Italy and Mexico | The Ultimate Convergence or Wrestling and Cultural Fusion

If Hank Quinlan had been a real bordertown detective (and not a character played by Orson Welles in Touch of Evil) and he met me in that dark bar he drinks at in the movie, he might have said something like "Nericcio? Ne-REACH-oh... what kind of name is that? It's not, er, Mesican." It's true. One of my grandfathers was from Partanna, Sicily, Guglielmo Nericcio, to be exact. A few years back, Italian American literary studs Fred Gardaphe and Anthony Tamburri tried to get this Chicano/Tejano hijo de Laredo, Texas to embrace his inner Italian, tried to get this would-be Latin American literary critic to get down with his inner Siciliano--and they damn well almost succeeded. I even published a short piece in Tamburri's VIA, back in the day, and I find that a fine chianti wets my whistle more of late than a fine tequila of late. They may have succeeded more than I know!

All of this a long preface to the fact that a moment of Chicano/Italiano convergence happened this past weekend in Jersey when Mexican wrestlers invaded a bastion of an East Coast Italian American "barrio" in New Jersey! Read the story here, now, or I'll put you in a pair of cement shoes. I know, I know--enough with the stereotypes!