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

In a war of an opener, Luciernaga endured everything Viper Lopez could throw at her for the victory

Winner: Viper Lopez
Rating: ****

Dorado fought valiantly against the trio of La Guerra rudos, and even got some timely help from Los Rudos Terribles, but it wasn’t enough and ZDM put away the veteran lucha as expected.

Winner: ZDM
Rating: ***

El Macho put on a hellova show, and did everything he could to win that belt. A late frog splash in the middle of the ring looked to end it, but Dungeon kicked out and eventually hit his Darkness Falls to retain the belt

Winner: Dungeon Dominguez
Rating: ****

The janitor was new on the job, and still hadn’t quite memorized the layout of the inside of the arena. Hopelessly lost in his search for a certain broom closet, he found himself trying every door he came across in a dimly lit hallway somewhere backstage. Finally, he found a door that was unlocked and threw it open, hoping to see some mops and a few brooms. Instead, he found two men seated at a card table, glaring at each other in stony silence.

It was one of the referees, Skip Pimentel, perhaps the most highly respected ref in wrestling, famous for being a fair and just arbiter of matches. Across from him sat an extraordinarily short little bald-headed fellow. The janitor recognized him as Paco Pequeno, Mr. Bonilla’s right-hand man. In his right hand was a well-polished silver pistol, pointed directly at the referee across the table. Only after the janitor noticed the firearm did he also note the beads of perspiration dotting Skip Pimentel’s forehead.

Both men turned their heads and stared silently at the janitor. Skip looked scared. Paco looked only mildly annoyed. He swung the gun around and aimed it at the janitor.

“You’re interrupting a very important discussion, senor,” Paco said flatly. “Please excuse yourself.”

The janitor could hardly slam the door shut quickly enough and scampered away down the hall and out of the building through the first emergency exit he came across, never to return to the job.

Exposito writhed around on the mat, clutching at his elbow. His cousin El Descosido and the referee Notorio rushed over to attend to him as Los Arboles celebrated their surprising victory nearby. Oro de Acapulco, who had applied the armbar that caused that sickening snapping sound, did not seem at all concerned for the man whose excruciating agony he’d caused. EMTs arrived in the ring and could see immediately by the improbable angle in which Exposito’s arm bent beneath the elbow that his injury was a serious one, and he was rushed out of the arena and to a hospital.

La Guerra’s owner, evil drug lord Adalberto Bonilla, sat alone in the big room backstage he’d claimed as his office, enjoying a large cigar while watching the event unfolding out in the arena on a closed-circuit television. They were currently between matches, but his mind was already on the main event that was up next. Laying on the tabletop before Bonilla was the item that Lobo Muerte and Cicatrices would be fighting over in that match; the illustrious Mascara de Choque. The highest prize in lucha libre.

He still didn’t get it. Why was everyone so interested in getting their hands on this tattered old mask? Obsessed may have been the better word. Bonilla understood it was a fairly important piece of professional wrestling history, the mask of the most dominant rudo in Mexican history and all. But people acted as though the mask had some sort of mystical properties. As though it were the Holy Grail. And that is just ridiculous, Bonilla thought.

As unimpressed as he was with the mask, Bonilla had to admit that whenever he was around it, he felt an irresistible urge to put the ugly old thing on. Realizing in a few minutes he’d need to hand that mask over to officials so they could in turn present it to the victor of the main event, he took the opportunity to slip it on one last time.

As he pulled the mask over the top of his head, the lights in his office - and unbeknownst to him, throughout the entire venue - began to flicker wildly….




Peering through a small gap in the curtain, a young luchadora watched Concepcion Schultz celebrate in the ring over the battered body of her defeated opponent Casimiro Olmeida. She took a deep breath, preparing herself to step out through that curtain and face the La Guerra fans for the very first time, to rain on Concepcion Schultz’s parade. She put her hand on the flap and waited for her entrance theme to sound over the PA, her signal to move.

Suddenly, the lights everywhere in the arena cut out. The crowd hooted in anticipation. It caught the luchadora off-guard, as this additional theatrical flare had not been discussed with her by the lighting engineer or anyone else. Shrugging, she decided to roll with it. A lights-out entrance was a tried and true way of making a dramatic arrival in pro-wrestling. She heaved the curtain aside, and through the pitch blackness that enshrouded the arena she marched down to the ring…




“What in the flying fuck is going around here?” Mr. Bonilla shouted as he clawed desperately at the laces on the back of the mask, sitting in complete darkness in his office.

He tried to tell himself that what had just happened hadn’t, well, just happened. But it had.

When he’d slipped that mask on and the lights had cut out, Bonilla heard an odd whoosh behind his head as the laces of the mask seemed to pull themselves as taut as they could possibly be pulled. There was an intense and seemingly endless tightening of the mask around his head, like he was being crushed by a boa constrictor. Bonilla was having difficulty breathing, and he struggled mightily to jam a few fingers under the bottom of the mask to keep it from crushing his windpipe.

“HELP!” Bonilla cried. “SOMEBODY HEEEEEEEELP!”

