Why does puro get so much love? Why does lucha get so dismissed?

[ohtani's jacket]

So if you're struggling and you want to really dive in, people will help. That's true with this community in general on any sort of wrestling and even after GWE I don't think that's changed.

 

 

With regard to this, I often wonder what people are referring to when they say they've tried getting into lucha. Does it mean they tried following cubsfan's uploads, or watched the matches getting MOTY hype, or does it mean they've tried to watch some of the more famous bouts?

 

I don't think lucha lends itself well to a random sampling, but at the same time you have to be open to the idea of liking lucha to really get into it through the great match approach. The way that I got into it was to watch the '89 and '90 seasons. Japanese wrestling was the opposite. I had a laundry list of great matches I wanted to see right from the beginning. With lucha it was more about learning who the characters were and enjoying their interactions. The critical analysis came later.

 

But as I've said before, I wasn't trying to like lucha, I wanted to like lucha. I liked the fact that it was different. I still like the fact that it's different. The notion that lucha would be better, or more accessible/acceptable, if it were closer in style to Mid-South, Crockett or All Japan seems contrary to the spirit of wrestling. Throughout its history, wrestling has expressed itself differently in different countries and territories. That point of difference and diversity has been crucial to it thriving. Even if you don't see lucha as a special brand of entertainment, you can at least appreciate that it's something different.

[gordi]

 

So if you're struggling and you want to really dive in, people will help. That's true with this community in general on any sort of wrestling and even after GWE I don't think that's changed.

 

 

With regard to this, I often wonder what people are referring to when they say they've tried getting into lucha. Does it mean they tried following cubsfan's uploads, or watched the matches getting MOTY hype, or does it mean they've tried to watch some of the more famous bouts?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For me, it's always meant checking out some of the super-hyped classic bouts, like the '97 Tourneo Cybernetico or less widely hyped bouts that sound like they might float my boast, such as Pirata Morgan vs El Faraon 11/90. Recently, it's always something that I read about on here. Almost every time, I think, "That was good/great/really enjoyable/amazing, I'm glad I watched that..." and then I don't watch another lucha match for at least three weeks.

 

There are always so many things I wanna check out, and my wrestling-watching time is pretty limited these days. I'm very much in the "enjoy wrestling in all it's crazy variety" camp.

[drew wardlaw]

I don't think lucha lends itself well to a random sampling, but at the same time you have to be open to the idea of liking lucha to really get into it through the great match approach. The way that I got into it was to watch the '89 and '90 seasons. Japanese wrestling was the opposite. I had a laundry list of great matches I wanted to see right from the beginning. With lucha it was more about learning who the characters were and enjoying their interactions. The critical analysis came later.

This approach really helped me. I went through the '90 yearbook and just tried to get a grasp on the style. I found the Lucha Primer thread on here which was very helpful, so I was able to watch along while reading other people's reviews, the primer thread, and jotting down my own thoughts. It was cool to chart my progress and understanding throughout the year and by the end I felt like I had a decent grasp on the stye.

 

I will say, though, that like Matt D up there, it was very difficult to understand at the beginning. The first couple trios matches I watched were straight up disorienting, with the long crowd shots which missed the pins, strangely timed replays, captain's fall rules, multiple refs, etc. I enjoyed the challenge of trying to understand the style but there was definitely a learning curve and I can see how that's prohibitive for people.

[El-P]

For me, it's always meant checking out some of the super-hyped classic bouts, like the '97 Tourneo Cybernetico or less widely hyped bouts that sound like they might float my boast, such as Pirata Morgan vs El Faraon 11/90.

