Seeing a live Lucha Libre event was one thing I wanted to do in Mexico and I was able to convince Tal and Thomas to come along. Throughout the holiday I was trying to get tickets for an event at Arena Mexico in the centre of the city. Usually the tickets are released one month ahead but they didn't appear on the site until a few days prior. Nothing like leaving it until the last minute.
Arena Mexico is the spiritual home of Lucha Libre and from the outside looks to be a small arena. It has been the spiritual home of Mexican Wrestling and every Friday they hold a large show with occasional super events through the year.
This was our card for the evening. I recognised some of the wrestlers: Mistico who was in the main event is very popular. The big block of names in the centre were taking part in a match called "Los Reyes de Aire" or "King of the Air". This is a special event that takes place once a year, so we'd got quite lucky.
Security is quite tight at the venue and our cameras were taken from us to be collected later. This worried me as the entire holiday was on that camera. Smartphones were allowed, which seemed a bit weird. Thomas and I made our way in (Tal was off getting some food and would join us later) and finding out seat became the first challenge. We eventually found an elderly marshal who took us to our seats. In buying the ticket I went for as close to ringside as I could get managing to get row 2. When we got to our seats we found out our block had no row 1 so we were technically ringside on the corner so we had nobody in front of us. Unfortunately being on the corner it meant all the concession sellers were walking back and forth throughout the show, but we soon got used to them.
The Mexican style is much more high flying and quicker than the US WWE style of wrestling. There's very little chat, something that the American has too much of. All the talking is done in the ring here, which is great.
One of the earlier matches had a wrestler accompanied by Que Monito a famous midget wrestler who you may know from this clip.
Unfortunately for the sadist in me, who didn't really participate or get beaten up on this occasion.
The show was great with a couple of tag matches to warm the crowd up. The guys were big, especially the non-Mexican ones and the high flying was great. The areana was huge, the building is clearly like a tardis appearing much larger inside than you could even imagine when you see it from outside.
The Reyes de Air match was bizarre starting out as a 16 man battle royale to determine the order they'd then wrestle in in a big 8 vs 8 matchup. Two guys from one of the teams were left having eliminated the other team so they then had to wrestle each other.
I managed to find the Reyes match online which I've posted here. It runs for about 30 minutes and shows the great match that we got to watch. Watch carefully and you'll see us in shot.
I'm glad I was shown applauding and not falling asleep or picking my nose. Phew!
The wrestling was great entertainment and I know these guys sometimes do shows in London so I'll be hoping to see some of them there. I'm pleased that Tal and Thomas enjoyed it too. We didn't stay for the final match as we wanted to get a jump on the mass exodus and get our cameras back.
Tomorrow would be our last day, but this wasn't going to stop us finding some more roller coasters.
No comments:
Post a Comment