This is going to be the final installment of Lethal Lucha Legends, at least until somebody bugs me to do another one, which probably won’t be too soon, or I come up with another gimmick, so I’m going to put the proverbial cherry on top of this sundae.

In my two previous pieces I chronicled the lives and achievements of two wrestlers who were vital in the rooting of lucha libre as a Mexican cultural institution. As important as they were in its Genesis, though, today I am covering a man who was the first to single-handedly bring worldwide fame and recognition to the lucha libre style. He was a man that took the clay El Santo, Gory Guerrero, and their ilk molded, and sculpted an even finer image than his predecessors would have even hoped of achieving, spreading his artistry to the four corners of the world. A legend in the Americas, Japan, Europe, and pretty much everywhere in between, today we honor a man who has a face for every occasion, but one soul, that of a magnificent luchador.

Aaron Rozriguez, a.k.a. Mil Mascaras

Aaron was born on July 15, 1942 in the city and state of San Luis Potosí. Being raised in a typical Hispanic household, he was a devout catholic, and read the bible, well, religiously. During his teenage years he, too, excelled in many sports, among them baseball, amateur wrestling, bodybuilding and judo (Those four sports seem to have been the basic athletic building blocks of any luchador of the time, because when asked a similar question of high school activities, almost every other wrestler of the same generation, such as Canek, Rayo de Jalisco, and others, would answer the same). His religious devotion, though, would lead his mother to send him to a religious seminary school, but Aaron escaped, apparently realizing that he had a different place in life…as a bullfighter?

Yes, young Mil Mascaras had a try at Mexico’s other national sport for a short while, but the conclusion came to him that would most likely come to most of us, that getting gored (he received some bad thrusts even from the young, short-horned bulls he practiced with) is not a very fun pastime. In 1955 he would get his first taste of canvas theatrics, witnessing a wrestling card where one of the big matches was between two luchadores now obscure, but very important in their day, Felipe Ham Lee and the Jamaican high-flyer Dorell “Dory” Dixon. It was Dixon’s acrobatic performance that would entrance him, but his own pro career wouldn’t begin until some 9 years later.

Aaron’s amateur sportsman career was tremendously successful, though, especially in wrestling and judo. In 1964, he was actually selected to represent Mexico on the Olympic team for judo! But Mexico, reliably, consistently destitute Mexico, couldn’t afford to send him to Tokyo, where the games were held. But luckily, all was not lost for him, as the same year he made his professional debut, unmasked and using the name "Ricardo Durán." He was milling around in the small arenas and enjoying moderate success, but as in all great tales of glory and greatness, his big break was about to come when he least expected it.

“Lucha Libre” magazine (creative title, right?) was holding a contest. They had created a character for the perfect wrestler, super-heroic in nature, with a Herculean physique and the ability to fly like an eagle, although not necessarily into the future. The big thing, though, the standout characteristic of this hypothetical grappler would be that he wore a different mask for every match. Every single match a different hood, a most unprecedented feat. Readers were encouraged to send in their mask designs with a 25-peso incentive for those that got picked. Now the only question that remained for editor Valente Pérez was so: Who would be the one to strap on those many, many masks?

After a few trials with different hopefuls, Pérez found his man…in Jorge Galindo. But Galindo couldn’t keep up with the schedule demanded of such a popular character, and he quit almost instantly. But serendipity, sweet serendipity, the pebble that forks the river of fate would have it that Ricardo Durán, an almost no-name, but a guy with the necessary physique and the amateur background, perfect for the role, fell into Pérez’s lap. The mask(s) and persona became his, and this is where the road to greatness for him finally began, debuting as Mil Mascaras (“one thousand masks”) on July 16, 1965 in Arena Mexico, in a tag team tournament teaming with Black Shadow (another now obscure legend), actually going on to win the tournament!

One could argue that a lot of Mil’s early success and rise to stardom was due to him constantly being paired alongside huge main event guys like El Santo, the aforementioned Shadow, or pairing him against the biggest rudos of the day, but Mascaras had a natural talent in the ring that immediately showed main event quality. His technical expertise, his strength, and his agility quickly impressed both the audience and the locker room alike. He could just as easily submit his opponents with a powerful bear hug as he could descend from the turnbuckles with a plancha suicida. His charisma and athleticism yielded a quick assimilation into the pantheon of lucha stars, and as would come with stardom in Mexico, amassing a cinematic résumé that would rival Santo’s or Blue Demon’s any day. But Mil eventually became to big for his breeches, so to speak, as far as Mexico went. He had done all there was to do, so that’s when he heard the siren song of the Los Angeles promoters.

