Mad 'Lucha VaVoom' Wrestling

The Good, the Bad and the Naked

A man dressed as a goat-sucking Chupacabra smacks me in the face with his hoof as he is hurtled through the air by a pissed-off member of the Fighting Undead. The ringside audience is scattered, as chairs smash and cans of beer pump foam across the floor. The crowd roars with an approval equal to their shock and disbelief. To the booming sound of Mariachi music, a corseted ring-girl waves a Mexican flag and bounces with glees as the monstrous sweaty hand of a Luchador lifts me to my feet. My benefactor is not rewarded, for a skeleton arm swiftly splinters a 6-string guitar across his skull and he crumples into a twisted heap. This is Lucha VaVoom, where wrestling from south of the Californian border collides with saucy striptease and outrageous comedy to create the wildest, real-life Technicolor Tex Avery cartoon (in sparkly spandex) the world has ever dared dream of. Over the course of three nights in the summer heat of Los Angeles, thousands of people will leave with faces beaming, though possibly with a few bruises too, for with flying midgets and three-hundred pound Luchadores crushing those fools that thought front row seats were a great idea, it’s unwise to take your eyes from either the stage or the wrestling ring.

Since its unveiling in August 2002, Lucha VaVoom has spread Lucha love with one-off specials to Chicago, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Toronto and Amsterdam. Three series of capacity-packed performances of the mammoth production occur every year in L.A., and tonight is the first of the ‘Summer Nacionales’, which sees the show assume a 60’s dragster theme. With a mob of fans surrounding the entrance of the exotic Mayan Theatre - adorned with South American décor of the Ancients - a dozen motors arrive carrying a wild assortment of wrestlers, midgets and burlesque beauties, all equally as colourful and animated. I jostle with clambering hands from behind the rail to speak with Dirty Sanchez, one of LVV’s most popular characters. With a handlebar-moustache and a wig over his groin, the wifebeater-wearing wrestler bounds around the pavement and gees the crowd like his match has already started. I ask him what he thinks of his opponent’s chances.

‘I aint gotta say much,’ he sneers, heading for the ring. ‘I just gotta stick my hand down my pants and show them what they have in store.’

I head inside the theatre, foolishly assuming that things will start making more sense inside. The lights slowly fall and the revving of thunderous engines reverberates around the darkness of the auditorium. Screeching onto the stage come The Buxotics, a dancing troupe led by Rita D’Albert (co-creator of Lucha VaVoom), all decked in couture motor racing overalls and pumping pom-poms into the air, strutting the floor with high kicks and cheerleader splits. Joined by two majorettes with ‘Lucha’ and ‘VaVoom’ embroidered onto the respective backs of their costume, the ante is officially upped with a spectacular marching band striptease to the sounds of Wooly Bully, ending with an impressive double-display of nipple tassel twirling. Things have clearly started as they mean to go on.

Gasparin, a rotund ring announcer from Mexico, takes to the mic to introduce the first Lucha match. He speaks only in Spanish, and lends authenticity to the Lucha Libre history that is on offer this evening. The Mexican brand of freestyle wrestling is a perfect blend of art and sport dating back to the 1930’s that involves fighting techniques such as judo, jujitsu, grappling and kickboxing. That said, it’s still as entertainingly fake and stupidly enjoyable as the WWE, only with far more colourful characters and much, much sillier, over-the-top moves. Traditionally, Rudos are the villains and Technicos are the heroes, fighting it out in a masked world filled with acrobatics, athleticism and bawdy comedy. With great gusto, Gasparin introduces the Rudos as El Presidente & Lil’ Cholo, who will be squaring off against the Technicos, Dirty Sanchez & Disco Machine. The wrestlers all parade like peacocks to the crowds. Disco Machine dances like its Saturday Night Fever when he performs a great move against his opponent, while sleek El Presidente is a rotten cheat, offering a gentlemanly handshake to Dirty Sanchez only to twist him into a flip that lands the Technico flat on his back.

