L. A. Park
Adolfo Margarito Tapia Ibarra is a Mexican luchador enmascarado, who currently performs as L. A. Park. He is best known throughout the world as La Parka, especially from his many years in the American World Championship Wrestling promotion. He has worked for every major and multiple minor wrestling promotions in Mexico, as well as participating on multiple wrestling tours in Japan. He is a three-time world heavyweight champion, having held the IWC World Heavyweight, IWC World Hardcore, and IWL World Heavyweight championships all once. He is also a two-time world tag team champion, having held the MLW World Tag Team Championship and the CMLL World Tag Team Championship each once.
Tapia was forced to change his ring name from "La Parka" to "L.A. Park" in early 2003 when AAA owner Antonio Peña asserted his copyright claims to the La Parka character, barring Tapia from using the name as he promoted his own version of the gimmick with this new wrestler also being known as La Parka.
In March 2010, L.A. Park returned to AAA and started a storyline with AAA's La Parka, pitting the original and the new La Parka against each other. At Triplemanía XVIII, Park defeated La Parka and earned the rights to once again be known as "La Parka". The result, however, was later thrown out.
Tapia's uncle changed his character to Super Parka after Tapia gained worldwide fame. Several of Tapia's other family members are or have been professional wrestlers, including his sons El Hijo de L.A. Park and L.A. Park Jr., brother El Hijo de Cien Caras, nephew Volador Jr., and great nephew Flyer, among others. L.A. Park's family is referred to in Mexico as La Familia Real.
Professional wrestling career
Early career (1982–1992)
Adolfo Tapia made his professional wrestling debut in 1982 at the age of 16, using his real name. Later on he would wrestle as the masked El Gringo in the Monclova, Coahuila region and as El Minero in Mexico City. Tapia lost his first Lucha de Apuesta, or bet match, to Climax II and was forced to take off the El Minero mask and reveal his real name, as per Lucha libre traditions. In 1988 he changed his ring character to El Asesino de Tepito, a rudo character he used in 1988. He lost the Asesino de Tepito mask in an Apuesta match against Astro de Oro at some point in 1988. Following the mask loss Tapia adopted a character called Principe Island, a character he would use until 1992. As Principe Island he won the masks of wrestlers Gran Cóndor, Principe Judas, Guerrero Negra and Bestia Negra I. On November 21, 1987, he lost the Principe Island mask to El Hijo del Santo. Following his mask loss he started working as the masked Invasor del Norte I as well as still taking bookings as Principe Island. The double bookings came to an end on June 26, 1991, when Stuka unmasked the Invasor del Norte character, revealing that Tapia played both characters.Asistencia Asesoría y Administración (1992–1996)
In 1992 Antonio Peña founded a new wrestling promotion called Asistencia Asesoría y Administración, signing Tapia to a contract early on. Peña came up with the idea to repackage Tapia as "La Parka", a character who wore a full bodysuit and mask that resembled a skeleton like the ones used in Mexico's Day of the Dead ceremonies. The character was an almost instant success with the fans, the imagery combined with Tapia's charisma and flamboyant actions in the ring made him a big crowd favorite despite La Parka initially being a rudo character. One of his initial storyline feuds was with Lizmark, a feud that resulted in a match for the Mexican National Light Heavyweight Championship at AAA's inaugural Triplemanía event, in which Lizmark successfully defended the title against La Parka. In August 1993 La Parka won his first championship when he defeated Lizmark for the WWA Light Heavyweight Championship on a WWA/AAA co-promoted show. The title reign lasted until October 23, 1993, when Lizmark won the title back. The feud between the two saw La Parka defeat Lizmark for the WWA title for a second time on June 20, 1994. La Parka was one of the wrestlers that worked the When Worlds Collide show, a joint AAA/World Championship Wrestling pay-per-view where he teamed with Jerry Estrada and Blue Panther, losing to the team of The Pegasus Kid, 2 Cold Scorpio, and Tito Santana. On September 9, 1994, La Parka won the Mexican National Light Heavyweight Championship that he had been chasing for over a year when he defeated Lizmark for the title, finishing off the storyline between the two. La Parka held the title for 200 days losing it to Jerry Estrada. La Parka would wear the Mexican National Light Heavyweight championship two further times while working for AAA, in 1995 and in 1996 until he lost the belt to Pimpinela Escarlata on May 13, 1996.Extreme Championship Wrestling (1995)
In 1995 he would make an appearance for Extreme Championship Wrestling in the United States, teaming with Psicosis, losing a tag team match against Konnan and Rey Misterio Jr..World Championship Wrestling (1996–2000)
When WCW began using a number of AAA wrestlers for their cruiserweight division in mid to late 1996, La Parka gained worldwide exposure by appearing on WCW's weekly television shows and PPVs. La Parka often wrestled against other AAA Luchadors such as Juventud Guerrera or Super Caló and often teamed with Psicosis. Due to La Parka's more comedic style he stood out from the rest of the AAA wrestlers who were generally high fliers. He was nicknamed "the chairman of WCW" due to the fact that he often carried a chair to the ring, played air guitar on it during his entrances and generally used it both in matches and in post match celebrations. At one point he and Psychosis were managed by Sonny Onoo, although the team failed to achieve much success as a unit. He later dropped Onoo as a manager and begin to feud with Psychosis and Disco Inferno. While La Parka often wrestled on WCW's Monday Nitro show his PPV appearances were rare. On July 13, he teamed with Psychosis and Villano IV on the undercard of WCW's Bash at the Beach PPV, losing to Héctor Garza, Juventud Guerrera and Lizmark Jr. He also wrestled at SuperBrawl VIII, losing to Disco Inferno.La Parka's biggest achievement in WCW did not even involve Adolfo Tapia. One night in a match against Randy Savage, La Parka suddenly executed Diamond Dallas Page's finisher, the Diamond Cutter on Savage and gained the pinfall. After the match "La Parka" unmasked to show that it was in fact Page under the mask, using the ruse to get back at Savage during their rivalry. A couple of weeks later, Savage wrestled against the real La Parka, defeating him to gain a small measure of revenge.
