I’ve written mostly about my time spent watching American professional wrestling in the 1980’s and 90’s. I haven’t written much about my love of Mexican professional wrestling, Lucha Libre. I came to like lucha years after I stopped watching American wrestling, but in hindsight seeds of it were there back in the early 80’s. It probably started with Spiderman. I was obsessed with Spiderman as a young child. I had to have everything Spiderman. I’m really not sure why I latched on to Spiderman. Who knows why kids latch on to anything. I never stopped liking Spidey, and he does have a certain resemblance to our friendly neighborhood wrestlers down in Mexico. And in fact many popular Luchadors had their own comics. So the connection was there. I also remembering always liking the masked wrestlers that would occasionally come onto the WWF programs, though they were usually there for different reasons. Often it’d just be a wrestler that had been out of the “league” for a while and was making a comeback. They would not wear the mask for too long, resuming there own personas soon after being unmasked. But that didn’t really matter to me. I liked it when they were in the masks.
I honestly didn’t think too much about wrestling in the mid and late 90’s and early 2000’s. I’d outgrown it and the American product had changed. In the summer of 2005 my brother went to Cuernavaca, Mexico for a Spanish immersion course. While he was there he and some other students took in the local sites and entertainment. Included in this were the Lucha Libre shows that periodically came through town at the Arena Isabel. They were part of the CMLL (Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre), Mexico’s largest wrestling promotions. His description of the matches and the audience sounded great and hilarious. He brought me back a lucha mask. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. I'd wear it to work every now and then for a laugh. My co-worker Alex, from Chile, started calling me El Santo. He'd used to watch the Santo movies as a kid.
When my brother went back to Mexico for a second time in the summer of 2006, he invited our good friend Aric and me to also come down and visit. We’d stay with his same host family for a couple weeks. I had a great time in Mexico and one of the highlights was going to the lucha matches. The fans were so into fights, cheering and jeering accordingly. The arena was over 50 years old, and you could feel the history of wrestling matches in the air. There were people outside the arena selling masks. I of course bought another one. Many beers later we were still celebrating on the top of our host mom’s roof with our masks. Ahhh memories.
I was lucky enough to visit Mexico again the next summer, that time with my girlfriend (now wife), Aric and his girlfriend. We were able to take in another lucha show at the arena. A new wrestler, Mistico, had become very popular down there since the previous summer and was going to be wrestling at the show. He was unmasked at the end, but no one saw his face as he ran from the squared circle into the dressing room. It was a big deal. The audience was in shock. It was amazing. I stole a poster of the side of the arena. It hangs on the door of our bedroom.
