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When Gabriel Ramirez, founder of Pro Wrestling Revolution, first started organizing lucha libre shows in San Francisco in 2008, he chose John O’Connell High School as his main venue.
Doing lucha shows in the Mission was “perfect,” he said. The shows at O’Connell frequently sold out.
“You could see the Latino crowd show up,” he said. “Our culture embraced it.”
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Lucha libre is a style of Mexican wrestling full of theatrical pageantry, colorful spandex costumes and masks to conceal identities. Longtime lucha libre fan Pat Patascil calls the sport “organized chaos.”
There were ups and downs over the 15 years Ramirez put on shows at O’Connell — a sexual abuse scandal involving a physical education teacher who helped organize the shows almost put an end to the events at the school.
Then came the pandemic. And then, in 2023, a leak in the school gym’s roof left the space out of commission for almost two years.
But Ramirez always managed to bring the shows back. He held 18 shows at O’Connell from 2008 to 2023.
Nowadays, though, he’s stuck. Since the school’s gym reopened in January 2025, he hasn’t returned to the Mission District. Rules imposed by the San Francisco Unified School District mean Ramirez must apply for permits through the district’s real-estate department. The costs, he said, have become prohibitive.
The real-estate office, Ramirez said, “broke it down to a point where it’s impossible to rent the gymnasium. By the time you rent that facility, that holds maybe six to eight hundred people, max, it was costing me four, five thousand just to rent there. How can I pay that much money?”
Working lucha libre to pay for prom
It wasn’t always like this.
For the 15 years that Ramirez held shows at O’Connell, he coordinated directly with teachers and administration at the school. It worked out well for all parties.
“I always made sure they were making a profit,” he said. That meant O’Connell took 100 percent from parking and concessions, and received a block of 100 tickets that it could sell.
Young lucha libre fans cheer at John O’Connell High School. Photo courtesy of Pro Wrestling Revolution.
The shows were fundraisers for the school’s senior class. The money was used for sports equipment and uniforms, prom, school rallies, caps and gowns, and any other necessities.
Patricia Barraza, who worked at O’Connell’s afterschool program from 2011 to 2018 and helped coordinate the lucha shows from 2017 until 2018, said students looked forward to the shows year after year.
“You’re always going to have students that want to have the high school senior experience but can’t afford it,” she said.
Seniors worked the event, selling concessions, directing parking and tabling for funds.
“Students who were like, ‘I can’t ask my mom for $60 for prom. She’s working cleaning homes to put food on the table and take care of me and my siblings,’ they knew if they went to the show and worked concessions, they would get their ticket taken care of,” said Samantha Aguirre, a social science teacher for SFUSD, who helped organize the events until 2023.
Aguirre said the lucha shows were “definitely our biggest fundraiser of the year.”
Gym has always been for rent, SFUSD says
But sometime in 2023, the school district’s real-estate office told Aguirre that it would be more stringent with rules.
“They were saying, ‘No, you can’t do it anymore because somebody else is running it, not the school,” she recalled.
To host events at an SFUSD school, organizations need to apply for a permit to rent the space. Outside organizations, or what the district calls for-profit organizations, have higher fees than teachers or people affiliated with SFUSD schools.
Laura Dudnick, director of communications for the school district, said the district has had these facility rental policies for a while. She said she’s unsure what the change in 2023 was.
“We really appreciate events that bring students and families together,” she said. “We want to make sure that whoever wants to rent the space can.”
Blue Demon Jr. greets the crowd at John O’Connell High School. Photo courtesy of Pro Wrestling Revolution.
Prior to 2023, Ramirez didn’t pay to rent facilities at O’Connell in exchange for letting the school keep funds from parking, concessions and ticket sales. But once the real estate office got involved, prices soared.
Principal Amy Abero, for her part, said “from the district perspective, we have to be mindful of the liability when things happen on campus.”
Not wanting to give up on the tradition, Ramirez paid the new fee once, in 2023: $3,345.99. He cut down on costs by not using the school’s parking lot or kitchen, and using only two restrooms. And although it was a fundraiser for the senior class, none of the money from permits went to O’Connell.
Under the current rules for renting school facilities, the money generated from permits and rentals goes directly to the district’s real-estate office.
Ramirez kept ticket prices to their usual $20, even though he estimated he would need to charge $75 to $100 a ticket to cover the rental fees. And he still ensured the school got their usual funding for school activities.
Although Ramirez has looked for other venues in the Mission, none have been suitable for the size of shows he puts on, he said.
O’Connell has all of the facilities needed to put on a lucha libre show: A gym large enough to fit a 16-by-16-foot ring and a few hundred chairs, a kitchen, bathrooms, a parking lot, and a theater to use as a dressing room.
Instead, Ramirez has been organizing sold-out shows locally at Mount Pleasant High School in San Jose, and has hosted shows in Dubai, Portugal and Mexico.
Two luchadores at Pro Wrestling Revolution’s school perform. Two fellow luchadores clap them on. Photo by Sophia Rerucha.
But nothing compares to O’Connell.
Leroy Bermudez, who lives three blocks away from O’Connell, took his son and daughter to three shows in the 2010s.
A few months after attending the show, he remembers his son Damian, now 24, asking him for a lucha libre mask at the Mission’s annual Carnaval celebration.
“I had no knowledge that the memory of going to the shows had even sunk in,” he recalled. “I’ve always tried to incorporate and teach my son and daughter their roots, trying to keep some tradition. Lucha is something that you could connect over, regardless of barriers.”
“My primos don’t speak English,” Bermudez added, “but there’s no language barrier to lucha, so we can all enjoy it.”
Ramirez is making a return to San Francisco this month, hosting a lucha show at Chase Center on March 22. But he still hasn’t found a way back into the Mission.
“I’m everywhere, and I can’t do something at O’Connell High School to help raise funds,” he said. “Lucha libre is missing in the Mission right now. I would love to bring it back.”
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