THE DAY EL SANTO HOOKED ME

G'day,

have I mentioned that i'm a complete Lucha nut??...no..well, I think I'll tell you the why for's and how comes of my becoming one

Like ive said before, me and the occasional "big" wrestling events seem to keep bumping into each other, seeing Goldberg wallop Hollywood for starters at the georgia dome was one...BUT....the one that really grabbed hold of me was once again a complete f'n fluke and this is what happened....

late january to March 1984 me and a couple of mates were in L.A doing the the Strip seeing bands we had heard about in Circus and Hit parader, you know, Ratt, Motley Quiet Riot, London, Dokken and WASP...etc etc, drinking , laughing,  having a tops time as was my usual state of being at that point in history.....now me and gazza were and had been wrestling fans since memory began...so finding a comic shop that had actual up to date PWI's was a hoot and a half indeed...I came across a copy of Box Y Lucha mag, had a look through and recognised Mil Mascaras and his brother Dos but that was about it, so, i walked up to the counter and picked the blokes brain about this lucha libre stuff, he politely informed us  that outside of soccer, it sold more tickets per week than anything and if we got a chance to go see some, we should.

Back at the hotel, we decided to go see some lucha, this meant we had to haul arse across the border at San Diego...hunted down one of the staff who was as he put it a "bean eater", always good when people can laught at themselves, who we had formed some sort of rapore with, he set us up to cross the border with his mom and dad who visiting and were going home to Tampico on the coast just north east of Mexico City...double bonus, we got there unscathed and they got home for virtually nothing cause we wouldnt let them pay for nothing..HAHAHA....we got to there house and they insisted we stay the night and have a "welcome to mexico" party with the rellies..why not...this was the first and last time i drank "proper" tequila, FARK MOI, anyway their son in law was in the travel industryand while in  most cases in mexico this meant he sold train tickets, this bloke booked for a travel agent, he got us a hotel right dead smack in the middle of MC at a very reasonable rate, well we was getting 8,000 pesos to the dollar so it wasnt that big a fiscal hardship ( i'm kidding about the rate, but it was pretty fn good), he insisted on driving us into MC cause he said us gringos would get ripped off rotten probably, and who am i to argue with local knowledge....

We got into MC and hooked up with one of his workmates from the agaency they both worked for, this bloke was gonna be our guide for the week and we monetarily compensated him I can assure you (about a months wage if i decipher my scratchings properly), thats the thing about Mexico, they open a door for you and they stick there hand out, no biggie really our spare change was pretty good to them....NOW...heres where it gets weird.

we went down the hotel bar to have a couple of coldies and when we went back to the room, old mate, umm, Perlios, was almost beside himself, i thought someone had carked it, fuckin how right was I...the great man of Lucha Libre and all round tops chap by all accounts..."el Enmascarado de Plata"  El santo had died from a heart attack

and this deadset gutted the country, it was phenomenal, picture if you can a top AFL or League player dying and getting Elvis or Michael Jackson level crowds to the funeral...we had about 2 days till the funeral and subsequently all Lucha show were canned in honor of the passing, perlios pulled some strings and got a vhs and some tapes and we sat around the hotel room for a couple of days with Perlios doing commentary in Spanglish, piss f'n funny indeed.....ANYWAY... the morning of the funeral we took our place on our balcony from about 9.00 am they were already 15 deep on the footpath, Perlios invited a couple of mates and chica's up to the room, they were most stoked and were top folk, but when the big white limo's came into view and i'm talking about 100, the crowd on mass went silent...then after about 10 seconds the chant "SANTO, SANTO, SANTO" erupted and didnt stop until the cortage had passed...we watched with the required reverance whilst joing in with the santo chants...we saw some luchadores on tv getting interviewed about santo, these included Blu Demon Snr, Sicodelico, Tineblas and Rayo De Jalisco...

didnt understand a word but they werent bagging him, that much i knew....went to a few shows after the joint had calmed down, and thus my Insane Luchafandom began...all because a movie star in a silver mask went toes up while i was in town