Brought to you by El Rey Network’s Lucha Underground, airing Wednesdays 8PM ET/PT.
When you think of luchadores, what immediately comes to mind? Crazy wrestling masks. But, as you might imagine, wrestlers don’t wear these masks just for the spectacle of it. In professional Mexican wrestling, the luchador mask defines a wrestler’s identity and helps him create and maintain a persona. And in El Rey Network’s new TV show, Lucha Underground, you’ll be privy to plenty of cool-looking masks and the stories of the luchadores who wear them.
So in honor of this awesome new show, we wanted to share a brief history of the elusive luchador mask.
Beginnings
Luchador masks can be dated back to the inception of the sport in the mid-19th century. The interesting thing about the inclusion of the mask in lucha libre is that, of all of the offshoots of Greco-Roman wrestling, Mexican wrestling is the only one that adopted its use.
Many people point to the luchador mask as being a product of Mexico’s Aztec heritage. This is because most of the early masks in Mexican wrestling were comprised of colors and symbols that reflected animals, ancient heroes and gods. The wrestlers would take on the role of the character that was reflected in their mask.
In other words, the mask would define how the wrestler acted. They would become the mask.
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Unmasking
So, you might be asking, if the mask is so important to the wrestler, what happens when it comes off?
Well, many luchadores end up taking off their mask in the ring for various reasons. The unmasking of a wrestler often takes place at the end of a wrestler’s career. Unmasking is not only a sign of loss (and sometimes weakness), but it also fundamentally changes the way that the unmasked wrestler is viewed. This is because the mask comes to define the character that the wrestler is portraying (or trying to live up to), so when the mask comes off, that identity is stripped from him. He is no longer who he once was.
That’s not to say that all Mexican wrestlers who are unmasked lose their appeal. As a matter of fact, there are a number of successful Mexican wrestlers who have never even worn masks. Tarzan Lopez, Gory Guerrero and Negro Casas are just a few of the maskless wrestlers who have gained immense popularity.
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The Betting Match
If the unmasking of a wrestler is such an important aspect of that wrestler’s career, then a match where both wrestler’s put their masks on the line can be seen as some of the most pivotal fights in the sport. And while these matches don’t happen very often, they are held in the highest esteem.
Can you imagine? You spend your whole life becoming a professional athlete, idolizing wrestlers on television, training to become like them and learning the tricks of the trade, and, in the span of 30 minutes you lose one match and get unmasked – the ultimate insult. It changes how the audience looks at you and, in many ways, you can never recover that identity that you once had.
This situation is about as serious as any professional wrestling can get, and it makes for some great drama.
