This is the second installment of Why She Matters, a recurring feature from The Luchadora Project about luchadoras working outside the spotlight, what makes them worth watching, and why their work matters.
Rarely does one watch a match with Sanely in it and walk away talking about Sanely.
I know because I watched what history will call her best match.
In fact, I’ve watched it three times.
The first time I watched the July 17 CMLL trios match, I remembered Persephone. I remembered Tessa Blanchard. I remembered thinking Thunder Rosa’s dancing was something I didn’t want someone to walk in on me watching. I remember Johnnie Robbie moved quickly and I questioned why she doesn’t have a full-time gig somewhere. Olympia looked good. There were dives and the sort of crowded closing stretch that felt like every other trios match featuring luchadoras.
When I saw that Dave Meltzer had given the match 4.25 stars, I thought maybe I had missed something.
Then I couldn’t remember who was even in the match.
Wait, Sanely was in that?
I watched it again casually and still couldn’t remember much she did. She had entered the ring. That much I could recall.
The third viewing was for this column. I kept my eyes on Sanely, including the long stretches when she stood on the apron while someone more exciting did something more exciting.
That was when I understood why CMLL keeps booking her.
Someone has to lose.
Someone has to lose without making the rest of the match look bad.
I think that’s why Sanely matters.
Daveflation
We should deal with the 4.25 stars first. I appreciate Dave shining a light on luchadoras, but in no world is this a 4.25-star match.
Meltzer gave the same rating to Randy Savage and the Ultimate Warrior’s retirement match at WrestleMania VII. He gave 4.25 to Shawn Michaels’ return against Triple H at SummerSlam 2002. Shawn Michaels and Chris Jericho also received 4.25 stars for their WrestleMania XIX match.
I’ve now watched Sanely’s trios match three times. It isn’t as good as any of those. I don’t think it is particularly close. Of course, had I been sitting ringside like Dave was this night, I might have thought differently.
The match is good. It is a busy, enjoyable CMLL trios match with recognizable stars and a strong final few minutes that stretch on for too long. I wouldn’t get near four stars.
Wrestling fans call this Daveflation. Meltzer’s scale has expanded over the years, first beyond five stars and then far enough beyond five that the original ceiling is somewhere down around the chair rail molding. A 4.25 in 2026 seems to purchase about 3.5 stars in 1993 money.
Meltzer can rate matches however he wants. It is his newsletter and, unless something has changed, he has not invited me onto the committee.
The inflated rating did accomplish something useful. It made me go back.
Once I stopped looking for a 4.25-star match and started watching Sanely, I found a better reason to write about her.
Four Wins
Counting wins in professional wrestling is a questionable way to make an argument. Doing it with CMLL’s luchadoras, who spend much of the year being shuffled through trios matches, might be even worse.
Naturally, I counted every one.
In 2024, Sanely wrestled 49 proper CMLL matches. Her record was 22-27.
In 2025, she worked 71. She went 24-47.
There’s 35 proper CMLL matches on her 2026 record through August 16. Sanely has won four.
Four wins. Thirty-one losses.
That is twenty less wins than she had last year. Her winning percentage has fallen from almost 45 percent in 2024 to 11 percent this year.
She hasn’t won a proper CMLL match since March 25, when she teamed with India Sioux to beat La Magnífica and Zeuxis. Sanely has lost 20 consecutive CMLL matches since.
A wrestling record can’t tell us whether somebody is good.
It can tell us what a promotion asks them to do.
CMLL used to ask something different from Sanely.
The Lady of the Black Glove
Sanely is the daughter of Mano Negra, the former NWA World Light Heavyweight Champion whose mask she adapted for her own career. The long black glove comes from him too, giving her the nickname La Dama del Guante Negro.
She grew up around wrestling and wanted to enter it herself. Mano Negra resisted. Sanely has said her father understood how difficult the business could be for women, so he insisted she finish her education first.
Her career has included injuries and long absences. She returned from more than a year away in 2024 and found herself in one of CMLL’s more unusual paths to a championship. Fans voted her into a Mexican National Women’s Championship match against Reyna Isis.
On September 27, 2024, Mano Negra stood in his daughter’s corner while Sanely won the championship at Arena México.
The reign lasted 161 days. India Sioux beat her on March 7, 2025.
Sanely still had meaningful wins after losing the belt. She joined India Sioux, La Jarochita and Lluvia to win the Copa Herederes cibernético in June. A tournament for second-generation wrestlers was an appropriate place for the daughter of Mano Negra.
Less than two years after becoming national champion, almost all the wins are gone.
Her schedule has not disappeared with them.
Eighteen Matches With Tessa
Sanely and Tessa Blanchard have been opponents in 18 proper CMLL matches this year.
Tessa, or Tessa’s team, has won all 18.
One was a cibernético. The other 17 were team matches. Tessa didn’t personally pin Sanely every time, and they haven’t had a singles match. They’ve simply stood on opposite sides of the ring 18 times.
Tessa’s side keeps winning.
Through August 16, Tessa had wrestled 51 proper CMLL matches this year. Sanely was across from her in 18 of them. That’s more than a third of Tessa’s CMLL schedule and more than half of Sanely’s.
That’s too much to dismiss as a coincidence hidden in the schedule. In 2026, helping Tessa win has become Sanely’s most regular assignment.
CMLL has made it increasingly clear that Tessa is a big deal. She works the important Friday shows and the regular cards throughout the week. She wins tournaments, pins champions in preliminary matches and receives world title opportunities. The volume of her Arena México appearances even led Cubs Fan to ask why she gets so many of them.
