I experienced an amazing night at the Lucha Libre in Mexico City and it was not at all what I was expecting. As someone with a blind spot for anything related to sport, where any imagery or references tend to swirl into a black hole vortex, I was expecting a lot of sweat and pain and watching through my fingers. It turned out to be an amazingly family-friendly pantomime, with little girls wearing capes of their favourite characters attending with their fathers. Everyone, young and old vied to shout out the worst obsenity with boos and hisses for the rudos (the tough guys, the 'baddies') and wows for the tecnicos (the amazingly athletic, good guys). We were in the rudos crowd which gave great excuse for everyone to hurl out cathartic, friday night, abuse. It kept an amazing balance of comedy and athleticism, the final win being the camp kiss planted on the unwilling lips of one of the rudos. The whole crowd were changing 'beso, beso'.
Here is one of the first masked luchadores who became an iconic folk hero, El Santo.
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