By its nature, pro wrestling (or, as that particular industry is wont to call itself, “sports entertainment”) is supposed to be a spectacle. We all know that it's supposed to be a hyper-sexualized show consisting of sweaty men in spandex chucking each other from pillar to post, scantily-clad women tearing each other apart whilst covered in oil, mud, or less... desirable fluids; witnessed in dingy arenas or Foreign Legion detachments by middle-aged men sporting sweet mullets and their 300-pound, mumu-wearing wives. At least that's what the stereotyping's led me to believe.

Developers Immersion Software, publishers Slang, and Mexican wrestling promotion AAA brought a bit of that lucha libre zaniness to E3, and you've got to hand it to them—setting up a full-sized wrestling ring in the middle of the Los Angeles Convention Center, bringing out the real wrestlers straight out of Mexico to participate in a bunch of unintentionally (?) hilarious promo videos and skits, and even staging a bunch of rasslin' matches during E3—all to promote an untested franchise: Lucha Libre AAA: Héroes del Ring, (supposedly—until further notice, I’m sure there’s some obscure Brazilian MSX lucha game out there) the first videogame to feature Hispanic hand-to-hand hijinks. And you know what, God bless 'em.

I was fortunate enough to walk by their monstrosity of a booth several minutes before one of their scheduled bouts—Mascartia Sagrada and Octagoncito vs. Mini Abismo Negro and Mini Charly Manson. As one may surmise from these gentlemens' respective ring names, these guys were buff, little dudes. "Man, these Mexican wrestlers sure are tiny," I mumbled to myself as they came filing down the aisle. As it turns out, “Mini-Estrellas,” or better known in the United States as the very un-PC “midget wrestling,” is actually as big a part of the show as the heavyweights are. It should be noted that I probably have only two or three inches over these minis, which made me kind of sad. Entertaining stuff, though! I was able to take a couple of minutes of video, so please enjoy this Bitmob exclusive!

The insanity continued during Konami’s press conference. Slang’s Federico Bayer brought out some of the athletes that would be competing the next day for the honor of being the game’s cover athlete; and in true wrestling fashion, there was some shoving, chest slapping, and—from what little Spanish I know—swearing. And right on cue, a young scholar named Dr. Wagner, who was absent for the scheduled weigh-in, showed up on-screen to berate the other gentlemen present, calling them names and just being a big meanie in general. Shockingly enough, it was actually one of the tamer parts of Konami’s wild press event.

I almost forgot the best part of this triumph in media advertising. They were giving away these neat luchador masks as tchotchke. I know we in the enthusiast press are supposed to be objective and not be swayed by something as trivial as trade show giveaways, but seriously now—how could you not like anything represented by a company that’s giving away something this amazing? I’m totally going to use these the next time I’m involved in a violent gun crime.

I can't believe I went on this long without talking about the actual game—it's not that bad, actually! I'm sure it's no WWF No Mercy (or whatever game's supposed to be the gold-standard in pro-wrestling sims nowadays), but the action was pick-up-and-play, the controls seemed to be competent and intuitive enough, and the visuals looked as good as any given Unreal Engine 3 game. I'm just concerned about the game's target market—it's about as niche as you can get, unless I am severely underestimating the size of the Hispanic videogame community.