In October 1998, La Parka became part of Eddie Guerrero's Latino World Order, a group that also included Psychosis, Juventud Guerrera, Villano IV, Villano V, El Dandy, Silver King, Héctor Garza, Damián 666, and a reluctant Rey Mysterio Jr. The group feuded mainly with Konnan and Perry Saturn. In January 1999, Guerrero was injured in a car accident and the LWO group was subsequently abandoned.
When Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara took over the creative portion of WCW in late 1999, the duo had Ferrara's voice dub English over the intercom while La Parka would be doing interviews in Spanish. This often ended with a confused Gene Okerlund exclaiming "What the hell was that?!" Among other things the voice-over explained that La Parka was a fan of Skeletor from Masters of the Universe and other comedic comments. During this time, he teamed with Kaz Hayashi, a Japanese wrestler who also used a "comedic voice over" gimmick and referred to La Parka as "Skull Captain". La Parka left WCW in March 2000 before WCW was bought by WWF a year later.
A second La Parka (1996–2003)
While La Parka had been busy working exclusively for WCW for a number of years Peña had given the "La Parka" outfit and character to another wrestler under AAA contract and had him working as La Parka Jr. from late 1996 and forward, cashing in on La Parka's popularity in the states. Initially Peña and La Parka did not clash over the use of the La Parka name since Tapia worked mainly for various US independent promotions and for smaller Mexican promotions. When Tapia signed a contract with Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre, AAA's main rival, in 2003 Peña took legal actions against Tapia. He renamed "La Parka Jr." and had a court order drawn up that prevented Tapia from being billed as "La Parka" in Mexico, claiming that Peña had the copyright to the character. The legal battle between Tapia and AAA forced Tapia to change his name to "L.A. ParK", short for "La Autentica ParK". In subsequent years both parties filed various legal petitions to stake their claims on the copyright. For a period of time Tapia was barred from appearing on television wearing the black and white outfit he had worn for years. This led to Tapia wearing a modified version of the outfit in other color combinations such as black and red, black and yellow, white and black or even variations of silver. He had already modified the original "La Parka" outfit to differentiate between himself and the AAA version, adopting a mask that looked less like a skull and more like the face of Darth Maul from the Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace movie. Later on Tapia would return to wearing the black and white outfits once again.Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (2003–2008)
In 2003 L.A. ParK began working for CMLL, although he was often kept off their television broadcasts due to the ongoing legal battles with Peña and AAA. In January 2004 L.A. Park teamed up with Shocker to defeat Los Guerreros del Infierno to win the CMLL World Tag Team Championship. Guerrero and Bucanero regained the titles 56 days later, after which L.A. Park challenged Último Guerrero to defend the CMLL World Light Heavyweight Championship against him at CMLL's 71st Anniversary Show, a match which L.A. Park lost two falls to one.Tapia worked for CMLL in an on-again, off-again capacity, not being booked for CMLL for long stretches of time. During one of those "off again" periods, L.A. Park won the Mexican National Light Heavyweight Championship for the fourth time when he defeated El Dandy for the title on October 15, 2004, making him one of only two wrestlers to hold the title four times. In early 2007 La Parka returned to CMLL full-time and began a storyline with Perro Aguayo Jr., a storyline that saw the two face off in a singles match at the 2007 Sin Piedad event where L.A. Park won by disqualification after Los Perros del Mal interfered in the match. The storyline ended in mid-2008 with no satisfactory end, instead L.A. Park began a feud with Dr. Wagner Jr. Initially, L.A. Park was the tecnico in the feud, but the fan reactions began to turn against L.A. Park as the CMLL crowd began siding with Dr. Wagner Jr. This led to a double turn between the competitors. Playing the Rudo L.A. Park was disqualified several times for excessive violence, including a match at the CMLL 75th Anniversary Show that L.A. Park lost by disqualification. In the months following the Anniversary show both L.A. Park and Dr. Wagner Jr. left CMLL.