. This event also marked Tenay's first commentating role in professional wrestling.
The PPV is considered the first time most viewers in the United States were exposed to the "lucha libre" style of wrestling, and contributed to several AAA workers, especially Eddie Guerrero, Rey Misterio Jr., Konnan, Psicosis, and Juventud Guerrera, working regularly in the United States for promotions such as Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), World Championship Wrestling, and the World Wrestling Federation/World Wrestling Entertainment (WWF, later WWE). The show is also notable for being the last appearance by Art Barr, who died 17 days later.
The main event of the show was a steel cage match between long-time rivals Konnan and Perro Aguayo, while the semi-main event was a tag team "Lucha de Apuestas", Mask vs. Hair match between the popular duo of Octagón and El Hijo del Santo taking on "La Pareja del Terror" ("The Terror Team"; Art Barr and Eddie Guerrero). While not the main event of the show, the semi-main event was rated 5 stars by the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, which also voted La Pareja del Terror the Team of the Year and Art Barr the Heel of the Year. After the match, Barr and Guerrero first cut off each other's hair and then had the last of it shaved off as a result of their loss.
Background.
The event featured five professional wrestling matches with different wrestlers involved in pre-existing, scripted feuds, plots, and storylines. Wrestlers were portrayed as either heels (referred to as "rudos" in Mexico, those that portray the "bad guys") or faces ("técnicos" in Mexico, the "good guy" characters) as they followed a series of tension-building events, which culminated in a wrestling match or series of matches.
The driving storyline behind When Worlds Collide was the emergence and dominance of a group known as "Los Gringos Locos", who had become the top "rudo" group in AAA. Initially after joining AAA, Eddie Guerrero had teamed up with El Hijo del Santo to form a tag team known as "La Pareja Atomics" "("The Atomic Team"), with AAA booker Antonio Peña invoking the fact that their famous fathers, Gory Guerrero and El Santo, had formed a very successful tag team in the past. The "Los Gringos Locos" storyline began as Art Barr started to convince Guerrero that he was in the shadow of Hijo del Santo, just like his father had been in the shadow of El Santo. The storyline tension between the tag team partners was bolstered by the fact that Guerrero and Hijo del Santo did not get along behind the scenes, but teamed up because it made sense business-wise. After some prodding by Barr, Guerrero turned on his partner and joined with Barr to form a team that became known as "La Pareja del Terror" ("The Terror Team"), but also earned the nickname "Los Gringos Locos" after a commentator stated that "those Gringos are Loco".
With the turn, Peña wanted the team to play up their "Americanness", with Barr and Guerrero wrestling in red, white, and blue gear and the two reminding the audience that the "American way" was better, as they cheated their way to victory. El Hijo del Santo received backup in the form of Octagón, a very popular masked "técnico" who had starred in several Lucha Libre Films in the past. The feud between the two teams would evolve into Barr and Guerrero recruiting other wrestlers, most importantly Konnan, who up until joining "Los Gringos Locos" was one of the most popular "técnicos" in Mexico. They were also joined by Madonna's Boyfriend, Black Cat, and Chicano Power, forming what was the first real "stable" in Mexico.
Guerrero and Barr focused on Hijo del Santo and Octagón, using "Los Gringos" as backup whenever they needed them. On November 5, 1993, Hijo del Santo and Octagón defeated "La Pareja del Terror" to become the first team to hold the AAA World Tag Team Championship.
On July 23, 1994, "La Pareja del Terror" won the tag team titles, with the storyline being that the duo had paid off the referee to call the match in their favor. The referee, known as "El Tirantes" (the Suspenders), became a "rudo" referee from that day on. The "theft" of the tag team championship led Hijo del Santo and Octagón to lay down what is considered the ultimate challenge in "Lucha Libre", a "Lucha de Apuestas", or bet match. For the match, Hijo del Santo and Octagón would "bet" their masks against the hair of Barr and Guerrero, a challenge that "La Pareja del Terror" eagerly accepted, and the match was set for the When Worlds Collide show in Los Angeles.
The other "Los Gringos Locos"-related storyline started when Konnan joined sides with Barr and Guerrero, switching from being a "tecnico" that was highly favored by the crowd to being a hated "rudo", as he turned on his long-time partner Perro Aguayo in a match against "Los Gringos Locos" in August 1994. The storyline played off the fact that years previously, Perro Aguayo had forced Konnan to unmask when he pinned Konnan in a "Luchas de Apuestas" match in CMLL. Konnan and Aguayo would face off several times over the following months, often as the captains in six-man tag team matches, most of which ended with inconclusive outcomes and both wrestlers hitting each other with chairs and other objects. On August 6, 1994, on a show called "Night of Champions" in the Los Angeles Sports Arena, Konnan teamed up with Jake "The Snake" Roberts to defeat the team of Aguayo and Vampiro Canadiense in two straight falls. After the match, the two enemies agreed to a steel cage match, which would be the main event of When Worlds Collide.
