La Cack, Spanish for "The Cack"

La Cack's ECW Luchador Match Up of the Week!

This past week in ECW was a great one as usual. The ECW luchador matchup of the week was Mexico's finest ECW protégé Super Crazy, who took on another man from south of the border, Mosco de la Merced. It was a very intense matchup, but Super Crazy dominated almost the entire matchup. It was Merced's first appearance in ECW. Cut the guy some slack, everyone can't score a win on their debut( 99% of all good wrestlers do though). The match started out with a lot of lucha-libre style maneuvers. Merced did have a pretty impressive showing for his first time in ECW. He did some awesome top rope moves such as; a tilt-a-whirl hurricanrana, a running front flip to the outside, and a Blitzkrieg "Sky Twister." One thing this match did lack was the ever so famous Bow-N-Arrow submission move that Super Crazy normally uses. To make up for it he hit Merced with an outstanding springboard moonsault that left both men in the crowd. Super Crazy hit Merced with two more springboard moonsaults in a row, only getting a two-count both times. Then a few minutes later, after a couple reversals, Super Crazy threw Merced to the ropes and gave him a tilt-a-whirl back breaker. Then he followed it up by going up top and putting Merced down for the three count with a huge frog splash. Possibly look for Merced to score his first ECW victory if these two lucha-libre stars square off again this week.

History of the Lucha Mask

Lots of people ask me about the history behind Lucha Libre mask and how they became so popular in Mexico. The following is borrowed from Andrew Cole's "World of Mexican Wrestling."

The first lucha libre mask was a gimmick, a device used to excite the audience. In 1934, an American wrestler brought the leather mask down from Chicago, and Lutteroth (the promoter) liked the idea. He was dubbed El Enmascarado, "The Masked Man," and fought a few matches against other Americans in Mexico City (there were only a handful of Mexican wrestlers at this time). This mask provided the model for all those that have followed: form-fitting and covering the entire head.

Two years later the promoter decided to bring back masks. Antonio Martinez, a sporting goods retailer, sewed a leather mask for Cyclone McKay, another American, who became El Maravilla Enmascarado. Soon the Masked Marvel was drawing crowds, and the newspapers were calling him "hated and mysterious"--the mask was a hit. Perhaps a reason for the Masked Marvel's success was that masks were suddenly the rage in Mexico City's popular culture, and Lutteroth was following the trend.

The conflict in U.S. professional wrestling is usually defined as a fight between the good "American" wrestler and the wicked, treacherous foreigner. This did not play for long in Mexico, because the country has not had the same experience of waves of new immigrants arriving a nd stirring up racist and nativist feelings. In the 1940s the essential struggle in every lucha libre bout was redefined as a battle between rudo and técnico. Lucha libre represented the daily battle on the streets of Mexico City.

As the plot became more Mexican, the characters followed suit. The earliest masked characters were simplistic. Within a few decades audiences could see characters tumbling across the ring that represented athletes, animals, professions, religious figures, cowboys, Greek gods, body parts, science, Indians, weather, comic-book characters, and, most prominently, death, horror, and violence.