‘I came up with the character because we needed a bad guy,’ explains Rita D’Albert, shouting in my ear, now back in overalls and watching the action ringside with co-creator Liz Fairbairn. ‘I thought, who’s a badder guy than Bush? And so we have El Presidente, who comes to the stage with a mix of Hail To The Chief and Darth Vadar’s Imperial March.’ The crowd have certainly got behind this idea and are booing him like there’s no tomorrow. Inside the ring, El Presidente jumps from the top rope, crashing into Dirty Sanchez (who is illegally held by Lil’ Cholo) and sends him flying. The Rudo clenches his hands together and cheers his triumph but the crowd isn’t happy. They all start to chant ‘Dir-ty! Dir-ty! Dir-ty!’ and the flattened Luchador responds, springing to his feet.  Ferreting in the back of his tights, he pulls out a pair of shit-filled underpants and holds them aloft. Everyone in the theatre starts either booing, laughing or trying not to vomit as Dirty Sanchez chases his opponent around the ring, stuffing the gooey pants into El Presidente’s face, who flees into the crowd. Dirty Sanchez brandishes his prize at the elderly referee, who responds with a stunning dropkick to the jaw. Everyone is grappling on the mat and somehow, in the chaos, the Technicos are held for a three-second slam of the palm, showing that good does not always triumph in Lucha. 

‘I wasn’t sure about Lucha VaVoom at first,’ admits Liz Fairbairn as the dazed, sweaty masked fighters stumble backstage. As one of the few women wrestling promoters in the business, she knows what she’s talking about. ‘But then I went to a Lucha match and between the first and second half, a drag queen climbed into the ring and started lip-synching to a tape. Then someone ran in and pulled her wig off. I thought, if they could do that, then we could mix burlesque with it.’ Rita provided the VaVoom element from her experience co-producing the Velvet Hammer Burlesque, a vintage striptease show that was instrumental in the revival of the US scene during the 90s, making burlesque stars like Dita Von Teese into household names. 

‘I was standing watching our first ever show and I thought to myself, we have to do this all the time,’ she explains. ‘It’s the greatest thing I’ve ever been part of and it’s just grown bigger and bigger. I just don’t understand why we haven’t conquered the entire world yet, ya know?’

Lucha first-timer Laura Ramirez, an insurance broker from Orange County, is one of hundreds of formally sane people in the audience now, for some reason, doing the chicken dance. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. It’s relentless. You don’t want get a drink or go the bathroom in case you miss something. The Crazy Chickens are just wild. I just wanna go give Lil’ Chicken a big hug,’ says the new Lucha VaVoom convert, referring to the midget wrestler covered in yellow feathers and orange-beaked mask (their fight, as one of the commentators remarks, is ‘like watching a Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman sex tape.’)

The show briefly pauses for breath as a performer called Lola La Cereza performs an ethereal belly dance. She is followed by Karis, whose striptease has half the male audience on its feet and whooping until she exposes the fact that she’s actually a man: again, it’s classic, cartoon misdirection.

‘It’s one of the few times of the year I can be kinky in public and people actually cheer me on,’ says Karis when he arrives backstage. The backstage area is just as much a circus as the ring itself, with film crews interviewing, photographers shooting and semi-clad performers buzzing with intent. Wrestlers are getting warmed-up by masseurs and midgets are riding the shoulders of their Luchador teammates, as air cooling fans battle the rising body heat of the sweltering corridor. Amidst the chaos, I hear the screams of a performer desperately needing some AA batteries for her flashing bra-piece (I manage to save the day after emptying out my camera bag to find some). Back outside, the Wau Wau Sisters are giving a dazzling display of aerial acrobatics. Watching striptease on a trapeze 40ft in the air without a safety net really does hammer home the combination of guts, ingenuity and insanity that it takes to create this show.

After six years of lunacy, nobody seems to be tiring of this uniquely Californian hybrid, and future plans for a Lucha VaVoom Las Vegas residency or TV show look promising. With this perfectly balanced evening of sex, comedy and comic book violence, the populace of the Earth deserves nothing less than a global tour. For everyone deserves a little VaVoom now and then for the Lucha in their life.