Lucha Libre AAA in US Sues Lucha Libre AAA in Mexico For Breach of Contract & More

Lucha Libre AAA is in the midst of a lawsuit among its various iterations, as the US company has sued the Mexican promotion for breach of contract and more. Luchablog reports that Lucha Libre Factory Made Ventures (Lucha Libre FMV) has filed suit against Promociones Antonio Pena, the actual Mexican lucha libre promotion owned by Dorian Roldan and Marisela Pena, accusing it of “breach of written contract, breach of implied covenant of good faith & fair dealing, copyright infringement, trademark infringement and unfair competition.”

This is all fairly confusing, so let’s break it down a bit. Lucha Libre FMV is the production company that is owned owned jointly by Lucha Libre AAA (the company that holds AAA’s trademark rights) and FactoryMade Ventures. Lucha Libre FMV is the company that produced Lucha Underground and was initially licensing the rights to the AAA trademarks. However, the lawsuit states that in 2014, Lucha Libre FMV hit “contractual milestones” which meant that they ended up owning all Lucha Libre AAA trademarks, both current and future, in perpetuity.

As a result, Lucha Libre FMV states that everything AAA has or will create are owned by them with the exception of a carveout which allows Promociones Antonio Pena (again, the actual Mexican promotion) to continue using said trademarks in Mexico. Lucha Libre FMV alleges that any usage of the trademarks in any other country belongs exclusively to Lucha Libre FMV. The site reports that the lawsuit includes the documents for licensing and trademark reassignment, with all the appropriate signatures. Lucha Libre FMV says that they paid $700,000 to Promociones Antonio Pena thus far for those rights, as PAP is owned 5% of the FMV profits and later has a minimum year guarantee.

Still with us? Good. So Factory Made Ventures — the co-owners of Lucha Libre FMV — say that they were looking at selling the company and discovered that Roldan made deals with several entities for Promociones Antonio Pena. Those included deals with Twitch, Facebook, Turner, PlutoTV, and YouTube, as well as their deal with Marvel for licensed characters.

FMV is arguing that these are “worldwide deals” and are thus violations of their deal with Roldan and Promociones Antonio Pena. As such, FMV argues that they are owed those profits. Roldan has claimed that the revenue is mostly generated from Mexico and as such only a small portion belongs to FMV. FMV say that they were working through this with PAP when they were blindsided by PAP’s deal with Marvel.

Roldan quit Lucha Libre FMV, where he had been the General Manager, on October 28th and according to the lawsuit sent a note promising to pay $391,719 to Lucha Libre FMV over the next five years as their cut of the money from Facebook, Turner, Plutom and Twitch. He allegedly sent $31,719 in November as the first installment but FMV refused to settle for that amount and took his actions as proof that Promociones Antonio Pena violated the deal. The suit was filed oN December 8th.

There is no mention in the lawsuit of AAA’s events in the United States, which would potentially suggest that Lucha Libre FMV was properly compensated for those deals.