Jim Benning, who edits the travel website World Hum, wrote about lucha libre wrestling in Tijuana for last Sunday's Washington Post.

It’s Friday night in a small Tijuana arena, the kind of rickety Mexican structure that can make you misty for American building-and-safety codes, and in the ring before me, masked wrestlers are smacking and flipping and generally abusing one another for my viewing pleasure.

Whap! The great Hijo del Santo goes down. That’s gotta hurt.

The crowd breaks into a sympathetic chant: “San-to! San-to!” I take a gulp of ice-cold Tecate, lean back in my wobbly folding chair (not unlike the ones occasionally slammed onto these wrestlers’ substantial heads) and smile.

Lot of it going around: Brent Hopkins had a good primer on the local lucha libre scene in the June 26 Daily News (no longer online): "Hernandez stepped into the ring at the Mayan Theatre downtown on a recent night as part of the Lucha VaVoom review, a freewheeling wrestling and burlesque show that booked three sold-out nights in the 1,500-seat house. A crowd of roaring enthusiasts, hipsters, guys in sport coats and ladies in next to nothing cheered them on with unabashed adoration. 'It's about good and evil, characters sketched in broad strokes,' said Liz Fairbairn, girlfriend of wrestler Gringo Loco and co-producer of Lucha VaVoom. 'It's very comedic, sure, but there's some very, very serious athleticism involved.'''

Photo: Jim Benning