Lucha Underground and the meaning of “luchadors”

I’m going to get the weekend’s Lucha Underground results up eventually. They’re in another window, they’ll be in this window soon enough. Of course, I’m not the only person who goes to these shows and writes about them; there’s another site that has the Saturday results right now. It’s just, the few paragraphs before the results come from a well meaning place and totally miss. Miss so badly that just paced around thinking about it (so I guess they hit something.)

To save you from clicking and being spoiled, the gist of the complaint is all the luchadors lost so the Lucha Underground writers don’t know what they’re doing. (There’s also a specific related complaint about a surprise stipulation match which reveals a bit about the level of knowledge here – if they were as big fans of the people they’re defending, they’d know exactly why that match happened.)

I disagree with the thoughts in that recap. I think the writers know what they’re doing, but there’s a few things going on here that feel like are broader points about where we are with Lucha Underground (and so I can swing this away from just being about someone on the internet being wrong.) Three points I want to make:

Two episodes don’t make a series or even a trend. Unfortunately for this guy, he just missed. If they went to the last show of the last set of tapings, they would’ve seen a couple of masked luchadors in a MOTYC where both came out looking outstanding. If they went to Sunday’s tapings, they would’ve seen a couple of masked luchadors in a MOTYC where both came out looking outstanding. Just unlucky timing on what they wanted to see, but that doesn’t mean the whole show has made any sort of change. Everyone gets their moment in the sun, just not all on the same show and sometimes not on the show you happen to go to.

Angelico is a luchador. Angelico had himself a busy weekend, which maybe we’ll get into more detail later. In that recap, he’s dismissed as someone who won instead of the luchadors. Again, maybe they just didn’t know, and Angelico’s AAA gimmick is partly to be an ‘other’, something different than their typical. Angelico’s still as much as a real luchador as anyone else on that roster. He’s worked hard in tough conditions, he’s sacrificed years of his life to get a break, and he’s feuded with the Pirata Morgan family over a bootleg CD in IWRG. That’s about as luchador as you can get.

Maybe you want to discount that because we’re fans of Angelico. I don’t have the same feelings towards Taya (and I’d assume the feelings are mutual!) and her gimmick is explicitly that she’s not a luchadora but a vile WWE-style diva, but she’s really a luchadora too and I’d defend her as one.

No one’s certified me to decide who does and does not count as a luchador, but I’ve got some simple beliefs about what matters. If you’re a professional, if you make the effort to improve your craft, and if you wrestle in Mexico, you’re a luchador. A mask is nice, but simply being masked does make you a luchador – that’s a false construct of the Mexico lucha TV boom and WCW Nitro. There’s plenty of people in Mexico rings who are wearing masks who aren’t really luchadors, but backyarders taking advantage of an easy barrier to entry. It’s not the mask that makes someone a luchador, it’s the work.

Everyone’s a luchador. No one was more critical of the lack of important AAA guys on the first couple of shows than me. The stuff I wrote here was not even near as harsh as the conversations I had elsewhere. There was just too much bad history of Mexicans being brought into promotions like WWE to be marginalized to extend much trust, and when the first moments of a show led by ex-WWE people featured less Mexicans than planned, those there in subordinate positions, and ex-WWE guy and an indy guy being put over as the top people in what was supposed to be an AAA show, it fed quite nicely into that lack of trust.

That was episode 1. By episode 3, we had the Fenix/Pentagon/Drago three way. From there, Fenix was winning ten matches, Drago was feuding with King Cuerno, and Mil Muertes was the great new character of 2014. Might have wanted it to happen on Day 1 and it wasn’t guaranteed to happen every day, but the AAA guys were treated seriously and respectfully, same as everyone else.

Same is what matters. Same is the place they’re all at. Once everyone’s treated equally, it doesn’t matter who they were or where they came from before all of this. Bael had a different journey to Lucha Underground than Argenis had, than Brian Cage had, than Prince Puma had, but they’re all at this place, and they’re all one group.

I’m not saying you can’t have favorites – the handful of people who can identify me will definitely identify me cheering for Aerostar in April. Just don’t confuse your favorites losing as a systematic bias. I’ve got no doubt the people behind the scenes have a few guys they like a little more – but it’s probably not about what country they work on the others days, but what they can do. Somewhere along the way, maybe when those Aztec drums were being pounded every 90 seconds, it finally occurred to me that there really wasn’t (and hadn’t been for a while) any on-screen distinction between US wrestlers and AAA luchadors. They’re still going to work and look differently, but they’re going to matter the same. They’re all Lucha Underground luchadors now.