The 'martinete' or the 'contralona': The Legal Line After Referee El Búho's Death

In a small arena in Mineral de la Reforma, Hidalgo, Mexico, a 75-year-old man stepped onto the mat not to seek victory. He was Gerardo Germán Pineda, known to audiences by the affectionate nickname "El Búho" — The Owl. At an age when most of his peers have long since stayed home, he still stood between four ropes, still bent to absorb the impacts the trade calls "bumps." That night, a wrestler nearly half a century younger, El Hijo de Fishman, executed a move that drove El Búho's head into the mat. He did not get up again. No television camera captured that moment with any dignity — only the phones of a few spectators, and a wave of outrage that erupted on social media hours later.

I have never run a single step in my life, yet I understand how to touch the finish line with my heart. But this is a stage, where outcomes are written in advance in a script — and death was never in any script.

When the stage becomes a crime scene

Lucha libre belongs to choreographed performance art; it does not operate as a competitive combat sport. Wins and losses are arranged, falls rehearsed hundreds of times to look painful yet stay safe. Outsiders mistake it for genuine combat, but those inside understand: every move is a tacit agreement between two performers. When that agreement breaks — when one person works stiff, or deviates from the script out of frustration — accidents can happen.

The event took place at the "11 de Julio" Sports and Culture Center, organized by the company El Patrón Espectáculos. It was an independent, regional show, operating outside major promotions like AAA or CMLL — where medical protocols, insurance, and oversight are stricter. According to reports, the venue was later temporarily closed for lacking an operating license and had previously faced obstacles in facility inspections.

On October 7, El Hijo de Fishman was arrested on a charge of negligent homicide. A wrestler walked onto the stage to perform, and walked out in the arms of police.

It is worth noting that in lucha libre, referees are not merely whistle-holders. They often take part in the show — absorbing impacts, being shoved down, sometimes attacked by the wrestlers themselves as part of the script. That role carries far higher injury risk than ordinary officiating, yet rarely comes with insurance or medical screening. A 75-year-old in that role is two risks stacked on top of each other.

The name of a move

What determines the level of Fishman's legal liability lies in a seemingly small detail: what the move is called.

Initial reports alleged he used a banned move called the "martinete" — a move that drives the recipient head-down, carrying serious neck-injury risk. According to the initial theory, Fishman used it because he had been penalized points in the match, and the act was retaliation.

Video published by the Mexican press, however, reportedly showed only a "contralona" — a common back-takedown, not on any banned list. The sources themselves acknowledge that the move's name and its causal link to the death remain disputed.

Martinete and contralona differ in mechanics. Martinete places the recipient head-down, loading the entire weight onto the cervical spine — which is why it is banned in many places. Contralona is a familiar back-takedown; the recipient falls backward, with the back and shoulders as the main contact points. But when the performer loses control, or the recipient cannot protect their neck in time, the line between the two becomes fragile.

What decides the matter is force, not the name. A seemingly harmless "contralona" can still cause fatal neck trauma if executed with excessive force, poor timing, or onto an unprotected recipient. The move's name matters less than how much force, how much control, and onto whose body.

And this is the detail that made me pause the longest: the recipient was a 75-year-old referee.

In combat-sport medicine, the combination of age and a head-neck injury mechanism in a 75-year-old is close to an absolute contraindication. Reduced bone density, diminished cervical flexibility, slower recovery — together they create a fatality risk many times higher than for a young wrestler. Anyone who books a 75-year-old referee into a head-drop spot is raising a duty-of-care question — and that is the most solid criticism in this entire story, more solid than the dispute over the move's name.

In South Korea, where I live and work, I have watched many small shows with no doctor ringside. Based on my experience covering matches, one mistimed impact, one fall no one catches, and the whole hall goes silent. Those moments taught me that in sport, safety is not a private matter for the athlete — it is the responsibility of an entire system.

When the public judges a smile

This story carries a telling paradox. What outraged the public most was not the death, but the smile.

The photo of Fishman's arrest, his face unmasked, and images of him laughing after the incident, became the focal point of condemnation. In lucha libre culture, the mask — "máscara" — is a sacred identity. Publishing an unmasked photo is itself a form of public humiliation. And a smile, in the eyes of the crowd, is proof of callousness.

But a smile does not prove guilt. It can be a stress response, a defensive instinct of a panicking man. Meanwhile, the "banned move" allegation — the thing that actually shapes legal liability — is being contradicted by video. The public is judging with emotion, and emotion is easily led.

I do not look for the winner in a race; I look for the moment they choose not to give up. But here, both men lost: one lost his life, the other lost his freedom and his honor.

Restorative justice and the gap left behind

The legal story closed in a way few expected. Fishman was released — not because he was exonerated. He was freed through a compensation agreement carried out under Article 186 of Mexico's National Criminal Procedure Code — the "restorative justice" mechanism. According to journalist Antonio Nieto, the compensation reached 585,525 Mexican pesos, roughly US$32,000.

The figure is contested. Some sources reported a different amount, and the lawyer's initial announcement did not fully disclose the terms. But whatever the exact number, the notable point is the nature of the agreement: it is restorative, not a damages judgment.

More importantly, the release is procedural, not exculpatory. If the compensation obligation is not fully fulfilled, the investigation can resume. The case is dormant, not closed.

This raises a question of deterrence. When a death can be resolved by an amount of money and a signature, the incentive for promoters to invest in safety — hiring doctors, buying insurance, screening participants — can erode. Restorative justice brings swift, certain closure to the family, but it does not create pressure forcing the system to change.

And this is the crux the settlement does not resolve: the venue lacked a license. That is a clearly documented governance failure, independent of what the move was called. There is no evidence of insurance, no evidence of on-site medical protocol. The systemic risk — independent shows without license, insurance, or screening — remains exactly where it was after the check changed hands.

Within the wrestling world, voices are not uniform. El Hijo del Santo called it an accident and warned against rushing to blame. Latin Lover defended Fishman while admitting he himself had shoved and slapped referees for drama. Those defenses both soften the case and inadvertently expose a reality: in this trade, rough treatment of referees has become part of the performance culture.

I have spent years reading about small shows across Asia and Latin America, where wrestlers and referees perform with no one behind them to protect them. The pattern in Hidalgo is not an outlier. It is a miniature of an industry where most workers sit outside every safety net. The official forensic finding will determine the charge level, full compliance with the compensation will determine whether the case revives, and the venue's licensing decision will show whether the city draws a lesson. Those are the signals worth tracking, because they reveal whether a death leads to change — or merely to a payment.

What remains after the applause

Fourth place haunts me more than any gold medal, because it is a story of resilience. But there are positions quieter still: the position of the one no camera films, no medal is awarded, no statistic records. The 75-year-old Owl stood in the ring for decades, taking falls to keep the show looking real. He had no pension, no insurance, no personal physician. When he fell for the last time, his death was settled by a private agreement, not by a safety reform.

Sport is a quantified dream; I am only the one who records that dream in words. But some dreams cannot be quantified by a compensation payment.

If a 75-year-old referee can step onto the mat with no health check, no insurance, no medical contingency plan, then the problem is not one move. The problem is an entire system that has learned to look away. And every time the system looks away, someone falls in silence — like the Owl.