 

Same for me, watched the most big stuff lucha for the 2006 GWE poll. And most of what was pimped as great, I indeed found terrific. But it was a time where you couldn't yet get entire TV seasons for zilch like today, and I wouldn't spend a dime on wrestling anymore. There was always something else I really wanted to watch instead and when torrents appeared, it was easier getting your hands on shitload of Mid-south or Memphis TV seasons, stuff I was more curious about. I've been saying I'd watch WWC for ever now. Downloaded and deleted my stack a dozen times. You only got that much time and you get burned out and you have your odd little priorities (like watching old TNA). At some point, you've just gotta choose. Like I've been saying since the beginning : it's mostly contextual.

 

In an odd way, the pro-wrestling TV that got me back watching as it happens and really have fun with it, first time since the very early 00's with ARSION, is Lucha Underground. Yeah, not exactly "lucha libre", but still. If I had to cut down to only one show to watch at this point, that would be it. Back to binge watching that S3 next week BTW. Can't wait.

[Loss]

My major hurdles initially were in understanding rules and crowds. The constant faint noise as opposed to loud pops for certain people, moves or actions bugged me (I later found out this was a production issue, not an actual crowd issue), and so did referees not enforcing rules when all the rudos were in the ring at the same time taking out one guy. I accept those things now and I'm fine with them, but they were big stumbling blocks for me in the beginning. It was hard for me to make sense of what I was watching beyond just appreciating it as a display. I *still* hate that there's no easy way to figure out who the team captains are.

[Cap]

 

So if you're struggling and you want to really dive in, people will help. That's true with this community in general on any sort of wrestling and even after GWE I don't think that's changed.

 

 

With regard to this, I often wonder what people are referring to when they say they've tried getting into lucha. Does it mean they tried following cubsfan's uploads, or watched the matches getting MOTY hype, or does it mean they've tried to watch some of the more famous bouts?

 

I don't think lucha lends itself well to a random sampling, but at the same time you have to be open to the idea of liking lucha to really get into it through the great match approach. The way that I got into it was to watch the '89 and '90 seasons. Japanese wrestling was the opposite. I had a laundry list of great matches I wanted to see right from the beginning. With lucha it was more about learning who the characters were and enjoying their interactions. The critical analysis came later.

 

That is a good point. For me I started with a random sampling. I would run into something that looked interesting on youtube, or have some lucha on a random comp I had or something. I got the 80s set and just kind of started from the top. There was never a time I didn't like it, but I always knew I was missing something. Admittedly Sangra Chicana vs MS 1 was the first lucha match I just sort of lost it for and as someone said earlier, it is primal and different. However, it also helped the pace and pattern and intensity of at least apuesta matches. After that I sort of just dove into a lot of the higher end stuff from the set and from the early 90s and everything started coming easier. Now I can throw on just about anything and (I believe at least) "get" it. It is easier for me to understand the characters quickly and read the nuances. I do wish I could go back and really follow large swaths in order, but it isn't in the cards anytime soon. Maybe one day.

 

Last minute update:

 

Rules were also a struggle for me. It doesn't bother me as much anymore, but sometimes when I see a match where a ref does something that really impacts the finish of what was otherwise awesome I get really frustrated (example: Park vs Santo). That stuff may add to a match for some, but it still bothers me and takes a bit away.

 

The lucha audience and the wrestler's relationship to it is my absolute favorite. I was watching some random high end stuff with my friend, who is mexican, a while back. She enjoyed it (and was translating important stuff for me) but isn't a fan really. She was telling me that her sister isn't a wrestling fan in any conventional sense but goes to shows with friends just for the experience. One of my wrestling fan bucket list items is to buy a lucha mask and go to a show in mexico.

[fxnj]

CMLL doesn't hold up when you just watch a random match out of context, but I still think there is lucha that holds up fine to random sampling. The main reason why I gravitate so strongly to the indy stuff is that it's exactly the sort of wrestling you can pop in cold and be in awe of the cool shit no one else is doing. When I first saw Negro Navarro and Black Terry I wasn't worried about missing any of the nuances of their characters because I was too busy enjoying the badassery on display by these grandpas tearing shit up on the mat and laying into each other.

