Lucha Libre!

Guadalajara, Mexico

Back in the early 1990’s, we lived about 1 block from what was then the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) world headquarters in beautiful Stamford, CT aka The City Moving Forward for People. This was before the brawny wrestlers were defeated by a peaceful panda, and the World Wildlife Federation got them to change their name to WWE. Apparently Hulk Hogan lived up the street, hence the location. It was hard to ignore WWF when they had a rumble on the roof of the HQ building – helicopters and spotlights for hours basically across the street from our house. Though Mark was more of a roller derby fan in the 1960s, Linda’s dad told her that he used to be a wrestler in his youth when they watched together.

Like a lot of people, Lucha Libre, literally “free fight,” hit our radar in 2006 when Jack Black starred in Nacho Libre. In fact, only recently was Mark able to remember to call it Lucha and not Nacho. If you are still wondering what this is, it is championship “wrestling” where many of the luchadores wear masks. 

When we arrived at Lake Chapala, we saw there was an “event” scheduled with the local gringo society for a group trip to Guadalajara for…Lucha Libre! We bought tickets on the spot, thinking this was a small slice of Mexican culture we had to see. And apparently the Arena Coliseo in Guadalajara is a very good venue for it – relatively small, so most seats are pretty close to the action, but big enough to get good and rowdy crowds.

The day for the trip finally came, and we piled on the bus and headed 1 hour north to Guadalajara. The arena is in a neighborhood that has lots of auxiliary businesses, selling masks, t-shirts, action figure wrestlers, and of course comida, cerveza, y tequila. Being in a group of 30+ gringos coming off a chartered bus made us even more conspicuous than usual, but in general it seemed the locals found it humorous that we wanted to see Lucha Libre.

This was on a Sunday evening, which it turns out is family night, so there were a bunch of kids in the stage / ring, pretending to wrestle, jumping from turnbuckles, and generally emulating their heroes. Imagine this happening at an NBA game. Or a WWE “match.” Apparently Tuesday nights are more raucous, with mostly men and young people attending. (We may have to return!)

Soon the smoke rolled out from the entry area, and the first of 5 sets of contestants entered. First came the Técnicos, generally these are the good guys, the fair wrestlers who follow the rules. They are pitted against the Rudos, the bad guys, who don’t. A couple of the matches that night were Rudos vs. Rudos, too. Names ranged from El Yaqui (dressed as an indigenous indio we think?) to Malefico, Black Sugar and Demonio Maya. A general rule was that the tecnicos, for whom most people cheer, are pretty athletic-looking, and generally handsome (and more likely not to wear the masks while fighting,) while all the rudos sported a panza de cerveza (beer belly). Some of the moves were genuinely difficult and looked painful -- high flying somersaults onto an opponent, swan dive out of the ring onto the hard floor. But there was a lot of chest slapping and fake punching too.

Each group had their fans present, with much semi-raucous cheering (it was family night, after all). There were a number of kids who seemed genuinely elated, or crestfallen, when Tigre Blanco prevailed, or failed.

 

They served beer in the stands, 80 pesos for two Victorias in a huge cup, and eventually, tequila – which had to be served mixed. So we had our very first, and likely last, tequila and coke – a tequila libre! Also donuts and chicharron (fried pig skin)!

Get your chicharron here!

Near the end of the evening, those in our group who were interested were escorted to the press area, where several of the wrestlers came out and posed for pictures. The wrestlers were very polite and seemed to find it pretty funny that old white people wanted to pose with them. Mark actually asked for a headlock, and got more than he asked for – ouch!

Linda and friend enjoyed their interaction a little bit more

From the wall of fame, the original mask wearer!

Famous group of Rudos

The action wound up pretty early, about 8:30 p.m., and we trooped back to the bus. And just to add some more excitement to the evening, our bus ran out of gas on the way back! The bomberos (firemen) showed up with gasoline (quien es mas macho?) and eventually we got back to our car.

So another cultural snapshot, here on the fun side of the wall!

(Enero 28, 2018)