Worst gimmicks in Lucha Libre

It has been a while since the last time I saw any of the shows WWE has nowadays on TV, but every now and then I read news about WWE, like how The Rock returned to the company, or how Kaitlyin is the Divas champion or how the WWE has a new heel that is very American and makes racists comments every time he’s on the mic (And yeah it’s been that long since I watched Raw or something similar).

In WWE they are no strangers to the idea of creating and launching a wrestler with a controversial gimmick. Hell, there had been occasions when WWE just had TERRIBLE TIMING when giving a major push to a new character with a rather polemic personality.

But what about lucha libre? In the more than 70 years of history of Mexican wrestling there has been a parade of luchadores with all kind of name and ideas, I mean there has to be something as lame as Santina Marella. After reviewing 80 years of lucha libre history, today I bring you a few cases that makes you wonder, what were they thinking?

Los Power Raiders

Courtesy of the Walt Disney of lucha libre, Antonio Peña. Many people praise his imagination when it came to create new characters. Well, this is not the case; definitely this is one of the worst ideas that came from the mind of Mr. Peña, a lazy concept, but that’s just giving way too much credit, is just a plain copy of the Power Rangers.

The stable first appeared in 1995, taking advantage of the popularity that the show had among Mexican kids. The group was formed by the Green, Black, Blue, Red and White Raiders.

Sadly for Mr. Peña, Saban’s legal team got a hold of AAA’s owner idea and threatened to sue him. As fast as Rey Mysterio getting injured after months of recovery, Peña dropped the idea behind Los Power Raiders and created a new group, Los Cadetes del Espacio, no, he didn’t re unite El Solar, Super Astro and Ultraman, he took the name and gave it to his five new luchadores, Venum Ludxor, Discovery, Frisbee and Boomerang.

Shrek and El Burrito

Some brilliant mind of Monterrey’s Arena Coliseo saw Shrek and decided to give the main characters to a couple of local luchadores around 2005 and book them in matches.

I imagine that this idea didn’t transcended beyond Monterrey, because no one on Dreamworks found out (or just didn’t care) and didn’t sue.

What happen with these lucahdores? Well, opposite to what it is shown on the first movie, Shrek wasn’t very good at wrestling and lost his mask three months after his debut on Mexican rings, when faced El Gato Volador (another local wrestler).

With El Burrito the story is completely different, or at least I can gather that with the little information I found of him. Anyway, the last data I found is that he wrestled until 2007 and he managed to win three masks, one of them belonging to the next group of luchadores.

Los Teletubbies 

Blue Demon, Rolando Vera, Hector Garza, great luchadores from Monterrey? Screw them! Los Teletubbies are far superior… ok no. Yes my dearest readers, The Teletubbies might not talk in a comprehensible language (and I’m not being xenophobic here) or teach useful thing to their young audience, but they sure have the capacity to get on a ring and kick butts… well no, apparently they weren’t very good in wrestling either.

As you can imagine there isn’t that much information about the wrestling career of this stable. The only thing I could find is that they lost their masks in 2007 when they fought Ricochet, The Flea and El Burrito.

Of course there are more shitty gimmicks in lucha libre, but I’ll leave that for another time. I’ll see you next week.

Francisco Arreola

@fcoarreola