 

Serious question: Is there anyone who's seen a Black Terry match without falling in love with the guy?

[JerryvonKramer]

I'm gonna make some effort over the next month to try to get into lucha.

 

Perhaps without the pressures of GWE looming something might finally click.

[NintendoLogic]

I honestly think that doing a deep dive to try to "get" a certain style of wrestling is a waste of time. I'm not saying that tastes can't shift or that context isn't useful. But if something doesn't have that immediate visceral connection with you, the amount of effort it takes to "get" it is far out of proportion to intellectual rewards it provides. I mean, come on. It's not Shakespeare, it's fucking professional wrestling. It's supposed to be comfort food, not something you try to choke down and learn to like the taste of because it's good for you.

[Matt D]

Wrestling is like any other hobby. We get out what we put into it. I think most of us get a hell of a lot out of it.

[Cap]

Yeah... Wrestling is absolutely comfort food, its like Kimchi. I lived in Korea for a bit and hated kimchi when I got there, but if I had tried it a few more times and in a few different ways I wouldn't enjoy one of my favorite meals on earth now (Kimchi Jigae [stew]). Similarly, I couldn't stand Giant Baba the first few times I saw him. But if I didn't try a few more times and in a few different contexts I wouldn't enjoy one of my favorite matches now (Baba vs Robinson).

 

Sure, people shouldn't be forcing themselves to watch lots of wrestling they can't stand and "making" making themselves like things, but I return to what i said before; there are lots of ways to get fulfillment out of wrestling (other than just the entertainment value) especially if you are engaged at the level many of the people on this board are.

[W2BTD]

Serious question: Is there anyone who's seen a Black Terry match without falling in love with the guy?

 

Old man grapplelucha might be my least favorite genre of wrestling in existence, so keep that in mind, but I find Black Terry to be as close to unwatchable as any semi high profile wrestler around. There are some styles I dislike (shoot style, for instance) where I can appreciate the skill of the participants even if the style isn't for me. I find grapplelucha so dull and silly looking that it's hard for me to understand what people love about it.

 

This isn't meant to come off as a troll. I've followed this entire thread from the shadows, and Black Terry triggered me to respond. I tried to get into his stuff a few years ago when he first became a thing (I recall a super hyped Hechicero match, and to be fair, I'm a Hechicero fan now), and in 30+ years of watching wrestling I don't think I've ever been more baffled about the appeal of any pro wrestler.

 

What this tells me, and this relates to the last few posts, is that at some point you just have to handwave a style an accept that it isn't for you. And that's OK. I don't need to force myself to buy a ticket to every Wes Anderson movie to confirm I don't like his stuff. Two or three tries was more than enough. Anderson is never gonna make a Martin Scorsese film, and grapplelucha is never gonna appeal to me either. It's like opening the refrigerator 19 times in the same day when you have no food in the house and magically expecting exciting new options to appear.

[Cap]

I get the point of the last paragraph there. Understandably, people seem to be sort of grappling with how much people should be expected to watch things they aren't into and how much of "a chance" people should give styles before they abandon it. The easy and obvious (and correct) answer is "however much they want" and "depends on the person". We can exchange metaphors for it till New Years, but it isn't going to change that each person can and should decide how much time they want to spend on wrestling they aren't feeling, but obviously there is more going on.

 

I guess for me I think a hand full of tries is solid. No one is responsible to answer to anyone but themselves, but if someone can and is willing to articulate why they aren't into a style that tells me they gave it a try, thought about it and don't like it. I have made pretty clear that I think those producing content - I hope - should maybe push a little beyond that and be a touch more versed. Regardless, it more or less is dependent on how much you are going to discuss and engage the genre or style. If you don't want to talk about Lucha or shoot or WOS or whatever you don't really have to watch any of it. You don't have to give it a first try. But if you want to engage threads about it (particularly in a space like this) people are going to inquire and feel out what kind of background you have.

