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A review by patrickwreed
Mondo Lucha A Go-Go: The Bizarre and Honorable World of Wild Mexican Wrestling by Dan Madigan
3.0
It's a frustrating book, because it could have been far better with minimal work.
It looks fantastic - glossy full colour photos, stunning reproduction of Lucha Libre movie posters, lobby cards and comics - and the sections on Lucha cinema are well-researched, informative, and clearly coming from a place of passion.
What is disappointing is how much the book would have benefited from a good editor. Much of the history included is good entry level material (I would have liked to see more on Lucha's origins pre-EMLL, and the impacts of repressive governments on the genre, though this has been written about elsewhere), that's let down by repetition and by simple mistakes. We're told that Psicosis is also known as Psychosis in the US twice in as many pages, while Black Shadow has almost his entire biography repeated, and some sections trail off into just a list of names.
In terms of mistakes, some are grammatical or typographical, some are evidence of either an insufficiently observant editor, or one not knowledgeable about wrestling - how else do you explain describing a Mexican Surfboard as an example of a "high-flying move", or the Michinoku Driver (also misspelled in the book, incidentally) as being a variation of a crossface? In the same section as these cock-ups, El Santo/El Hijo del Santo get their finishing moves listed twice under different names - either writer, editor or both, unclear that they were just repeating two different descriptions of one move, rather than unique names for two different moves.
Those mistakes, and the constant repetition either of key moments (aside from what I mentioned earlier, Mil Mascaras' origin was repeated at least twice) or of throwaway comments makes it a frustrating read, as does what often comes across as a fairly scattershot understanding of wrestling history outside of the bigger Lucha names. Some major names get barely a mention, while a section on the lack of Luchadores in the US during the 80s is really only a meandering exploration of the WWF's own masked wrestlers of that decade, with no mention of other American promotions or territories. Mil Mascaras - a figure much cited elsewhere in the book - was a regular fixture in Texas and California throughout the decade (as were several other Luchadores), as well as making regular appearances for the WWF, which doesn't support that sections central premise at all. There is something to be said about the US having different attitudes towards masked wrestlers than Mexico, but it's an argument that this book fails to coherently make.
It would be a good introduction to Lucha Libre for anyone with a passing interest, particularly if more on the cultural and aesthetic side than looking to explore the history of the sport, but there are better books out there on the same topic (though few as nice to look at as this one).
It looks fantastic - glossy full colour photos, stunning reproduction of Lucha Libre movie posters, lobby cards and comics - and the sections on Lucha cinema are well-researched, informative, and clearly coming from a place of passion.
What is disappointing is how much the book would have benefited from a good editor. Much of the history included is good entry level material (I would have liked to see more on Lucha's origins pre-EMLL, and the impacts of repressive governments on the genre, though this has been written about elsewhere), that's let down by repetition and by simple mistakes. We're told that Psicosis is also known as Psychosis in the US twice in as many pages, while Black Shadow has almost his entire biography repeated, and some sections trail off into just a list of names.
In terms of mistakes, some are grammatical or typographical, some are evidence of either an insufficiently observant editor, or one not knowledgeable about wrestling - how else do you explain describing a Mexican Surfboard as an example of a "high-flying move", or the Michinoku Driver (also misspelled in the book, incidentally) as being a variation of a crossface? In the same section as these cock-ups, El Santo/El Hijo del Santo get their finishing moves listed twice under different names - either writer, editor or both, unclear that they were just repeating two different descriptions of one move, rather than unique names for two different moves.
Those mistakes, and the constant repetition either of key moments (aside from what I mentioned earlier, Mil Mascaras' origin was repeated at least twice) or of throwaway comments makes it a frustrating read, as does what often comes across as a fairly scattershot understanding of wrestling history outside of the bigger Lucha names. Some major names get barely a mention, while a section on the lack of Luchadores in the US during the 80s is really only a meandering exploration of the WWF's own masked wrestlers of that decade, with no mention of other American promotions or territories. Mil Mascaras - a figure much cited elsewhere in the book - was a regular fixture in Texas and California throughout the decade (as were several other Luchadores), as well as making regular appearances for the WWF, which doesn't support that sections central premise at all. There is something to be said about the US having different attitudes towards masked wrestlers than Mexico, but it's an argument that this book fails to coherently make.
It would be a good introduction to Lucha Libre for anyone with a passing interest, particularly if more on the cultural and aesthetic side than looking to explore the history of the sport, but there are better books out there on the same topic (though few as nice to look at as this one).