La Guerra/Lucha POWER presents SANGREMANIA: Nights 1&2!

Just checking this thread out for the first time.

Holy crap, this is awesome stuff. Well done.

AAW VS i.W.e.: WORLDS COLLIDE
(03/25/19) (08:00 PM EST)

"Worlds lived, worlds died. Nothing will ever be the same."

THEME SONG:

Main-Event: (Landmine Exploding Deathmatch)
David Harley vs JD Belmonte

Co-Main:
Leonidas Belmonte vs Kaelara Sentarl

Champion vs Champion
Reggie Griggs (c) vs Cicatrices (c)

Other Matches:
Shrieking Sheik Open Challenge 
Johnny Hairpsray vs Dany Chance
The World's Sexiest TT (Connor Cooke and Micky Martin) vs The God Squad (JC Lamb and Leviathan Goliathan) 
Hoss Haskins vs Kerry Texan
Dirk van Oranje vs Timor Dragunov
Ocelot, Raccoon Dog vs AC Evans and 
The Decapitators vs Ghetto Child and Brody Macfarlane (AAW Tag Rules Match)
Shooterman vs Ron Vaughn
Broederbond vs The Starboyz (AAW Tag Rules Match)
Hazmat and Hayden Willis vs Jolly Roger and Errol Roberts

La Guerra de Sangre: A Lucha Libre Telenovela
Season 2, Episode 1
"Family Dinner: A Prelude to Season Two"
Orig. Air Date: April 17, 2019



All the luchadors on the La Guerra de Sangre roster thought it was awful nice of David Harley to treat them to dinner at a fancy restaurant in an affluent pocket of Juarez. They’d all received expensive-looking invitation cards in the mail. It was the weekend before training camp was set to begin; in a few days they’d all report to Rancho Imperio to prepare for season two.

Needless to say, everyone was rather surprised when the one person conspicuously absent from the dinner turned out to be David Harley himself. They also found it odd that a gang of black-suited security guards posted at the door to the private dining room demanded they hand in their cell phones before entering, but everyone just went along with it.

About two dozen luchadors sat at a long banquet table, eating from enormous taco platters and drinking margaritas, trying to enjoy themselves even though they were beginning to feel deeply uneasy. Why would David arrange a dinner like this and not attend it himself? The chair at the head of the table stood empty for nearly an hour as everyone did their best to eat and drink and be merry and pretend it wasn't. 

Suddenly a short, stocky man wearing a pair of ridiculous-looking Trival boots, the toes of which ended in two-foot-long pointed tips, shuffled into the room and sat himself down in that empty seat at the head of the table. He wore his hair in an unflattering bowl-cut and his paintbrush mustache hung well over his upper lip. He was wearing an ornately rhinestoned cowboy shirt tucked into skintight black jeans, and one of the largest belt buckles anyone at the table had ever seen.

All conversation in the room slowly tapered off into silence, and every eye made its way over to the goofy-looking guy with the funny boots. He cleared his throat and offered up a gap-toothed smile, then grabbed the nearest wine glass and rapped on it with a fork, which was completely and utterly unnecessary since he already had everyone’s rapt attention.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I arrive with very important news for you. First and foremost, I must regretfully inform you that David Harley will not be joining us for dinner. He shan't be joining us tonight, nor ever again, for he is no longer the owner of La Guerra de Sangre. He told me to thank you all for your hard work, and wish you the best of luck in your wrestling careers.”

The room exploded in a cacophony of uncertain murmurs and worried grumbling. The chubby guy clanked his wine glass again.

“Don’t fret, my friends. You all still have jobs, because David Harley has handed over ownership of La Guerra de Sangre to someone with a very keen interest in keeping this promotion alive,” the stranger said. “And I know this for a fact, because the man he sold his stake to… is me.”

“And who the hell are you, then?” a luchador at the far end of the table shouted, and soon half the room was shouting the same thing.

The stocky guy stood up from his seat, which hardly made him seem any taller. “My friends, my name is Adalberto Bonilla. You may have heard of me.”

All at once, the room fell completely and utterly silent. One could’ve heard a pin drop, had one been dropped, but one wasn’t. Everyone around the table was familiar with that name. They’d all heard it before. In the papers. On the news. In the streets. In scary stories told in hushed voices around campfires, about bad men who terrorized whole towns and killed just about anyone who crossed them or even looked at them side-eyed. Adalberto Bonilla. None of the guys around the banquet table ever had a face to attach to that name; it had always been the unspeakable name of an unseen evil you’d been told from a young age you never wanted to encounter. Indeed, there were a lot of law enforcement agencies in both Mexico and the United States to whom Adalberto Bonilla was little more than a faceless apparition. Detectives all across the continent wished they could one day be so lucky as to finally see the face who belonged to that name. But nobody at the table that night, seeing that face for themselves, felt lucky in the least.

“El Herrero de Guerrero,” one of the luchadors mumbled, sounding awestruck.

“Just as I suspected,” Adalberto Bonilla said while his squinty little eyes scanned the room and a wry smile touched his lips. “You have heard of me.”

