A 75-Year-Old Referee, a Disputed Throw, and the Safety Void of Mexican Freestyle Wrestling

For more than forty years sitting at ringside, I have learned one thing: people remember the blow; I remember the sigh after the arena falls silent. That night, in Mineral de la Reforma — a small town in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico — the one who took the final blow was not a young wrestler. It was a 75-year-old man named Gerardo Germán Pineda. Fans knew him by the affectionate nickname "El Búho," the Owl. He did not step onto the mat to fight. He stepped on to officiate. He was a referee.

Referees are invisible in the audience's memory. They are there to keep the rhythm, to make the calls, to ensure the show unfolds as scripted. But when a 75-year-old man steps between the ropes and takes a throw, that invisibility suddenly becomes the biggest question of the whole story.

The incident took place at an independent freestyle wrestling show organized by the company El Patrón Espectáculos, in the "11 de Julio" Sports and Culture Center. This was not a structured promotion like AAA or CMLL — the two largest bodies in Mexican wrestling, with relatively strict medical, insurance and oversight protocols. This was a local show within a regional circuit, where safety standards depend largely on the conscience of the organizers.

One thing that the loud public debate tends to skip must be said clearly: freestyle wrestling — lucha libre — is not a genuine combat sport. It is choreographed performance art. The wrestlers do not step onto the mat to decide a winner; they cooperate to tell a story. A fall, a move, a dive — all are rehearsed and planned in advance. This explains why clashes that look brutal on the mat are often physically safe, and also why a single small lapse in rhythm can lead to immeasurable consequences.

That night, the one who delivered the throw was El Hijo de Fishman — a name inherited from the famous wrestler Fishman, the son continuing his father's career. The one who took it was El Búho. After the throw, he was taken to emergency care and did not survive. On October 7, Hidalgo police arrested El Hijo de Fishman on a charge of negligent homicide. From a local show, the story walked straight into the courtroom.

But the legal file revolves around a much smaller detail: the name of the move.

According to initial reports, El Hijo de Fishman was accused of using a banned move called the "martinete" — a throw that drives the opponent head-first into the mat, carrying serious neck-injury risk. The stated motive: during the match he had points deducted, lost his composure, and used a dangerous move in retaliation. If true, the story is no longer an accident but deliberate recklessness — a detail enough to raise the level of prosecution.

Then the Mexican press released video. The footage, by all accounts, shows only a "contralona" — a common back throw, not on any banned list. No head-first drive. No clear retaliatory move.

This is the crux I want to stress: the identity of the move is disputed, and its very name is what determines the level of legal liability. In a choreographed performance art, moves are not classified by combat effectiveness as on a real fight card, but by the degree of risk they pose to the recipient. The martinete is banned because it places the recipient's neck and spinal cord in an extremely dangerous position. The contralona is not. So the question "which move did he use" is not a purely technical matter — it is the pivot of the entire file.

But if we stop at the name of the move, we miss something more important: the mechanics of force. A "routine" contralona can still cause fatal neck trauma if performed with excessive force, poor timing, or on a recipient who is unprepared and unprotected. In performance wrestling, the thrower and the recipient share responsibility for rhythm. The recipient must know when he will be lifted, turned, and how he will land. When either side falls out of rhythm — through fatigue, distraction, or intent — the gap between "performance" and "accident" narrows to a dangerous degree.

And here is the detail I consider most worth discussing, more than the name of the move: the recipient was 75 years old.

Based on my experience following matches and martial arts shows, age is not just a number on paper. Bones lose density. The cervical spine loses flexibility. The ability to recover from trauma slows with each year. A blow from which a 30-year-old might rise after a few seconds can be the end for a 75-year-old. In combat sports medicine, the combination of advanced age and a head-and-neck trauma mechanism is almost a categorical contraindication. This is basic knowledge, beyond dispute.

So who allowed a 75-year-old referee into that situation?

In professional wrestling there is a little-known role: the "bumping" referee — one who not only makes calls but joins the show by taking light bumps to heighten the drama. This role already carries far higher risk than a standard referee. For a 75-year-old, letting him take any fall — even a "routine" one — is a safety choice hard to justify, regardless of what the final move was. The greatest responsibility lies not in the name of the move, but in the decision to place a 75-year-old in a dangerous position.

Then comes the question of the organizational setting. The "11 de Julio" arena was later temporarily closed for lacking a license. This is a concrete, documented management violation — quite unlike the contested "banned move" story. No license means no official safety inspection. No ringside medical staff, no emergency protocol, no insurance for the performers. Within the freestyle wrestling system, the major promotions maintain stricter protocols, but regional and independent shows often operate in a vague legal void.

What is worth reflecting on is the industry's response. The arena was closed, and the local wrestling community began discussing health screening for performers. But these changes are local. Without a mandatory insurance standard and industry-wide health requirements, the systemic risk remains intact.

The public outrage, meanwhile, focused on one photograph: El Hijo de Fishman smiling after his arrest, his face no longer masked. In lucha libre culture, the mask is a wrestler's sacred identity. Publishing the unmasked photo is both an insult and a cruel exposure. But what enraged the public was not the injury, but the smile. That smile was read as callousness.

I am not sure. A smile does not prove criminal intent. In many cases, smiling after a traumatic event is a defensive nervous-system response — not defiance. But the public rarely distinguishes the two. Once the crowd has attached the face of a callous man to someone, every complex legal detail becomes meaningless.

Meanwhile, the legal outcome unfolded quietly. El Hijo de Fishman was released, not because he was exonerated, but because of an out-of-court compensation agreement under the restorative justice mechanism — Article 186 of Mexico's National Criminal Procedure Code. The amount reported by one journalist was 585,525 pesos, roughly US$32,000. But the figure is disputed: another source gives a different sum, and the lawyer initially did not fully disclose the terms.

More important than the figure: this agreement is a procedural ending, not an exoneration. If the compensation obligation is not fully met, the investigation can be reopened. The case is dormant, not closed. And the management failure — the unlicensed arena — remains unresolved.

Some colleagues in Mexican wrestling spoke up in defense of El Hijo de Fishman. El Hijo del Santo called it an accident and warned against rushing to blame. Latin Lover defended him while admitting he himself had pushed and slapped referees for drama. Those voices do not erase responsibility, but they remind me that this story is more complex than a photo posted on social media.

An empty arena, but I hear the applause of those who do not give up.

The story in Hidalgo leaves a question that the performance-wrestling world over has yet to answer: when an art form lives by pretending to fight, who is responsible when the pretending suddenly becomes real? A compensation payment can close a file, but it cannot fill the safety void. St. Petersburg taught me that a stumble is the fastest way to learn to walk — but that lesson is only worth something if people actually get up and fix the path. Every arena eventually goes dark. What remains is whether anyone still has to step between the ropes to take a blow that should never have existed. I write slowly because I want to remember for a long time, like a man keeping the rhythm for the whole arena.