The crowd goes wild as the masked wrestlers toss each other around the ring in colorful spandex. But this is no ordinary Mexican "lucha libre" match: it is the "War of the Sexes," in which three women wrestlers battle three far bigger men. Mixed matches like this, which emerged on the wildly popular pro wrestling scene some 20 years ago, could be a metaphor for gender relations in Mexico -- a country with a deep tradition of machismo, where women are fighting for equal rights even as thousands of them are raped and murdered each year.

"Get back in the kitchen, you damn hag!" yells a fan in the stands in an expletive-strewn outburst, as a wrestler called Moonbeam, decked out in a sequined leotard and tall boots, throws a left hook at her hulking opponent, Nazi Warrior. Instead of getting upset, Moonbeam says it is "very beautiful" when male fans hurl insults at her. "It means you-re doing a good job. You-re provoking them and giving them an outlet for their stress," she says. "They take out their frustration by yelling at you," instead of shouting at or hitting their wives when they get home, she tells AFP.