Anyone that knows me knows that I'm a big wrestling fan. WWE is fine (for a given definition of "fine") but it's the indies that frequently keep my attention these days. They can provide crazier and more intense in-ring action than you'll see on Raw or Smackdown, and depending on the company, can provide better storytelling, too.
No company proves this point better than Lucha Underground, on El Rey Network. The best way to describe LU is "It's not a wrestling show. It's a television show about wrestling." (There is a difference.) LU tells the story of the titular company, run by a shady promoter named Dario Cueto, as he pits people against one another for his love of violence and bloodshed. But as it enters its third season, more and more aspects of quasi-Aztec lore enter the picture, and that's where this idea of mine comes up.
Spoilers for Lucha Underground through Season 3, Episode 8 below the break.
One of the central story elements in LU is the existence of the Seven Aztec Tribes, whose descendants are slowly coming together in Dario's "Temple," the converted warehouse in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles that serves as the home of the promotion. Wrestlers like Prince Puma, Fenix, El Dragon Azteca Jr, Marty "The Moth" Martinez, and Kobra Moon all hail from different tribes. There is also an ancient prophecy that says that "the gods" will return and there will be a great war between the tribes and the gods, and that the timeline of that prophecy is starting to come to fruition.
Who "the gods" are, isn't clear. It is known that Dario's brother, "The Monster" Matanza, was incarnated with or possessed by a god after some ritual performed by Dario's father, as an explanation for Matanza's strength and resilience. There is also a strange benefactor, referred to as "the most powerful man in the world," who was the vessel for one of these gods, and has only just recently "descended" and concentrated his power into the contents of a box he has entrusted to Dario, who now seeks a new host for that power.
I had this idea in my head for a possible character or story arc for an existing character that would fit within LU's framework. I used some elements of this character in my e-fedding past, at least in part inspired by the first season or two of LU. As I thought on how I would apply it to LU, I adapted it into a concept I call "The Tribeless." In my description of how to build the character and concept below, I'm depicting it as a new character coming into the company, though, as I said, it could be adapted for an existing character going in a new direction.
So one week in LU, we meet a new masked luchador, El Lobo Salvaje ("The Savage Wolf"), who seems to be just another jobber for other, established talent to defeat to build to their own feuds and rivalries. Lobo is a rudo jobber, however, meant for the tecnicos to defeat. Interestingly for a rudo, his mask has a light coloration to it, a pale gray with black designs to it. And so it goes for a couple of appearances, just establishing him as a newcomer to the Temple, but Matt Striker & Vampiro (our commentators) know little about him, just that he hails from no known tribe.
Then we get our first vignette highlighting El Lobo Salvaje. Interspersed with clips of him taping up his wrists and hands and donning his wrestling gear, we see Lobo walking down alleyways or streets in Los Angeles, where he gets accosted by some of the random "luchathugs" that inhabit the universe of Lucha Underground. And overlaying the clips of his preparations and his fighting the thugs, Lobo speaks, talking of Aztec culture and their rites of sacrifice. Of how the gods gave of themselves to let humanity live, of how the gods were empowered through ritual blood sacrifice. Lobo mentions how he grew up with nothing, no tribe of his own, no proud traditions to inspire him. "So if I want power, I will get it the way the gods did-- through blood." And as he says this, the vignette shows him not just beating the thugs to the ground, but beating them bloody. At which point Lobo takes off his mask (with his face obscured or his back to the camera) and smears their blood across its surface. Then he puts the mask back on as he seems to bask in whatever imagined (or real) power it is giving him.
This ties into LU's Aztec-themed mythology. Blood was a major part of their religion and the rituals therein. Sacrifice was also a huge part of it, as we've already seen applied in LU with Pentagon Jr/Dark breaking arms as a "sacrifice" to his Maestro. El Lobo Salvaje is "sacrificing" victims by beating them to the ground and bloodying them, then taking their blood and adding it to his mask's stains as means of taking their power for himself.
After the vignette airs, the next time we see Lobo in action in the Temple, he's wearing a different mask-- just a darker color variant of his usual one. This time around, his opponent is the jobber, and El Lobo Salvaje lives up to his name. He brings a new ferocity to his style, giving his victim little chance to mount a defense as he dominates them. Ideally, it would be done in a way that should be disturbing rather than badass, although I appreciate this is a tricky thing to pull off in front of indie wrestling fans, especially those in the Temple. In the end, after Lobo has beaten his opponent, he renders them bloody, and then takes out his bloodstained mask. He smears his victim's blood onto it, then wears the bloody mask-- which will eventually come to be called "The Crimson Mask" even if it's gray with dried bloodstains-- as he poses in the ring.
El Lobo Salvaje does this to at least one other opponent before he cuts a promo in the ring explaining himself. He talks of his people's history. That they used to belong to the Aztec tribes, but they did something that so offended the gods, they were exiled from the tribes, unfit for even sacrifice to the gods' power. The exiles were expected to just wither and rot without the gods' favor, but instead, they have survived. The Tribeless, as he calls the exiles, no longer care about the gods' favor and want to steal the gods' power for themselves. And Lobo means to do this through blood.
It would seem at first that Lobo is just referring to himself as "The Tribeless," but this can become the name of a group of other wrestlers, ones without ties to the Aztec Tribes (basically all those gringos), who start to follow him as he rises up the ranks. Lobo doesn't just want blood, he wants anything that will let him take power from the gods, and that includes any of the trophies at play in LU-- the championships, the Aztec medallions, even whatever's in that box that Dario Cueto has. Who knows, if there's actually something to Lobo's mad ramblings about blood sacrifice, the Crimson Mask could indeed become A Thing that people are fighting over. Certainly, I could see Lobo's rivals and enemies seeking to defeat him to take the Crimson Mask away from him.
I think that ultimately in Lucha Underground, the coming war will be between wrestlers representing the Aztec Tribes and wrestlers empowered by or possessed by the gods. But in the interim leading up to that war, the threat of the Tribeless-- whose goals may upset the balance of power in the struggle-- could be an interesting diversion, one that could spin the conflict out in any number of ways.
Jay's Further Notes--Where I Came Up With This Idea
As I said, this idea has its genesis in my e-fedding days. I had a character called Bob Hyden, a self-professed scumbag, who wound up working for an American lucha company based in Texas. Hyden, a misanthropic asshole, had few kind things to say about lucha libre or its fans (he may have, at one point, said he couldn't wait for President Trump to deport the lot of them) and as I was looking for a way to make him stand out from the usual "scumbag who says mean things about everyone" routine, I hit on the idea of playing up his "anti-lucha" stance.
I had Hyden buy a replica El Santo mask and use it pretty much exactly the way Lobo Salvaje does above. Only Hyden's doing it less to take power for himself, and more to desecrate a lucha legend and hence lucha in general. He called his bloodstained Santo mask "the crimson mask," and was also meant in part as a mockery of the e-fed's top title, a golden lucha mask that had belonged to the company's original owner. By ascribing more importance to the "Enmascarada de Sangre" than to the "Enmascarada de Oro," Hyden was also suggesting that the top title was less important to him.
My goal in doing so was to help build Hyden as a despicable heel to be defeated, to help give more meaning to the championship by having his gruesome trophy taken away from him. Sadly, before the idea could come to full fruition, there were some delays in the e-fed results, and real life demands prevented me from being able to contribute to the shows, so I dropped out.
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