Lucha Tributes: Sexy Star
We all know where this is going sports fans; last night Lucha Underground delivered a great Aztec Warfare match with a controversial finish and a controversial new champion in Sexy Star. Naturally I felt like this was something that needed to be talked about far more in depth than I did last night in my Running Diary of the show and thus here we are. This is, as best as I possibly can, the full tale of Sexy Star. I’m talking the good, the bad, the ugly; everything I could possibly find you will be reading about in here so you can get as close a portrait as possible on the woman who made history last night. Sure I’ve written about Sexy before but not like this. I simply ask, whatever side of the coin you fall on, that you read it with an open mind and an open can of Pepsi. So crack that cold one open; this is a Lucha Tribute to the polarizing, the controversial, the famous (and infamous) Sexy Star.
What You Already Know
Gee I don’t know. Seriously, if you don’t know that Sexy Star is a luchadora for Lucha Underground, the first luchadora to hold the Lucha Underground Champion, the third woman in history to hold a World Championship in wrestling (somewhere Nicole Matthews and Kimber Lee are fist pumping again) then you’re either not reading me (which many aren’t in fairness), you don’t go on Twitter much or you’re just flat out living under a rock. Like a big rock. Oh, you may have also heard about Sexy wrestling in this No Mas match last year that included blood and the greatest use of profanity since J.K. Simmons dropping the F bomb every other word in the Party Down episode “Taylor Stiltskin Sweet Sixteen”.
What You Didn’t Know
Bare with me sports fans because this will be a long one. Now if you’ve been watching Lucha Underground longer than a millisecond you’ll know that the back story of Sexy Star involves her being in an abusive relationship for many years before she put on her mask and found the strength within herself. It’s pretty much why she became a luchadora and her feud last year with Marty “The Moth” Martinez and Mariposa (the co-star of that famous No Mas match) was built around them taking her inner strength away and her needing to get it back. As it turns out the back story isn’t just for TV; it’s also true, to an extent. In the documentary Lucha Mexico (which I highly recommend to any wrestling fan) Sexy candidly speaks about how she was depressed prior to becoming a luchadora and considered suicide several times. She goes on to explain that wrestling saved her life; reflecting on the first time she stepped into a wrestling ring, Sexy describes the feeling with a Spaghetti Western esq quote, “Here I die and here I’m born again.” Now I haven’t been around Sexy Star a day in my life but giving her the benefit of the doubt, her story being what it is just makes it all the more remarkable where she finds herself today and why LU got behind her as they did. As Martin Tyler would say, you cannot write scripts like that.
So what of Sexy’s wrestling career prior to Lucha Underground? Most believe she immediately started in AAA but in truth she began her career for the FILL promotion in Monterrey under the name Dulce Poly. She would work there for two years before AAA brought her in and gave her the name she’d become most known for. And here’s where the irony begins, at least if I’m using the term correctly. The Sexy Star you all know from Lucha Underground is resilient, scrappy and heroic to an absolute fault (somewhere, Rob Viper is nodding vehemently in agreement). In AAA however she would make her name as one of the more arrogant rudas in the company, beginning when she stole Billy Boy away from his wife, beloved luchadora Faby Apache. The two would feud for years (with Billy Boy and Aerostar being incorporated in numerous times), with Sexy taking Faby’s hair, her Reina de Reinas Championship; hell she even forced Faby to be her maid at one point during the angle after beating her in a trios match. All in all it seems as though Sexy was a pretty decent ruda for AAA, at least character wise. She was a staple of several top rudo stables for them, including La Legion Extranjera, La Sociedad and even Perros del Mal (when they were associated with La Sociedad), while winning the Reina de Reinas title twice and the AAA Mixed Tag Team Championships once with future LU rival and rock star Pentagon Jr. Remember that last note kids, because it’ll be important later on.
