You may have heard of Lucha Libre, a style of professional wrestling in Mexico famed for colorful masks and acrobatic moves, but there's a new style of wrestling that is taking the country by storm. It's called Desastre Total Ultraviolento, or DTU for short, and, roughly translated, it means Disaster Total Ultraviolent wrestling. Ruptly got ringside at some DTU matches in Pachuca, Mexico and got an inside look at this violent and bloody new sport.
DTU Professional Wrestling has has become one of the country's most raucous and dramatic sporting events, eclipsed in popularity only by football. Bouts involve wrestlers hitting each other with chairs, knives, and fluorescent tube lights wrapped in barbed wire, which explode on impact and scatter tiny pieces of glass on the ring's floor.
Wrestling has been hugely popular in the country for over 50 years, its origins date back to 1863 when a Mexican wrestler, Enrique Ugartechea, first developed the art of 'free-style' wrestling based on Greco-Roman traditions. However, DTU takes the violence to another level, and it's not uncommon for contestants to get covered in blood, both their own and from their opponent, in the course of the match.
The DTU professional wrestling association was founded in 2007 and has been enjoying massive growth in popularity across the country since then. Most importantly, in spite of all the blood and gore, wrestlers usually hug it out and praise each other's physical skills at the end of each fight.
