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León d’Oro—412 votes

He-Man—410 votes

Chris Power—52 votes

I had three thoughts:

1. I was spared He-Man by two measly votes.

2. I was shocked that there were fifty-two people in TV Land who actually liked the name Chris Power.

3. Only 874 people had watched the show.

CHAPTER 15

TOILET WATER IS TOILET WATER

Shortly afterward, I made my lucha libre debut with my new name, León d’Oro. The show took place in a parking lot, lit with a string of Christmas lights and a pair of headlights from an ’82 Chevy parked in front of the ring.

Mike had warned me to watch out for the Mexican wrestlers who were unhappy about the foreigners invading their territory. So it was no surprise when the first guy I got in the ring with, el Ranger, punched me in the face as hard as he could right off the lockup. I understood what was happening and after the second swing connected harder than the first one, I punched the bastard back. Just to make sure there was no confusion, I tattooed him a second time and after that he was very easy to work with. When the match was over he was quite friendly and never mentioned the stiff shots. Go figure.

After working exclusively in North America, I found the strange lucha style to be like wrestling trigonometry. There was a lot of rolling and tumbling in the ring, a direct contrast to the impactful bumps I’d been trained to do. The luchadores were throwing each other off the ropes with one hand and barely touching each other on tackles and clotheslines. They were working so light with each other that everything they did looked—dare I say—fake.

The stories told during the matches were strange as well. Falls would end only when every member of a team was pinned. We would work a fall for five minutes or so until all the members of the losing team got pinned or submitted one after another, only seconds apart. Then the second fall would start and the same thing would happen. You could also win by diving outside the ring onto another guy, but only if he wasn’t the captain. The captain could only lose if he was pinned or submitted. Confused? I am and I wrestled there for three years.

Another major difference was, when you worked a match in Canada or the States, you worked on the left side of your opponent’s body. You focused on his left leg or his left arm; you locked up at the beginning of the match with your left leg forward. But in Mexico, everyone worked on the right side. During my first match, I had no prior knowledge of this and it was like I was driving a car in England. I was bumping and crashing into things like Mel Gibson in Malibu, until I figured out it out.

I was glad that I had the parking lot match to work out the kinks because my next match was in the Plaza Monumental, the massive bull fighting arena. The ring was set up in the middle of a large dirt floor and the mat was covered in a coat of dust that mushroomed into the air with every bump. When the show started, the Plaza was jam-packed with 10,000 screaming fans, the majority of them girls and kids. When I looked into the crowd during my previous matches, I could see each face, each person. But with a crowd this large all I noticed was a living, breathing monster, moving and shifting just outside the glow of the ring lights. It was the first time that I felt like I was in the big leagues. This was no community center or bar; this was a legitimate arena with tiers of padded seats, wandering popcorn vendors, and a full PA system. After working here, I knew I could never go back to the minor leagues of Canada again.

While the situation was memorable, the match was not. We’d been booked with the legendary Mil Mascaras. Earlier, he’d been bragging in the dressing room (while standing on his toes and wearing his mask) that he’d:

a) Trained Arnold Schwarzenegger on Venice Beach in 1968,

b) Was the best technical wrestler in Mexican history, and

c) Was a superstar in every country in the world... even