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The G.O.A.T. 100 #93 | El Canek
- Peter Edge
- 7 hours ago
- 10 min read
Welcome to the G.O.A.T. 100 where we will count down with PWM wrestling historian Peter Edge the 100 greatest wrestlers of all time, based on many different stats and criteria. A new wrestler will be added on Mondays and Thursdays every week. Here is a link to an introduction essay with Peter explaining his GOAT100 concept. At the bottom of the article you can find the GOAT 100 Portal with links to all profiles so far published, as well as a visual key... Enjoy learning more about the history of our great hobby!
Cast your mind back to last year and that MJF vs Mistico feud. Now, it’s a feud I’ll talk about in depth in Mistico’s entry later in this series but there was a noteworthy trait in the feud – the nationalism. We saw MJF as the foreign heel degrading the country of the babyface, while Mistico was defending the honour of his nation that he was a hero of. Some of the anti-Mexico rhetoric in MJF’s antagonism made some of my younger friends in my wrestling fandom circle uneasy – and understandably so with what is going on in America right now politically – but without wanting to sound flippant, that's lucha.
From Los Gringos in 1994 to Sam Adonis in the late noughties, a very easy way to get heels booed in Mexico is to wave the American flag. Heck, MJF was relatively subtle (for once) compared to Los Gringos and Adonis with their anti-immigration slurs and pro-MAGA schtick respectively. Even if MJF was sometimes historically inaccurate – Jon Cruz dressed as Abe Lincoln popped me because the Mexican people actually had an affinity with Lincoln (I'll explain more in the Mistico entry).
But Mexico vs. The World didn't start with Los Gringos and their campaign of terror against AAA. One particular luchador took on the best the world had to offer and made himself a beloved name in his country of birth and drew many many fans in those battles, not with any inflammatory comments needed by the foreigners he faced but by being himself. He was El Canek.
Born on June 19, 1952, Felipe Estrada had a tough childhood. His father left the family home when he was three. Felipe struggled with illnesses as a child, leaving him frail, so he was targeted by bullies for his weak frame. It was during his childhood that he started reading comic books. One though, changed his outlook on life. On the cover of one he found on the way home from school while in the third grade was El Santo, resplendent in his silver mask.
It would be Santo and Kalimán – a popular comic book character in Mexico – that inspired Felipe to do more exercise. He took an after-school job as he was entering teenager years working in a blacksmith, which helped him get stronger.
Felipe would spend his teenage years bodybuilding and taking part in amateur wrestling competitions. He would make his debut at 18 as El Universitario after El Matematico no-showed an event at Arena Jardin, teaming with El Angel Azul vs. El Profeta and El Chilango García. Azul would later sell him one of his outfits, giving birth to El Principe Azul.
Under that name in 1972 he took the mask and hair of Ultratumba in consecutive matches, and the hair of El Noruego, and won the WOTY in Villahermosa, the city where he was based. By the end of ‘73, he was in Mexico City and was now known by the name he would be use for the rest of his life. Inspired by the Mayan warrior Jacinto Canek, who inspired a rebellion against Spanish conquerors against Mexico in the 18th century, Felipe took the name El Canek.
It would take time for him to get further in his career. A bad day at the office when he wrestled for Rene Guajardo in Northern Mexico saw his momentum stalled. But when Rene was on the same show as Canek in the capital, he realized that the “bad day at the office” had been an anomaly, and Canek was back in Rene’s promotion. This time he wrestled for Guajardo for a year, where he took many masks including El Destroyer’s and Lemús's, as well as the hair of Sunny War Cloud, Rubén Juárez and Jose Torres.
Canek would be one of the stars from the first show of the start-up UWA. The promotion was set up by Francisco Flores, who had been the promoter of shows in Naucalpan for EMLL but had seen the owner of EMLL, Salvador Lutteroth bring his son into the company and set up a transition plan for the day Salvador would retire. Miffed off, Francisco recruited Ray Mendoza and got investment from Benjamin Mora Jr. to set up the Universal Wrestling Association.
