So here’s how it happened. I had an impressive 4 matches to my name when a promoter in Laredo came calling asking me if I wanted to do a show in Mexico. He said that he really saw something in me, which has to have been bullshit because those first 4 matches were shit. Maybe he wanted to have sex with me but the most likely explanation is that someone else he was counting on had dropped out and he just knew that I was in the area. He hasn’t booked me again so I guess he changed his mind about my limitless potential.
I’m not sure where I was in Mexico, someplace right across the border. The show was in a small rodeo arena or whatever those things are called. The crowd was in the stands, they didn’t set up any seating around the ring, so even as small as the place was in rodeo terms, the ring was still like fifty feet away from the closest fan which was weird. I’m used to the people, however few there might be, being right next to me. It was the largest crowd I have performed in front of, I think there were more than a thousand people there.
Things I remember. Someone said that Austin Rivers, the NBA player was in the crowd. Why would a c-list pro basketball player be at a mud show in Mexico? I looked him up on my phone and the guy in the crowd everyone was pointing at did look like him. He was speaking Spanish though so I don’t think it was Austin Rivers. I didn’t see how it happened but a roid-case in red briefs and kickpads ended up in the crowd punching a fan – I saw that because my match was supposed to be while that was going on. Did he climb up the wall like a rodeo clown or how did he end up in the crowd?
My opponent and I were just standing in the ring like assholes not sure if we should do our match because of all the commotion in the stands. The referee didn’t speak English but I thought he was saying something about the police. The girl I was supposed to be working with (who looked like SoCal Val) spoke some Spanish and asked the referee something and then he tried to grab her wrist. That guy went from zero to pissed in half a second. He chased her out of the ring and I was still just standing there wondering what the fuck was going on.
Eventually a Mexican wrestler called Rudo Anaranjado came out and start yelling orders, at the referee, at the crowd, at the wrestlers who had come out to gawk. The guy in the crowd trying to fight a fan crawled down and out while people threw shit at him. Then Anaranjado backed the referee into the corner and slapped the living fuck out of him. I never saw the SoCal Val knock off again but she was gone from the ring area. Once Anaranjado was done abusing the referee he gestured at me to start a match with him, it’s amazing how much information you can get from one impatient gesture.
Obviously we had discussed nothing beforehand and I had no idea at that point (still don’t really) how to call a match in the ring, and I don’t know how much English he spoke anyway so I just went along with whatever he was doing. Which was beating me in three minutes and then waving a Mexican flag around for five times as long while the crowd went nuts. That ring was fucking hard as a rock and Anaranjado did not have what I would call a light touch.
That would be plenty all by itself, but that was also the day I found out about magic.
