Here's what the success of Mask vs. Mask taught us

What's going on, everybody? Welcome on. It is the Brass Ring Media Pro Wrestling Podcast. It's Monday, June 1st, 2026. Good to be here with you guys. It's been a couple of weeks and wanted to fire up the old pod for that reason. It's been a while. It's been a couple of weeks. That's kind of the clip that we've established here for these. But more so than that, That's something that I really, really wanted to talk to you guys about. And I'll get to that in a minute. Thank you all for being paid Brass Ring Media members. Appreciate it. Thank you for the support. Thank you for trusting me and us here at Brass Ring Media to cover pro wrestling and the pro wrestling business the right way. It really means a lot. It means a lot. And we're not able to do this without your support and without you saying, hey, yes, I want more of that coverage. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Hopefully you guys are checking out everything that hits Brass Ring Media for paid subscribers like yourselves. Had a really cool interview that hit a few weeks ago now with the creator of the Slow Burn Shoot documentary about AIW. That was a heck of a conversation, about 30 minutes of just not just about the film, but about the importance of independent wrestling and just how necessary it is to the future of the wrestling business and so I was able to interview the director as well as the subject of the film which is the founder of AIW out in Ohio so that's up now as a podcast for you guys for paid subscribers here to Brass Ring Media hopefully you guys are checking that out also I wrote up and finally was able to fully watch all the episodes of the Hulk Hogan Real American documentary on Netflix. Finally got through that and... I've been waiting to finish all of it before putting out a column, reviewing it, and that dropped as well. So you can check that out, Brass Ring Media. You guys will know where to find it. It's up on Substack. It's right there under the editorial features column. But yeah, that was... I could do a whole podcast on that. But I think... just to give it a quick nod. Again, you can check out the full written story up at Brass Ring Media right now. Overall, I thought that the documentary certainly was entertaining. There's no question about that. I think it did a really nice job of capturing the rise of Hulk Hogan and Hulkamania and just how big that was culturally. I think the documentary did a nice job of capturing that. And then, you know, I don't want to give away the story too much, but it also did a good job of capturing the The lack of remorse that Hulk Hogan has for some of the things that he's done and said during the, you know, the back half of his career here near the end of his career and his end of his run as a relevant WWE superstar between, you know, the racist comments and the lack of apology on those. If you were hoping that this documentary was featured Hulk Hogan giving like a passionate apology for that and apologizing for his lack of apology years ago. You're not going to get it. You don't get that here. And it's disappointing, but also telling because I think it shows well and clearly who Hulk Hogan is. And so to that end, I don't know if it meant to do that, but you got some pretty good insight into where Hulk Hogan was when he passed away last year so check out the full review I tried to spend a good deal of time like taking notes on it and making sure that I covered the big things hopefully you guys check that out right now up on in the newsletter at Brass Ring Media so With that said, and with all that stuff out of the way, I wanted to talk today about mask versus mask. El Grande Americano versus El Grande Americano from AAA over the weekend. Who would have thought? Who would have thought, right? Like, look, when the El Grande Americano I can't even say the name because it's so hard to believe that this is actually a thing. But when the El Grande Americano character was put out for the first time and kind of shown on Raw for the first time, it was like a heel character mocking the Lucha Libre culture. It was like you knew it was Chad Gable. and that was the bit that you knew it was him and it didn't matter because he was just going to mock lucha culture and that's what was going to happen and that's where the heat was right boy did it turn into something else I mean you have to you know keep listening to this podcast until the end and then stop listening to it when it's over and go back and find that match on YouTube. It's on the WWE YouTube channel. It may even be on Netflix now because they played it. They aired the match in full after Raw this week. So they clearly WWE as a company wants to get the most traction out of this. But it aired over the weekend on Saturday night. on the WWE YouTube channel as part of a AAA special that aired just there on YouTube. I was watching it live and this thing, it got into the 300,000 live viewer range at the peak. And that's just one platform. That was just the English platform alone. And it was in a couple other places. So really successful business, mask versus mask, El Grande Americano versus El Grande Americano. And like I said, when it started, you just shook your head, right? I mean, I can't be the only one that was just shaking my head at this going, okay, not only is it like kind of lame, but it's also like, blatantly disrespectful and yes he's a heel and so you can get away with it but I I don't know I didn't I just didn't see the value in that character on television or on Netflix I guess aside from getting a few laughs here and there heelish laughs like somebody quick that a baby face can can