There is no sitting about waiting a couple of weeks on this one; no time to faff about. Some of the greatest TV wrestling of all time is currently available through your Amazon Prime subscription in the UK, and you can watch all of it. If you know what I am talking about already – Lucha Underground – you’ve become a Looney Tunes-style dust cloud as you ran to boot up Prime.

For those of you who don’t know, let me explain. Started in 2014 and broadcast on the El Rey Network, Lucha Underground was effectively the brain child of Mark Burnett (yes, that one) and Director and writer Robert Rodriguez. The latter is known for Spy Kids, Desperado, Sin City, The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, and Machete, with the former the architect of everything you hate. It was a weekly one-hour (45 minutes) wrestling show in partnership with Lucha Libre AAA (now WWE’s subsidiary) and would use AAA wrestlers. However, unlike WWE or AEW now, the show didn’t travel.

Based in the very Mexican-American, Chicano communities that the wrestling style of Lucha Libre comes from, it was studio wrestling filmed in Boyle Heights, LA. Made to look like an old warehouse in Boyle Heights, it looked rough, rustic, and raw, but it isn’t. It is beautifully crafted, well-told, genuine, proper wrestling in all the ways you want to take that phrasing. You see, underneath the wrestling, between matches and throughout whole seasons, you have an entire soap opera (telenovela) going on about the boss, the on-screen owner in Spanish actor Luis Fernandez-Gil’s Dario Cueto.

Matches are high-action, high-octane; constantly something is going on, but underneath there is that dark and twisted story with Dario and the cast of wrestlers. Dario, at least in that first season, is up there with WWE’s “Attitude Era” villain (and real-life villain) Mr McMahon. Not that the wrestlers are perfect either. There are some “wrong ‘uns” in there too. I think you can guess if you know anything about the #SpeakingOut thing, but I’ll let you discover that on your own if you haven’t already.

Not only is Lucha Underground wrestling and storytelling with a dark, mysterious telenovela theme under it, but you have a live band in “The Temple” (the arena) every week bringing a closer sense of Mexican and Hispanic culture in the sound too. Some might argue that I am overselling it, but that first season of 39 episodes is a masterpiece of wrestling, storytelling, and culture combining. Every bit of that studio does something, is something, and is part of the story of Lucha Underground’s rise to the pantheon of wrestling in the first season.

Of course, there is the Pentagón Jr. vs. Reklusa (Chelsea Green) match in a later season, Angélico jumping off Cueto’s office, and obviously the great matches between Prince Puma (Ricochet) and Johnny Mundo. However, it isn’t that alone that I want to highlight because the characters of Lucha Underground are wide and varied. I love and adore Pimpinela Escarlata, Mascarita Sagrada, and the whole thing with Big Ryck (Ezekiel Jackson), The Mack (Willie Mack), and Killshot (Swerve Strickland).

“Why do I care? I’m not in the UK or have Amazon Prime.” Well, it is available in some other places, and you can buy it on Prime, though we all know buying on streaming services means you don’t own it either. If you’re in the US particularly, you can check out part of the first season recently uploaded to YouTube in full on the Lucha Underground YouTube channel here. Have a look around, check YouTube, check streaming services, check everywhere. A few years ago, Lucha Underground was on Netflix, but something about the WWE deal might have killed that alongside other things.

As a fan of wrestling, you deserve to give yourself that opportunity where/when you can, at least that first season. If you have a Prime subscription in the UK, take a couple of hours and see how different those first handful of episodes are. If you’re in the US or wherever that playlist linked above works, take the time because you’ll thank me later. If you’re a fan of that energy from the “Black and Gold” era of WWE’s NXT from about 2015-2017, you get that and more here. It is not perfect, but it is up there with the best wrestling you’ve ever loved, and you deserve it.

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