LIVING THE VIDA LUCHA

ONE IMPOSSIBLE CHALLENGE. ONE WEEK TO TRAIN. GO

ALL I SEE IS a crowd of jeering demon faces. There are horned devils, court jesters, Street Fighter villains and, in the corner of my eye, Bane himself. What’s more, they’re all upside down. I’m suspended in mid-air, mid-suplex, being held aloft over the shoulders of a much stronger man with far more tattoos than I have. My feet touch the sky; my head fills with blood. In a matter of seconds, gravity will take over. I’ll hit the floor of the ring – hard. I am, you see, a luchador.

A luchador is a Mexican wrestler – or, at least, a Mexican-inspired wrestler. As far as I can tell, there aren’t any actual Mexicans in the London Lucha League. But the people involved have embraced the ethos of Latin America’s answer to the WWE in all its