at El Toreo. The promotion was the first to elevate wrestlers such as El Canek, Dos Caras, Fishman, Perro Aguayo and Villano III to main event status. El Canek became the "face of the UWA", holding the UWA World Heavyweight Championship no less than 13 times during the promotion's life span, drawing full houses when he "defended Mexico's honor" against foreign wrestlers such as Hulk Hogan, Tatsumi Fujinami or Big Van Vader. The UWA also reached out to promotions around the globe and forged working relationships with the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in the United States and New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) and Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling (JWP) in Japan. This working relationship resulted in a larger influx of foreign wrestlers than EMLL was ever able to produce and also led to the UWA actually gaining exclusive rights to promote a WWF branded championship, the WWF World Light Heavyweight Championship in the early 1980s, even if the promotion does not acknowledge the lineage in their official title history today. The UWA even began working with EMLL in the 1980s, co-promoting shows and allowing EMLL to book UWA wrestlers on their shows. By the early 1990s UWA began to struggle financially as several of their top wrestlers left the company to work for EMLL who could offer them more money. In 1992 Antonio Peña broke away from EMLL, much like the UWA had 18 years earlier, and formed a new company called Asistencia Asesoría y Administración (AAA) further affecting the UWA's finances. As the peso devaluated sharply in the mid-1990s, the UWA was forced to close its doors in 1995. Legacy The UWA is remembered as the place where a lot of main event wrestlers of the 1980s and 1990s got their start, including El Canek, now considered a legend in lucha libre. The UWA also helped popularize the match format that is now the most common in Mexico, the Best two out of three falls Six-man tag team match, or Trios match when they put together the rudo (bad guy) trio Los Misioneros de la Muerte (Negro Navarro, El Signo and El Texano) and matched them up against trios of popular tecnicos (good guys) and drew so many sell-crowds that other promotions began to heavily promote the Trios format as well. Los Misionares de la Muerte were originally workhorse midcarders in the UWA, but their stock rose immediately in a UWA match