Persephone has beaten her twice in CMLL World Women’s Championship matches this year. The second came on July 31, two weeks after the Sanely trios match.
I still believe Tessa will eventually beat Persephone for the championship, most likely at Aniversario. I’ve been wrong about wrestling before, and I’ll be wrong again, but CMLL keeps giving me reasons to believe this one. I’ve already made the longer case.
To get Tessa to those title matches, CMLL keeps putting Sanely on the other side of the ring.
If you want to know who CMLL sees as a star, look at who keeps beating her.
The July 17 match was already their 15th meeting of the year. Sanely teamed with Olympia and Persephone. Tessa stood across from them with Thunder Rosa and Johnnie Robbie.
Tessa’s team won.
Sanely took the pin. The result was familiar. The 4.25 stars were the strange part.
Watching Sanely
Sanely spends the first three minutes of the match on the apron.
That explains part of why I forgot her. Six-woman tags do not encourage patient viewing. The eye follows whoever is running, diving or being thrown into something. A wrestler standing in the corner has to compete with five other wrestlers, a referee and the possibility that I will look down at my phone.
Sanely eventually tags in against Thunder Rosa.
She slows Thunder down, stands over her and raises the black glove. She wins a collision with a shoulder block, follows with a simple slam and settles into grounded control. The offense is basic. It gives Thunder’s quicker movement something to push against.
Thunder counters with a series of rolls and pinning combinations. Sanely follows her through them and takes the bumps cleanly. A couple transitions reveal the setup. Nobody gets lost.
Later, when the rudas take control, Sanely usually knows where the next piece of the match is happening. She joins the stomps, pulls an opponent into position and leaves enough room for her teammates.
I didn’t notice any of this during the first viewing. I noticed that the rudas were in control.
That is the job. Sanely helps create the part of the match everyone else remembers.
Her most memorable offense happens in the closing minute of the match.
The Dive Is Fine
Sanely runs toward the corner, hops onto the second rope and throws a crossbody onto the pile below, where Johnnie Robbie and Persephone are waiting.
Neither the height or distance are remarkable. Sanely isn’t particularly smooth getting onto the rope. The jump will not become part of a career retrospective of Sanely’s work.
Sanely reaches the people waiting for her. They catch her. Everyone lands close to where they intended, and the match continues.
The dive is serviceable.
That word sounds like an insult in wrestling. Fans want spectacular. We want moves that can be clipped, posted and described with at least two fire emojis by an account called SashaFan02018.
CMLL needs the dive to land.
One missed catch changes the match. A bad jump leaves someone injured or three wrestlers standing on the floor pretending they were supposed to watch Sanely fall beside them.
She gets there. They catch her.
The match goes on.
There’s a temptation in a profile like this to rescue Sanely from ordinary praise. We could call the dive beautiful, daring or evidence of some hidden athletic ceiling. The footage would say that’s a lie.
It is fine.
Much of Sanely’s work is fine. Fine becomes valuable when a match has six wrestlers, several dives and a closing sequence that depends on everyone being in the correct place.
Sanely does not create the best moments in the match. She avoids becoming the reason the match falls apart.
Someone Has to Lose
The dive explains part of Sanely’s value. The finish explains the rest.
After nearly fifteen minutes, Sanely returns to the ring with Thunder Rosa. She climbs to the top rope and hits Thunder with a missile dropkick. It is Sanely’s strongest individual move of the match and arrives when the result still needs a little doubt.
For a few seconds, Sanely looks capable of winning.
Thunder survives. She catches Sanely, lifts her and plants her with the Fire Thunder Driver.
Sanely takes the move flat and clean. She stays where Thunder needs her for the cover.
The referee counts three.
That is the full assignment.
Losing well requires work. The winner needs resistance before the finish. The last move has to look decisive. The person taking it has to land in the right place and remain there without making the pin look like a complicated furniture delivery.
No one is ever going to confuse Sanely with Manami Toyota or Jaguar Yokota. She isn’t building a case for inclusion among the greatest women to ever wrestle. I don’t imagine wrestling historians were waiting on this column to settle that question.
Sanely’s value is found further down the card, where most of professional wrestling actually happens.
CMLL runs several shows every week. Tessa Blanchard can’t wrestle Persephone every Friday. They’d run out of matches long before CMLL ran out of Fridays. The promotion needs familiar opponents who can give its stars useful victories without making the outcome feel completely free.
Sanely can do that because she isn’t some anonymous wrestler brought in to fill an empty corner. She’s Mano Negra’s daughter. She has spent nearly a decade in CMLL. The mask and long black glove give her an identity people recognize, and she held the Mexican National Women’s Championship less than two years ago.
Beating Sanely still means something.
Thunder Rosa’s victory looked decisive. The match ended exactly when it was supposed to. Sanely had done her part without demanding that anyone stop and admire it.
That has been much of her 2026.
Through August 16, Sanely had worked 35 proper CMLL matches and lost 31 of them. Eighteen placed her across the ring from Tessa Blanchard. CMLL knows what keeps happening when it books Sanely, and it keeps booking her anyway.
Those 31 losses tell us where she sits in the division. Being sent back out nearly every week tells us she still has a place in it.
Sanely matters because CMLL’s women’s division has to function between championship matches. It has to work on ordinary cards in Puebla, Guadalajara and Arena México. Someone has to keep the trios match moving, give the featured wrestler enough resistance and take the finish without dragging everyone else into the wreckage.
Sanely has become very good at being that someone.