Pro Wrestling Chronicle

Imagine your the biggest star in your profession. Not only that, within the confines of your homeland you are more famous for what you do than anyone in your industry in the world. You’re so popular at what you do that you work four times on Sundays! You rarely have a day off. You travel all over the globe in cars and vans because everyone wants to see you perform. You transcend demographics. Kids adore you, women are fascinated by you, and guys just think your the coolest. You make a great living running your body into the ground day after day, and it’s finally paying off. After all that work, the biggest promotion in the world wants you to work for them. It’s all the money you’ll ever need to take care of yourself. All the fame and notoriety one could ever dream of having. But that’s where the romanticized life of pro wrestler Mistico ends.

Though he’s been selling out the 18,000 seat Arena Mexico weekly for over a year, and drawn more people monthly by himself than anyone in the world, the WWE just realized he existed. Though they’d like to pretend that industry trade papers don’t exist, it seems enough people in the WWE-bubble (also known as Stamford, Conn.) read the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and saw the end of the year awards. Enough,that is, to be shocked and suprised to find out some masked guy in Mexico is a big deal. S

I’d think, as an onlooker, that he’d be signed right away. If I were Head of Talent Relations, Johnny Ace, I’d see this Mexican guy as my ticket out of the doghouse and offer him a great salary and strong bookings throughout the Southern Mexican border towns. But did WWE and Mr. Ace do this?

Of course not. Who wants to draw big in El Paso or San Diego, let alone hotbeds for the vastly growing minority fanbases of Atlanta and Chicago? What’s important is Mistico realizes his “faults” and works the style of wrestling everyone in the WWE works. Even if every Mexican-American loves the little guy for that “silly flippy lucha stuff”, it’s not gonna fly (no pun intended) here at the FED.

Nope, it’s best to just debut the kid cold the night after being in San Diego - where he’d be over huge -and instead in a place like San Jose. But wait, it gets better. It’s not a debut, but a try out. Yep, he’s not going to be signed and put anywhere on the card just for the easy money they’ll make off of him in merchandise and ticket sales with the booming Hispanic community. He better show them he wants it. He better earn his spot. The final humiliation came as word got out that the tryout was held before the show, without a crowd, and most likely without the aid of a worker familiar with his style. The WWE isn’t willing to cater to young Mistico just because everyone else loves him. He’ll learn to fall in line IF he can pass the tryout.

See, Mistico might be a big deal south of the border, but in WWE land he’s a short guy in a mask that they don’t like, wrestling a style they don’t get. They haven’t invited him to the dance to celebrate him, but rather, to expose him for the fraud he must be. He wasn’t created in the bubble, after all.

Fear not, Mistico, because you always have the millions of adoring fans at home in Mexico. You’ll just be paid alot less and used as a whore until your body breaks down. For it’s part, home promotion CMLL was trying to alert the border patrol that Mistico would be coming to America. It wasn’t because they wanted to given their homegrown prodigy a police escort as he left the nest for a theoretical better life. They were hoping to stop him from making the tryout. After all, in wrestling, there’s one bigger sin then getting over when your not suppose to. It’s leaving before you’ve been fully whored out.

PS The excuse, “we already have a Mexican in a mask, guys!” doesn’t work WWE. At least try to pretend for two minutes you don’t have a minority quota sheet and think about the big picture. You’d love to have millions of fans, all white anglo- christian republicans with six to seven figure incomes preferably from the northeast. You’d also like to pretend you aren’t a wrestling company. In both cases, please stop pretending, and figure out the benifits of not only signing Mistico, but 4 to six other stars of Mexican decent. Heck, why not just sign anyone if there’s a way to actually make it work regardless of race, gender, or political affiliation. I thought “the power was back”?