The third match on the show was billed as "AAA vs. IWC", presented as an inter-promotional match between the Mexican AAA and the US-based International Wrestling Council (IWC). IWC was the promotional name used for AAA shows in the United States, which meant they were not two separate entities behind the scenes. For this match, the IWC representatives were three wrestlers who had not worked for AAA, only IWC, as the Canadian Pegasus Kid teamed up with 2 Cold Scorpio and Tito Santana in Santana's highest profile match after leaving the World Wrestling Federation. The "rudo" trio of Blue Panther, La Parka, and Jerry Estrada represented AAA in a match where the lead up to the show focused more on the issues between La Parka and Estrada in the months prior to When Worlds Collide. La Parka had won the Mexican National Light Heavyweight Championship on September 4, 1994, which led to Parka's regular partner Estrada starting to ask for a title match, feeling that he had earned one. In the weeks prior to When Worlds Collide, the fans had begun to support La Parka, taking to his more comedic wrestling style and very distinctive skeleton body suit and mask, sowing the seeds for La Parka potentially turning to the "tecnico" side, but prior to this point he was still working the "rudo" side.
The second match of the show centered around one of the classic tropes in "Lucha Libre" in which one or more young wrestlers tried to earn the respect of veteran wrestlers, often with the veteran wrestlers portraying the "rudo" role and putting the rookies "in their place". In this case, the "veteran" was Fuerza Guerrera, who felt that the 19-year-old Rey Misterio Jr. had not earned his sport, pushing for his own son, Juventud Guerrera, as the future superstar of Lucha Libre. The Guerreras were also involved in a long-running storyline against the then-reigning Mexican National Tag Team Champions Heavy Metal and Latin Lover over the championship. The Guerreras had aligned themselves with Psicosis, a peer of Juventud Guerrera, who fought Rey Misterio Jr. on several occasions before the two of them joined AAA. For unexplained reasons, Fuerza Guerrera and Psicosis were not teamed up with Juventud Guerrera for the show but instead were teamed with "Gringo Loco" member Madonna's Boyfriend for the match against Heavy Metal, Latin Lover, and Rey Misterio Jr.
The opening match was another chapter in a long-running storyline between two of AAA's top "Mini-Estrellas", Mascarita Sagrada and Espectrito, a storyline that actually predated the creation of AAA in 1992. The "tecnico" Sagrada and the "rudo" Espectrito had been booked as rivals from the beginning of Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre's (CMLL) "Mini-Estrella" division, as established by Antonio Peña when he worked for CMLL. Mascarita Sagrada defeated Espectrito in the tournament to determine the first-ever CMLL World Mini-Estrella Champion in what was one of the early highlights of their storyline feud. When Peña decided to break away from CMLL to create AAA, a large part of the "Mini-Estrellas" division left with him, including the champion Mascarita Sagrada and Espectrito, vacating the championship in the process. In AAA Peña got the Mexico City Boxing and Wrestling Commission to sanction the creation of the Mexican National Mini-Estrella Championship, a title that Espectrito won by defeating Mascarita Sagrada in the finals of a tournament.
Mascarita Sagrada defeated Espectrito on April 16, 1993, as their feud continued to develop. Espectrito played a part in Mascarita Sagrada losing the championship to Jerrito Estrada on February 4, 1994. At this point in time, the storyline was expanded to also include Octagoncito as well as Jerrito Estrada and saw Octagoncito defeat Estrada to become the fourth Mexican National Mini-Estrella Champion. The highlight of the Mascarita Sagrada/Espectrito storyline came on the "Night of Champions" on August 6, 1994, when the two faced off in a "Luchas de Apuestas" match with their masks on the line. After splitting the first two falls, Espectrito was caught cheating in the third fall, losing the match by disqualification and being forced to unmask afterwards.
Event.
Prior to the start of the show, the producers from WCW/Turner Broadcasting System made several changes to the format, including reducing the overall time by 40 minutes. This forced AAA to change the first three matches from the traditional best-of-three falls to a single fall. The producers also cut back on the elaborate entrances that AAA usually had for their major shows and did not allow AAA to have a dark match before the broadcast started to rev up the crowd. The producers also pushed to change the semi-main event to a singles match between El Hijo del Santo and Eddie Guerrero, but in the end, the match went on as originally planned and advertised.
The opening "Mini-Estrellas" tag team match featured fast, high-flying action from all four wrestlers, with Octagoncito starting out easily controlling the match against both his opponents, but when the , Sagrada tagged in the much larger opponents (Espectrito , , Estrada , ) used their size advantage to control the match. During the match, the four demonstrated that their smaller size allowed them to wrestle at a faster pace and perform moves not expected of people of their stature, including a dive through the ropes to the floor and leaps off the top rope. The end came when Espectrito slipped on the top turnbuckle and landed awkwardly on the top rope; moments later, Mascarita Sagrada pinned his long-time rival while Octagoncito forced Jerrito Estrada to submit to "La Escalera", a Russian leg sweep into an armbar submission.
For the second match, Fuerza Guerrera was designated the captain of the "rudo" team while Heavy Metal served as the captain of the "tecnico" team. To win the match, a team would either pin or force the captain to submit, or pin