So yeah, things seemed to be pretty good for Sexy if you look at all of that. And yet it almost didn’t happen due to an incident in 2010 that some people may be aware of. In August, right before she dropped her Reina de Reinas title at AAA’s Verano de Escandalo event (remember when AAA had tons of events?!) Sexy actually went to Tampa Bay to participate in a WWE tryout. Yes, even Sexy tried to make it with the mother ship once upon a time. Clearly it didn’t pan out, but more interesting is why it didn’t. You see, WWE wasn’t nearly as evolved as they are these days, mainly because John “PEOPLE POWER” Laurinaitis was still running talent relations. Thus the reason Sexy wasn’t hired wasn’t strictly because Laurinaitis (and by extension WWE) felt she wasn’t good enough in the ring; it was because they thought she couldn’t speak English well enough, looked ugly without her mask and looked fat. Yup.
Now, let’s forget for a moment that WWE (even before the Performance Center days) spends eons training wrestlers their style anyway thus making their ability coming in moot. Let’s also forget that they would hire Sin Cara (the original, not the one who beats up Chris Jericho) several months later, a man who didn’t and never learned to speak English during his entire run in WWE. Hell let’s even forget that Sexy Star, even to her most hardened critic, is a beautiful woman with or without the mask on. The fact that WWE wouldn’t hire her because of her looks and (more than likely) felt compelled to shame her in front of the rest of the people trying out is…I don’t even know the right word. Even worse for Sexy was that the WWE tryout didn’t just humiliate her but almost wrecked her career. Even though she simply tried out for WWE, AAA punished her anyway and moved on her down the card for the next seven months. According to what I’ve read Sexy briefly considered leaving AAA during that time and going to rival CMLL; yes, it apparently got that drastic. Ultimately Sexy would stay with AAA and get her push back in the spring of 2011. Just think; if that WWE tryout goes well or AAA and Sexy have a falling out years before they had a falling out, last night doesn’t happen and Rob Viper is the happiest man alive. It was that close folks. And all because of a WWE tryout that showed off the ugliest side of wrestling’s most well known entity. Thank Grodd they’ve taken their head out of their ass and have started treating female talent in and out of the promotion better.
This brings us to the biggest dispute of Sexy’s career and the one that has left her and her victory last night, so polarizing in the eyes of many within the lucha community. Sexy and AAA would get along fine for the next five years, but the relationship eventually crumbled for good earlier this year following several incidents. The first, as documented by cubsfan in his LU review last night, involved Sexy missing a show in January after a “car accident”; supposedly she was supposed to lose the match she was scheduled for. That was nothing compared to a month later, when AAA booked Sexy and Pentagon to lose the AAA Mixed Tag Team Championships. Sexy took major exception to this, believing the titles were merely gifts to her and Pentagon. Ultimately she refused to drop the titles and officially left AAA, leaving Pentagon to defend them and ultimately vacate them himself. She soon after announced she was retiring from AAA and lucha libre to become a boxer, thus allowing her to get out of AAA’s thumb (it should be noted she still did work LU’s tapings during that time, including the taping we saw last night). As of today, November 17th, Sexy has yet to enter the ring as a boxer, but has come out of retirement to wrestle of SHIMMER (under her real name Dulce Garcia) and will wrestle again next week for The Crash promotion in Tijuana. She’s also now involved with a legal dispute with AAA over the rights to the Sexy Star name and the Sexy Dulce name, making this whole thing one gigantic mess.
So who’s at fault for this mess? Unlike other situations involving Jack Evans and Fenix it’s hard to see who the winner or loser is here. On the one hand AAA, who looks like the child of WCW 2000 and Dixie Carter’s TNA, cannot be trusted with anything. Their challenge of the rights to Sexy’s name, particularly the Sexy Dulce one which she never used in AAA, isn’t just ridiculous; it’s a word that hasn’t even been made up yet. Furthermore even the legit gripes they have against Sexy, such as her refusing to drop the Mixed Tag Titles and refusing to lose, aren’t that legit considering they never did anything with Sexy and Pentagon as champions (by my count they never did actually defend those belts, basically making them props as Sexy claimed) and created a culture where all luchador(a)s, including Sexy, were best served looking out for themselves. Hell, doesn’t the fact that they nearly fired her back in 2010 for attending a tryout anyone would’ve attended make that clear? At the same time I cannot blame the numerous lucha libre fans out there who don’t sympathize for Sexy. She did walk out on AAA and left Pentagon to the wolves. She did refuse to lose matches a couple of time, a big no no. She did have an attitude of being too big for what was going on around her. The list goes on. And that’s why if one is looking around Twitter today and seeing people who aren’t as happy about last night as others, this (combined with the opinion of many regarding Sexy’s in ring work) is why. And it’s not altogether wrong, even if it’s also not altogether right.