Suddenly every luchador in the room was staring down at the tabletop. They all inspected their silverware intently, or gazed forlornly out over the taco platters and nacho bowls. Nobody dared look directly at the notorious drug lord as he continued to speak.

“David Harley ended up owing me a little more than he was able to come up with in cash, so I had no choice but to seize some other valuable assets of his,” Mr. Bonilla told the room. “And while I find it distasteful to discuss fellow human beings as though they are livestock, I do want to make one thing abundantly clear from the very beginning: Everyone at this table belongs to me now.”

The room remained silent for a long while. Just about everyone in attendance was too scared to even breathe, but one young luchador foolishly felt a sudden surge of courage and stood from his seat.

“Nobody owns me,” cried Alhambra, the youngest wrestler on the roster. He pounded a fist on the table. “I don’t give a damn what your name is.”

In the split-second it took for the security guards to draw their guns on him, Alhambra realized he’d made a grave mistake. Every which way he looked, he was staring down the barrel of a pistol. The other guys ducked their heads under the table. Alhambra sheepishly sat back down, and twenty frightened faces reluctantly resurfaced from beneath the tablecloth.

“Make no mistake,” Adalberto Bonilla continued, now with a distinct hint of menace to his voice. “Whether you like it or not, I own all of you now. And from this moment forward, we do things my way.”

---

La Guerra de Sangre: A Lucha Libre Telenovela
Season 2, Episode 2
"A Reunion of Rivals"
Orig. Air Date: April 18, 2019



As they made their way up that last leg of dusty ranch road and the sprawling expanse of Rancho Imperio spread out before them, Motosierra and his midget twin Minisierra breathed a sigh of relief. It had been a very pleasant motorcycle ride on this fine and unseasonably warm spring day, Motosierra at the helm and his brother on the back, but after a few hours of riding their legs and groins were cramping and their bodies abuzz from the constant rumbling of the chopper’s powerful engine. They couldn’t wait to stand on steady ground again. Motosierra’s back was absolutely soaked with sweat due to his brother clinging to him for dear life for the last several hours on end, and Minisierra’s belly was damp for precisely the same reason.

Motosierra pulled the chopper into the dirt lot in front of Rancho Imperio’s main building, the training facility. There were a surprising number of cars parked there, considering the remoteness of the ranch. Clearly, not a single soul dared skip out on training camp this year, now that Adalberto Bonilla was in charge. Ignoring where everyone else had parked, he pulled up right in front of the building and cut the motor.

Minisierra leaped off the bike and started flapping his T-shirt in an attempt to dry it out a bit. Motosierra was just starting to swing his leg over the gas tank to climb off the bike himself when he heard an odd sound. It was the crunch of gravel beneath some wildly spinning tires, approaching rapidly. Minisierra cried out, trying to get his brother’s attention, right before an enormous impact sent Motosierra flying ten feet across the lot.

In the split second before he was sent soaring, Motosierra turned his head in time to see a familiar white Rolls Royce convertible hurtling towards him at speed. He didn’t even need to see the man at the wheel to know exactly who was in the driver’s seat. There was the sound of metal crashing against metal, the well-polished chrome grill of the Rolls Royce colliding with the chassis of the chopper. The next thing he knew, Motosierra was airborne.

He landed on the hard, unforgiving dirt with a thud and writhed around in agony. Minisierra, hysterically screaming his head off, kneeled beside his brother to try and help him. The Rolls Royce, now with a crumpled motorcycle under its front wheels, came to a grinding halt just inches from the two brothers, and Sal de Roca leaped out of the driver’s seat, vaulted over the windshield, ran down the hood of the car and pounced on the two like a panther, raining savage blows down upon them both. A half-dozen gangsterish-looking fellows, led by Adalberto Bonilla, came running over from the training facility, and it took every single one of them working together to pry Sal de Roca off of the two Sierras.

“What is going on here?” Adalberto Bonilla cried, sounding more amused by the wild scene he’d stumbled upon than anything else. He certainly didn’t seem upset. “Sal, did you just try to murder two of my luchadors?”

Sal, still catching his breath from all the excitement, looked down sheepishly and kicked at the dirt. “I mean… I wasn’t necessarily going to kill them… I just….”

“You were trying to kill two of my employees in cold blood,” Adalberto Bonilla said, matter-of-factly. “I respect that.”

Sal’s head swung up, looking a little puzzled. He wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly.

“Excuse me, sir?”

“I admire your fighting spirit, Sal,” Mr. Bonilla continued, beaming. “And your creativity! Using an automobile as a weapon in an ambush... as a literal vehicle of destruction. Brilliant! You seem to have an almost unparalleled passion for violence, and I like that. I like it a lot. It translates well to the art of lucha libre.”

Sal couldn’t keep from grinning, being praised in this way by someone who’d long been a hero to him. Motosierra and Minisierra, bruised and bloodied and still sitting in the dirt, looked perturbed but did not dare to say so aloud.

