On February 27th, at the press conference for the upcoming 2014 Homenaje a Dos Leyendas event, CMLL officially announced the 2014 En Busca de un Idolo (“In Search of an Idol”)tournament to begin the first week of April. The announcement made official the third year of the tournament, which was designed to showcase and subsequently push newer and/or younger wrestlers in the promotion.
CMLL is a promotion with no shortage of annual tournaments. With so many tournaments yearly, one might assume that each individual tournament means very little. That is largely true. A few special, higher quality products can always standout even when threatened with oversaturation. En Busca de un Idolo has proven capable of standing out as a noteworthy tournament in a promotion overstuffed with them.
There are likely several reasons for that. First off, the tournament provides upwards of four singles matches per week which is notable in a promotion that runs rather few singles bouts. Secondly, all of the tournament matches for this year’s edition stream live on Terra.com.mx, allowing fans to avoid the frustration of CMLL not airing anticipated matches on their regular television programs with is an all-too-often occurrence in that particular promotion. The tournament also features younger wrestlers who for the most part have most part have not yet received a spotlight in CMLL. It is an opportunity to see wrestlers spotlighted who otherwise would not be.
Lastly but perhaps most importantly, is that the tournament has a two year track record of having a lasting and meaningful impact. Both the 2012 and 2013 winners (Titan and Vangelis, respectively) went onto immediate success in the aftermath of the tournament. Within 13 months of winning the inaugural En Busca de un Idolo, Titan had captured the Mexican National Middleweight Championship (his first CMLL championship), became 1/3 of the Mexican National Trios Champions with Rush and La Mascara, and competed in the New Japan Best of Super Juniors tournament. While Vangelis (31) was much older than Titan(21) when he won the tournament, he still saw his career spike teaming up with upper level wrestlers Rey Bucanero and Terrible, as well as going on the FantasticaMania tour after his win. There is reason enough to believe based on the stories of those two winners that the 2014 winner will be in for a new and sustained push.
In 2014, the participating wrestlers are from CMLL’s Gen14 training class as well as several other new-to-CMLL luchadores. Eight of CMLL’s 14 Generation class luchadores faced eight other CMLL newcomers in a cibernetico with the final eight remaining wrestlers progressing to the tournament proper.
The rules for En Busca de un Idolo have changed throughout the years. Rather than confuse things by mentioning prior year rules, below are the rules of the tournament instituted for the 2014 version. The 2014 tournament structure – as initially announced – is as follows:
- The eight participants form two teams of four luchadores coached by Virus and Negro Casas, respectively.
- In the opening round, each luchador is to face every other competitor (seven in total) in a lighting match.
- Lightning matches are one fall, 10-minute time limit matches
- The point system is a tiered system (from least weight to most weight):
o Match Result – Winner receives 20 points, both participants in a draw receive 10 points, and the match loser receives 0 points.
o Public Vote – The public votes via a website setup by CMLL. It is not entirely clear how these votes are account for about 30% of the total points awarded (compared to 20% for match results and 50% for judging)
o Judges Results – Four judges evaluate each wrestler individually after their match based on the wrestling ability and ability to connect with the crowd. The judges each score on a 1 – 10 rating system and the four scores are added together (ie. max score of 40 points).
- The judges are Shocker (who a sub when he no shows), Mr. Niebla, Tirantes, and a weekly guess judge (w/ Zacarias usually chilling out in the background).
- If there is a second round, it will presumably be similar to the 2013 version where the top four in the standings (or possibly the top two from each team) advance to a four wrestler round robin tournament.
- The finals will be a one on one match between the wrestlers with the most points after two rounds.
All tournament matches are streamed live on Terra.com.mx every Tuesday and Friday beginning April 4th. The Tuesday matches air around 9:30 PM ET (with prelim matches starting at 8:30 PM ET). The Friday matches air around 10:30 PM with undercard matches starting at 9:30 PM ET.
Team Virus: Guerrero Negro, Jr., Hechicero, Star Jr., Super Halacon Jr.
Team Negro Casas: Barbaro Cavernario,Cachorro, Dragon Lee, Soberano Jr.
