Ricky Marvin
Ricky Marvin is officially heading back to Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide. According to a report from False Finish, the 46-year-old veteran recently signed with the promotion to work as a trainer and occasional producer. It is a smart backstage hire for a company that has been evolving rapidly ever since WWE acquired the Mexican promotion in 2025.
Since the buyout, AAA has brought in a steady wave of WWE-affiliated names to help run things behind the curtain.Wrestling legend Mark Calaway (The Undertaker) has already earned high praise for his work with the creative team,while on-screen star Pete Dunne has been picking up duties as a match producer. Bringing in a respected Mexican veteran like Marvin helps bridge the gap between WWE’s structured production style and traditional lucha libre.
A New Backstage Role for a Lucha Libre Veteran
Born Ricardo Fuentes Romero on January 8, 1980, Ricky Marvin has spent more than three decades in the ring. He made his pro debut in 1995 at just 15 years old, wearing a mask as White Demon. Wrestling was already in his blood.His father, a retired pro known as Aries, taught him the basics before passing the torch to legendary CMLL trainers Ringo Mendoza, Negro Casas, and Memo Diaz.
Now, in 2026, Marvin is shifting his focus toward coaching the next generation. He actually has a tiny bit of history with his new parent company, having attended a WWE tryout in Chile back in December 2018. Coming back to AAA also makes for a nice family reunion, as his brother Rolando currently wrestles there as Mini Histeria.
Early Days in CMLL and Becoming Ricky Marvin
Before he became a cult favorite overseas, Fuentes paid his dues at the Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL) wrestling school starting in 1998. That was where he ditched the mask and came up with the name Ricky Marvin—a mashup of his own first name and his favorite cartoon character, Marvin the Martian.
It didn’t take long for his frantic, high-flying pace to catch on with crowds. In July 1999, he teamed up with Sombra de Plata against Fugaz and Sangre Azteca in a match so electric that the arena gave all four men a standing ovation. That single performance booked them a rematch at the CMLL 66th Anniversary Show two months later. By November 2000, Marvin beat Virus to claim the Mexican National Lightweight Championship, holding the belt for over a year.Before wrapping up his main CMLL run, he also took part in the 2003 “Guapos U” reality-show storyline, where a bitter feud with classmate Zumbido ended in a draw—and both men getting their heads shaved in the ring.
Making History in Japan with Pro Wrestling NOAH
While Mexico gave Marvin his start, Japan is where he built his legacy. He first toured the country in late 1999 and ended up winning the CMLL Japan Super Lightweight Championship twice before the branch folded in 2001. He kept coming back anyway. A brief 17-day run with the NWA World Welterweight Title in Último Dragón’s Toryumon promotion in 2002 convinced him that his real future was across the Pacific.
In 2003, Ricky Marvin signed with Pro Wrestling NOAH, kicking off a remarkable twelve-year tenure that defined his career:
- Breaking Barriers with Kotaro Suzuki: In January 2007, Marvin and Suzuki beat The Briscoe Brothers for the GHC Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship, becoming the first foreign-and-Japanese duo to ever hold the belts.
- The Mushiking Feud: From 2005 to 2007, Marvin pulled double duty under a mask as Mushiking Joker,playing the arch-enemy to Suzuki’s masked alter ego, Mushiking Terry.
- Three-Time Tag Champion: After Suzuki went down with a knee injury in 2010, Marvin teamed with Taiji Ishimori to win the vacated tag titles. He grabbed them a third time in 2012 alongside Super Crazy as Los Mexitosos.
- Chasing Singles Gold: When Marvin beat Satoshi Kajiwara for the vacant GHC Junior Heavyweight Championship in October 2011, he refused to keep the belt. Instead, he handed it right back so he could earn it properly against Katsuhiko Nakajima, who had only dropped the title due to injury. Nakajima ended up beating him the following month, but the gesture cemented Marvin’s reputation with the Japanese crowd.
Previous AAA Runs and the Bengala Mask
Even while spending most of his time in Japan—plus a handful of Ring of Honor appearances in 2007 and 2013 against guys like Roderick Strong and Davey Richards—Ricky Marvin regularly popped up in AAA. He teamed with Latin Lover and La Parka at Verano de Escándalo in 2007, and picked up a big win at Triplemanía XVI the next year alongside Crazy Boy and Último Gladiador.
His full-time return to AAA in the 2010s took a few wild turns. After joining the Los Perros del Mal faction in 2013, he quietly disappeared and returned in May 2014 under a mask as the babyface character Bengala. Nobody officially acknowledged it was Marvin under the hood. In his very first match as Bengala, he pinned his former faction leader, El Hijo del Perro Aguayo. He kept the mask on in both AAA and Lucha Underground until 2016, when Super Nova took over the character.
Back as himself, Marvin immediately turned heel to form Los OGTs with Averno and Chessman. The trio beat Los Xinetes for the AAA World Trios Championship in November 2016, holding the belts until Faby Apache pinned Marvin in a singles match in March 2017 to win the titles for her family. By October, Marvin was back on the free-agent market.
The Indie Hustle Leads Back Home
Leaving AAA didn’t slow him down a bit. Over the last eight years, Marvin has been a staple on the global independent circuit. He took Dr. Cerebro’s hair in a 2018 IWRG main event, worked dates for MLW and GCW in the States, and even launched his own promotion, La Cueva del Dragon, in 2021—booking himself against Bandido in the main event of the first show. As recently as June 2025, he was flying out to Germany to wrestle Aigle Blanc for wXw.
Now, with 31 years of bumps and miles on the odometer, Ricky Marvin gets to pass on what he knows. Few wrestlers alive understand both the fluid chaos of Mexican lucha libre and the stiff precision of Japanese junior heavyweight wrestling quite as well as he does. For a new-look AAA roster trying to blend traditional Mexican wrestling with WWE’s global television standards, you couldn’t ask for a better coach in the back.
