Último Guerrero addressed criticism of his match with Kazuchika Okada, which was taped this past Thursday for AEW Collision.
The match aired on a two-day tape delay with those witnessing the match live stating it was marred with issues, including Guerrero’s mask coming off multiple times.
It was an odd decision to have Guerrero wrestle with the mask as he lost the mask to Atlantis nearly ten years ago on CMLL’s Aniversario card in September 2014.
Guerrero wrote about the issues on his Facebook account and noted that he arrived at the arena in Allentown without a mask because he assumed he would be wrestling unmasked. A staff member at AEW had to come up with something for him to wear and made a mask for the match and put over the staff member for delivering the match with little notice.
Translated to English:
A story to tell I came to the dressing room of the recording location for AEW at the collision function unforeseen for me from one day to the next where I had to fight with mask and it turns out I have no masks arriving at the location they realized there is no mask immediately a company worker was ordered to make an unusual mask he made it as he could reflecting the loyalty he has to his work within an hour or so checking and worrying why I looked good. everyone criticizing why he pulls out that mask and I’m thinking about the sacrifice of this person my respect because it’s the work of a great working man of AEW represents my sacrifice and that’s why I put it on and went up with it. sometimes many people do something for us and we do not take them into account with pride I will keep this mask.
One person who witnessed the unedited version of the match told us that the mask fell off three times and elicited laughter from the audience. The edited version of Saturday’s Collision match included the mask falling off when Guerrero was struck by the Rainmaker for the finish, which would have been impossible to edit around.
The Cubs Fan at Luchablog added the following note from the taping:
FantasticaMania viewers know Ultimo Guerrero wrestling masked is usually not an issue – as best I know – Ultimo Guerrero was not aware he was going to be asked to wrestle masked and did not bring one with him. That led to a mad scramble to find a mask or mask up a mask, and Ultimo Guerrero ended up wearing a mask that wasn’t really suitable and would not stay on his head. It appeared Guerrero tried to cut out a lot of spots that would’ve risked his mask coming off, which resulted in a lower quality match – and the mask still came off multiple times during the match. The match was not what Guerrero and Okada are capable of doing, and even editing around the mask issues probably won’t work. I hope UG gets another chance to show what he can do.
The Okada vs. Guerrero match currently had a 3.64 rating (out of ten) on Cagematch.
For a full review of AEW Collision, listen to Collision Course of the POST Wrestling Café with John Siino & Kate from Montreal
