Seek and you shall find

by Sarah Stupar (Canada)

A leap into the unknown Mexico

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It's about 7pm on a warm February night in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and I'm not exactly sure where I'm going as I hop off the bus near the central square. While I don't speak Spanish, I do speak French fluently, so I've been wandering around Cabo for the past two weeks almost understanding what's going on around me, but not quite. I'm trying to find a boxing gym where, as I understand it, some local Lucha Libre wrestlers may or may not be training. After an abysmal 2018 slogging through my daily life in Vancouver, BC, I was relieved and delighted when my parents invited me to accompany them to Mexico for a month. My only worry was that I would miss a whole month of training for the only thing that was really sparking joy in my life: an independent wrestling show called “Glam Slam: Wrestling vs Burlesque”. New to 'proffesional' wrestling, I'd participated in three shows, and was highly anticipating my fourth, I'd even changed my flights so that I'd be back in time for it. But I was nervous. How good would my performance be if I took a whole month off of training? Would my risk of injury increase? Would I forget everything I had learned? I knew that Lucha Libre wrestling was popular in Mexico and I hoped that maybe I could find some Lucha Libre wrestlers to train with while I was there. I asked around in my local wrestling community, but no one had ever heard of wrestling in Cabo, and everyone agreed that Lucha Libre was far more commonplace in Mexico City and Monterrey. One evening while walking along the marina, I saw four Mexican guys performing a skipping show with a light up rope. Except they didn't just skip, they flipped while skipping. They jumped from their hands to their feet and back again, did back tucks in the air, did rotating front flips, never missing a beat. I approached them after the show and ask one of them “Hablas ingles?” but he shook his head no. I manage to string together a sentence about training, asking where they do it, but I'm not making sense, or they don't train here. Finally I pull out my phone and play a clip of me wrestling. “Hay Lucha aqui?” I ask. Ahh si! my new friend exclaims, and now he's phoning someone else, connecting me with people on Facebook, giving me phone numbers. I leave with a date, a time, and a location where he thinks the luchadores are meeting next. So I'm here at the appointed place, appointed time but I'm nervous. No one responded to my text messages or friend requests, so I'm not sure what I'll find. And this is crazy anyway. I hardly speak Spanish. And what if I'm the only woman? The place is a small concrete building next to the running track. It's a boxing gym. There's a ring in the corner and bags hanging all in a row against the wall, and about 25 people practice their punches or skip or stretch. Everyone looks at me, because I'm obviously new. A young boy of about 18 approaches me and asks what I'm looking for. I'm fumbling to explain what I'm doing there and older man with an air of authority comes over. I try to explain that I'm a luchadora. His eyes widen. You're a luchadora he asks? Yes, and I pull out my phone to show him my demo reel. It's about 3 minutes long, but he watches maybe 15 seconds. “Ok” he says and he motions to the ring. The language of movement is a relief. Lucha style is different, but it's ok, but I don't need words to understand. I can just watch and learn. My eyes are all I need. We work for about 15 minutes and he says ok. I'm welcome to come and train with them for my whole stay in Cabo. As I leave, I feel like a hero, like my own hero. I had been feeling so nervous that I almost didn't leave the house, but in the end I found exactly what I was looking for.