Daniel Garcia loves making wrestling fans hate him. Just… maybe not that much. The AEW star says one night in Los Angeles took things way beyond boos and middle fingers, to the point where he genuinely believed he might get stabbed before he made it back to his car.
Speaking to Alex Sagot, while looking back on some of the craziest reactions he’s received as a heel, Garcia admitted there have been plenty of fans who wanted to confront him after shows. One encounter still stands above the rest.
“Man, there’s been times fans have tried to fight me before. At a show in L.A., a fan tried to fight me. We had to walk out… I thought I was going to get stabbed. I didn’t, thankfully. We got a very good security team.”
If that sounds intense, Garcia says Mexico somehow topped it. Working for CMLL as one of the foreign villains, he discovered very quickly that Mexican crowds still throw themselves completely into the story. Once the match ended, the heat didn’t disappear with the bell. It followed him out of the building.
“We were the bad guys… we’re the foreigners in the country, so people really hated us. We walked out of the building and there was just a mob of fans flipping us off and swearing at us… We had to have a police escort out of the building.”
Most wrestlers would probably call that a nightmare. Garcia calls it proof the job is working. As scary as those moments can become, he says they’re also the moments that remind him why he enjoys playing the villain. His goal isn’t to be liked. It’s to make fans desperate to see somebody shut him up.
“That’s what makes you kind of feel alive in those moments. My job as a bad guy is to make the fans as angry as possible so when the good guy beats us, the fans are happy… If the fans really hate me, I guess I’m doing my job right.”
Garcia escaped both situations without getting hurt, but they’re a reminder that in some wrestling cities, fans still treat the action like it’s completely real. For a heel, that’s the ultimate compliment… right up until security has to step in.
Do you think fans sometimes cross the line when reacting to wrestling villains, or is that part of what makes pro wrestling unique? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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