Lucha Libre

There's about 75 Spanish language TV channels on the Time Warner system in Los Angeles. As I was trolling through the on-screen program guide, I ran across two words that tapped the memory keg.

"Lucha Libre."

That's heavyweight wrestling for the language-impaired. And, for the sight impaired, the picture up above is that of one Bruno Sammartino, who was the disputed champion of the sport for about 15 years starting around 1963.

And my grandmother was in love with him.

These were the days before WWF and Hulk Hogan and "let's get ready to rumble." Wrestling promoter Vince McMahon pretty much turned his sport into one big virtual comic book of super heroes in swim trunks. But, years before, it was a lot simpler. And a hell of a lot more fun. Sure, it was as fake as lips after a Botox injection. But, try telling that to my grandparents, who were glued to the damn TV set for two hours every Saturday night. I would sit with them for that whole hour before, listening to that blasted Lawrence Welk champagne bubble crap, just so I could watch wrestling with them. Actually, the real show for me was my watching them watch wrestling.

You have not lived till you watch people in their seventies throw things at the TV set. The wrestling stars in those days were definitely either heroes or villains. Bruno, of course, was the champion and adored by my grandparents, because every week, between matches, he would talk in Italian supposedly to his relatives in Abruzzi, Italy. Not that my grandparents could understand it. But, that sort of made Bruno one of them. People off the boat making a life in America.

I can remember some of the other names like it was yesterday.

Bobo Brazil. He used to knock people out with his head. A cocoabutt.

The Fabulous Moolah. She was the female champion and my grandmother said she was a dirty girl. That became my barometer for years to come.

The Kangaroo Brothers. You guessed it. A tag team of two brothers from Australia.

Killer Kowalski. Might as well been an escapee from Sing Sing.

Freddie Blassie. He was usually some bad guy's manager. So was Wild Red Berry. They would both hang in the corner of their wrestler and usually help with some well-timed choking if the good guy came close.

Gorilla Monsoon. Nuff said.

And there was Sky Lo Lo. A little midget who used to crawl under one side of the ring and come out the other.

I don't know where or when this clip is from, but, except for the color picture (I only watched this stuff on my grandmother's black and white set), it pretty much replicates the whole experience.

Most of the time, the matches spilled out of the ring and into the arena. This frequently resulted in somebody wearing a bridge chair as a hat. And, of course, the really rotten guys were also hiding something in their trunks to use as a weapon. My grandmother would also be the first to notice this and would scream out a warning to the good guy. In German, of course.

"Watch it! He's got something in his trunks!"

"Break his neck, Bobo!"

"Oooh, you rotten son of a bitch."

And these were my earliest adult inspirations in life.

One night after my grandfather died, my father saw an advertisement that these same wrestlers were coming to an arena near us. He got tickets, and my grandmother made her only appearance ever at a sporting event. There was a bit of a subdued reaction. Sitting at ringside, I think it dawned on her that she was sitting on just the type of bridge chair that could be potentially used as a weapon.

Shortly thereafter, the local TV station stopped showing Saturday night wrestling. It was moved to Channel 47 out of Newark-Linden. In the pre-cable days, it was one of those UHF stations that you needed Norad to position the antenna for. My grandmother would literally start the tune-in process about an hour before the show.

"I got the picture coming in. Don't move."

We'd sit through tons of Spanish-language commercials for hair tonic, just to see a snowy image of Bruno Sammartino doing one more scissor kick.

Lucha libre were probably the only two Spanish words my grandmother ever knew.

Dinner last night: Ham cappacola sandwich and salad.