| Greetings from Mexico, I have traveled back to my country and as I sit here in the wee hours, smoking my Marlboro Light 100 and drinking some nice beers from over here called Sol, I take a look at the past of a life I had forgotten. Many of you are not very familiar with Mexico, other than what you see from the Lucha wrestlers or what you see in movies, you either think Mexico is a great beach in Cancun, or a dusty dirty town like in Desperado and Once Upon a Time in Mexico. And yes it is both, but it is neither. True Mexican life is the large and small cities, Monterrey, El DF/Ciudad de Mexico, Guadalajara, then there’s the frontera, Reynosa, Matamoros, Camargo. Now my Mexico is all from the frontera all the way to Monterrey. Now I have traveled to the Cali side but I find that side of Mexico has gone more California than anything, it’s not the Mexico I am used to. And while we may be poor, and our government and officials corrupt we have a long proud history. And when it comes to wrestling, our history is greater than any country. As a child I remember watching the old lucha movies, like Santo and Mil Mascaras fighting the mummies and vampires, and each one would have a sports car, you’d see Blue Demon in a blue sports car, Mil Mascaras in a corvette, Tinieblas in whatever, it was goofy and campy but at that point they weren’t just movie stars they were rock stars, they were everything. They became household names and wed go to the tiny little shack/stores and wed pay un toston which translates to about 50 cents and wed buy the mask, each of us would pick one, put on the masks have someone lace it up from the back, we’d put on a towel on our back with cloth pins and wed wrestle till darkness came or we were exhausted. Wrestling was our world, I was lucky enough to see Mil Mascaras in Reynosa, Tamaulipas back in 1970 or 1980. Don’t remember who he fought but he won. And I remember my grandfather buying these black and white magazines half the magazine was about boxing, mostly Roberto Durango as he was the pride of Mexican boxers at that time and the other half was all lucha libre. But for a long while in the 90s, Mexican lucha became goofy and comedy, it sucked. I’m sorry but it did. Now it’s slowly getting back to what it was but not too much. For so long they made it real, there was blood, and torn mask with their hair popping out and blood in every match. They protected their identities like a national secret. A wrestler would never agree to a mask vs. mask match and when it happened, everyone was waiting to read who won as most matches were not on TV. Now, its not a big deal, someone loses a mask, they just put it right back on, or go without a mask, there’s hardly any hardcore matches as it was. Its just another sign of how things have changed, I am sorry that I haven’t written in a while, but you know how it goes, sometimes you get lost in heartaches and heartbreaks and it takes time to find your way back to who you used to be. If ever. Well thanks for reading You can find me and a few other columnists playing at my site www.striketowers.com laters
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