He debuted in the U.S. in May of 1968, and caught on in L.A. like flame. If his performance was able to wow the Mexican audience, to which his kind of style was not as alien, you can only imagine the wonder with which the gringo crowds watched as this mysterious masked marvel subdued his opponents with ground and air offense, and looking good doing it! Not to even mention the continuing question of what mask would he wear the next day. Just as in Mexico, he was facing and defeating the top heels of the region, including none other than the likes of the Sheik, and winning titles. L.A., being one of the big international ports of call that it is, opened Mil to massive exposure, and with the southwest U.S. conquered, it was time to move on to Japan.

His Tokyo debut was on February of 1971. The Japanese called Mil Mascaras “Kamen Kizoku”, or the masked noble, being a paragon of luchador fighting spirit. Historically, Rikidozan has been unarguably named the father of Japanese puroresu, but if you want to look at the single man who planted the seed for the high flying style of the junior heavyweights, the invention of lucharesu as a unique style, the popularity of the masked character, you need look no farther than Mil Mascaras. Satoru Sayama, the original Tiger Mask, would say it himself that without Mil Mascaras, there would be no other stars that are praised and revered for their excellence in both high flying and technical wrestling, be it Tiger Mask, The Great Sasuke, Jushin Liger, or Ultimo Dragon. Such was the greatness of his impact in the Orient.

Mil Mascaras was basically the cream of the crop by then, moving from Tokyo to Tijuana to Texas, pretty much going wherever he pleased and working for the highest bidder, headlining every arena. In the U.S. if you wanted to draw money in any place with a Hispanic population, you wanted Mascaras, no matter what. Mil even had the privilege of making history, in being the first ever masked wrestler to compete in Madison Square Garden, America’s wrestling cathedral, when no other had been allowed to wrestle under a hood before.

When the Georgia-based IWA was formed in 1975, Mil Mascaras was the first choice to be their world champion. He remained champ for a year or so until founder Eddie Einhorn became finicky with funding and payments, and there was a mass exodus of top talent, including Mascaras. The promotion survived for a while longer, eventually closing the following year, but Mil Mascaras had two huge successfully drawing title defenses that year, one in Jersey City against Ivan Koloff, and another against Lou Thesz in Mexico city. After the close of the promotion, Mil still had the world title belt, and he even defends it to this day.

There ends most of the major accomplishments in the career of the legendary titan of the ring, Mil Mascaras, but fortunately, unlike before, I do not have to end this article with an obituary. Age has shown its effect on him, like it inevitably does, but over the last 20 years Mil Mascaras has still kept wrestling, into his 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s, keeping his legend alive all over the globe, by himself or teaming with his brother Dos Caras, in such promotions like Michinoku Pro, AJPW, W*ing, WAR, CMLL, AAA, one-shots with WCW and WWF, and pretty much any promotion that is or has been considered important at one time or another. He is arguably one of the oldest active professional wrestlers in the world currently, among such others like Abdullah the Butcher and Genichiro Tenryu.

Unlike his predecessors, Aaron Rodriguez still lives today to see the lasting influence he has and will continue to have on the sport he worked so hard to make great in other countries that was already a religion in his home. And before you start thinking only dorks like me who sit at their computers creaming their pants over anybody from a foreign country care about him these days, Acclaim recognized his status in History, adding him to the roster of the Legends of Wrestling video games, deciding that even American players would see he deserved to stand alongside Dusty Rhodes, Hulk Hogan, or any other name you could mention. So next time you’re watching your favorite promotion of choice, when you see The Great Sasuke, Shark Boy, or Amazing Red executing a plancha, or some other daredevil move…hell, even when you see some pissant dickwad who thinks he’s the greatest because he practiced on an old mattress at home pulling one off, think of Mil Mascaras, and how he’s probably the reason they’re all there, or why so many of us care about this tomfoolery we call professional wrestling. Chances are, when you do, somewhere, one of his faces will be smiling.

Tokage
AIM: TokAngel