You’ve got to be kidding me.

On Monday’s episode of “WWE Raw,” Dragon Lee was the next person in a line of legitimate luchadors to try and pump the brakes on El Grande Americano’s recent run of cultural appropriation and luchador burials. Of course, being WWE’s darling (can you hear my vitriol?), Lee succumbed to the forces of El Grande Americano. Yeah, that’s right. Forces. Multiple. There are three El Grande Americanos now. 

It gets to a point.

If you’re a frequent reader of these columns, you’ll know that we at Wrestling Inc. are not big fans of the El Grande Americano storyline, and as a Southern California native, the art of lucha libre is especially important to me. You can imagine, then, how passionately anti-El Grande Americano I am, and how badly I’m about to crash out. The situation is ridiculous. Why does WWE have these amazing performers (including the people underneath the costumey El Grande Americano masks), just to pedal uninspired, lazy triplet nonsense? It’s ridiculous. It’s so crazy; I’m not even totally opposed to overbooked, ridiculous nonsense — it’s one of my favorite things about WWE’s rival promotion. However, when the overbooked, ridiculous nonsense makes a mockery out of lucha libre, a revered Mexican in-ring artform, the overbooked nonsense goes from a joke I can poke fun at to something I legitimately dread. I’m not a hard woman to please! Just give me AJ Styles and two guys in Styles-style Spirit Halloween wigs, and I’ll put a Loved on your segment!

It’s crazy how deep my hate for El Grande Americano runs, because this match would have been right up my alley if you just took out the red, white, and blue nonsense out of the equation. I will never complain about Dragon Lee being on my screen, and he was a pleasure to watch. He had a certain edge to his moveset tonight that was understandable, considering he was going up against the incredibly disrespectful Americano. The dark eyeshadow, a la Robert Pattinson’s Batman, was a great touch that added to his more aggressive presentation. This whole match could have been Dragon Lee’s kick back into the spotlight after a while stuck in catering; having him kick out of the second Americano’s interference was a move I did not expect, but fully appreciated. It’s like they’re teasing a Lee push, and I fully believe that he’s capable of living up to the hype WWE seems to be putting behind him. I just need WWE to pull the trigger.

Styles’ interference on the side of Lee further adds to my theory (one I conjured out of desperation, I will admit), and, again, it just goes to show how badly El Grande Americano can ruin the entire vibe of the match. I swear, if he wasn’t there (all three of them), I would have easily Loved this match. Alas, WWE loves their racially insensitive mascots. I hope someone in the back is having fun, because I am wholeheartedly not.

Written by Angeline Phu