Mexico Sports

Sports Boxing

In terms of native sports, Mexico still maintains a few.

Football is at the top of Mexico's list of favourite sports, closely followed by boxing where within the sport, Mexico has produced more world champions than any other country after the United States, including Julio César Cháves whose relentless style and powerful punches enabled him an incredible boxing career which spanned 25 years.

The Mesoamerican ball game is the oldest known of sports. Mexico is home to many of the ruined ball courts, including the oldest which is dated back to 1400BC in Pado de la Amada and the largest of the courts found to date which is at Chichen Itza.

Mexican National Sports

Sports Charrería

Charrería is the national sport of Mexico. The Charrea is the national event whereby Charros (male participants) and Escaramuza (teams of female participants) compete in a cowboy rodeo style competition of riding and roping. Traditional costume is worn for the event. One of the highlights is the 'pass of death' whereby a Charro leaps to the back of a wild horse.

Bullfighting is a sport which the Spanish conquerors brought with them which has remained popular to the modern day. The event remains similar to Spanish bullfighting in that the bull should be killed almost instantaneously in one knife stroke to the appropriate point on the spine, but as in Spain, this is not commonplace.

Sports Lucha libre

The largest bullring in the world can seat 60,000 spectators and is located in Mexico City.

Other popular sports Mexico follows are wrestling or lucha libre where it is typical of the wrestler to wear a colourful mask and baseball which in Mexico dates back to the 1870's. The Mexico baseball league has been in place since 1925.