My Lucha Journey: Introduction/Statement of Purpose

There's something about leopards and their spots, even in this day and age of easy access and quick information. We all have our niches and I think the nature of internet discussion is a race to the top when it comes to being right. This leads to a trend of deepening over widening. That's why I cast my net backwards into the US territories of the 80s and the pretty disposable WWF of the 90s instead of watching lucha libre when it was right there and so available.

Or maybe I was daunted by the sheer scope of it. This isn't like watching Portland or Memphis of Southwest. Wrestling is wrestling but this is a different genre, a different dialect if not a different language. It took me a good chunk of my lifetime and an epiphany or two to feel like I really get US wrestling, and even then, I imagine I'll change my tune on a few things over the next few years. The idea of diving into waters full of different norms and psychology and looking like a total idiot to people who I respect and some I don't was a bit TOO daunting for a long time.

It remained that way even as I bypassed high ranked luchadors in the DVDVR 500 or Segunda Caida's top 25 and plenty of interesting cameos in March Madness. I rarely do anything by half and I felt like I couldn't just dip my toe in to see a Blue Panther or Negro Casas match. It was all or nothing. I think for years the one lucha match I had even seen outside of WCW TV was the Los Gringos Locos match from When Worlds Collide. That's not understatement or hyperbole. That was just it. Probably because of this, and despite plenty of evidence saying otherwise, I bought into the lazy misconception that most lucha was just endless but entertaining convoluted holds, crazy armdrags, and over-frequent dives.

I had enjoyed participating in the DVDVR AWA 80s set, so when the lucha set came around, I hesitantly jumped aboard. At first, a lot of my misgivings were well-founded, if not about the content, then about myself: I didn't have any idea who was who and found myself generally lost. After a few discs though, the patterns started to emerge. I had more to unlearn than to learn, as for the most part, lucha is its own reference point but not hard to get acclimated in; it was my own biases holding me back. Once I started to develop a baseline, though I began to process what I was watching. I started feeling the excitement of momentum shifts and getting into lucha's late match selling. I went from bewilderment of title matches to really appreciating the struggle found in the best of primera caidas. I still have a long way to go. It's one thing to learn to tread water. It's another to swim readily across a sea decades in the making.

The plan was to finish the lucha set and then slowly work my way through the 90s and into today. There's just so much content popping up now, though, and there really is something more exciting about following something as it happens. I ended up watching one modern Casas match and from there, how couldn't I watch more? There's no gateway drug quite like a jubilant, crotchety old rudo so capable of wrestling circles around his opponent and basking in the adulation of a crowd that's spent their entire lives watching him. I found that I had a perfect window to get through a match most nights in that floor-huddled limbo of trying to get my toddler to sleep in her crib.

I had begun this journey of lucha exploration, but I wasn't documenting it. There's not a ton of time these days and I really needed a way to push myself. I've enjoyed the Segunda Caida blog ever since I got back into wrestling heavily in 2009. Being able to contribute here is absolutely the push I need. I want to thank Phil and Eric. I'm going into a lot of this blind and this site IS a representation of them. I'm going to occasionally misinterpret what I'm seeing and get facts blatantly and embarrassingly wrong. I'm going to get far too excited about something I see the first time in a throwaway match and harp on about it when it's probably far more commonplace then I think, so please forgive my ignorance and my enthusiasm. The new plan is to post on a M/W/F schedule and to take a look at all matches scattershot: trios, lightning matches, luchas de apuestas, good matches and bad, to try to make sense of everything. I'm going to mainly focus on the last couple of years and on CMLL, but i'll stray occasionally, especially into more classic series of matches with some context. Feel free to correct me on anything; I'll probably need it. So far, lucha is a lot of fun. It's a whole new world out there and I really had no idea what I was missing. I hope that some of that comes through in match reviews.