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Mexican wrestling goes Warped to lure fans

Published July 27, 2007 at midnight

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MIAMI - On a scorching Saturday afternoon in downtown Miami, a six-sided pro wrestling ring stood wedged between picturesque Biscayne Bay, a skateboarding exhibition and a stage featuring a blaring heavy metal group.

While seemingly out of place, this is where Juan Gonzalez and his companions from the Asistencia Asesor'a y Administracion (AAA) promotion continued their grass-roots campaign to promote lucha libre in the United States.

Mexican wrestling is being featured on the 2007 Vans Warped Tour, which is a combination of hard-core musical acts and extreme sports showcases. Bouts are featured three times daily, most of which draw a young audience unfamiliar with the genre, besides those who saw actor Jack Black don the trademark lucha mask and tights in Nacho Libre.

"Non-Latinos are getting to discover us," said Gonzalez. "The Warped Tour, though, is kind of crazy. In Mexico, we're wrestling in front of families. Here, we're in front of head-bangers and punkers."

During this recent stop at Miami's Bicentennial Park, a six-man tag-team match held in the mid-afternoon drew about 100 spectators. But those in attendance saw a display of fast-paced, high-flying maneuvers that are lucha libre (which translates literally as free wrestling or free fighting) staples.

"We do a lot of acrobatics," said Gonzalez, referring to the flips and out-of-the-ring dives that punctuate his lucha matches. "The American people really seem to be enjoying a new type of wrestling they're not used to. That's the most pleasurable thing for us."

Mexican performers aren't completely foreign to avid U.S. wrestling fans, as some of the top stars in Mexico like Rey Mysterio Jr. and the late Eddie Guerrero became champions in World Wrestling Entertainment. AAA also airs in the U.S. from 1 to 4 p.m. Sundays on Spanish-language Galavision.

But while lucha libre continues to boom in Mexico, where it is part of the country's cultural heritage and considered a pseudo-sport, it has yet to establish permanent roots north of the border. The Vans Warped Tour could be a precursor for U.S. wrestling shows this fall sponsored by AAA and its Lucha Libre USA promotional arm.

"The main difference between U.S. wrestling and lucha is that we are a lot more entertaining and there's a lot more of a show aspect to it," Gonzalez said through an interpreter. "We're a lot more colorful and fly around. American wrestling concentrates on wrestlers being big and muscular. It's really about being in the ring and hitting and not so much the entertainment aspect of it."

The Warped Tour has given Gonzalez the chance to establish himself in the U.S. working as the masked Psicosis, which is a character he was given by late AAA owner Antonio Peña after the original Psicosis (Dionicio "Nicho" Castellanos) left that promotion in the mid-1990s to work for Extreme Championship Wrestling and later World Championship Wrestling.

"The bad thing is we're always being compared," said Gonzalez, who actually feuded with Castellanos in AAA in 2005 before the latter signed with WWE.

Questions can be sent to Alex Marvez c/o the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 200 E. Las Olas Blvd., Fort Lauderdale, Fla. 33301, or e-mailed to .