America Threw Art Barr Out. Mexico Made Him A Star

In November 1994, thirteen thousand people in Los Angeles paid to watch an American have his head shaved in the middle of a wrestling ring, and he had spent two years making them want it. Art Barr was the most hated man in Mexico, and he was better at being hated than anyone the country had imported in a decade. What almost nobody in that building knew was why his own country had already turned on him first. This lucha libre documentary follows Art Barr from Portland, Oregon, where he wrestled for his father Sandy Barr as a children's character, to a short and ugly run in WCW as The Juicer, to the night Konnan brought him to Mexico. As the masked American Love Machine he was unmasked by Blue Panther at Arena Mexico for using the martinete, the piledriver that is banned outright in Mexican wrestling, and then built his entire act on the one move a Mexican crowd will never forgive. The second half covers AAA, his partnership with Eddie Guerrero as La Pareja del Terror, the rise of Los Gringos Locos with Konnan, and the war against El Hijo del Santo and Octagon that ended at When Worlds Collide on the sixth of November, a hair versus mask match the Wrestling Observer Newsletter rated five stars. Seventeen days later Art Barr was dead at twenty-eight, and what he and Guerrero had invented went on to reshape American wrestling through Rey Mysterio, Juventud Guerrera and the frog splash Eddie carried for the rest of his life. Subscribe for more wrestling documentaries on the dark side of lucha libre.