Went to see CMLL (lucha libre) in Mexico City
Join Date: May 2012
Posts: 14,200
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.
Join Date: Aug 2003
Posts: 95,986
Thanks for the TR. Interesting stuff.