Rene Guajardo would be recruited to make the jump and advised Mendoza (who was booking for the new promotion as well as wrestling) to use Canek. Canek would feature on the first card, teaming with Dory Dixon and Sunny War Cloud against Mil Mascaras, Mendoza and El Solitario in a showcase of talent that had made the jump. War Cloud would end up being the sole man of the six involved in this match not to be inducted into the Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame.
Within three years, Canek, the youngest of the six in that trios match, would win the National Light Heavyweight Title beating Dr. Wagner, having a five month reign before losing the belt to Dos Caras, kick starting one of the great feuds in Lucha history.
Out of those six, Mascaras was spending more time out of Mexico than in, wrestling in Japan and the USA. Mendoza was 50 in 1979 and Guajardo working as his lieutenant was 46, and while it wouldn't be unusual in lucha history for guys that age to keep booking themselves as the top, they decided they wanted younger guys to be feuding in the main event slots – and Canek and Caras were the perfect bedfellows.
Canek would get the rocketship push by being booked to win his first UWA Heavyweight Title with a win over Lou Thesz, who had been awarded the title after going an hour with Mil Mascaras. UWA would strike up a working relationship with New Japan Pro Wrestling which saw Canek take tours to Japan and wrestle for Antonio Inoki’s circuit and also NJPW sent talent to UWA and big shows at the El Toreo de Naucalpan.
Canek would face the likes of Tatsumi Fujinami and Tiger Mask in New Japan with Inoki, Riki Choshu and Fujinami returning the favour by visiting Mexico. The formula was simple in the visits from the Japanese stars: Canek would lose the belt to a foreigner and then win it back two months later.
Tiger Jeet SIngh and Inoki were the only people besides Canek that had a reign with the belt lasting 100+ days before 1983. The Singh reign in particular saw Canek challenge for the belt frequently and the gates for these matches were among the best that the company had done to this point. These successes led to a winning formula for Canek and the Heavyweight Title. Canek’s apuesta record saw him take Angel Blanco’s and Fujinami’s hair in Mask vs Hair matches. He had become the biggest star in the company.
Canek would be part of the 1981 and 1982 MSG Tag Leagues in NJPW as they tried to build up an annual tag tournament on par with their rival AJPW's Strongest Tag Determination League. But Canek only had one documented win out of 16 matches with Super Marquina and Perro Aguayo as partners in those ‘81 and ‘82 tournaments. 1983 saw Canek spend more time away from Mexico. He went on a lengthy tour of Japan and the USA, spending most of that time in Texas. But Canek, homesick, went back home.
1984 saw Canek defend his UWA Title against Andre the Giant on the 9th Anniversario show, bodyslamming him in his 2-0 win in a 2-out-of-3 falls match and also against Stan Hansen and Hulk Hogan while Hulk was in his first year as the WWF Champion. While facing Stan saw Canek win via DQ, the Hogan match (a WWF Title defence) ended in a double count-out in the third fall because that was the result that worked for Hogan brother.
But all joking aside, even getting a fall off Hogan was a big deal in 1984. If it was by pinfall, it was the only one Hogan gave up in that period. I can't confirm exactly how said fall happened in my research, but even a count out or DQ decision in favour of Canek would put him in rarefied air in who got anything off Hogan, considering how protected he was in the early days of Hulk-a-mania.
By 1983 UWA had done enough to build up Mexican stars that the foreign wrestler vs Mexico template (with Canek losing the Heavyweight title to the foreigner to regain it in a rematch) would be discontinued, with luchadores exclusively being part of the title lineage from 1983 to 1989. The feud between Caras and Canek was a big focus of this period.
Unfortunately, records are spotty on dates for matches in Mexico. Cagematch has the number of times Canek and Caras were involved with each other in matches as 240 occasions with 18 of those being in New Japan, somewhere where record keeping is better. I wouldn’t be surprised if the career rivals ultimately had more than 300 matches in Mexico in the five decades they feuded.