beat up and you know you have a little bit of a moment it's a feel-good part of the show Blah, blah, blah. That's it. They turned this thing into something completely different once Chad Gable left due to injury, and they brought in an imposter, El Grande Americano. And so you knew that the minute that they did that, you had a match. And at that point, I was advocating, and if you read my Raw columns weekly, I was advocating... well yeah of course you do the match of course you do El Grande Americano versus El Grande Americano right I mean it writes itself I mean you can get you know a little raw match out of this huh little did I know little did I know that they would turn up the heat and turn up the volume in such a big way and essentially got a whole event out of this and a whole kind of new audience for AAA. And that is probably the most important part of this whole thing is that you got people that are going to look at AAA differently. Not that it wasn't good before. I mean, it was Lucha Wrestling and that company has a lot of history and a lot of fans in Mexico in particular. But WWE, once they bought it, they got their Talons into it and you know Undertaker is booking AAA right so you just don't know what is going to happen to like a historic promotion like that once it's you know WWE-ified if you will and this is a good sign for them they were able to kind of take something that was created in the WWE Labs, El Grande Americano, and turned that into a feud and a match that could actually draw money in the AAA promotion. And they did that this weekend. The crowd... What was so refreshing about the match, and again, it's on YouTube. You can check it out right now. What was so refreshing about the match was the fact that you had an invested audience. It didn't matter the meta storyline. It didn't matter that people liked Chad Gable. None of that mattered. It didn't matter that it was Ludwig Kaiser under the other mask. They told a story El Grande Americano versus El Grande Americano. And let the story speak for itself. It just fed that. There was a love angle in it. I mean, there was, you know, they had a, you know, different El Grande Americano factions feuding with one another. And it all led up to this single showdown, mass versus mass match, original El Grande against imposter El Grande. And That's all you need in pro wrestling. When I was watching the match, and really the setup to the match, which I'll get into in a minute, I was just nodding my head, being like, this is all it needs to be. And that goes for WWE, of course. It goes for AEW, too. You don't need all the meta. You don't need all the cute. You don't need all the fancy. You don't need to hide or run from the fact that it's pro wrestling. lean into that push all the chips in the middle and WWE did that with this event and with this match the start of the match I mean like the start of the match itself took as long as some of the other matches on the card I mean they framed this match up as a as a just a huge huge deal they told a long backstory it was kind of like comic book style where they told the entire story start to finish of the El Grande Americano saga, if you will. And they took the time to do that. And that was important for two reasons. Number one, if you were a regular viewer of AAA, or you just watch Raw and you know that there's two El Grande Americanos and they're going up against each other, right? Regardless, if you know that gimmick and those guys, this kind of welcome to the match and set up to the match, an introduction to the match. It set the table because it told that story. It doubled down on the story. It played up the story of the two El Grande Americanos. It leaned right into just the narrative storyline of those two guys, of those two Lucha guys. And so if you knew it, you could just kick back, relax and feel the intensity that that video introduction was trying to find in the audience. It was trying to tap into, hey, this is a big deal and we are going to mess with people's emotions to make them feel how big of a deal this is. And it just, it was nothing fancy. It was just leaning into pro wrestling. It was leaning into the story, treating it as a real thing, treating it as a important thing, not kind of winking at the camera. None of that. It was just straight up. Now, the other reason it was really impactful to do an introduction like they did was because you knew that they knew and they were correct to assume that they're going to have some new eyes on AAA for the first time. And because of this match, because they had people that see El Grande Americano on Raw that are interested in what happens with the mask versus mask stipulation, right? And so this video like set up everything else. If you missed it, if all you know is those guys from Raw, This gave you a really great backstory on why the match is happening, why there's a rivalry, where it comes from, why it's important, and how this match is going to finish it. So the intro and the setup to the match, it was perfect in that regard because it encapsulated both audiences that they had on that night, the diehard AAA audience and then the people that are testing it out for the first time for this match specifically. It was well done. It was well. And look, you can say a lot about WWE. You can't say that they don't know how to put a new video package together. And they certainly did. And they certainly did on this one. Okay. So that was the setup. Then you had the entrances. And these things were I don't want to say they were on par with Wrestlemania but they were Wrestlemania-esque let's put it that way they were Wrestlemania-esque they were special there was clearly