The CMLL challenge to the Blackpool Combat Club has been answered.
Following their latest match on last week’s episode of AEW Rampage, Mistico and his fellow CMLL wrestlers issued a challenge to Jon Moxley and the Blackpool Combat Club to come fight them in Arena Mexico.
In a new digital exclusive video released by AEW, Jon Moxley and Claudio Castagnoli have responded to the challenge from the CMLL crew.
“The luchadores of CMLL stand in solidarity against the forces of AEW and the elite of the elite, the Blackpool Combat Club,” Moxley said. “Things haven’t gotten too out of hand yet. War is an ugly, terrible thing. But in sport, competition, it can be beautiful. Professional wrestling, the greatest sport in the world, transcends borders and cultural barriers. The struggle in the ring, the human struggle of the man in the arena whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who if he fails, fails daring greatly.”
He continued, “Questions are answered in the arena. Since the time of David versus Goliath. In this case, show style is superior? Lucha Libre, national heritage, with all its idiosyncrasies, or the style of the Blackpool Combat Club? We don’t have a style. The BCC is decades and decades, a lineage of knowledge, shared, passed in, preserved, and protected. So in this story, the BCC, should we walk into Arena Mexico, be David or Goliath? The answer is, we’re both.”
From there, Claudio Castagnoli jumped in and added his two cents.
“You picked a fight with this guy, my friend, Jon Moxley. You thought you just picked a fight with the biggest star in AEW,” Castagnoli said. “Prison rules, right? You go after the biggest, baddest guy you can, just to make a name for yourself. You know what? Kudos for that. What you didn’t expect is you picked a fight with me. See, my story with CMLL goes back 15,16,17 years, when I just started in the United States. I was like, you know what? Lucha Libre. Over 100 years worth of heritage. That’s what I want to learn. That’s what I want to get good at. Every week, I ordered the DVDs. Every week, I watched the shows, and I went down to Mexico for a week straight. I went to the offices of CMLL, begging for a chance. A week went by, a week and a half went by. I got rejected every single day.”
Castagnoli continued, “So you know what I did? I just became the best luchador there is. Not out there in the arena, in the back. In the dark, where nobody was watching. I trained day in and day out, and now here you are, trying to show off what Lucha Libre actually is to the great audience of AEW, and you got showed up by the Blackpool Combat Club because we train when nobody’s looking, because we work when others stop. That’s what we do. Then you invite us to your house. See, we didn’t invite you to come here because this is our house, our rules. But you invite us to your house? If you do that, su casa is gonna be nosto casa.”
(H/T to Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.)