[2][3] In the modern day, an uninterested journalist interviews the aged former wrestler and politician Jack Veneno.

In the 1950s, Rafael Antonio Sánchez grows up in poverty in the Dominican Republic under the Trujillo dictatorship.

After seeing a film starring the luchador El Santo, he and his friend José Manuel Guzmán Marte, a police officer's son, dream of becoming professional wrestlers.

They both find success, under the names of "Jack Veneno" and "Relámpago Hernández" respectively, but fighting tests their friendship.

Some liberties were taken with the story; for example, in reality Veneno first saw El Santo at a Ciudad Trujillo cinema with his father, but in the film this was moved to a travelling circus in the town of San José de Ocoa where he spent his earliest years.