“RAWRRRRRRR!”

AEW’s The Beast Mortos, on the impact of restrictive tariffs on a country’s economy and trade relations.

There are certain individuals, possessing a certain something about their personalities, who just seem made to be pro wrestlers. Whether it’s their physical presence or something about them when they walk onscreen or into a room, you can just feel that they’re meant to be mixing it up in the ring. Could one look at Minoru Suzuki, Kota Ibushi, or Roman Reigns and picture any of them working in your Human Resources department or supervising a construction project? Certainly not, as that construction project would end in disaster and HR complaints would pile up as your employee practiced piledrivers in your office, undoubtedly resulting in further complaints. 

My new favourite wrestler and yours, The Beast Mortos is one of these personalities. Nothing is more ‘pro wrestling’ than a stunningly attractive man donning a hideous bull mask and some confluence of bondage gear and a viking getup and communicating entirely in grunts and roars. Like a kind of reverse were-beast, Mortos sheds his human skin and becomes a feral, cloven-hoofed monster that lays waste to his opponents. He flings men both small and large in and around the ring as though they’re nothing. He charges at his hapless foes like the mask has actually transformed him into a rampaging bull or an angry mountain goat. Maybe it has. 

For most of his time in Mexico and just before breaking through into the American mainstream in All Elite Wresting, Mortos was known as Black Taurus, an equally appropriate moniker for a wrestler as beastly and bullish as this. But due to the particular politics of lucha where a company owns a wrestler’s gimmick even if the wrestler doesn’t work for them, he was forced to leave that name in the possession of Mexico’s AAA promotion and rebrand. But the essential parts – the mask, the grunting, the incredible and uncontrollable strength – remain. Mortos abides. 

Architect of the Gentlemen of Asskickery hall of fame and our evil overlord Carol is a fan of the more whimsical aspects of wrestling, and less so the more serious-face ones. We are, unfortunately for fans with these proclivities, in a more serious period for AEW where our fun-loving babyface heroes like Orange Cassidy are being pushed to the limits of their patience by a violence-loving cult called the Death Riders, led by Jon Moxley. We’ve just come out the other end of a deeply and deadly serious violent feud between Hangman Adam Page and Swerve Strickland, leaving both to (literally) grapple with the aftereffects and trauma of having committed acts of unspeakable violence to one another. This feud has seen such no-laughing-matter story beats as a home invasion, arson, and outrageous – even by AEW standards – matches that feature blood drinking and syringes. There is still plenty of whimsy to be found in the promotion, but it is decidedly on the back burner. 

The Beast Mortos straddles these two worlds. He’s big, and mean, and has recently joined forces with one of my favourite factions, La Faccion Ingobernable. Having taken on many members and different forms over the years and spanning at least three countries – Mexico, Japan, and America – LFI is a group of individuals with the common defining trait of being ungovernable. They play by their own rules, they never abide by norms or rules, and they play dirty when they need to. This current incarnation is led by veteran luchador and fellow bovine enthusiast “El Toro Blanco” Rush and his brother Dralistico, as well as wrestling veteran Jake “The Snake” Roberts. Mortos fits right in with this ragtag bunch.

But what makes The Beast Mortos an appropriate candidate for the hall of asskickers that Carol has so carefully curated and cultivated over the years is the counterbalance and dissonance between his beastly and brutal persona and his outside-the-ring elegance. The Beast Mortos is a scholar, and is pursuing a law degree, both in storyline and in real life. I, for one, would fear for anyone opposing me in court with Mortos as my public defender. Professional as he certainly is, there’s always the possibility that Frank Mortos, Attorney at Law..ahem, RAWWWRRR will hit the opposing prosecutor or even their star witness with an avalanche gorilla press. And that’s after humiliating them with a powerful closing argument.

And what could be more gentlemanly than that? Being able to flatten one’s foes one minute while being thoughtful and scholarly  the next is a hallmark of nearly all the Gentlemen and Gentlewomen of Asskickery. Mortos would be the first of this illustrious bunch to be part bull, at least according to the information I have available to me, but I don’t feel that that should be a disqualifying factor. And, okay, I would not call any single move in Mortos’ repertoire ‘graceful’ in the way that I would describe every move in the arsenal of my last entry into the pantheon of Asskickery, Kazuchika Okada. Guess what, though – even the styled, poised Okada who can make a dropkick look like a classical work of art doesn’t have a law degree.  And further, while anything looks brutish when delivered by a man in a bull mask, there is a certain elegance to the way that Mortos moves about the ring. 

And, unlike Okada or many of the wrestlers I currently consider among my favourites, The Beast Mortos is the sort of over-the-top wrestling character I love. Sure, Kenny Omega and Minoru Suzuki are wrestling personas just as much as Mortos is but they’re far more subtle. Omega and Suzuki would not be quite as out of place in aisle 3 at Trader Joe’s or Don Quixote as Mortos almost certainly would be. It takes approximately zero seconds from the time that Mortos emerges from the curtain to know precisely what he’s about*, and that’s a man-bull that very much wants to run straight through you as though you were made of marshmallow. The nuances of his personality and wrestling persona aren’t that important past that because Mortos wears his horns on his sleeve. The overwhelming majority of what you need to know about him can be gleaned from just taking a gander at his terrifying mask and black leather bondage-y gear that might be most associated with a character from the Masters of the Universe…verse. 

Mortos and La Faccion Ingobernable are currently embroiled in a feud with another over-the-top character, the superhero-like Hologram. It’s the kind of very unsubtle good-guy vs a league of baddies that’s typical of lucha but is less and less common in modern American wrestling. A far cry from the 80’s and 90’s, American wrestling as presented by WWE and AEW is a smorgasbord of ‘shades of grey’ characters whose heel status is far more fluid and situational. Truth be told, that’s how I prefer most of my wrestling stories, but I think there’s also ample room for straight-ahead stories about a time-traveling android confronting an angry were-bull. Wrestling is, after all, a land of exquisite contrasts. And while most people will be out here cheering on the Holograms of the world, you can find me firmly in the corner of The Beast Mortos, a true Gentlebull of Asskickery.

*or at least be curious!

Sachin Hingoo is raaaaaawr, rawr raaawr. Rawwwwwr, rawr raaaaawr rawwr. Rawr.