Went to see lucha libre in Arena Mexico last night and thought I'd give a brief summary for those interested.

First off, from what I understand there are events every Fri/Sat/Sun and the turnout was pretty good. About 10-12k people in an arena that holds 16,500. Mexicans are absolutely crazy about this, and there is also a large contigent of foreigners from Asia/USA/Canada who probably just go 1 time for the experience.

A couple of random thoughts:

-The card was 7 matches, with only 1 being a singles match. All the matches were usually 3 v. 3

-All matches are best 2 of 3 falls with the exception being 1 "lightning match" which was a 1-fall singles match with a 10 minute time limit

-The crowd is extremely hot for the duration (show lasted a bit over 2 hours). "*******" chants at top heels, random men and women screaming "kill him", "he's a damn clown", random stuff like that. Mexican women apparently go crazy for top rope dives as they're usually rewarded with screams each time.

-Most luchadors have masks and the heel threatening to unmask a face is an easy way to draw a lot of heel heat

-Action is extremely fast-paced as you might imagine with 6 wrestlers in most masks. If you are a fan of Ricochet, then you would love LL. A lot of spots that looked a bit too choreographed, tons of huricanranas, dives over the top ropes, that handstand bounce off the ropes is extremely popular.

-Not much technical wrestling, not a ton of non-high flying intermediate moves that you'd see in WWE

-Almost no kickouts of finisher moves and if a guy locked in a submission, there was an insta-tap like 75% of the time

-Walkout songs were a ton of English language songs from the 80s, a few Mexican pop songs, don't really think any wrestler had his own theme.

-Almost no promos. One guy cut a 10-second promo, but other than that, there was 0 talking and all wrestling. Seems like it would be a little tough to get into on a weekly basis due to there not being any storylines or character build up.

-Far less botches than I thought there would be. These guys are extremely talented. The upper tier guys in this event would all be among the best workers in WWE, but obviously with the limited/no English and cultural differences, probably only the super elite guys ever get a shot at WWE.

That's about all I can remember for now. If you have even a passing interest in wrestling, then I think you'd thoroughly enjoy going to lucha libre in Mexico, and a great value at $6 for pretty solid seats. I don't think it's something I could get into on a weekly basis, but will definitely be something I'll do every other month or when some friends come to visit and want to check it out.

Thanks for the TR. Interesting stuff.