time taken in them to present one El Grande Americano one way and one El Grande Americano the other way or another way I guess another way so that the fans could invest fully and it The entrances captured that and what I liked about it was they captured the differences in the two El Grande Americanas but they also were similar because they're playing the same character so I thought that was a cool little nod to the story where both are hovering around what it means to be El Grande Americano. Same type of entrance music, same type of flair, same type of pizzazz, but then just a little bit of a different tone for each of them because one of them's heel El Grande and one's babyfels El Grande. I liked it. I thought setting up that dynamic right out of the gate clearly told the audience, hey, you're cheering imposter El Grande and you're booing Original El Grande. That's what we're going to be doing here. And then that's exactly what happened. And the match itself, man, it was so sharp. Sharp and crisp physically, of course. I mean, Ludwig Kaiser and Chad Gable are both pros, pros when it comes to in-ring wrestling. But more so than that, more so than the crisp nature of it, it was sharp from the perspective of it, understood the going in the dynamic that the two guys were going to have with the audience. They knew they were going to have a hot crowd for Impostor El Grande. They knew they were going to be able to get heat with Chad Gable El Grande. And they went with that. They trusted that instinct. And it made for a really special night because the whole first 40% of the match for sure is original El Grande Americano getting heat because he's beating the tar out of imposter El Grande. That's the first 40%. Because they knew they had the audience, because they knew they had an invested audience that cared about the characters and cared about the outcome, which, by the way, is why having that is so important because you can build matches on top of that investment. And they did here. and they knew it and they could trust it so they didn't waste anything in just getting more heat and more heat and more heat on original O'Grande because the crowd reacted and they were there and they wanted to cheer on their guy they wanted to cheer on imposter O'Grande and so it just was just keep beating them down and keep making that mountain that Impostor El Grande is going to have to climb, make that even bigger because you're beating them down, beating them up so bad. And the crowd is just itching and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting to be taken on a ride. And then they never get it. And then they kind of get a little bit of a taste, a little bit of a hope spot, and they get shot down because El Grande can't quite get there. It was a perfect roller coaster and perfect work by Both guys, really. I mean, Ludwig Kaiser, imposter El Grande Americano for selling the way that he did. And then Gable's character for just ruthlessly and relentlessly just beating them up. And the hope spots were all very well executed. And they hooked the crowd. I mean, the crowd popped for them, whether they led to near falls or not. crowd was there for it the crowd was there for it and they were in on it and that is the story of the match it was just that investment the crowd energy is wild and sure a lot of that had to do with because what they were doing in the ring was cool it was fast paced it was hard hitting but the main reason people they could have done anything in that ring that's the thing you remember here I think that's I'm glad we got to this point because that's the thing to remember. The fact that they did some really cool moves. I mean, there's no question about that. And they were dynamic and they worked fast and they were crisp. All that is there. But really, if you did anything else in that match, because the audience was so invested, because they cared a lot about Impostorio Grande Americano winning and wanted to see that one outcome. It wasn't a pick your adventure. It wasn't all some of you choose this. Some of you are going to choose that and we don't care who. We just want you to know. This was built for imposter El Grande Americano to win and to have the audience fully on his side. That's when wrestling is fun. That's when wrestling is fun. When you have everybody reacting in that same way. Sometimes I think WWE forgets that. Even AEW sometimes I think forgets that. Although they've been a lot better lately. But you gotta have invested fans if people are gonna care about what you're doing. And this match is the absolute perfect example of that. Because there's no reason for anybody to be seriously invested in this. I mean, it's a ridiculous concept. The fact that you'd have two fake Lucha guys running around and feuded with each other, right? It's ridiculous. But it's pro wrestling. And so when you take that ridiculous, you give it a little bit of context. You give fans something to get behind and something to cheer against. You give them two talents who are invested themselves and talented, not just in the ring, but from a character perspective. You give all that and what you get is a very memorable match. And not just a memorable match because it was five stars or because it was the match of the year, which it could be both of those things when everything's all said and done. But it did business. You had a whole night of eyes on YouTube just because of this match. Mask versus mask. and I thought that was cool. I also liked the last thing about the match itself. It got bloody. They treated it like a mature pro wrestling show where you had guys fighting each other. It's going to be blood. They're rivals. It's going