It’s Wrestling, Mexican Style

With the resolve and physique of a Tasmanian devil, Super Astro enters the ring. One of Mexico’s premier wrestlers--a barrel-chested yet diminutive powerhouse dressed in silver lame tights and lace-up booties--he slides under the ropes and performs a back flip while his enemy charges toward him.

In World Power Wrestling’s first event of the year Sunday at the Anaheim Marketplace, Super Astro’s team was up for battle against a trio of other masked warriors: Poison, Medico Asesino and Maldad. It was part of a weekly program that is as much about showmanship as it is about sport.

Sunday’s match packed the house, but that was nothing new. Lucha libre, as Mexican wrestling is known, is one of Mexico’s favorite pastimes.

“I lived in O.C. and was wrestling all over Mexico,” says Martin Marin, 36, who started WPW’s lucha libre events three years ago. “There was nothing here. I thought it would be a good idea to cater to the Hispanic community.”

Mexican wrestling is a family affair, despite the make-believe violence. Impervious to the men who are thrown systematically from the ring and into the crowd, young women sit in the front row with their babies.

Audience participation, after all, is key. Stand up during a match and prepare to join the show. Wrestlers make a regular practice of sparring with the audience and vice versa. This is especially true with matches that pair gringos and Latinos.

The banda music fades as American Rebel and Rage make their entrances to AC/DC’s “Back in Black,” carrying placards that read: “I don’t hate Mexicans--I just deport them” and “Yes on Prop. 227.” Verbally assaulted by members of the audience, the gringo wrestlers respond by yelling, “Speak English, nimrod!” and “You got your green card?”

If this exchange happened on the street, chances are someone would end up in the hospital, but here, it’s all in good fun. “You gotta have controversy,” says Marin.

“The crowd is mainly Hispanic, so you bring in a couple of guys trying to put down the Mexicans. They wanna see the good guys--the Mexicans--beat the white guys up.”

Whereas American wrestling is about bulk, lucha libre is about agility. Even if the wrestlers look as if they’ve eaten more than their share of frijoles con queso, Mexican wrestlers perform with unbelievable grace and elasticity.

At intermission, the wrestlers clear the mat and the kids jump into the ring to practice their moves--hanging on to and bouncing off the ropes. You know what these kids want to be when they grow up.

“El Santo [the masked movie star who died in the mid-’80s] is the biggest name in lucha libre history,” Marin says. “Every kid grew up idolizing him. In the back of their minds, they want to be that guy. They want to be the hero.”

Like El Santo, today’s Mexican wrestlers wear masks. It’s actually a tradition that reaches back to ancient times when the Incas, Aztecs and Mayans wore them into battle. To remove a wrestler’s mask is the ultimate disgrace.

But Super Astro did not suffer that humiliation. He threw the black-clad and muscular Maldad out of the ring and onto the concrete floor. Groaning, Maldad retreated from the mat, limping--only to reemerge moments later with a fake broken nose and “blood” streaming down his face.

Joining in the free-for-all that ends all lucha libre events, wrestlers from the previous matches come out from their dressing rooms to continue their brawls on the floor. In certain sections of the audience, people have to get up out of their folding chairs so the wrestlers can use them in battle. It’s a necessary element of each and every performance--setting up new rivalries for the next installment in this weekly, live-action soap opera.

Super Astro for governor? Stranger things have happened.