Another Open Letter to Paco Alonso: or Why Valiente Needs to Start Wearing Pants Again
Dear Paco Alonso,
I’d say we meet again (you reclusive bastard) but that would be a lie considering you never read my last letter. Actually I suppose you could’ve and just decided to go with Dragón Lee vs. La Máscara over L.A. Park vs. Rush instead but…you know what, not important. In case you didn’t read the last one, my name is Eric, but you can call me Cult. I’m a young man who enjoys the simple things in life, like Pepsi, GameBoy Color, Batman: Arkham City, the occasional Alex Cox movie marathon and watching all three of the CMLL shows you stream every week, a fact that makes some people think I’m insane. Hell you may think so; like you have time to watch all three CMLL shows! Never the less that’s why I’m here today penning you another letter than will once again lead to some dick suggesting in the comments section you won’t even see this because that guy likes to kill dreams (how you doing Rodolfo?!). But whereas the last one was suggesting to you an easy way to make money at the biggest show you hold all year, this will suggest something…I guess you construe it as more or less serious depending on your point of view. Let’s just start by saying it involves a talent of yours; a tenured veteran by the name of Valiente.
Don’t get it twisted Paco; this isn’t some demand to send Valiente packing as if he had the talent of every luchadora not named Zeuxis. Valiente is good; hell in my opinion he’s damn good and your decision to give him a recent singles push by having him win the CMLL Universal Championship and reach the finals of the Leyenda de Azul cibernetico was an inspired move. Perhaps there were more deserving, younger luchadors that you could’ve given the shot to but there’s plenty of time for that. The important thing is that you took a talented guy like Valiente, stuck in the trios division like Neo was stuck in the Matrix, have given him a platform to rise up and just like that have created new potential match ups and feuds instead of recycling the same old, same old. This is a good thing. No, it’s a great thing and I’m pretty certain Valiente will reward you with some pretty good matches and maybe even a big pay off down the road if he can get successful enough to put his mask on the line. That isn’t the problem. The problem is that Valiente is starting to look like a cross between the male Demi Moore from Striptease, the living embodiment of the Top Gun beach volleyball scene; simply put he’s a man in desperate need of being clothed!
Now I’m not one to get all Samuel L. Jackson about what wrestlers/luchadors wear. The closest I’ve ever come to understanding fashion is the time I was once pals with a fashion designer; who am I to judge Zack Ryder for having tights that extend down one leg and not the other or Rey Mysterio for badly trying to dress like a James Cameron creature? But this Valiente thing has gotten out of hand and someone needs to step up and say something. And that someone is me. Let’s go on a little museum esq tour if you will Paco because you need to understand how bad things have gotten. First, let me give you exhibit A.
That is a photo of Valiente from 2015. What jumps out at you, besides the fact that Valiente still looks like the miniature version of Buff Bagwell that he is? Simple: HE’S WEARING PANTS! Look at those bad boys he’s got on Paco; a pair of pants bluer than the Pacific in Morgan Freeman’s dreams, complete with splashes of white and gold on the sides and, most importantly, LENGTH! Everything is covered, everything is out of sight and no one is in danger of being blinded by things they should never have to see! This is a good, clean look that is fun for the whole family Paco and one that makes Valiente look like the super cool luchador that he is. It works for everyone. Zero complains.
Now let’s take a look at exhibit B.
What you’re looking at here is a photo from a few weeks ago, when Valiente beat Volador Jr. for that CMLL Universal Championship. You can probably tell that from Valiente celebrating and Volador moping like Bill Murray at the 2003 Oscars. But you know what’s more important than that; the fact that Valiente’s pants are gone! GONE GONE GONE! And in their place is what Valiente calls tights but what the rest of us call a Speedo. Take a close look there Paco. Before Valiente looked like an actual luchador with those tights of his. Now he looks like David Hasselhoff if the Hoff binged on steroids over the weekend, shrunk several sizes and shrunk his bathing suit several sizes more! That Speedo is barely covering the nether region area of Valiente’s body; hell it’s barely covering the upper part of his thighs. HIS THIGHS PACO! And it’s not just a minor thing that happens every now and then, oh no. With each passing week it appears that Valiente’s trunks have gotten shorter and shorter, culminating just last night on CMLL’s Puebla show where Valiente came out with a Speedo so short it can only be described as Hobbit sized. I don’t actually have a picture of it, but judging from the imagine that’s sadly been burned into my brain I’d say his look resembled something like exhibit C.
Paco; COME ON MAN! I could deal with Valiente ditching the pants for smaller tights and I could even look the other way as the tights proceeded to shrink. But the guy is now working, and this is no joke, with tights that are just as small, IF NOT SMALLER, than the ones he wears when he finishes first or second in the CMLL Bodybuilding Competition. In the words of Sonic the Hedgehog, that’s no good. Maybe Valiente thinks it’s making him a sex symbol, but all its really done is turned him into…whatever the opposite of a sex symbol is. It’s the look of someone who is trying to get out of the friend zone and is unknowingly sentencing themselves to a lifetime in said friend zone! And I don’t know about you Paco but Valiente is too good to be perpetually stuck in the lucha libre friend zone.
In case I haven’t made it clear enough for you yet, here’s my point; Valiente needs the pants back. Not today, not tomorrow, not sometime in the future, he needs them back now! He needs them like the sun misses the flower. He needs them like I need Atlantis vs. El Hijo del Santo, mask vs. mask (sorry; had to get that in there). You may be thinking how to accomplish this when in reality it’s pretty easy. You can pass down an order for Valiente to put on the pants or he’s being sent home. What’s he going to do, keep the Speedo and try to make it in AAA, a place that’s crumbling like the last piece of Chocolate Chip pie that’s leftover from my Thanksgiving? If that’s too simple for you then get creative. You know the mask vs. mask match we all love? Put Valiente in a match where if he loses the pants have to come back on! We’ll call it the pants vs. Speedo match. Sounds like a can’t miss idea to me. Regardless, just get the man back into some clothes, for his sake and ours. The only time a man should be wearing a pair of tights so creepily short in wrestling is if his name is Marty “The Moth” Martinez. Valiente isn’t Marty; he is however too good a luchador for his lone talking point to be how short those things are. Even worse is that he’s now starting to influence some of the other luchadors into shrinking their tights too! Astral’s tights are now getting smaller and smaller and Asturiano looked to be wearing nothing at all last week. This is becoming a disease Paco; before you know it this will be an epidemic sweeping across lucha libre with no cure to be found. Nip this in the bud before it takes over your whole locker room and we’re dealing with the fall out of Kráneo…good Grodd I can’t even say it.
So with that imagine now implanted in your head till Cthulhu kills us all, allow me to take my leave. Make the right decision Paco and #PutValientesPantsBackOn. If nothing else that’s a hell of a lot funnier a hashtag than #ShesNotMyWomansChampion.
Your Mortal Nemesis,
Cult
