One of the original wrestlers to work for the UWA. Was a hated rudo for almost his entire career and was involved in many bloody hair matches. For whatever reason (rumored to be either jail or drugs) he disapeared in the early 90's only to eventually pop up again but in terrible shape and only to drop his hair a couple of times.
Babe Face[1] (Jose Guadalupe Fuentes Ochoa, 79) passed away on Friday. Despite his name meaning “good guy” in US wrestling lingo, he spent pretty much all of his career as an unmasked rudo. He was a Guadalajara Diablo Velasco trainee in the early 70s, came to wrestle in EMLL in the mids 70s, and then jumped to the UWA as that got going. He’d show up in EMLL/CMLL every so often, but he was almost always a UWA guy, an upper-level rudo who could work with the top guys but rarely beat them. His apuesta record is littered with hair matches, and his record in them was fairly mixed. (It also includes one with a young Eddie Guerrero.) He was considered a very good worker and that’s why people outside of Mexico might have heard his name – Bret Hart, of all people, put him over for his wrestling skill, remembering him from tours they worked together in Japan. That’s another way people outside of Mexico would know him: Babe Face was Satoru Sayama’s greatest Mexican opponent, and he worked NJPW tours when Sayama became Tiger Mask. NJPW’s NJPW World service, when it launched, posted a Babe Face & Perro Aguayo vs. Gran Hamada & Satoru Sayama match from 1980, a rare look at the early stage of that rivalry and at 1980 UWA at all. UWA wasn’t taped at that point – NJPW just happened to be there because Antonio Inoki was winning the UWA title in a main event against Tiger Jeet Singh – and Babe Face looks great in the video.
Babe Face’s career burned out rather quickly for a luchador; he wasn’t the same guy by the 1990 TV boom, and would’ve felt a little outdated. He was stuck in UWA as it was going rapidly downhill; he had short runs with CMLL and AAA after, but it didn’t amount to much. A guy like that might have gotten forgotten. Babe Face had a second life as a micro-restaurant owner. Babe Face ran a lucha libre rice stand on the city block surrounding Arena Mexico, becoming a permanent fixture in the area’s culture. Babe Face learned to cook rice from his trips to Japan. Current wrestlers would stop to eat after training; old wrestlers would visit their friend when nearby; fans would get some rice and take a photo with him. Ernesto Ocampo, writing on Twitter, mentions that Babe Face would send rice dishes up to their offices sometimes when they were on the SuperLuchas magazine. Even if he never had a wrestling match, he would’ve been a memorable part of the Arena Mexico scene.
