I still remember the first time I stood in the shadow of the Templo Mayor in Mexico City, feeling the weight of centuries pressing down on me. The Aztec civilization, with its complex cosmology and dramatic rituals, has always fascinated me both as an academic researcher and someone who simply appreciates compelling narratives. What struck me then, and what continues to intrigue me now, is how ancient stories can resonate so powerfully with contemporary experiences. This connection became particularly clear to me recently while playing a wrestling video game that beautifully captured the journey of an indie wrestler moving to the big leagues—a narrative that strangely echoed the rise and fall of Aztec city-states.
The women's storyline in this game particularly captivated me because it mirrors what I find most compelling about Aztec history: the underdog story. Just as the game presents a "Face That Runs The Place" type star getting poached to WWE, the Aztec empire itself began as something of an indie promotion before becoming the main event of Mesoamerica. When I research the early days of Tenochtitlan, I'm always struck by how this small, marginalized group transformed itself into a dominant power. They started exactly like that ECW-like promotion described in the game—raw, DIY, with that same raucous energy. The Aztecs built their first temples with the same makeshift quality that characterizes indie wrestling shows, using local materials and developing their distinctive style through trial and error. What's fascinating is that archaeological evidence suggests their early population numbered only around 10,000 people before exploding to nearly 200,000 at their peak—a growth trajectory not unlike a wrestler moving from small venues to Madison Square Garden.
As someone who's spent years studying Mesoamerican cultures, I've come to appreciate these underdog stories precisely because they feel more authentic than tales of established powers. The men's storyline in the game, while well-executed, follows the more conventional path of a mid-carder finally getting their push—and honestly, that's just less interesting to me. We see this in Aztec scholarship too, where the narratives about established rulers like Moctezuma II often get more attention, but the truly compelling stories are about figures like Tlacaelel, the power behind the throne who transformed Aztec ideology in the 15th century. His influence was so profound that it reshaped their entire worldview, yet he never sought the top position for himself. This kind of narrative has that same indie quality—the behind-the-scenes innovator rather than the spotlight-hogging champion.
What really makes both the game's women's storyline and Aztec history resonate is that DIY spirit—the sense that you're witnessing something being built from nothing. When I attend indie wrestling shows today, that raw energy reminds me of descriptions we have of early Aztec ceremonies. Bernardino de Sahagún's Florentine Codex describes how the Aztecs would transform their ceremonial spaces with the same makeshift intensity that indie promotions use today—creating spectacle with limited resources but boundless creativity. The crowd at an Aztec ceremony probably had that same raucous quality, with perhaps 20,000 people packed into ceremonial spaces that were constantly being expanded and modified. I've stood in what remains of those spaces and tried to imagine the noise, the energy, the sheer vitality of it all—it's not so different from the electric atmosphere at an ECW-style show.
The comparison might seem unusual, but as both a historian and a wrestling fan, I see meaningful parallels in how stories of ascent and transformation captivate us across different contexts. The Aztecs understood spectacle and narrative perhaps better than any civilization before them—their rituals were carefully choreographed dramas that reinforced social hierarchies and cosmological beliefs. Similarly, the best wrestling storylines understand that what makes a narrative compelling isn't just the destination but the authenticity of the journey. When I research how the Aztecs incorporated conquered peoples into their empire, allowing them to maintain local traditions while adopting Aztec overlordship, I see parallels to how wrestling promotions sometimes integrate indie talent—preserving what made them unique while fitting them into a larger narrative structure.
Ultimately, both the lost treasures of Aztec civilization and compelling fictional narratives share this quality: they reveal universal patterns in how societies and individuals transform themselves. The artifacts we continue to unearth—like the recent discovery of a gold bar weighing approximately 4.25 pounds that was part of Moctezuma's treasure—tell stories of rise and fall, of ambition and limitation. What makes these discoveries thrilling isn't just their material value but the human stories they represent. After nearly two decades studying this civilization, I've come to believe that the most enduring treasures aren't the gold objects but these narrative patterns that continue to resonate across centuries and mediums. The Aztecs understood the power of a good story, and in that, they were truly ahead of their time.