Sat, Sep 29, 2018 page16

• Mexican wrestlers overcome mockery

  • AFP, MEXICO CITY
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  He is just 90cm tall, but he packs muscles, power and swagger into a little frame: Meet Microman, the smallest star in Mexican professional wrestling.

  Mexico’s lucha libre, a wildly popular mix of sport and entertainment, long featured small people in a deeply demeaning role: they were mascotas — a word that can mean both “mascot” and “pet” — for full-sized wrestlers.

  However, a new generation of little people are rising lucha libre stars in their own right and dream of one day headlining main events.

  

  Wrestler Microman jumps on his opponent during a fight in Mexico City on Sept. 7.

  Photo: AFP

  Microman wowed a skeptical crowd at one bout in Mexico City, where he and two costars, El Gallito and Guapito, took on another team of small-sized wrestlers.

  He and his fellow “Micro Stars” were met with a smattering of jeers when they got in the ring, but Microman silenced them when he climbed onto the top rope to execute a high-flying leap straight onto the neck of his rival.

  He then flattened another with an acrobatic headstand kick known as the “Zero Gravity” move.

  The audience went wild.

  “Did you see how he held that headstand on top of the ropes? He does it really well,” 28-year-old construction worker Juan Carlos Elizalde said.

  Microman, 19, takes it all in with an attitude befitting lucha libre’s biggest little star.

  “Microman is a wrestler who gives everything he’s got for the crowd,” he said, referring to himself in the third person.

  Microman was fighting in the second match of the night — four bouts down from the top of the fight card — but just having his name on the billing shows the progress he and other little wrestlers have made since his father’s time.

  Microman is the son of Kemonito, who was also a wrestler, but had a very different career.

  For 30 years, Kemonito was a mascota for full-sized wrestlers, a sidekick who provided comic relief until the real action started.

  Working conditions and the level of respect have improved dramatically since then in the World Lucha Libre Council (CMLL), said Catalina Gaspar, an activist for little people’s rights.

  “They train them professionally now. I’ve been really happy to see that. Twenty years ago, they threw them in the ring with wrestlers who were 2m tall and they got injured a lot,” Gaspar said.

  Kemonito’s generation had no health insurance or benefits, but put up with the job for lack of other options, she said.

  “Some of them were paralyzed... One even committed suicide,” she said. “But now they are seen as idols, not mascots or buffoons.”

  However, Gaspar said there is still a long way to go: social security benefits, pension plans and other support for “life after wrestling.”

  Eight Micro Stars debuted in April last year as the third weight category in the CMLL.

  Microman said he did not know what to expect that day.

  “I didn’t know people would react like that, that they would back me so much without even knowing me,” he said. “I think it was my happiest day in wrestling.”

  The Micro Stars do not earn a regular salary, but get medical care, health insurance and a guarantee of at least two events per month, the CMLL said.

  “That makes you nervous, because you never know what will happen, whether people will like it,” Microman said. “But when you enter the arena and start walking down the bridge, you just do what you have to do, which is show everything you know in the ring.”
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