“Gentlemen,” Mr. Bonilla said, now addressing all the belligerents in the brouhaha. “I’ve been doing my homework and I know that you guys have quite a rivalry brewing. I’ve personally found this rivalry of yours riveting, as it has included some of my most favorite pastimes: kidnapping, extortion, grand larceny, narco-trafficking, attempted murder. The works. It’s been a glorious sight to behold.”

Sal, Moto, and Mini all took a moment to smile at the praise being heaped upon them by their new boss. It had been a vicious lucha feud they could all take pride in, that much they could all agree on.

“But no rivalry can continue indefinitely in lucha libre,” Mr. Bonilla said. “At a certain point, there is but one honorable way to conclude a feud. To settle the matter once and for all. And the only way to do so is.... una lucha de apuestas!”

Motosierra and Sal turned to each other, looking more than a little dismayed.

“Your mask…” Mr. Bonilla said, pointing at Sal. Then he slowly swung his finger around to Motosierra. “Against yours. Miércoles.”

Sure, they’d been literally trying to kill one another just moments ago, but to any true luchador, losing one’s mask in a lucha de apuestas was a fate far worse than death! Were they really prepared to take things that far?

La Guerra de Sangre: A Lucha Libre Telenovela
Season 2, Episode 3
"Rules of the Ranch"
Orig. Air Date: April 19, 2019



After wrapping up the first night of training, Adalberto Bonilla gathered all his luchadors in the mess hall for another feast of epic proportions. If there was one thing that could be said of the notorious drug lord, it was that he knew how to put together an extravagant spread of food. His pudgy potbelly, which jutted out over the top of his skintight jeans, stood as testament to that. The guys were really enjoying all this eating well; many of them had gone to bed hungry nearly every night of their impoverished lives.

The day had been a great one. Training had been lighthearted and casual. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed hanging around in the gym, joking and chatting. They arrived to dinner in high spirits. The wrestlers strolled along a buffet line, overloading paper plates with sky-high towers of fresh tamales and chimichangas, then took to their seats and began to gorge themselves while Adalberto took to the floor to discuss a few matters.

The first thing he told them was that La Guerra de Sangre headquarters would be relocating from Juarez to Chilpancingo, effective immediately. One could feel all the air escape from the room right after he’d said it, as the luchadors realized what that meant for them. Chilpancingo was considerably smaller than Juarez, little more than a tenth the size, and way down south as well. Attendance at shows would certainly suffer. They’d have virtually no access at all to the American market, certainly not in the way they’d had before, straddling the border. And what visiting wrestlers could they possibly attract way down there, aside from some regional rubes? The negatives seemed to overwhelmingly outweigh the positives, but everyone already knew exactly why Mr. Bonilla was doing this. It was area on the map that he controlled personally.

Adalberto Bonilla’s second proclamation wasn’t nearly as shocking as the first, but still quite the cause for concern. “I forbid you all from associating with any luchador who works for a promotion other than this one,” he told them. “As far as any of you are concerned, La Guerra is the only wrestling organization on Earth.”

The guys all looked alarmed and exchanged nervous glances. Many of their friends and family members worked for other pro-wrestling promotions. There were hundreds of them scattered throughout Mexico. And the United States - where half the roster had relatives - was much the same way. You’d have a hard time finding a town anywhere on the continent without some sort of wrestling outfit of its own. They wondered if this was not an impossible rule to follow.

Mr. Bonilla went on for another twenty odd minutes, laying down assorted ground rules the guys were expected to follow, many strangely specific and seemingly arbitrary. No drinking within six hours of a match. No cell phones in sight whenever Mr. Bonilla is present. No barbiturates. No speaking in English, because Mr. Bonilla can’t understand it and hates the sound of it. The music of Vicente Fernandez is banned for precisely the same reason. And for all male wrestlers: no womanizing on weeknights.

By the end of it, any remaining enthusiasm the wrestlers might have been feeling about being there at the ranch had long since disappeared. But for one unlucky luchador, things would get even worse once dinner was over.

“Cicatrices, a word if I may,” Mr. Bonilla said, grabbing the ace of La Guerra by the arm as everyone else filed out of the room. “I’ve made a decision about your first defense of the sacred Mascara de Choque. It will be against none other than the Avispa de Alameda.”

Cicatrices struggled mightily not to laugh out loud, and could hardly suppress the grin involuntarily spreading across his face. Of everyone on the roster, the shrimpy little Avispa de Alameda might have been the least threatening of them all. Cicatrices could hardly believe his luck; his first defense of the highest prize in lucha libre would essentially be a gimmie.

“It is my honor to fight for you, sir,” Cicatrices said with as straight a face as he could muster.

“And I trust that you’ll make my nephew look good out there,” Mr Bonilla added.

“I absolutely promise you, sir, I will make certain your-”

Cicatrices’ sentence cut off abruptly and under his horned mask, his brow furrowed.

“Wait a second. Your nephew?”

“He’s really going to love that mask you’re giving him,” Mr. Bonilla said, drawing close to Cicatrices and gently slapping his cheek a few times. “I can’t wait to see the look on his face when he wins it.”