The New York Times’ Michael Brick profiles AAA’s recent tour of California, focusing on the use of Americans as anti-Mexican heels in the Foreign Legion stable (which Brick compares to the days of evil Russians during the Cold War). Former ROH standout Jack Evans is one of those heels, and Brick recounts his promo from a show in San Jose, one of the few times you’ll see a wrestler get heel heat for being pro-American on this side of the border.
Or so you’d think. Like PW Torch’s James Caldwell, I’ve seen Adam Pearce and Joey Ryan do this routine live. It didn’t lead to a riot, but it did work in getting the predominately Hispanic crowd (the show I went to took place in South Texas, in the border town of McAllen) to hate Pearce, Ryan, and his tag partner Karl Anderson’s guts, giving them more heat than pretty much anyone on the card. After years of seeing the flip side of this, it is weird to see the flag waving patriots as heels. JBL’s the closest thing we’ve seen to that in mainstream wrestling, but it’s not quite the same thing.