Thudding footsteps hurried down the hall. The door flew open and his masked henchmen Los Ultimos came rushing into the dark room in a panic, expecting to be faced with a group of rival cartel members, probably in the act of assassinating their boss. They were perplexed to find Bonilla alone at his desk, clawing crazily at the mask over his head.

“Mr. Bonilla!” Ultimita cried, sounding shaken. “What is wrong, senor?”

The lights flickered wildly for a moment, then burned steadily once again. They could see through the holes in the mask that Mr. Bonilla’s face had turned a sickly shade of blue, and his eyeballs were red and bulging.

“Get… this… fucking… mask.... off of me!” Bonilla gasped, pointing frantically to his head.






Conveniently, the lights came back on the moment she hit the ring. Concepcion Schultz and La Luciernaga whirled around at the sound of her stepping through the ropes and met her in the middle of the mat, the referee kindly supplying microphones.

“Everywhere I go, I hear a lot of talk about you, Ms. Schultz. How great you are. How revolutionary of a luchadora you are. How you deserve to be battling at the top tier of La Guerra with all the men. How you might well be the first female to hold the top title in lucha libre one day. Well I’ll tell you one thing, Concepcion: You don’t impress me particularly much.”

The crowd booed the newcomer, having become firm fans of Concepcion Scultz over the past few weeks. Concepcion and La Luciernaga turned to each other and made a sarcastic show of being hurt by the stranger’s remarks.

Concepcion raised her microphone. “Your words wound me deeply, strange lady that nobody’s ever seen or heard of. So who the hell are you, exactly, and what do you want?”

The mysterious luchadora smirked. “Me llamo Baronesa, and I'm sick to death of hearing about how amazing and perfect Concepcion Schultz is. And I’ve heard you complaining about the lack of female talent here in La Guerra, the lack of quality competition for you to go up against. I know you’ve been bitching to the boss about how he should hire some more women. Let that be a lesson to you: be careful what you wish for, Concepcion. It just might come true. La Baronesa is here now. And I challenge you to a match.”

The crowd ooohed and aaahed and waited with great anticipation for Concepcion to respond.

“I consider myself to be a feminist, and I typically have a policy of not committing violence against my fellow women,” Concepcion said as she put her hands on her hips, shaking her head disapprovingly at Baronesa. “But for you… I’ll make an exception. You’re on.”




Little Ultimita ran behind Bonilla and started yanking at the laces as his brother Ultimo Grande and father Penultimo stood guard by the door. He tried his damnedest, at one point putting his foot on the seat back for leverage and truly pulling with all his might, but the laces wouldn’t budge even an inch and Mr. Bonilla was getting angry about having his head jerked around violently.

“Um… you guys?” Ultimita said, looking at his brother and father pleadingly.

They joined him behind the boss and each tried their hand at removing the mask, but it felt as though it had been cemented to Bonilla’s head. They didn’t know what to do.

An official appeared in the doorway, there to pick up the mask to bring to ringside for the main event which was due to begin in a matter of moments. Bonilla gave the mask one more forceful jerk and felt like it might rip his face clean off his skull, so he relented.

“Do any of you have a spare mask in your locker?” a defeated-sounding Bonilla asked Los Ultimos.

They nodded. Bonilla tilted his head toward the official. “Then go get it, and give it to this guy.”

The crowd roared in near-hysterical jubilance. Cicatrices had won! The mask would finally be returned to its rightful owner!

Lobo Muerte clambered to his feet and got in the referees face, chastising him for not throwing out the match after the interferences from both his enemy El Descosido and his ally Doctor Dorado. He was particularly angry about how long the ref had allowed him to be double-teamed by the ZDM boys. Skip Pimentel, ordinarily a very firm and forceful figure who never showed fear in the face of upset wrestlers, looked sheepish and apologetic and kept saying something about his hands being tied. Eventually, Lobo had enough of Skip’s excuses and clocked the referee with a vicious elbow, sending him tumbling out of the ring. Lobo followed him outside and proceeded to put the boots to him out on the floor.

Inside the ring, Cicatrices climbed the corners, raising his arms in the air and celebrating along to the raucous cheers of the crowd. Since the referee was currently getting the crap kicked out of him, the ring announcer climbed in to present Cicatrices with his prize instead. For some reason, he looked more than a little reluctant to do so.

Cicatrices joined the ring announcer in the middle of the ring, and had his wrist raised in victory. “Ladies and gentlemen, your winner… and the new, two-time Mascara de Choque champion… CICATRIIIIIIIIIIICEEEEEEEEES!”

The crowd roared. The ring announcer thrust the mask, wadded up into a tight ball, into Cicatrices’ hands and exited the ring as quickly as he could. Cicatrices unfurled the mask and was about to raise it over his head in triumph, but suddenly stopped and stared down at what he was holding in his hands in utter disbelief.

It was not La Mascara de Choque at all. It was just some cheap, neoprene mask, the kind you could get at a flea market for only a few pesos. It looked quite a lot like the mask the midget jobber Ultimita often wore to the ring. The screaming fans all fell silent instantaneously as Cicatrices threw it down on the mat in disgust.

“BONILLAAAAAAAA!” Cicatrices cried angrily, and stomped on the mask several times before abandoning it in the middle of the ring and running backstage, looking as though he might be angry enough to kill somebody.