When Cassandro, the tights-wearing legend of Mexico’s second-favourite sport, first entered the ring, he did so behind his mask.

“I started wrestling with a mask on because I was not out of the closet. Well that’s what I thought, but everybody knew I was gay except me.”

It was back in 1987 in tough Ciudad Juarez – the other side of the Rio Bravo, just over the border from El Paso, Texas – where the American born to Mexican parents grew up.

The family used to cross the river every weekend to visit family. After mass, Cassandro would hurry off to watch the high-flying, maniacal acrobatic bouts of the wrestlers.

“In Mexico wrestling is like a religion. I’ve been a fan since I was six years old and I started going to the matches. I never thought I was going to be a wrestler but I guess destiny brought me here.”

Fate is not always kind.

Cassandro faced discrimination as soon as he came out. He was beaten up for being homosexual and was stabbed.

“Six months after my first match I took the mask off. I had a lot of issues. Mexico is a very machista country. I had to prove myself. One, because I was gay and two, because they felt threatened because I was a very good wrestler and they were going to be in trouble if they didn’t step up to the plate.”

There had been no openly gay wrestlers before his arrival. Straight men would play gay men as a gimmick to make people laugh. They were clowns.

Cassandro brought tights, glitter, rhinestones and make-up to the ring.

“I’m like the Liberace of the lucha libre. I do a lot of glamour.”

He says his costume does not make him; he makes the costume. Of course, he has the skills to match the glamour – he knows how to wrestle. He also knows how to deal with a bit of pain.

“I’m just returning from an injury. I had surgery on my left knee and now I have a plate and seven pins.

That was a year ago – April 16, 2010. Now I’m back again and I want to go for more.”

Cassandro’s razor-sharp knowledge for dates and times is impressive but not half as much as the size of his cojones.

“It’s wrestling, not a beauty salon,” he says.

“I hurt my knee when I flew out of the ring in a suicide jump. My opponent never caught me and I landed really flat on my legs so I had a left tibia plateau fracture.”

It gets worse.

“I’ve been hospitalised many times. The latest operation was the first serious surgery I’ve had since I was paralysed back in 1992 for 18 days. I took a bad bump.”

Being the best, he lives by a slightly deluded sense of duty. The doctor said he needed a year’s rest. He was back in the ring within five months.

“Every time I come back from an injury I say I’m not going to keep wrestling any more but there I go again up in the ring.

“It’s the fans who keep me going. They are my medication.”

Cassandro is a wrestler with a conscience. His name comes from Cassandra, a prostitute from Tijuana, Mexico. She worked for politicians but all the money she made she gave to build houses for homeless children and battered women.

“She came to see me in Tijuana before she passed. It was a very humbling experience.”

The tale puts the wrestling into perspective but also highlights why the Lucha Libre (free fight) is so important as a place where Mexicans can release the stresses of life.

But that means, however, the backstreet betting matches in Mexico City can be dangerous.

“They get wild and are very fanatical. Before, they used to throw a lot of things to the wrestlers and be very aggressive. In places like Monterray or Mexico City it could be very scary to wrestle because the fans got so into it. Nowadays it is calmer, with more respect.”

The Exotico (cross-dressing fighter) still trains every day and does the high-flying stuff as well as his signature move, the lip-lock, which finishes with a kiss to his opponent’s mouth.

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