When AAA was launched in 1992, journeyman wrestler Adolfo Tapia was given a fresh gimmick and a skeleton suit, and became the legendary luchador, La Parka. While he started as a heel, his dancing skeleton character quickly became a fan favorite with the suit bringing out Tapia’s natural charisma. Tapia’s La Parka was a major star in AAA for 4 years until he left the company for start-up promotion Promo Azteca. This was around the same time he started wrestling in WCW, where he would receive his worldwide fame.
However, AAA owner Antonio Peña still had the rights to the La Parka character and instead of going after the original La Parka (Tapia), he simply made a new one. As soon as Tapia left, Pena right away created La Parka Jr. and brought in Jesús Alfonso Escoboza Huerta as the new man behind the skeleton. The “Jr.” honorific was quickly dropped and for the next seven years, there was explicitly two different La Parkas in the wrestling world.
This was how Antonio Peña handled many talent departures — if he owned the rights to the character, he simply filled the role with a new wrestler and slap a fake “Jr.” honorific on them which would quickly disappear. Sometimes Peña would do this without informing the audience that there was a different man behind the mask. Amazingly, the replacements usually worked, and in the case of the second La Parka, it worked really well.
Who Is The Real La Parka?
The second La Parka in AAA (Jesús Alfonso Escoboza Huerta) was the only La Parka who wrestled on national television in Mexico, therefore this supposed “fake” La Parka quickly became the real La Parka in the eyes of the Mexican fans. While to American fans, Tapia’s La Parka in WCW was the real one.
Originally, there was no clash over the name, as for the most part they always worked for separate promotions, with Tapia mainly working for WCW as well as US and Mexican independent promotions, while Jesús Alfonso Escoboza Huerta wrestled in AAA. However, there did become an issue when Tapia signed for AAA’s main rival CMLL in 2003. AAA owner Antonio Peña had a court order drawn up to prevent Tapia from being known as La Parka in the rival promotion. This legal battle forced Tapia to change his name from La Parka to L.A. Park, short for “La Auténtica Parka” (with the k pronounced as ka.)
For a period of time, Tapia was also barred from using the skeleton costume he had worn for years. This led to Tapia wearing a modified version of the skeleton using different color combinations and modifying the skeleton mask to look like the face of Darth Maul from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Though as time went on, L.A. Park would return to the original design.
L.A. Park vs. La Parka
And so, L.A. Park and La Parka would continue their careers, separate but forever compared to each other. However, in 2010, this came to a head as L.A. Park invaded AAA, attacking La Parka and vowing to reclaim his name. It was a legendary feud with both men opening up about their shared name on TV. Tapia’s L.A. Park (the original La Parka) would say, “As long as I’m alive and wrestling, all the others are copies, and I’m the original. They can try to claim and call themselves whatever they want. I don’t believe in those trophies he’s gotten because he didn’t really earn them. La Parka was an already established character and at the top when I left AAA. It’s not because of him.”
La Parka (Jesús Alfonso Escoboza Huerta, the second La Parka) replied to this, “I was given the opportunity, and I took it. The rights of the name and character belong to AAA. It is that simple. If the character would’ve truly belonged to him, then he wouldn’t have changed his name to L.A. Park. Plus, I’ve never tried to be like him; I have my own style.”
The feud was iconic, and the two would have some of the most heated matches in AAA that year. After the feud in AAA, it seemed like L.A. Park and La Parka had finally buried the hatchet and surprisingly the two would even team together for smaller shows in 2012.
The two La Parkas seemed to end things on good terms as well. When Jesús Alfonso Escoboza Huerta died in 2020, L.A. Park would tweet this, which is roughly translated to, “No one is going to fill the place that the AAA Parka left, neither I nor anyone else. The truth must respect that name so that Chuy Escoboza is never forgotten.”