My name is El Desperado.  

You know, like the movie. Desperado, El Mariachi, Legend of Mexico. I love those films. Cool-as-shit guys just murdering each other. Everything that dudes think is cool, shoved onto celluloid. 

When I first started wrestling under a mask, I went to a mask-maker called Mystical Cacao-san with a certain mentor of mine. We had come up with a rough idea, and Cacao-san turned it into something so fucking incredible that it heaped pressure on me: now I had to wrestle to live up to the look. 

I had always dug this luchador Dr. X's mask, whose design was based on NOSAWA when he was Super Cacao. So, I kind of became a Super Cacao descendant. 

People are always in my DMs asking me to sell them my masks. I appreciate the attention, and no judgment on guys that do sell their masks, but I always turn them down. If Ultraman and Kamen Rider were selling their gimmicks wouldn't that ruin some of their mystique?

I guess it took a while for me to be able to live up to the look. Too long, maybe.  

Being somebody that people actually want to see is kind of a major qualifying factor for a pro wrestler, but it took a lot of time for me to get there. I was just thinking myself in circles all the time. When you're hung up on some idea of how you think things should be, you end up really restricting your potential. 

One man really helped me get out of that mindset. The advice he gave me, watching and reflecting on what he did in the ring, and directly working as his partner or opponent helped make me into someone, and someone who's still going today.

Minoru Suzuki, a giving senpai and a trusted friend. The whole time I was in Mexico, I focused everything I did on joining Suzuki-Gun, which takes 24/7 dedication. Grappling and kickboxing training before matches, dinner and drinks — a lot of drinks — after. Even playing Monster Hunter on the bus. I loved just hearing his old school stories, unbelievable shit with him, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Antonio Inoki, Karl Gotch. Everybody that dudes think are cool. 

In between the stories, Suzuki gave me one piece of advice that has always stuck with me. 

"Stop talking in your matches. If you go to America, what are you gonna do, say all that shit in English?"

Wrestling is an art of using your whole body to express yourself, and if you fall back on words in the middle of a match, then you can't get better. I realised I was building a language barrier in a field that should have none, and I really learned how to let my body do the talking.

Then, there was Yoshinobu Kanemaru. Kanemaru came along right when I was completely lost with no idea what to do, and he set me straight. Years after our first singles match together, he said, 

“I thought that if I didn't do something, you were fucked." 

That's how bad I was, I guess, compared to this incredible classical wrestler that does everything on point with perfect timing. To me, he's the perfect pro-wrestler.

So, I started teaming with Kanemaru-san. It started with me moving exactly as he told me to, every single night. Before I knew it, there was no instruction at all. I just knew what to do in any situation. I realised I was doing more with less. 

That's a wrestler's toolbox, to know to do the right thing, at the right time, with the right timing. I still remember really loving the match we had with Swerve Strickland and Keith Lee at Forbidden Door. A ton of fun, but I have no idea why they put us in with those massive dudes.

Who else… Tomohiro ishii. The pandemic had the whole world just faced with something so messed up. Near the start of it all, I got COVID too. Just the worst fever, pain all over, vertigo so bad you think you're just gonna die. 

I'd just gotten over it, and NJPW started having empty arena matches again. They put the juniors and the heavyweights into the New Japan Cup, put me in the first main event with Ishii and I thought the plan was to just finish me off then and there. 

Ishii's short but carries himself like the biggest heavyweight in any room. The proverbial brick shithouse, but damn quick with it. He just has so many tools, and the biggest is his ability to bring you into these head-on collisions with him. 

You can think the best way is to sneak past him, cheat anyway you can, but in the moment he drags that pride out of you, like you don't want to be the smaller man. It's like when Kinnikuman had to stand up against Ramen Man and Brocken Jr. Does that reference translate? Probably not, sorry. 

Somewhere in the whole process, the match became me throwing absolutely everything I had mentally and physically at him. I don't remember ever throwing superkicks except in this match. I don't remember being beaten up as badly as in this match, either. Years later, we would end up teaming together, and the first thing Ishii did was remind me that, after this match, I'd said we would keep fighting until I was able to beat him. The guy's a true samurai.  

On December 11, 2020, in the Nippon Budokan the Best of the Super Jr. final was a match that carved the position for me I've been able to hold since. Hiromu Takahashi and I joined the Dojo on exactly the same day. Both of us should have been too short to be accepted; they'd only just abolished the minimum height requirement, replacing it with physicals and strength tests every three months. If we failed, we'd be on our asses.  

Hiromu and I shared the Dojo with Toks (Don) Fale, a guy who never had to worry about the size requirements. Picture me and Hiromu coming in the same day, and then the following 

Sunday, here's this massive, 240-plus pound dude starting out (I think he's 370 now). Still, he did all the squats we did, all the rope running, all the work. And he followed up with me when I couldn't get things done myself. I'm hugely grateful to Fale.  

