Story of a Voluntarily Unmasking: Huracan Ramírez

There is nothing more valuable for a masked luchador, than well, his (her) mask. Along  with his performance on the ring, the mask becomes one of the most important  source of income for a luchador. An element that makes the luchador outstand from others. And also a key to enjoy his life outside the arenas and wrestling mats.

Considering all this facts of the lucha libre mask, there are a few cases in which the luchador decides to reveal his identity voluntarily and not by the traditional method of a bet match. Today I have for you, the case of one of the most iconic wrestlers in lucha libre history, Daniel García Arteaga, better known as Huracan Ramirez.

First of all, quick recap of his career. Huracan Ramirez is born as a character for a lucha libre movie, named Huracan Ramirez, one of the first movies of  the lucha libre  genre. Huracan Ramírez gained so much popularity among the fans, that he jumped from the silver screen to the Mexican rings. It was the Spaniard wrestler, Eduardo Bonada that first wrestled with this mask, but he didn't like the idea of wrestling with a mask, so he dropped the character. At the end Daniel García was chosen to wrestle as Huracan Ramirez, which he did in a very outstanding  way for more than 30 years.

One thing I have to mention, is that Daniel García never was the owner of the rights of  the Huracan Ramirez character, this were possessed by the family of movie director Joselito Rodriguéz (the director of the Huracan Ramirez movie).

It was around the mid 80s that Mr. García started to consider retiring from lucha libre, but the family of Mr. Rodríguez had another plan in mind, they wanted to continue using the name of Huracan Ramirez in lucha libre.

Huracan Ramirez finally retired from lucha libre, this happened on February 5th 1987 or 1988 (the data is not very clear) in El Toreo de Cuatro Caminos. With Mr. García retired, the Rodríguez family continued their plans for the character with the movie Huracan Ramirez contra los Terroristas. But in a quite surprising turn of events, in 1989 during a show in Tijuana, Mr. García took his mask off. The movie was a huge failure, but I don't if it's related to Daniel García's unmasking, because pretty much any Mexican movie from the 80's was crap.

There are some unconfirmed theories of why Daniel García took the mask voluntarily, one of them says that the Rodríguez Family owed royalties money  to Mr. García. Another one says that the Rodríguez family wanted to take the character from Mr. García and the last one, that Mr. García wanted some recognition from the fans by the end of his career.

It 's been over 20 years since that day in Tijuana and since then, every luchador that used the name of Huracan Ramirez after Daniel García, haven't had success with the character. I know of two of them that lost the mask in a lucha de apuestas and the rest, just haven't been capable of match the greatness the Daniel García gave to Huracan Ramírez.

This is all for today, I'll see you next week.

Francisco Arreola

@fcoarreola