El Zorro

Jesús Cristóbal Martínez Rodriguez (born July 25, 1975) is a Mexican luchador (professional wrestler) who is best known as El Zorro.

His gimmick started out very similar to the fictional character Zorro complete with mask, but in recent years it has evolved and the mask has been eliminated.

He is best known for his work in the Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide (AAA) promotion in Mexico, where he is a former AAA Mega Champion.

He has in the past worked both in Europe, Japan and made a few brief appearances for the World Wrestling Federation show WWF Super Astros.

He was the "Deputy leader" of the La Legión Extranjera faction headed by Konnan.

In 1995 he changed identities and began working using another masked gimmick known as Junior instead.

While working as "Junior" he managed to win the Occidente Light Heavyweight Championship from but lost his mask to Cesar Dantés (Younger brother of Apolo Dantés).

In 1996 he began to work for the short lived "Promo Azteca" where he adopted the El Zorro gimmick.

In Promo Azteca he teamed up with another young wrestler, Tarzan Boy and won the WWO World Tag Team Championship.

When Azteca folded Rodriquez began working for various companies all over Mexico, he even found himself making a couple of appearances on the World Wrestling Federation's Latin based Super Astros where he worked as Jesus Cristobal, essentially using the Zorro gimmick but without the mask.

Zorro began working for AAA, later known as Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide some time near the beginning of the century, mostly working low card matches.

In 2002 Zorro won the UWA World Light Heavyweight Championship, his first of five reigns with the title.

Not long after winning the UWA title Zorro defeated Héctor Garza to also win the Mexican National Heavyweight Championship, thus becoming a double champion.

Zorro's first big storyline with AAA was a feud with Mr. Águila over both the UWA Light Heavyweight title and the National Heavyweight titles, resulting in the two trading the titles back and forth several times in 2003 and 2004.

After the storyline with Mr. Águila ended Zorro was put together with Charly Manson, a member of La Secta del Mesías (the biggest rudo or "villain" group in AAA) who wanted the Mexican National Heavyweight title.

Zorro kept the title away from Manson until the two met at Triplemania XIV inside a steel cage.

In order to get the match Manson was forced to put his hair on the line making it a Luchas de Apuestas ("Bet fight") where the loser would get his hair shaved off.

The match saw interference from La Secta del Mesías giving the victory and the National title to Manson.

After shaving off Zorro's hair La Secta del Mesías placed a black mask on Zorro's head (One similar to Slipknot's Mick Thomsons Mask), the storyline was that the mask had an ancient Mayan curse on it and could not just be removed.

In the weeks after La Secta put the mask on Zorro he seemed more erratic and not in control of himself.

The storyline progressed with Manson revealing that he had mental control over Zorro through the mask and used that control to have Zorro turn on his friends and do his bidding.

The mind-control aspects of the story were dropped and instead they explained it by the mask having a bad influence on Zorro.

When Manson left La Secta and joined up with Los Hell Brothers, turning tecnico ("good guy") in the process and the storyline with Zorro hit a dead end as there was no possible payoff left any more.

Eventually the writing staff figured out a way to end the "trapped in a mask" storyline by having Zorro overcome the "evil influences" so that he could remove the mask and present it to the leader of Los Hell Brothers (Cibernético) as a proof of his good intentions.

After removing the mask Zorro's character seemed a bit rougher, he his beard and hair had grown wilder while he wore the mask and he seemed more vicious in his attacks on the heels.

After a while Zorro shaved and had his hair cut, reverting to the persona he had before the "evil mask" storyline began.

At the 2007 Verano de Escandalo Zorro teamed with Los Hell Brothers in a Domo De La Muerte cage match against the Black Family.

Zorro escaped early on in the match leaving his team at a disadvantage.

After Los Hell Brothers won the match a man came to the ring wearing the "iron mask" but that turned out to be Konnan.

When Zorro appeared on the scene moments later he turned on the tecnicos, attacking them with a kendo stick.

After the show Zorro claimed that he was shown the light; he was actually a Spaniard, not Mexican, and was against the Mexican contingent in AAA.

Joining Konnan's La Legión Extranjera ("Foreign Legion"), El Zorro dubbed himself "El Profeta de la Lucha Libre" ("The Prophet of Wrestling") and, as part of his new character, began making prophecies, often accurately predicting future events.

After Zorro's turn it became more and more obvious that Konnan considered El Zorro his "main man", the two even turned on AAA Mega Champion El Mesias and La Secta when Mesias did not want to grant Zorro a title match.

The storyline lead to a three-way world title match between Zorro, El Mesias and Cibernético at Guerra de Titanes.

During the match Cibernético received second and third burns to his back after La Legión put him through a table on fire (Cibernético was legitimately injured, it was not planned).

At a television show taping a few weeks later a storyline played out where El Zorro and the rest of La Legión Extranjera attacked and injured El Mesias so bad that he was hospitalized.

This was a storyline constructed to cover up the fact that El Mesias was returning to his native Puerto Rico for a few months.

In December 2012, Martínez was repackaged as La Parka Negra, the storyline nemesis of La Parka.

He returned as El Zorro in October 2013, before departing the company in February 2017.

Martínez made his debut at age 17 at the "Plaza de Toros Jorge Rivera" in Zapopan, Jalisco working as an Enmascarado (masked wrestler) called Neurosis.