On Lucha Underground – Is the new direction of wrestling a twist on the old?
Add one part grind-house film, one part TV drama, one part golden era wrestling, and one part PWG, send it through a blender, and you receive a true oddity. Lucha Underground, probably one of the most unique twists on modern day pro wrestling, acknowledges and embraces the new attitude of wrestling kayfabe by taking our suspension of disbelief and blowing it up with enough C4 to send a small city airborne. Lucha Underground unravels a mad tale that could only be described as the fever dream of a 80’s wrestling intern. The program somehow combines supernatural creatures, Mexican cartels, and ancient Aztec sorcery into a winding narrative about personal redemption, arena combat, and world-shaking prophecies?
The most refreshing aspect about Lucha Underground is that it is more than willing to accept that its wrestling is fiction, and, as such, chooses to invite us into another world, similar yet different than our own. For in the Arena, dragons are real, necromancers can cast spells to ensure victory for their undead wrestlers, and mysterious figures control the world fromm the shadows. The experience is a truly refreshing exercise in escapism, one that is much needed in an industry that has forgotten the delicate balance between hardened realism and the need for its viewers to engage in fantasy. Much of the older wrestling audience complains about how pro wrestling has become stale, and is devoid of the heart that made it popular in the older times. Deep down, it seems that the root of this dissonance stems from the fact that though much of the wrestling audience has grown older, there is still the child-like need for the business to instill a sense of wonder. We, as an audience, want pro wrestling to envelope us in a world more fantastic and exciting than the one in which we reside, where monsters can walk among us, where real life heroes walk down the aisle, ready to trounce their horrid adversaries. In a world that continues to develop and become increasingly more complicated, we want a place in which we can be excited, a place with rules we can understand and follow, yet provides us with the ocassional surprise to keep us interested.
It’s no secret that pro wrestling is a performance, plain and simple. We know that the man coming to the ring is not an immortal agent of death, ready to bring another soul to the Great Beyond with headlocks and powerslams. We understand that, most of the time, the couple fighting in the ring are probably not dating, that in-ring betrayals are scripted, and that no man can punch out their boss without being arrested. Realism is not what is wanted in pro wrestling, but an ability to, for at least 40 minutes, believe that these fantastical creatures do exist within the context of the show. When one looks back on the early days of wrestling, this atmosphere was provided. Stars such as the Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, and the Undertaker became household names because they where intriguing characters that engrossed us in their development, as they attempted to navigate their bizarre and fascinating world.
I write about this in earnest because I feel as though this craft has been lost in recent years. Though the over-all quality and pacing of the actual matches has improved exponentially over the years, there is something that has been carried down the line as well; the notion that pro wrestling is real. Somehow, audiences have forgotten the primary purpose of the squared circle, and have insisted that it adheres to the same realm of plausibility as a UFC or boxing match. It seems that this notion has been addressed differently in various promotions. Many independent promotions forgo most of the story weaving, choosing instead to focus on athleticism and execution within the confines of the match. Other, more mainstream promotions, appear to constrain themselves with plot lines rooted in mundanity, through personal disagreements, or split personality angles. The point being is that these plot lines tend to be a bit capricious and rely on the audience not having a memory longer than a few months. Faces flip back and forth from being heels to edgy anti-heroes with little prompting. Other characters are under utilized or are giving one-dimensional personalities that involve little opportunity for career-long growth. It is because of our obsession with hyper-realism. Despite the global understanding of the fabricated nature of pro wrestling, mainstream promotions refuse to accept that the audience knows it’s fake, and chooses to accept a conscious suspension of disbelief.
In a business with such a strange contention between promotion and audience, Lucha Underground comes as a welcome breath of fresh air. Lucha Underground accepts that the audience knows it’s fake, and so chooses to use that knowledge to spin even more fantastic tales. It allows us to believe in shady cartels with a smile, offers us plots involving a self-important Spanish entrepreneur willing to exploit forbidden magics to turn a profit, and even lets us believe that wrestlers are literal dragons. The action is high-calibre, yet doesn’t put on airs and attempt to force the audience to believe that its action and story are based on real events.
It is dumb-founding that society is still flabbergasted that wrestling is no more real than Game of Thrones. It’s even more unbelievable that the same respectful suspension of disbelief offered to Martin’s televised masterpiece is not extended to wrestling fiction as well. Audiences get engrossed in a piece of fiction when the medium allows them to become engrossed. That one would insist that their fictional world is as authentic and as real as our own is a fallacy. Bravo, Lucha Underground, for letting the audience engage in your fantasy.