Best Moment
I mean, doesn’t it kind of have to be last night? I’m pretty convinced that winning the Lucha Underground Championship and being the first woman to do so is kind of a big deal. So that’s definitely the winner; unfortunately the final minutes of the match aren’t yet available so I cannot post video of it yet. Trust me, it’ll be added once it’s up for you to see. In the meantime, allow me to post the second best moment of Sexy’s career and arguably still her greatest performance, the No Mas match against Mariposa. There’s a lot of things that led to last night; Sexy’s real life story, LU’s belief in her and the character and in my opinion this match. Without No Mas, a bloody, climatic finish to the story of Sexy having to find herself again in the face of the woman (and her brother) that abused her, last night doesn’t make sense in the slightest, or makes even less sense to those who already find it inconceivable. It’s worth watching for that alone, never mind the fact that it’s actually really great. Screaming out “FUCK YOU!” never has felt so good than it does here.
Conclusion
Being the first ever luchadora to hold the Lucha Underground Champion and the first female world champion for a televised wrestling show has its perks, and Sexy Star now can live off that forever; she can always use that accomplishment to get booked and will be remembered for it forever. Will it be in a good way or bad way is the question? Right now Sexy Star is being viewed a lot like the film Cloud Atlas; you either love her, her story and what happened last night or you loathe her, think she’s a Diva and can’t believe Lucha Underground hitched her wagon to her. I’m somewhere in the middle. Do I root for Sexy Star? Yes, though not as much as I once did. Is she the greatest female wrestler alive? Absolutely not. Is she who I would’ve picked as the first female Lucha Underground Champion? Probably not, especially if Ivelisse was healthy. Do I think there were more deserving people who could’ve won last night? Certainly. I’m not sure how anyone, be it the biggest hater, the biggest LU mark or even the people who work for LU themselves, can dispute that Sexy is an imperfect option. But the flaws don’t tell the whole story. Yes Sexy isn’t the greatest luchadora I’ve ever seen, but she’s far from the worst and nowhere close to being trash as some people I know believe. Yes other people deserved it more, but it’s not like LU is closing tomorrow; their time will come. Yes Sexy has her detractors, but she also has a ton of support, unless that gigantic ass roar I heard from the Temple last night was my imagination. And none of that takes into account that Sexy is really good at portraying her character, the real reason she’s here more than anything else.
And that’s the bottom line; Sexy Star is an average in ring worker, a great character, a flawed person and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with her being champion because those types of performers are champs all the time; hell the most well known wrestler ever was exactly like that if we’re being honest. She’s polarizing, she gets people talking, she gets people emotional and she makes for a great story in the bigger picture. What’s that bigger picture? Try all the women I saw on social media last night, including the wife of my editor at Rudo Can’t Fail, reacting with unbridled joy when Sexy one. Try all the women show in the Temple last night celebrating her victory, a group that, while shown on camera a little too much for my liking, wasn’t brought to ringside right before Sexy won as some have wondered (you can see them clear as day marking out for Angelico’s dive and checking on Mysterio earlier in the match). I’m not suggesting that every woman saw this and reacted the same way and I have no idea what LU’s numbers with woman are or aren’t; what I can tell you is that this meant everything for the women and girls that did watch it, and that’s fucking huge. That’s bigger than any opinion you or I can have. And whether you love Sexy Star or not or feel she was the wrong person to have this honor or not, it’s a wonderful thing she and Lucha Underground have done in showing a woman can reach the top of the mountain. If that’s not enough for you then consider this; if Sexy Star, a polarizing woman’s wrestler, can be a World Champion than why can’t Ivelisse? Why can’t Kobra Moon? Why can’t Zeuxis? Candice LeRae? Sasha? Becky? Bayley? Charlotte? Sexy Star has opened a lot of doors potentially folks. I don’t see how anyone can dispute that.
That’s a wrap folks. I’ll be back later with a preview of tomorrow’s CMLL. Till them, let’s end it light with the great DUCHOVNY!
