El Desperado Enmascarado

El Desperado Enmascarado is a fictional masked wrestler from the GWA Worldbook, the recorded history of the Great Western Wrestling Alliance territories. He wrestled the Rio Grande Valley circuit from 1963 to 1975, across the Frontier and Expansion eras, and held three championships between July 1963 and April 1964.

BASIC INFORMATION

Ring Name: El Desperado Enmascarado
Nickname(s): "The Gringo Desperado"
Billed From: "The Borderlands"
Origin: West Texas and New Mexico oil country
Height: 6'0"
Weight: 225 lbs
Active: 1963 to 1975
Territory: Rio Grande Valley
Finishing Move: Border Stampede (running powerslam with knee drop)
Championships: GWA Rio Grande Valley Championship (2 reigns), GWA Radio Championship (1 reign)

CHARACTER PROFILE

Background

He came into the Rio Grande Valley in 1963 out of the oil patch in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico. He wore a lucha mask and spoke broken Spanish. Promoters billed him from The Borderlands.

The mask was dark fabric with no bright flourishes and no lettering. He answered crowd noise by crossing his arms, tilting his head, and turning the mask toward the loudest part of the building.

RIO GRANDE VALLEY CAREER

1963 is the busiest documented year of his career: 108 recorded matches, of which he won 42. The Rio Grande Valley Championship changed hands eight times that year, and he held it for two of the eight runs.

The territory ran a bilingual house style that combined lucha technique with Texas brawling. He wrestled slow and hold-based against it. He took dates across the full loop, from the Sam Houston Coliseum and Beethoven Hall down through Brownsville and Del Rio, and across the bridge into Ciudad Juárez and Monterrey.

His last championship match was in April 1964. He took Valley dates for another eleven years, in the opening and middle of cards, through the back half of the Frontier era and all of the Expansion era. He retired in 1975.

CHAMPIONSHIP HISTORY

GWA Rio Grande Valley Championship, first reign

Won July 21, 1963 at Border City Beatdown in Brownsville, Texas, beating "Grit" Garrett Carter. Lost September 2, 1963 at Railroad Rumble in San Angelo to "Railroad" Rick Rhodes. The reign ran 43 days.

GWA Rio Grande Valley Championship, second reign

Won December 8, 1963 at Masked Mystery in Ciudad Juárez, beating Joe Frontier. Lost February 1, 1964 in San Antonio to Pedro Ramirez. The reign ran 55 days.

GWA Radio Championship

Won January 19, 1964 at Masked Mayhem in Los Angeles, beating Jim Morton. Lost April 5, 1964. The reign ran 77 days. The Radio Championship was defended on radio broadcasts, and he was the first masked wrestler to hold it. He gave his interviews in English and in broken Spanish, and border stations carried both.

From January 19 to February 1, 1964, he held the Radio Championship and the Rio Grande Valley Championship at the same time. Those thirteen days are the only period he held two titles.

RIVALRIES

Pedro Ramirez. They met sixteen times in 1963, more than Desperado faced anyone else. Ramirez took the Rio Grande Valley Championship from him in San Antonio on February 1, 1964, in a technical match with the mask at stake. Ramirez tore the hood loose in the finish, the stipulation went unmet, and Desperado left San Antonio without the title and still masked. Ramirez wrestled masked himself, as El Águila.

"Grit" Garrett Carter. Thirteen matches in 1963, including the Brownsville main event that gave Desperado his first championship.

"Railroad" Rick Rhodes. Rhodes ended the first reign at Railroad Rumble in San Angelo and the two met again through the rest of the year.

He faced Sam Frontier fifteen times in 1963 and Lady Lightning thirteen. In tag matches he teamed with "The Gentleman" James Montgomery and Outlaw Hawkins, most often against pairings drawn from the territory's Mexican and Tejano wrestlers, among them El Fuego and Rico Vega.

PRESENTATION

Physical appearance

Six feet even and 225 pounds, thick through the chest and shoulders, with arms that were dense instead of sculpted. He carried a forward lean that never straightened out, and he pressed weight down instead of lifting it clean.

The mask was plain dark fabric, cut without ornament, with tight and uneven eyeholes. The eyes behind them were light colored. He was clean-shaven under the hood, with short hair between light brown and dirty blond. He wrestled in a tight short-sleeved cotton shirt, plain dark trunks with minimal striping, and scuffed black boots laced tight. He came to the ring in a black cowboy hat. Away from the arena he wore button-down work shirts, denim or heavy canvas, worn boots, and the same hat pulled low. He never looked festive, local, or permanent.

Ring style

A power wrestler. Waist locks, body slams, and grinding mat control, with his weight pressed down on opponents until they tired. He broke the rhythm of faster men and slowed matches to a crawl. The Border Stampede, a running powerslam into a knee drop, finished the matches he won.

He rarely rushed. He glanced toward the crowd after breaking a hold. When a match frustrated him he tightened his grip instead of raising his voice, and he removed his hat with a slowness that read as mockery.

AUDIENCE CONNECTION

Catchphrases

• "El desierto no tiene dueños… solo sobrevivientes."
• "I didn't cross the border. The border crossed me."

Fan interaction

Border audiences met him with noise from his first appearance to his last. He stood over opponents after a pin with his arms crossed. Under the mask he could be seen smiling when the booing swelled. Radio carried him past the Valley, and the line that followed him for twelve years came out of one of those interviews.

Valley crowds spent twelve years wanting to see the mask come off. Pedro Ramirez came closest, in San Antonio, and it never happened.

LEGACY

The 1963 record holds two reigns with the territory's top championship inside six months, taken from Garrett Carter and Joe Frontier, lost to Rick Rhodes and Pedro Ramirez. He was the first masked holder of the GWA Radio Championship, and for thirteen days in the winter of 1964 he carried two belts at once.

He took Valley dates for twelve years without leaving for another territory. He wrestled 108 recorded matches in 1963 alone and lost more of them than he won. He kept the hood through every attempt to take it, including the one in San Antonio that came with the title on the line.

He retired in 1975. His name appears on Rio Grande Valley cards from Brownsville to Monterrey across thirteen calendar years, and on the championship lineage twice.