Travel-Stained Life

Most people in the US are familiar with WWE.  The crazy, semi-realistic, fake, professional wrestling.  It is extremely popular amongst young men who wouldn’t dare be caught in the flamboyant costumes their heroes adorn.  If you take it up another notch, with masks, 3 on 3 battles and little people (enanos), you have Mexican Lucha Libre.  We spent our second evening in Mexico City at the local arena to see what it is all about.

Our only previous experience with Lucha Libre was through trailers for the Jack Black movie Nacho Libre and our quest to purchase souvenier masks on a previous trip to Baja California.  We were quite aware that it is a relatively popular pastime in Mexico and were intrigued to see what it was all about.

Our night started with a security search when we entered the Arena Mexico which resulted in the confiscation of our camera.  So, no photos to show for our experience and butterflies in our stomach during the event, wondering if we would get our camera back in one piece (we did).  We were led inside by “Acomodores” who showed us to better seats than we purchased for “a good tip”.

Arena Mexico was the venue for the matches, which is near the center of Mexico City.  The arena is oldish looking, with plenty of character to go with chipped paint and worn floors.  The seats in each section were colored differently to aid in finding your seat, which was not helpful to us in the least as no section numbers were provided.  The upper sections were cordoned off from the bottom level by 4 foot chain link fences, surely to slow any madman who gets a bit overexcited by the action in the ring.  The arena was quite small by US standards and probably held 8,000 spectators, although we were going to a lesser event and there were probably less than 4,000 in attendance.  The arena reminded Ben of a dollhouse sized version of Madison Square Garden.

The showcase for the evening consisted of six matches, leading up to the grand finale.  Perhaps the most entertaining match of the evening was a 3 on 3 match (plus one enano in a monkey costume) that seemed to feature one team of devils against a team of quite feminine men.  The leader of the feminine team, Maximo, was quite beloved by the audience.  He was sporting hot pink tights and a pink mohawk, and it is safe to say he is not on steroids.  He prances and dances and is known for humiliating his opponets by kissing them right before the final pin.  The match was hard fought, with the team of devils beating the feminine guys early on.  But near the end, all of the devlis were spectacularly thrown out of the ring and taking a beating, when out of nowhere the enano dressed as a monkey launched himself onto one of the unsuspecting devils for the final blow.  The crowd went wild, Maximo executed his kiss and the devils were vanquished.  Our night was over, but not before we were provided with a fascinating look into Mexican pop culture.