Sexy Ruby jokes around with the audience during his lucha match at the Central de Abasto. Alicia Vera for Al Jazeera America

Luchadores help each other put on their outfits in the dressing room before their match. Gender-bending characters have become more common in Mexican wrestling. Alicia Vera for Al Jazeera America

Sexy Ruby, one of a number of lucha libre performers who work in drag, tries on a new wig before a match in Cuautla, Mexico. Alicia Vera for Al Jazeera America

MEXICO CITY — Sexy Tulepan describes himself as a typical macho who grew up in a homophobic home. At 18, he maintains he is so uncomfortable around gays that he gags when he sees two men embracing. Yet that doesn’t stop him from playing a stereotype-filled caricature of one, pirouetting around a wrestling ring with the ultimate aim of kissing another guy on the mouth. Donning a pink skirt, he smears his cheeks with rouge and pretends to be sodomized by opponents.

Sexy Tulepan, whose stage name means Tulip, is a gay-for-pay fighter in the hypermasculine world of lucha libre, an entertainment-wrestling circuit with both professional and amateur levels. Since the 1940s, when the rough shows took hold here, a slim number of fighters dubbed exoticos pranced around the ropes with exaggerated effeminate gestures. Many liked men in the bedroom, too. But over the last few years, straight wrestlers have increasingly adopted campy drag to advance their careers in the poorly paid business.

“I thought it was weird when someone suggested I apprentice with Sexy Ruby,” Tulepan explained about his manager, another exotico. “Then I went to his classes and saw he fought like a real man and had a family. That inspired me.”

So did the money. The pair are the only exoticos in a company of 60 fighters, and the scarcity means they can earn 2,000 pesos ($166) per fight, double the going rate for a non-pro.

The appeal of lucha libre lies with catharsis, said Steve DeFrank, an artist and Fulbright scholar who is doing a project about it with the Museo de Arte Popular. Many spectators are from downtrodden towns and villages, and the ring allows them to root for the bad guy, who breaks the rules behind the referee’s back. They can shout dirty words. Egging on a homoerotic act provides all sorts of relief.

“The baiting of men to kiss each other can be both a homophobic expression of macho dominance and a socially acceptable way to express homosexuality," DeFrank said.