Have you ever encountered a piece of art and felt it resonate with you so profoundly that you were forced to suspect that its creators were thumbing through your own subconscious looking for ideas? That’s what I felt when I first beheld the glory that is Lucha Underground, the Robert Rodriguez-produced supernatural Mexican wrestling TV series from the El Rey network.
If you’re not a wrestling fan, don’t stop reading; this isn’t so much a wrestling show as it is a gothic telenovela about the men and women who compete on one. Think the old El Santo movies mixed with Dark Shadows and filtered through the pages of a Dashiell Hammett novel. It’s a hard-boiled world where everyone’s got an angle, the dead don’t stay dead, and pro wrestling is real.
The matches take place in The Temple, a re-purposed Los Angeles warehouse. The Temple’s central figure is its proprietor, Dario Cueto (Luis Fernandez-Gil). Affectionately known as “El Jefe,” he’s an infinitely shady Spanish businessman who’s as interested in Aztec blood magic as he is in promoting his underground fight club. His two primary interests intersect in his monstrous brother, Matanza, a reincarnated Aztec god in the body of a Jason Voorhees-looking wrestler who happens to be his promotion’s champion. The blood shed by Matanza’s opponents serves as a sacrifice to as-yet-unnamed dark forces, but for the rabid fans of The Temple, the magic of the experience is more figurative, if no less bloody.
You won’t see anything like Lucha Underground anywhere in the wrestling world, or on television for that matter. It’s a reminder that the mainstream American version of pro wrestling (“sports entertainment”) is not the only possible vehicle to present what amounts to a century-old art of improvisatory stage combat. Where your classic American wrasslin’ seeks to imitate professional sports and their attendant tropes, LU uses the performance art of pro wrestling to dramatize age-old mythical dualities: life and death, good and evil, light and darkness.
Instead of goofy backstage interviews where guys stand shoulder-to-shoulder and yellspeak into prop microphones held by ESPN rejects, Lucha Underground uses the time between matches to effect real world building and character development. These segments are filmed like movies, complete with non-diegetic music and chiaroscuro lighting. Dario Cueto’s office even has Venetian blinds, in case he needs to get all Maltese Falcon about his latest scheme (and trust me, he does).
Which is not to say that Lucha Underground skimps on in-ring action. Their wrestling style is based not so much on holds and counter-holds as it is hard strikes, theatrical dives and blinding speed. The man known as Prince Puma regularly executes a 630° rotation in mid-air before striking his opponents. King Cuerno, a deranged big game hunter, sends his opponents tumbling out of the ring, then launches his own body through the ropes after them, a maneuver known as the ‘Arrow from the Depths of Hell.’
Lucha Underground’s roster is a unique blend of established stars from Mexico, WWE expatriates, and relative unknowns from the independent circuit. In a way, they’re all misfits, insofar as 6’4” hairless white guys are an exception rather than the rule. They aren’t on the big, glossy show with the 7-11 promotional cups because they’re too small, too brown, too female, but if they’re gritty enough, they’ll be embraced by the Temple faithful.
There’s Pentagón Jr., a black-hearted ninja who breaks suckas’ arms as a sacrifice to his debauched vampire lord; Sexy Star, a pure-hearted heroine who used lucha libre to overcome a history of abuse; Johnny Mundo, a former WWE star and failed actor who thinks he’s on the A-list; and the tag team of Drago and Aero Star, who make their partnership work despite literally being a reincarnated dragon and a time-traveling spaceman, respectively. But perhaps no one figure is more emblematic of Lucha Underground — its aesthetic, its storytelling style, and its ability to make a castoff performer into a star — than its sometimes-champion, Mil Muertes, the man of one thousand deaths.
A barrel-chested personification of oblivion itself, Mil was originally a little boy who learned to love the power of death as he lay trapped in the rubble of a catastrophic earthquake that claimed the lives of his family. He is led to the ring by his manager (and implied domme) Catrina, the same mysterious spirit that taught him to embrace the warmth of death all those years ago.
Under the slyly gimpish mask of Mil Muertes is Ricky “El Mesias” Banderas, a long-time journeyman grappler. Banderas got his start wrestling in Puerto Rico before becoming a major player in Mexico, but mainstream success in the US has long eluded him. Despite his 240 pound bulk he’s barely six feet tall, and yes, that makes him relatively small by wrestling standards. Inside the walls of The Temple, though, with thousands of bloodthirsty fans screaming his name? He seems ten feet tall and utterly unstoppable.
Unstoppable, that is, unless he has to tangle with his arch-rival, Fénix, a spectacularly athletic young man with the power of — what else — a thousand lives. When Muertes and Fénix had their biggest battle to date, the result was a literal bloodbath spoken of in hushed tones by fans as “Grave Consequences,”the night when Mil’s body and soul were claimed by the spirits of the dead. He got better, of course, and his battles with Fénix continue to this day. And why not? Life and death, light and darkness, good and evil? These are, after all, eternal struggles.
Eternal struggles, illustrated in living color before your eyes by the most bonkers athletes you’ve ever seen, in a cinematic world curated by inspired filmmakers. If you’re a wrestling fan, you should be watching Lucha Underground. If you’ve never been one, well, you should also be watching it.
It’ll make you a Believer.
