El Grande Americano mask vs. mask was wrestling at its best | Opinion
The mask vs. mask match at AAA Noche de los Grandes was as good as wrestling can get.
There just isn’t a place above what happened in Arena Monterrey on Saturday night.
Never mind the match itself being incredible. The presentation of it and the emotion swirling through the venue alone made this something to go out of your way to see.
The match mattered so much to every single person inside that building that anyone watching had to get swept away in it. It was beautiful.
Wrestling Fan of the Year spotted front row at AAA Noche de Los Grandes
There was one fan seated in the front row at Noche de los Grandes who best encapsulated the feeling from the crowd on Saturday night.
The original El Grande Americano, who would later shockingly be revealed to be Chad Gable, was making his ring entrance and walked past a fan holding an El Grande Americano mask. Ever the bad guy, Gable goes to rip the mask out of the fan’s hands, but the fan is having none of it. He clutched onto that mask like Ludwig Kaiser’s career as the character depended on it.
Then the fan got right up into Gable’s face and was ready to have his own Lucha de Apuestas with the man if that’s what needed to happen.
Then El Grande Americano — the Ludwig Kaiser version — makes his entrance for the match, and as he’s walking around ringside, he pauses right by where that fan was. Only now the fan is proudly wearing his El Grande Americano mask and is celebrating with his hero.
That fan might as well have been everybody in the arena last night.
What El Grande Americano represented in Mexico
Not being Mexican, I’ll never truly know the full extent of what Americano means to Mexican wrestling fans.
But I think fans from outside the country understand that this was Americano fighting for the pride of Mexico.
The other Americano was a fraud who didn’t even speak Spanish. Meanwhile, Ludwig Kaiser’s Americano has a Mexican girlfriend, speaks Spanish, and even defended the honor of Pimpinela Escarlata.
One of the best episodes of AAA on Fox that has taken place this year involved Pimpinela attempting to prove that Chad Gable’s Americano was a fraud, trying to prove that he doesn’t even speak Spanish.
This led to Pimpi asking how Gable wanted his quesadillas, either with cheese or without cheese.
Gable, not seeing the comedy in this, attacked poor Pimpi. Later, we’d see Ludwig’s Americano holding Pimpi’s hand and being urged to defend the honor of Mexico.
Americano was now defending Pimpinela and Mexico and, later, the honor of Andrea Bazarte as well, both in Mexico as well as in Orlando-area apartment complex elevators.
The whole storyline was that Americano had pride in Mexican culture, and Gable’s Americano didn’t. At least, not until after he unmasked. By the end, everyone felt that pride, including wrestling fans from around the world.
Chad Gable’s speech after unmasking
As much as this whole thing was a celebration of Americano and the connection that Americano has developed with the Mexican people, this was also Gable’s moment.
Gable’s speech after the match basically turned him into a hero in Mexico as well. He said he put on the mask to learn lucha libre so he could beat all the luchadors whom he hated. But through this process, he developed an appreciation for Mexican culture.
Gable vowed that he would be back in AAA.
And so, even the antagonist in this story, in the end, developed pride in Mexican culture. I don’t think it could have been done any better.
Ian Carey is a writer from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, whose work has been featured in NOW Magazine, The Huffington Post, and more. A lifelong wrestling aficionado born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, he has covered the industry for a decade and a half. He joined the f4wonline.com team in 2019.