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/wrestling /guests /Coale |
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/wrestling /guests /Coale |
| Guest Columns | Mark Coale |
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Do You Know the Way to Arena Mexico? It's been quite a while, but there is finally some quality wrestling on television again. Sure, RAW can be fun viewing, but, in the words of Vince McMahon, that's an "Action Adventure Series," not wrestling. Nitro saddens me too much to watch it for more than a few minutes at a time, especially with the commentators cause some kind of pleasure (Scott Hudson, Mike Tenay) and pain (Eric Bischoff, Jason Hervey) effect on the human psyche. And ECW just doesn't have the same magic it did even a year or so ago, let alone the glory days of 1995 and 1996. So what does that leave? Well, if you've got DirecTV, the answer is three short words: "Rudos, Rudos, Rudos." With the dish now providing a weekly venue for Lucha Libre, without need of going through tape traders or friends in the right locations, a fan of actual wrestling (as Ric Flair used to say, "as it says on the marquee") can actually watch some fantastic in-ring action. The first response from the Doubting Thomases is probably going to be: "I don't speak Spanish." Although it may sound silly, but do you really need commentary to enjoy a wrestling match? Point one: You don't have commentators at the arena when you are at house show. Does that lessen any of your enjoyment of the evening? Point two: How often, in the last year, has the announcing on a WWF or WCW show (no complaints here about Mr. Styles) been so poor that you watch the show with the sound off? If it's more than you can count on two hands, join the club. Point three: If you're watching the show for "wrestling" rather than "everything else," then you don't need some giving you exposition about what the important plot points. And, after years of watching Japanese tapes, it's definitely possible to learn the names of moves just based on patterns of word recognition. This is not to say that the Lucha matches on Galavision and Univision are bereft of storylines. You may not know, for example, about the heated feud going on between Atlantis and Villano III in CMLL, but you can certainly tell the animosity the two have between each other based on how they work with each other in matches. This is something called "psychology" and is something that is very often missing from the American wrestling scene. Then again, when you only have four to five minutes on TV to develop a match, that doesn't give any of the workers capable of inserting things into a contest the time to do anything. And, of course, there is the actual in-ring product. Being Lucha Libre, you can count on plenty of high-flying action, some which does admittedly border on the silly. But it's hard to complain about the occasional silly spot when you also have guys doing Tope Suicidas and corkscrew planchas from the top turnbuckle onto an opponent on the floor below. This week's CMLL show on Galavision had almost 40 minutes of competition in a 90-minute show and that's not counting ring introductions and post-match skirmishes. When was the last time either of the Big Two had that kind of ratio on RAW or Nitro? While I won't give up completely on Steve Austin or Ric Flair each week, this wrestling fan will now look forward to the weekend to see competitors like El Hijo Del Santo, Lizmark and Mr. Aguila/Papi Chulo on my television set. I may not understand everything I see and hear, but I can tell that I like it. Mark Coale O-Goshi Studios - Popular Culture Journalism for the Next Millennium Mail the Author Check out WrestleLine's Coale Column Archive Visit O-Goshi Studios |
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