On Lucha Forever and Cultural Appropriation

If you brand yourself lucha, you might as well book someone from Mexico, right?
Photo via Lucha Forever Twitter

Imagine if you will a promotion in America called World of BritWres. It's a promotion that claims to feature the best of British wrestling on American soil. Then the promotion opens, and no one on the card is from any part of the United Kingdom. Up and down the card, wrestlers who work somewhat "British" styles like Tracy Williams and John Silver are booked, but the closest thing to an Englishman or a Scot on the card is Davey Boy Smith, Jr. or Timothy Thatcher. What do you think the reaction would be? My guess is the outrage from across the Atlantic would be palpable. I'm imagining a bunch of angry tweets chiding "Yanks" as if all Americans are of one mind anyway for co-opting a hot scene without bringing over any of the talent that makes it great.

Of course, no one could blame you if you had a hard time imagining that scenario because British wrestling is so hot right now, and outside of the people who practice the old World of Sport grappling, it's pretty indistinguishable from American indie wrestling which in turn was influenced heavily by the confluence of All Japan Pro Wrestling's King's Road strong style, Dragon Gate's breakneck spotfestery, and World Championship Wrestling's hybridization of New Japan Pro Wrestling's junior heavyweight revolution and the flashier elements of actual lucha libre into its cruiserweight division. One could argue the hottest BritWres tournament isn't PROGRESS' Super Strong Style, but Pro Wrestling Guerrilla's Battle of Los Angeles because of how many English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Australian, and New Zealander talent are brought in.

So, of course, because everyone's an Anglophile nowadays, few seem to care that graps entrepreneurs have started a promotion in England called Lucha Forever, removed from Mexico by an average of 5,000 miles. What's worse is the closest thing to a Mexican that the promotion has booked is El Ligero, who wears a mask and is billed from Mexico but is really just another White dude from Leeds. Of course, the promoters say that they can't fly in lucha talent because of cost concerns, which for independent promotions is a legitimate concern. However, the promotion is booking Pro Wrestling NOAH ace Naomichi Marufuji for its show today. Unless LF is piggybacking off, say, Revolution Pro for travel costs, that flight can't be cheap, and again, Marufuji is about as top a talent you can get without getting New Japan involved.

To understand why this is offensive is to understand that lucha libre isn't just a style of wrestling; it's a tradition in a country that often gets a heel stomp to the head from life in general. Whether it be subjugation by colonial European powers, drug cartels controlling the landscape, American companies exploiting the wealth gap to suppress wages, or Donald Trump and Republicans scapegoating the people for everything wrong north of the border, Mexico has to deal with a lot of shit. Lucha is one of the few cultural touchstones it has to call its own, so for the OG colonial dickhead culture to swoop in and put on something called "lucha" with negligible if any input from Mexican or Mexican-English persons is insult to injury. It's not to say lucha is only a property that should happen in Mexico, but it should at least have some authenticity.

The debate over what cultural appropriation is rages pretty heavily in many circles. In some cases, the definitions can be hazy and one can claim plausible deniability. Wrestling is no different, as White/non-Mexican people have promoted lucha or used the name lucha before. Mike Quackenbush is about as Mexican as reindeer sausage, but, right or wrong, he gets away with branding Chikara as "lucha" because he makes efforts to bring in Mexican wrestlers from time to time. Is it enough to deflect from accusations of appropriation? Honestly, I have no idea. I'm a gringo, and I deflect to those with more skin in the game to make that fight. It's not a layup, to use sporting parlance.

Lucha Forever, however, is a layup. It's yet another BritWres promotion that is mostly indistinguishable from other BritWres promotions who use the same pool of talent, push the same pool of wrestlers in elite positions, and only dress it up as if it were a suburban community celebrating Cinco de Mayo. At the very best, it's in poor taste. At worst, it's cultural colonialism without paying reparation to the original scene. The promoters can continue to use the dressings and make money off something they only have spectator cred in, but they should be prepared to face the constant backlash. Ideally, they should probably rebrand if they want to continue running shows, but I'm too busy enjoying this tasty tea to expound on that idea more.

As a post-script, if your response to this criticism is "THE BOYS WON'T HAVE A PLACE TO GET A PAYDAY," well, look at the roster. How many wrestlers who've gotten Lucha Forever bookings are hurting for work? It's a veritable list of the most in-demand English/British talent and guests who are everywhere. I don't think that concern troll works.