 

I'd be interested what others - particularly those who have expressed discontent - think the standards should be for giving something a chance, if they think their should be standards.

[pol]

Terry is predominantly a brawler, not a maestro guy.

[W2BTD]

 

Herodes, the most in-depth conversation you could hope to have on this is to look at styles and tastes.

 

I've noticed cross over points over the years. Not hard and fast rules but general trends:

 

Guys big on Crockett are likely also to be high on AJPW

Guys big on NJPW are likely also to be high on shoot style.

Guys big on Memphis are likely also to be high on Lucha.

 

Some guys like all six, some less.

 

But it's more to do with the style than anything else.

 

The Memphis/Lucha thing is interesting. I think it definitely correlates to some extent, but to me there are two distinct styles within lucha. High flying dive oriented lucha (which I enjoy casually and in small doses but can not ever get invested in hardcore) and brawl/mat based lucha. Maybe the latter should actually be split into a second and third style, but I associate them together for whatever reason. People who like Memphis do tend to really enjoy lucha brawls, which makes a ton of sense. I don't like Memphis and I can't really stand lucha brawls or mat based lucha at all.

 

 

 

Terry is predominantly a brawler, not a maestro guy.

 

See above. For whatever reason, I tend to lump the two together, probably unfairly aside from the fact that there is some crossover among the guys who do both.

 

Here is some of the Black Terry stuff I tried, I'm hardly an expert, but these would be mat based "maestro" style bouts no?

 

 

 

Can't find the Hechicero match I had in mind, but you get the idea. Not sure I've ever seen a Black Terry brawl, fwiw

[NotJayTabb]

I got into lucha the same way I got into puro - by finding one guy I really like and letting things branch off from there. With puro it was Liger, with lucha it was El Hijo De Santo. By watching Santo matches, I discovered Casas, who in turn led me to modern CMLL and the web increased from there. As with all wrestling, it just became a case of knowing which names I like and which names make me less likely to watch a match.

[ohtani's jacket]

Grapplelucha is a new one on me. As pol mentioned, Terry is a much brawler than he is a mat worker, but if you're not interested in seeing an old man doing Memphis concession style brawls then I would stay away from Terry's brawls.

 

I'm not sure that force-feeding yourself a style is the right way to get into something. I've mentioned before that if you watch enough of a worker they become tolerable. That might make you immune to the things that annoy you about a style, but the only way to really get into something is for the timing to be right. To give a personal example, I always thought Lou Thesz was kind of boring. That was based on watching a match here and there while my attention was drawn toward other things I was into. I built up an idea about Thesz, and other workers from his era, that that stuff is kind of boring and dismissed it as such. Now, I think Thesz is a great worker and I'm wondering how I can see more of his stuff. The difference is that after the GWE poll I was looking for new avenues. The WoS well had dried up and it was hard for me to get any new vault footage since I no longer have rare footage to trade. Bob ALPRA didn't have any new uploads of French catch, and I'd had my fill of lucha. There was an opening to get into something new and Golden Age stuff felt like uncharted waters.

In other words, someday folks will get bored and get into lucha.

[El-P]

"Old man grapplelucha", as a mere concept, sounds quite awesome actually.

[Jetlag]

I think with Black Terry you kind of had to have been there to understand what makes him special. It was that period in 2010-2011 when Black Terry Jr. was uploading awesome fancam matches every week. It really cemented Terry and Navarro (and a few other guys) into my mind as all time greats. Of course, you can still watch all that if you contact BT Jr., but it'll cost you. Maybe that ominous powerbomb.tv service will make the entire library available sometime and we can all rewatch that stuff then. But really, Terry Jr. deserves some kind of wrestling journalism award for giving a glance at the mexican indy scene that was so different from the shitty lucha TV shows.

