Negro Casas

José Casas Ruiz (born January 10, 1960) is a Mexican professional wrestler (called a Luchador in Spanish) and professional wrestling trainer working for Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide (AAA) under the ring name Negro Casas. He is the son of former wrestler turned referee Pepe Casas, and part of the large Casas wrestling family; brother of professional wrestlers El Felino and Heavy Metal and uncle of Puma, Tiger, Canelo Casas, Rocky Casas, Danny Casas and many more. Casas has trained several wrestlers, including Mephisto, Kazushige Nosawa, T. J. Perkins, Rocky Romero, and Ricky Marvin. Casas has worked all over the world, making appearances for the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in the United States of America as well as touring with New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) in Japan for over a decade. In Mexico, Casas is known for his work in Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL), wrestling sporadically for the promotion from 1980 until 2023. Casas has also wrestled in Mexico for the Universal Wrestling Association (UWA), World Wrestling Association (WWA) and International Wrestling Revolution Group (IWRG). In 2008 Negro Casas joined with Mr. Niebla and Heavy Metal to form the group La Peste Negra (Spanish for "the Black Plague"), a group that would later be joined by El Felino. Early life Casas was born in 1960, the son of professional wrestler Pepe "Tropi" Casas, and grew up around Tlalpan. Casas described his childhood as a happy and normal one, even though his father would be away from home for long stretches as he wrestled all over Mexico and the United States. Casas' father first took him to a wrestling show when Casas was five years old, bringing him to an event across the border in the United States. Casas became hooked on wrestling from the moment he saw the first match, with his first idols being his father, Aníbal and El Solitario. Casas played football, soccer, volleyball and baseball while still in school and even started training in professional wrestling classes taught by his father and Raúl Reyes. José and his brothers, Heavy Metal and El Felino, often sat at ringside during their father's matches, pretending to be upset or cry whenever their father looked like he was getting beat up in the ring, a ploy that their father had taught them to help gain crowd sympathy.