When Hiromu went on excursion, he started a rivalry with Dragon Lee that made him a worldwide darling and made sure that, when he came back, he would instantly be a top guy. I was hugely jealous but hugely proud of him, and of me. Without Hiromu and Fale, I wouldn't be where I am, no doubt.   

And then… Jun Kasai.  

Kasai probably broke big on a global level because of his match with Ryuji Ito, the first deathmatch to ever get Tokyo Sports' match of the year honors back in 2009. I first got to know Kasai by watching this guy on Samurai TV slipping and falling on banana peels in the ring. Guys that can be as ludicrous as that, while still going harder than anyone as well… those are the coolest to me.  

Years later, I asked to wrestle him for a show TAKA Michinoku and Taichi were producing. If I put myself in Kasai's shoes back then, he was probably wondering why the hell a New Japan guy was asking for a hardcore match with him. What he didn't know, and what maybe many fans wouldn't know: I really didn't grow up as a big NJPW fan.

Hiromichi Fuyuki's FMW was much more my pace as a fan. I fell in love with this idea of hardcore wrestling, deathmatch as entertainment. The kind of experience that just doesn't exist anywhere in society. That's what I wanted to feel for myself. Honestly, that first match with Kasai was a dream come true… a dream that ended up breaking my jaw. 

It was on a regular punch, nothing big. If I had gritted my teeth, I would have been fine, but I thought he was throwing a chop, so I planned to take it full force. My mouth was open, he caught me just right, and that was that. Knocked right on my ass, and even as I was seeing stars and feeling pretty much powerless, I still swung those barbed wire boards about.

I got on the mic afterward, but there was no way of understanding what the hell I was saying. Still, somehow Kasai understood on a level enough to respond. Even after breaking my jaw, 

Kasai was the coolest. (I got hurt right before the Best of the Super Juniors tournament, and DOUKI took my place for his debut NJPW tour. Funny how things work out.) 

I don't know where I'd be if it wasn't for the matches with Kasai. Probably dead.  

I was so hyped to get back in there with Kasai — when the match was made, I was on a huge high. My niece had just been born as well, and I was full of love for that adorable little girl. 

Amid all of these highs, there was a big story in the news. A child had fallen asleep on the school bus and was left behind. In the blazing summer heat, the child had no chance and died of heat stroke on the bus.

It's hard to imagine anything more heartbreaking. Certainly, I wouldn't want to. It caught me at such a point mentally that it was a shot right to the heart. I found myself haunted by thoughts of that poor child, the heat, the fear they must have gone through. 

I couldn't eat, and if I did, nothing tasted of anything. I couldn't sleep, and if I did, I'd wake up in tears. Not being able to sleep, I'd go to the gym, work out, and break down crying in the middle of a set. 

The thought of the match with Kasai kept me going. That's why I said what I did on socials. I wanted to put all I had in the match, so I'd have no problem dying afterward. I was willing to die in the ring with him.

That definitely came through in the match. It's not an exaggeration to say we danced with death. I bled buckets and still managed to put Kasai through a razor blade board. 

After the match, Kasai was in tears, saying that countless people die while they're yearning to live. It brought me to tears as well. It gave me the clarity of thought I needed. I'm alive, and I'm damn glad of it. 

I think the real appeal of professional wrestling lies in experiencing the incredible, the excitement of seeing us do what isn't possible or acceptable in daily life. Hitting guys, kicking them, throwing a human being, stretching them. Add on top of that a kind of profound human drama. A keen sense of pathos. Genuine joy, frustration, anger.  

We feel all of that with regular pro wrestling, of course. But hardcore wrestling, deathmatch wrestling, multiplies and distills these elements. A powerbomb so forceful it breaks a table. Smashing someone with a chair so hard that it breaks. Falling off a scaffold, breaking light tubes, smashing glass. 

It's a limitless world where this blood, or that height, creates a genuine life-and-death tightrope act. It's there that you can find an extreme kind of high as a viewer and as a wrestler.  

The danger is, of course, extreme, but the pathos it generates and the message it inspires are much more powerful. Last year, when the deathmatch referee Barb Sasaki had his 25th Anniversary show, the Crazy Fest, I said on the mic: 

"After seeing what you just saw, don't you feel you have the power to do more in your life?
That power is the power of deathmatch."  

El Desperado, just like the movie. Manga, anime, theater, sports, video games, novels, and, of course, wrestling. I get a lot of input in life. The ring is my place to put it all out there. Whenever you see me, Vegas on April 16 included, I'll put everything out there. Not my face, though. That stays in my cool-ass mask.

Special thanks to Chris Charlton for assisting with translation for this story.

El Desperado is a professional wrestler who primarily competes for New Japan Pro-Wrestling, where he has captured the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship, Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championships, and NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Championships.