Five years ago, Alberto El Patron was riding a wave of goodwill after leaving WWE. Fast forward to today, and it’s possible he may never work for a major United States wrestling promotion again. If ever the term “life comes at you fast” applies, it’s probably for the former Alberto Del Rio.
Patron was slated to wrestle in a co-branded card between Impact Wrestling and Lucha Underground over WrestleMania weekend. Instead the former Lucha Underground and AAA star decided to not show up for the event, after which he was justifiably released from the company and was booed lustily at the event in absentia.
In an interview released Friday, one-third of the Impact Wrestling executive committee, Scott D’Amore, spoke with Sports Illustrated about the reasoning behind El Patron’s release. D’Amore stated that Impact would rather focus on the wrestlers that show up to the events, rather than focus on who was not there.
“It was obviously an unfortunate situation,” said D’Amore. “When Alberto failed to show up to the event, we made our decision on a new main event for the show. It was important for us to give our fans, in a capacity crowd at the Sugar Mill in New Orleans, a great event, and we did not want them to focus on someone who wasn’t there. We wanted them to focus on the match we were giving.”
From a business standpoint, it makes sense to not focus on who’s missing. Impact Wrestling putting the focus on the show itself and continually putting out good work is a good emphasis for the company to have, especially right now, and it’s a nice change of pace for a company that has historically … not done that.
One has to figure that the bridge to Impact Wrestling has been burned beyond any chance of reconciliation for Patron. But of course, both that company and WWE have proven us wrong more than once before.
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