to be blood. This was not like a jokey style trick or street fight or something like that that you'll find on Raw or like an episode of 205 Live back in the day. Oh, my God. I remember covering that. God. I covered 205 Live for Wade Keller at pwtorch.com for years. When it was bad and then when it was good and then when it was bad again. And all throughout... They had like a trick or street fight or a miracle on 34th street fight or something like that, where it's like kind of gimmicky, funny, hardcore stuff. Right. We know we know it's like Stadium Stampede, too. Very similar to that. This wasn't this was serious. This was serious violence. It wasn't over the top. but they showed some blood both guys got some color the masks were ripped like it felt and looked like they had been in a war together and I thought that's really important and then in the end you get the outcome that the audience wants you give them the outcome that they want which is Impostor El Grande winning in the end and getting his love interest back right complete story If nothing else, go listen to the pop at the end of the match when the three count is made. I promise you, I don't know, Will Ospreay inside Wembley Stadium winning the world title, that's going to be a pretty loud pop in a few months here at All In. But aside from that, though, or just make it WWE-related, That could very well be, by the end of the year, the loudest pop that happens under the WWE banner. You know, I mean, a lot could happen, right? I mean, although Femi can win the title from Roman Reigns, that obviously is going to get a good reaction, but I don't know if it'll be better than what they had. It was really, really cool, and it was so, so loud. Um, It was such a good night for pro wrestling because it hopefully it reminded people in charge that the formula doesn't have to be complicated. It really doesn't. It really doesn't. And this is just the ultimate example of that. You know, a mask versus mask match between two guys who were essentially making fun of the lucha culture when the gimmick started. And with a little context, the whole story turns, the whole pivot happens, and you get this wild piece of business on a Saturday night in late May. It's crazy. It's just crazy. And here's the thing. The best part about this, well, I mean, the best part about it was the match itself. But a residual benefit now is you've got a new group of eyes that are going to be paying attention to AAA. I mean, and it may only... you know it may only happen for a little while may only happen for a couple weeks but they got the Triple Mania shows coming up gosh WWE they better load these things up you know I mean to me how do you not put Impostor El Grande Americano in a title match for the AAA Mega Championship which is held by Dominic Mysterio by the way how do you not put him in that title match to main event that show. All of a sudden, that match becomes a heck of a lot bigger because of the reaction and because of the match they had this past weekend. People care now. People are paying attention now. And so you got them. So hopefully you can strike while the iron's hot and you've got this event coming up. Not to mention, in addition to El Grande Americano, but Chad Gable himself now is essentially a babyface for the company or the promotion. He was the heel in the match and he was the heel of Grande Americano. But as soon as he unmasked, he was able to sit there and tell the story of Chad Gable. I'm 41 years old. I'm from, you know, I'm from Minnesota and the United States and I'll be back. And the crowd's cheering that. Now you have another top AAA star in Chad Gable that you can bring back. and that will pull some eyes over to that product. So they set up a lot of good stuff this weekend with that match. And, you know, if that match isn't good, they're certainly not putting it on Netflix, you know, after Raw, right, this week. I mean, so clearly, you know, the numbers indicated that people were interested. And that's why everything's happening now that's happening. But hopefully they can build on this. And I'm going to be tuning in to AAA more often. probably won't maybe I will start writing some receipt columns for that show for you guys for our paid subscribers here because it'll be an interesting show to follow now that it has a little bit of heat behind it if you watch this match you gotta drop a comment and let me know what you thought of it I mean I think that I am right on point but heck It's my show. So I always think that I'm not always right, though. So if you thought something differently or you just agreed, let me know in the comments. I would love to be able to go through some of those on a future episode or the next time we fire up the microphone and go talk about it a little bit. But man, if you saw this, I want to know what you thought of it. Did you like it? Did you not like it? Are you somewhere in the middle? And the other question I have for you is, will it make you watch AAA even more than you already do? Let me know in the comments. We'll wrap it up there, you guys. Thanks so much. Hopefully you guys have checked this match out. Once again, I'll put it in the show notes so that you can access it quickly if you do want to check it out and see just what the heck I'm talking about here. And I hope you do. Thank you once again for your membership and for your paid subscription. I certainly appreciate it. We're going to continue to do all we can to cover the business of pro wrestling the right way and in a way that suits you guys. So thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm Zack Heydorn. This is Brass Ring Media. Talk to you guys real, real soon. See you.