Mexican Wrestling, Reimagined, Comes to Weekly TV The Associated Press
go to original November 9, 2014

Lucha Underground: Meet the Warriors (El Rey Network)

It was a meltingly hot October day outside the East Los Angeles warehouse converted to a wrestling ring. Inside, things were about to get equally torrid.

In match after match, as about 400 fans cheered and whooped, heavily muscled men executed high-flying leaps to slam their opponents to the floor. Some wore fearsome disguises to conceal their identities. In one match, the male wrestlers competed — shockingly! — with a woman.

But this was far from a neighborhood event done on the fly. It was a taping of the ambitious 39-episode TV series "Lucha Underground," a reimagined version of Mexico's grand tradition of lucha libre wrestling that's airing on filmmaker Robert Rodriguez's El Rey network.

Lucha fans on hand that day knew to expect the fast-paced, aerial action and florid drama that the sport with often-masked competitors delivers. They also applauded a group contest featuring a guy decked out in a pink leotard and a bouffant of red curls and a little person competing against far bigger rivals, part of lucha libre's comedic edge.

All this in the raw, unfinished interior of a vast warehouse converted to a studio, its walls covered with atmospheric graffiti and bold paintings of ancient icons of Mexico's pre-Colombian Aztec and other cultures — a Rodriguez film come to life, as one wrestler happily observed.

Check out Lucha Underground on Wednesdays at 8pm ET/PT, on El Rey Network.

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