In the storied alleys of Monterrey, the butterflies don’t flutter—they fight.
Ernestina Sugehit Salazar Martínez didn’t grow up wrapped in pink tutus or princess gowns. She was too busy learning how to be suplexed by men twice her size in a wrestling gym that smelled like old sweat and busted pride. The lone girl in a testosterone-rich swamp of dreamers, she carved herself into the kind of woman who could chew glass, spit elegance, and still make a man tap out while wearing glitter.
They say her name was inspired by the stars—a queen named Sujei—and she added “Princesa” like a velvet glove over a steel fist. Her mask bore a monarch butterfly, not because it was delicate, but because it promised transformation. From 1996 on, every match was a metamorphosis, every opponent a cocoon she had to tear through with double-footed dropkicks.
Lucha Libre Royalty, Without the Fairy Tale
Lucha libre doesn’t hand out crowns. You bleed for them. Sugehit bled in Monterrey first, then across Mexico, then in Japan, then in the bizarre, glitzy twilight zone that is WWE’s Mae Young Classic. Before she ever stepped into a CMLL ring, she was working her way through AAA’s labyrinthine chaos, tangling with Martha Villalobos and Tiffany like it was a family feud with body slams.
She had a long-standing beef with Dark Angel in Lucha Libre Feminil that culminated in a 45-minute bloodbath bet match. Sugehit won. Dark Angel unmasked. That’s lucha libre currency right there—forget belts, this is about dignity. About a face lost in front of hundreds, maybe thousands. And Sugehit took that scalp like a monarch laying waste to caterpillars.
Ladies of Polanco and Other Affluent Homicides
When CMLL finally decided to dust off its women’s division and pretend like they cared again, Sugehit was ready. She slipped into the scene like a wolf in pearls, immediately taking on names like Goddess and Lady Apache with the same calm fury you’d expect from a tax auditor with a vendetta. Her unmasking of Goddess in 2008 didn’t just win her a match—it reestablished the women’s division as a battlefield worth watching.
She formed “Las Zorras,” later rebranded as “Las Ladies de Polanco”—a name that screamed bougie wine moms but fought like a couple of starving coyotes in the ring. Alongside Princesa Blanca and Hiroka, she made the mean streets of Mexico City’s poshest neighborhood look like a lucha warzone.
They traveled to Japan. They got knocked out in the first round. But hell, they did it looking fabulous and leaving sore ribs in their wake.
Titles, Trauma, and Transformation
Sugehit didn’t just win titles—she turned them into haunted houses. In 2010 she won the PWR World Women’s Championship and held it for 454 days like it was the last tequila bottle in Jalisco. In 2017 she dethroned Zeuxis for the Mexican National Women’s Championship and then… lost her mask in a Lucha de Apuestas match to that same rival.
That’s right. After 21 years of mystery, 21 years of being a walking question mark, she was unmasked in front of the world at CMLL’s 84th Anniversary Show. The monarch butterfly had landed. No smoke, no mirrors. Just Ernestina Sugehit Salazar Martínez—5-foot-1 of grit, bruises, and audacity.
It should’ve been the end.
But she kept wrestling like the mask was still there. Which, in a way, it was.
Mae Young Classic: A Butterfly in the Machine
In 2017, Sugehit found herself in the WWE’s pet project—the Mae Young Classic—a tournament designed to showcase the best women’s wrestlers in the world. She beat Kay Lee Ray in the first round, then got bounced by Mercedes Martinez, who fights like she’s made of broken pool cues and bitterness. But Sugehit made her mark, even in that brief moment. A luchadora in a corporate wrestling factory, she moved like an emissary from another dimension. One with less Botox and more blood.
WWE didn’t keep her, maybe because she wasn’t cookie-cutter enough. Or maybe they couldn’t pronounce “Sugehit” without choking on their own branding.
COVID, Comebacks, and One Hell of a Reign
She caught COVID in 2020. Missed the CMLL 87th Anniversary Show because of it. But then, as if insulted by the virus itself, she came back and won the CMLL World Women’s Championship in October, defeating Marcela in a grueling two-out-of-three falls match. It was a late-career coronation. A final affirmation that Sugehit wasn’t just a legend—she was still the one to beat.
She held the title for 1,027 days. Let that sink in. That’s longer than some governments. Longer than most diets. Longer than WWE can commit to a storyline. And in August 2023, she finally relinquished it due to injury. Not defeat. Injury.
Even then, the belt didn’t want to leave her.
Legacy in Lipstick and Leather
Princesa Sugehit is part myth, part miracle. She’s what happens when a little girl in Monterrey tells the boys, “Screw your odds,” and proceeds to build a career that spans continents, cultures, and contradictions.
She’s a monarch butterfly alright—gorgeous, deadly, and impossible to pin down. With a mask or without, in a title match or a Lucha de Apuestas, she’s what every luchadora secretly wants to be: feared, respected, and unforgettable.
And somewhere in the rubble of old masks and spent rivalries, a voice whispers: “Long live the queen.”
Because she never really left the ring.