Immigrant Professional Wrestlers? Tell Me It Ain’t So, Joe
In response to criticism over World Wrestling Entertainment hiring policies, World Wrestling Entertainment Chairman Vince McMahon defended the league’s reliance on Mexican wrestlers as “the only way fans can witness the grueling, bone-crunching maneuvers that American wrestlers want nothing to do with.”
Mexican wrestler Rey Mysterio Jr. absorbs a brutal hit during a non-televised WWE event.
McMahon made the remarks after the Border Patrol, an unaffiliated Texas-based tag team known for wrestling masked Mexicans and then reporting them to Immigration and Naturalization Service officials, revealed that dozens of illegal Mexican wrestlers join the WWE each year.
The wrestlers, also known as “jobbers,” come in search of greater title opportunities and more interesting storylines than those available in their small, unorganized Lucha Libre leagues.
“These masked luchadores are hard-working, energetic, and always willing to learn new skills that Americans consider beneath them—such as being power-bombed from the top turnbuckle or chokeslammed through the announcer’s booth,” said McMahon on this week’s WWE Raw.
“The idea that these Mexicans are somehow stealing jobs from American wrestlers is ridiculous,”McMahon said.
“After all, someone’s got to take these folding chairs to the face.” McMahon then picked up a folding chair and whacked Rey Mysterio Jr. in the face.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/46687
Cappy White reports the following:
There is a movie about a wrestler of mixed heritage (
U.S.
&
Mexico
) filmed in Oaxaca
Jack Black stars as Ignacio (friends call him Nacho), a cook by day in a Mexican orphanage, who moonlights as a lucha libre wrestler to raise money for the orphans in this comedy from the creators of “Napoleon Dynamite” and the writer of “The School of Rock”. http://www.nacholibre.com
KJ