Lucha libre is art.
Even before I engaged too deeply with it, I knew lucha has a flair about it that catches the eye. On the surface, fans will easily see its influence in modern pro wrestling and even further back. Rey Mysterio, Eddie Guerrero, Lucha Underground…it runs deep. To this day, I fondly remember the colorful characters that would appear on WCW Monday Nitro and WCW Thunder, featuring the aforementioned Mysterio and Guerrero alongside the likes of La Parka, Psicosis, Hector Garza, Juventud Guerrera, and Eddie’s nephew Chavo.
While many different styles of pro wrestling contrast with each other, few are as different as lucha libre. Lucha is often one of the first things to cross my mind when I think of Mexico. The colorful masks and personalities. The styles of people like Hechicero’s grounded, technical approach or Mr. Iguana’s comedic sensibilities. I think about the culture of it, how there’s a sense of Mexican pride and unwinding to something that feels like home. I think of the sobbing faces in the ring and amongst the crowd during Lucha de Apuestas matches.
I confess that I’m far from being someone knowledgeable in lucha libre. I couldn’t tell you about El Santo and his legacy. I certainly wouldn’t be able to divulge anything coherent about the animosity between CMLL and AAA. That’s a job for people like Luchablog, Rob Viper, or Ernesto Ocampo.
But I know when wrestling makes me feel something.
So today, we’re taking a trip six years into the future, in a different lucha promotion: CMLL’s Juicio Final in 2000, held in Arena Mexico in Mexico City. A match that is an experience required of wrestling fans to witness.
It’s March 17. Mick Foley has retired from full-time wrestling. WCW and ECW are weeks away from becoming defunct. Kenny Omega and Randy Orton made their pro wrestling debuts earlier in the year. Metal band Disturbed releases their album The Sickness, and Sony’s PlayStation 2 is released in Japan.
Tonight, however, a match with huge implications looms. Mexico cheers as their hero, their “Superman” in the form of Atlantis, faces the legendary Villano III of the Villano family—and the most successful of them at the time.
Bitter by a previous loss to Villano, Atlantis sought retribution. In the grand halls of Arena Mexico, in front of the world, he put his very image on the line. His mask, or Villano’s mask. That’s all it had to come down to. The only way he’d be satisfied with settling this. Villano obliged.
Now, they’re in the ring. Separating them in their corners was the logo for Corona. Both luchadors evacuated the ring of all officials, save for one. By the fabric of their veils, this is between them. Pounding adrenaline with a pounding bell with which to signal them.
Atlantis controls Villano early on, keeping him centered on the blue mat. A captain helming an unruly boat upon a heathenous sea. Villano, ever the seasoned veteran, controls Atlantis’s arm, tweaking and ruining it.
With his bare hands, Villano rips the eye of Atlantis’s mask like a predator flaying its defenseless prey. Mexico City gasps as the pink Villano’s skull collides with his blue opponent’s; both men spiral and sprawl out. Cracked craniums taint their masks with blood as fans can only watch in horror.
That terror turns to boiling rage as Villano grabs Atlantis’s head, ramming his knee. Again. Again. Again. By any means necessary, that mask will sit pinkly on his head.
Atlantis walks in a daze, his right eye and hair wholly visible. Villano employs various kinds of holds: a double-arm stretch, a camel clutch that would’ve put a smile on Iron Sheik’s face. He senses Atlantis is weak. Villano acts as though this is short work for him.
Atlantis gains a breath of an opening, warranting his own camel clutch. He abandons that for an all-limb stretch, and Mexico’s hope fills his veins. Their heart courses his soul, pulling him through cradles until he pulls back on Villano with a Boston Crab.
Villano anticipates Atlantis’s newfound momentum, landing a Sunset Flip with a breeze that tickles their masks. A top-rope crossbody nearly spells doom for Atlantis once Villano reverses it into a roll-up.
Now it is Villano who is in the throes of exhaustion. Atlantis soars with a plancha, once more scattering them among the hard, dark blue floor.
Subverting Atlantis’s rampaging charge, Villano yanks in an octopus stretch. Atlantis’s next move stretches his rose-tinted opponent’s legs while half-pinning him. Pouring potential energy into kinetic, the veteran swings this hold into a Sunset Flip pin. Arena Mexico chants for Atlantis; their hero has to win.
Another Sunset Flip by Villano, who follows up in the chaos with a clothesline, a leg drop, and a senton. With that, he speculates the match is nearly won and reaches for a Butterfly Stretch. Atlantis avoids that, landing a torture rack in the form of his trademark Atlantida Backbreaker. It isn’t enough, so he does it once more. One more Atlantida, let this be the one. His mask is in tatters, but so long as it sits upon his head, he will keep on going.
Atlantis is the heart that moves mountains from the lakes. The heart that waters the deserts and plains when it rains. The sun that bears crops. You exist, you are here. Keep fighting.
Wrench him. Wrench him and tap him out. Your blood and your damaged mask mean nothing if you can’t put away this old dog.
Villano, unable to resist the strain any longer, taps. He taps for his dear life to live another day. The younger man won. It’s over.
The veteran’s loss isn’t met with vitriol. Instead, he’s overjoyed. He hoists Atlantis upon his shoulder. The white and blue mask is stained with his own claret, a shade of salmon pink to match his downed opponent.
Fans weep in the crowd. This is the release they’ve been waiting for. Their hard day of work, the woes of life in general, just to feel something. To feel grief for the past and hope for someone who deserved it.
Villano is slowly and carefully unmasked as a child sits upon his shoulder. Villano, his wet and sopping hair drapes his forehead as he reveals his name. Arturo Díaz Mendoza.
Atlantis holds aloft the mask of Villano III and boasts about the toughness of tonight’s struggle.
Mexico City still weeps, its melancholia now wiped away by sheer jubilation.
Lucha libre, puroresu, professional wrestling. Whatever you call it, this is the story. The connection between fiction and reality. Our invisible barrier to the stories that play out between two worlds.
This is why we watch for the morality plays that masquerade as this beautiful sport. The hope that audiences latch onto.
When the world is at its worst, we turn to pro wrestling. The heart to persevere against all odds and leave it all in the ring.
The manmade need to keep fighting against all. Just to prove that we are here. That no matter the documents, the laws, the hate. We all exist.
And we will fight to show that we are still human.
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