The lack of television wrestling from the 1950’s to 1991 after authorities banned the airing of pro wrestling after a child died in a copycat incident makes it hard to evaluate the talent levels of wrestlers of this time. We have to use the words of historians and writers of the time to look at how important certain people were.
Canek’s reign as the UWA Heavyweight Champion saw him defend the belt against many foreign wrestlers, with notable matches against Pat Patterson, Bad News Brown, Haku and Bam Bam Bigelow. It wasn’t until late 1989 when Vader became the first non-Mexican to hold the belt since Canek had won it back from Fujinami back in the summer of '83. Vader held the title for just over a year until Canek once again won it back. But once AAA was formed, Mexico really wasn’t big enough for three big companies and the UWA got lost in the shuffle.
UWA and CMLL would start working together officially and Canek would start working Arena Mexico more often (alongside Negro Casas) after his sparse appearances for CMLL in the country's wrestling cathedral during the 1980s. Canek and Dr. Wagner Jr. became the first ever tag team champions in CMLL history beating Vampiro Candienese and Pierroth Jr in a Best of 3 series finals. The Canek/Vampiro rivalry would extend to UWA, where Vampiro would win the UWA Heavyweight Title. But Vampiro was rejected at the box office with attendance plummeting to the point that UWA never really recovered. This was the beginning of the end for the company.
When UWA closed down in 1995, Canek would still defend the belt he made famous in different promotions defending it in CMLL and AAA. He had switched to AAA from CMLL in late 1996, just in time to wrestle at the 1997 Royal Rumble at San Antonio’s Alamodome as part of the strategic alliance between AAA and WWF to help sell tickets for the biggest capacity show WWF had had since WrestleMania 8. At the Rumble he teamed with Perro Aguayo and Hector Garza to face Jerry Estrada, Fuerza Guerrera and Heavy Metal … in a match that truly stunk. Yes, the Vince McMahon of 1997 commentating on Lucha is just as bad as you imagine.
The biggest feud that Canek had in AAA was with Cibernético over the UWA belt with their signature match being a Steel Cage Match at the Verano de Escándalo show at the Río Nilo Coliseum that ended in a draw after both men were unable to answer the 10 count.
The feud would end with a Strap Match and a Cage Match in 1999 and those were the last real great moments of Canek’s career. He did win the Rey de Reyes tournament in 2002 but that would be one of the final acts of his career in AAA. He then moved to IWRG, based in Naucalpan, with a program against Rayo de Jalisco Jr. Canek would beat Jalisco to win the IWRG Heavyweight Title in the final of a unique tournament where they had to win a tag-team tournament as partners to advance to a final singles match against each other to win the vacant championship.
But as the reign went on, Canek’s knees were going downhill quickly and he was becoming progressively more immobile, needing to go under reconstructive knee surgery that kept him out of the ring for 13 months. He would return after rehabbing, but he would never be the same.
Also, during the 00s, Canek ended up back in CMLL thanks to the CMLL/IWRG working relationship. There he feuded with Dr. Wagner Jr, with Canek playing rudo to Wagner’s technico. As the feud continued, Wagner took the UWA belt from Canek in an Arena Mexico contest but the feud stalled and Wagner never lost the title back to the man it had been synonymous with.
Canek would end up in the “seniors division” and would be one-sixth of a famously awful match with him and Cien Caras and Máscara Año 2000 vs. Dos Caras, Jalisco Jr. and Villano IV. That might have become one of Canek's most remembered matches due to its memeable quality thanks to a review from Bryan and Vinny… but it shouldn’t be.
Canek is one of the most charismatic wrestlers in lucha history. He is the greatest heavyweight in Mexican wrestling history. He got incredibly over in a time when agility and guile usually beat out power in lucha libre. But he was the perfect man for the time. He was the gatekeeper when the world of wrestling flew to the land south of the Rio Grande. The man was trusted to attract the fans and defend the honor of his nation when the best and most famous in the world of wrestling came to Mexico. Canek was the first of the gatekeepers and he is arguably the best of them all.
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