 

Those matches you posted there are solid, but don't touch Terry's better stuff. Admittedly Terry didn't strike me as a superworker either on first glance but following BTJr's channel for a while made me get it. Terry and Navarro are kind of complementary, as Terry is the great brawler, and Navarro is the great matworker. They will sometimes take a backseat to eachother and they are two workers where you have to see their "small" performances too. They are mostly awesome characters and I got a lot of enjoyment from seeing them turn up in different situations.

 

I've noticed before that some people really can't get into Black Terry/Negro Navarro matches. And mostly they just stay quiet, which makes me think they are trying to be polite and not shit on other people's fun. I remember one guy on another message board seemed to get genuinely angry at me for "liking those 60 year old lucha wet tissues so much" (I was pimping Charles Lucero at the time while making disparaging comments about Hiroshi Tanahashi). I also recall Daniel (kanji) causing a stir on DVDVR when he dismissed that Navarro/Solar match from that Ultimo Dragon show. If that is the case for you I want to ask if you can point to matches that do what these old man luchagrapplers are going for better. Because I'm wondering if people are having problems with matwork and lack of high impact moves in general.

[Matt D]

I had been really hesitant to watch enough Terry for GWE,but I did a deep dive on SC right before it and was really glad that I did.

[NintendoLogic]

I agree that there's a tendency for people who aren't really into lucha to treat it with kid gloves. But that only seems to apply to lucha. When people criticize Tanahashi, they don't limit themselves to saying he's not for them or bend over backwards to acknowledge the things his fans like about him. They flat-out say he sucks. I think it's because you'll get far more pushback for saying something ignorant about lucha than for saying something ignorant about puro, at least on this corner of the Internet. I've seen people say some of the dumbest shit imaginable about Kobashi without anyone saying a word in response when they'd get raked over the coals if they said something equivalently stupid about Negro Casas.

[gordi]

In matters of taste, "it's not for me" and "it sucks" is a distinction without a difference.

When people criticize Tanahashi, they don't limit themselves to saying he's not for them ... They flat-out say he sucks.

 

Please reconcile those two statements.

 

Here's my guess: When you say "It sucks" about something people like, there is no distinction. When other people do it... it's wrong?

[JerryvonKramer]

I agree that there's a tendency for people who aren't really into lucha to treat it with kid gloves. But that only seems to apply to lucha. When people criticize Tanahashi, they don't limit themselves to saying he's not for them or bend over backwards to acknowledge the things his fans like about him. They flat-out say he sucks. I think it's because you'll get far more pushback for saying something ignorant about lucha than for saying something ignorant about puro, at least on this corner of the Internet. I've seen people say some of the dumbest shit imaginable about Kobashi without anyone saying a word in response when they'd get raked over the coals if they said something equivalently stupid about Negro Casas.

All of this is true

[GOTNW]

I am hardly the biggest Tanahashi fan you'll find but I always at least try to acknowledge what he does that works, whether it be for the crowd or me specifically and what I dislike. Obviously there's a world of difference in how good I think he is and how WON & VOW bots think he is but as long as I enjoy some of what he does he'll remain a worker I'll care to write more about than just "he sucks".

 

Unlike say Dragon Gate stuff, which just isn't for me and is never going to be, and there's nothing I'd really accomplish by watching a bunch of matches and going in knowing I'm extremely likely to dislike them.

 

Also if your take is "Kobashi sucks" or even "Kobashi is a heavily flawed worker" but there are 200 japanese workers you enjoy a lot it's a lot different than talking shit about Casas, Santo, Dandy etc. and not caring for mexican wrestling altogether.

[JerryvonKramer]

 

In matters of taste, "it's not for me" and "it sucks" is a distinction without a difference.

When people criticize Tanahashi, they don't limit themselves to saying he's not for them ... They flat-out say he sucks.

 

Please reconcile those two statements.

 

Here's my guess: When you say "It sucks" about something people like, there is no distinction. When other people do it... it's wrong?

He's saying Lucha fans come across as being thin skinned so people feel like they have to tread on egg shells around them.