Salvador Lutteroth ran the first ever EMLL (now CMLL) show in Mexico, marking the birth of Lucha libre.
Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre Co., Ltd. (CMLL; Spanish pronunciation: [konsexo mundjal de luta lie], "World Wrestling Council") is a lucha libre professional wrestling promotion based in Mexico City. The promotion was previously known as Empresa Mexicana de Lucha Libre (EMLL) (Mexican Wrestling Enterprise). Founded in 1933, it is the oldest professional wrestling promotion still in existence.CMLL has been nicknamed "The serious and the stable", referencing their very conservative booking style and their traditional structure to how wrestlers are used and allowed to express themselves. Outside live television broadcasts, CMLL has not shown matches where one of the competitors bleeds. They have a few steel cage matches and on occasion have Super Libre matches where there are no disqualifications, but otherwise do not promote any variety of matches that would be considered hardcore wrestling, nor match types such as Ladder matches. CMLL has on occasion fired wrestlers for excessive violence, like the use of chairs, during a match or for using profanity while addressing the crowd during a show.
CMLL currently recognizes and promotes twelve "World Championships" for various weight divisions and classifications, six national level and six regional level championships. The CMLL Anniversary Show series is the longest-running annual major show, starting in 1934, with the CMLL 87th Anniversary Show being the most recent. CMLL also regularly promotes major events under the names Homenaje a Dos Leyendas ("Homage to two legends"), Sin Piedad ("No Mercy"), Sin Salida ("No Escape"), Infierno en el Ring ("Inferno in the Ring") during the year. CMLL has promoted their regular weekly Super Viernes ("Super Friday") on a regular basis since the 1930s. Founder Salvador Lutteroth funded the building of Arena Coliseo in 1943, making it the first building in Mexico built specifically for professional wrestling.
Salvador Lutteroth González (21 March 1897 – 5 September 1987) was a Mexican professional wrestling promoter of the mid-twentieth century. Lutteroth's organization, Empresa Mexicana de Lucha Libre (EMLL), was the dominant Mexican wrestling promotional enterprise from its founding in 1933 until Lutteroth left the company in the 1950s. Under its current name of Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL), it is, to date, the longest-running active professional wrestling promotion in the world presenting three weekly shows. Lutteroth was known as the "father of lucha libre," and, in his position as promoter and booker of the dominant promotion, was the most powerful man in Mexican wrestling, and one of the most powerful wrestling executives in the world. He was, in large part, responsible for the widespread fame of the most famous Mexican professional wrestlers of the mid-twentieth century, such as Octavio Gaona, the first Mexican wrestler to win the middleweight championship of the world by defeating Gus Kallio, Carlos Tarzán López, El Santo, Gory Guerrero, René Guajardo, Karloff Lagarde, Enrique Llanes, and the international league wrestler Medico Asesino, Rito Romero, Dorrel Dixon and Mil Máscaras, who wrestled in the United States, Japan, and Europe.