LuchaLibre!

Last night I went to my first Luchadore match! Very exciting. This is pretty similar to American entertainment wrestling; you got your cheesy intros with the smoke and bad music, the ridiculous costumes and names, and last but not least the overdramatic taunts and victory dances. In fact, before going to this match I was never quite sure what the appeal was, I’d rather see fake fighting in movies where its done right. However now that I’ve experienced a live show I have to say it was pretty entertaining. This is much less like a staged UFC fight and much more like the circus. Actually its kind of like watching clowns on steroids. You get you’re funny bits and you’re exciting bits and you even get an inappropriate amount of skin (more guy skin though !?). However from what I can tell the Luchalibre culture is quite a bit different than that of Pro-wrestling back home. It is considered a family outing and everyone comes out. I bought a first-row seat and sat next to a Grandma who screamed and cheered the whole time. She was hilarious but it got a little weird when she started to cat-call at the half-naked wrestler giving a lap dance. Don’t ask. Furthermore there are a few unwritten laws to Luchalibre. First and foremost, it is extremely shameful for a masked fighter to be de-masked. Almost never happens and when it does its trouble. Second the good guys always win. Third, the bad guys are usually foreigners and for some reason the favorite bad guy of choice is Japanese? That’s pretty much it for rules, after that most anything goes…which leads us to another difference between American and Mexican wrestling: There are no rules or regulations! More and more I’m finding this to be the case with Mexico in genrenal. I guess coming from lawsuit happy America this is quite a surprise but sometimes it does get a little dangerous. Take fireworks for instance. I’m all for blowing stuff up but Mexicans seem to take delight in showering their eager onlookers with sparks and explosions. In fact every firework show I’ve seen so far has forced people to run away from the show. This of course happened again at the match as well as plenty of other things to endanger the crowed; luckily I’m young, healthy, and quick to dodge so I loved every second of it. The other difference of Luchalibre is how ghetto it is. The match was held in a high school gym and the ring, costumes and props looked like they were bought second hand 10 years ago. Similarly all the music was straight from the 80s, they even played Labamba, twice! Then finally there are the vendors. These aren’t the official vendors that you’d see at a baseball or football game, these are pretty much the same vendors you’d see at the markets or on random street corners. So this means little old grandmas selling posters and masks and children selling gum and frozen coffee (got to love the variety). All joking aside though the show was great and a couple of the wrestlers where truly great athletes. Even the women put on a good show! When I first saw them come out I had to laugh, they were dressed in the skimpiest of outfits and a couple were definitely showing some age but once they got warmed up they beat the shit out of each other. The Japanese girl was thrown into the crowd several times and she went flying into those chairs. It was awesome! I had a blast and definitely recommend checking out one if you ever get the chance.

For now adios,

                      Justin