Masked wrestling as national theatre, in a purpose-built arena, with a crowd that is half the show.
Lucha libre is professional wrestling, and in Mexico it is a hundred-year-old popular art form with its own visual language, moral structure and mythology.
It is faster and more acrobatic than the American version, with high flying, rapid tag sequences and matches usually fought over two of three falls.
The rules of the story
Técnicos are the good guys, wrestling clean. Rudos are the villains, cheating constantly and playing to the crowd’s hatred. The crowd takes sides loudly and the abuse is inventive, obscene and frequently very funny.
Most matches are six-man tag — three against three — which keeps the action continuous.
The masks
The máscara is the centre of it. A luchador’s mask is his identity, and losing it is the ultimate defeat — lucha de apuestas, mask-versus-mask or mask-versus-hair matches, are the biggest events, and a wrestler unmasked in the ring must give his real name to the crowd and never wear it again.
El Santo, the greatest of them all, wore his silver mask in public for nearly fifty years, starred in over fifty films, and was buried in it. He removed it on television once, a week before he died in 1984.
Blue Demon, Mil Máscaras and Rey Mysterio are the other names to know.
The arena
Arena México, the “cathedral of lucha libre”, seats around 16,500 and has been the home of CMLL — the world’s oldest professional wrestling promotion, founded 1933 — since 1956.
Arena Coliseo in the Centro is smaller, older and more intimate.
Going
CMLL cards run at Arena México on Tuesday, Friday and Sunday, with Friday the main event.
AAA, the rival promotion, wrestles elsewhere and is flashier.
Tickets are cheap by any standard, from ringside down to the upper tiers. Buy from the box office or the official site.
Bring cash for beer and micheladas, which are sold constantly by vendors working the aisles.
Photography rules vary — professional cameras are usually restricted, phones are fine.
What a night is like
Loud, family-heavy, and extremely good-humoured. Grandmothers shout obscenities. Children in masks. Beer in enormous cups.
Masks are sold outside from about a hundred pesos and everyone wears one.
Practicalities
Doctores, the neighbourhood, has a reputation. In practice the walk from Balderas metro before a card is busy and fine; afterwards, take an Uber from the arena rather than walking, which is what most of the crowd does.
Doors open around an hour before. Cards run three to four hours.
