Arturo Rivera

Arturo Rivera García
	Name Arturo Rivera García Real name Arturo Rivera Nickname Rivera, Riverita, Cuasimodo Rivera, Rudisimo Rivera, Moroco Topo (Morocco Mole,Hanna-Barbera character) Family Birth date August 9, 1954 - Distrito Federal Debut Obituary date February 9, 2022 (aged 67)

Interviewing La Parka AAA

Biography

He is one of the most popular announcers in the Mexican wrestling, together his partners Dr. Alfonso Morales and Leobardo Magadan

Rivera has been always fan of rudo wrestlers and the Atlante (a Mexican footbal soccer team), he always shout "Los rudos! Los rudos! Los rudos! y el Atlante!" when a rudo wins.

Televisa announcer, left AAA when AAA's deal with Televisa ended. According to his daughter, he died of multiple-organ failure.

Was Posthumously inducted into the AAA Hall of Fame in 2022.

LuchaBlog Obituary:

Arturo “Rudo” Rivera (67) passed away Wednesday night. Arturo Rivera had been ill for a while – a notice asking for blood donations went viral last week – but the exact specifics of his illness had been kept private. Wrestlers memorializing his death hinted it being COVID-19, though far from definitive (and doesn’t seem to explain the need for blood donations.) Arturo Rivera Jr. didn’t mention what happened, but talked about his father being taken to the hospital by ambulance, then showing signs of recovery the last few days before it turned much worse.

Arturo Rivera was famous for being the first and most well-known heel announcer in Mexican wrestling. There are others who’ve done the heel bit since, but no one as well known and well-identified with it. Rivera had an unplanned entry into wrestling. Televisa treated their coverage of (then) EMLL wrestling as just another sport and would pull in announcers from other sports the network covered when they needed a fill-in. Rivera, who mostly worked on soccer, and his long-time partner Dr. Alfonso Morales were two such people who ended sticking in lucha libre. Morales grew popular because he deeply studied lucha libre to catch up. Rivera also learned, but it was his big personality and idiosyncratic sayings that caught on. Antonio Pena selected Rivera to call AAA’s matches when the promotion started and encouraged him to take more of a Jessy Ventura rooting for the heels personality. The idea hadn’t been done in Mexico prior, but it worked for AAA & Rivera, and he became a signature part of AAA through its 26 year run on Televisa.

Arturo Rivera remained technically a Televisa employee though he was only covering AAA after the promotion got started. He also worked as a commentator for morning TV shows (talking politics as much of sports), had a popular radio show, and wrote columns for the lucha libre magazines at times. AAA left Televisa in 2019 to go to TV Azteca, and Rivera stayed behind with Televisa. Rivera’s performance had diminished greatly by the final few Televisa years, seeming disinterested in the wrestling and more prone to digress into other topics. He also battled alcoholism and talked later in life about friends convincing him to go to rehab. Azteca supplied their own announce crew for the AAA show after the move, and AAA went with other people for their own in-house broadcast on Space. Televisa used Rivera as a personality on other TV shows for a year before letting him go in a wave of cuts, after 37 years total with the TV company. AAA brought Arturo Rivera back as a guest host on their Lucha Capital Facebook series and other content but seemed to quietly part ways again. Rivera had done interviews talking about his life over the last month and seemed upset about how his time with AAA ended, accusing them of blocking him for working with AAA wrestlers. He seemed like a guy who believed he would be with Televisa and AAA for his entire life and was bitter it wasn’t the case. Rivera ended up with many other ex-AAA wrestlers in Robles Promotions over the last year, working in a sort of master of ceremony role. He remained well-known, though the same issues seen in his last few AAA years were visible there as well.

A journalist who becomes more of a wrestling character could engender disdain from his fellow (or former) media friends, but Arturo Rivera seemed very well liked by other journalists. There were nearly as many media people talking about how much they liked Rivera as wrestlers.

One of Arturo Rivera’s most famous sayings was “Arriba los rudos, los rudos, los rudos y el Atlante”, the latter in tribute to his favorite soccer team. Atlante paid tribute to him on Twitter. Rivera noted in one of those interviews that he actually got the idea for the saying from an Arena Coliseo fan, who turned out to be the father of a famous bullfighter.

Another of Arturo Rivera’s bits was yelling “It’s not going to happen like it did in (the town of) Caborca”, while never explaining what terrible thing happened in Caborca. Knowing Rivera’s style, it was probably just a phrase he made up with no meaning, but one news article went over the many guesses at what Rivera was referncing.

Infobae relates a story about Arturo Rivera confronting then Mexico City Lucha Libre commission head Luis Spota in 1985 to interview/interrogate him about why lucha libre wasn’t permitted on TV locally. The version of the story told by Rivera is Spota said they were worried children would begin to emulate the luchadors, which Rivera counted by pointing out none of the children who watched Superman were trying to fly (the “kids might try to do wrestling moves” concern was used when lucha libre was originally banned from Mexico City TV in 1950s). Spota died soon after and the article tries to imply this discussion and Spota’s passing led to the policy changing with the next leadership, though in reality there was still a few years before lucha libre would be back on TV.

Marisela Pena announced Arturo Rivera would be added to the AAA Hall of Fame.

ESTO points out Arturo Rivera called the 1997 Royal Rumble as part of AAA/WWF partnership at the time.

Mas Lucha did a special late night show on Wednesday talking about both Super Muneco and Arturo Rivera.

CMLL choose not to acknowledge Arturo Rivera’s passing, something that was noted on social media. CMLL nowadays gets few responses on Twitter in general so the negative ones stick out more, and there were people who were angrily asking CMLL to say something. Arturo Rivera worked on EMLL shows as a Televisa employee from about 1983 to 1992, then returned in 2006-2007 when Televisa reunited him and Dr. Morales as hosts as a ratings stunt, one CMLL wasn’t thrilled with. Rivera was critical of CMLL and may have tried to recruit people to AAA upon its founding, something CMLL always has held against people from that era (it’s why Octagon returning to CMLL was so unexpected; suing AAA certainly helped absolve him). Rivera wasn’t a perfect soul, there’s gossip about negative choices he made that I don’t have the proof or the inclination to write about upon his passing, but it’s enough to say others might feel the same disdain towards him as the people in charge of CMLL. The difference is CMLL is a public-facing entertainment company, and almost all of those would normally would put out a memorial statement even through gritted teeth for a famous person they didn’t like, if only to avoid the negative reaction for doing so. It’s a reaction people take for granted in a culture where protecting the brand matters more than anything else. For better or worse, CMLL is different, and negative fan reaction to a decision is a very low, perhaps non-existent concern.

Gallery

W/Antonio Peña

Moroco Topo/Morocco Mole(Hanna-Barbera)

w/ Lupita Jones, Infierno en el Ring 2007