Jonathan Figueroa was never supposed to fly. Born in Brooklyn in 1982, a city where pigeons outnumbered dreamers, he grew up small in a business that worships giants. But instead of running from that reality, he launched himself into it—literally. In a sport of hulks and monsters, Amazing Red decided he’d be the meteor. The trick worked. For two decades, he burned across wrestling’s sky, brilliant, brief, and always at risk of turning into rubble on impact.
Red didn’t pick the “Amazing” part of his name. That came courtesy of Savio Vega during his Puerto Rico run with IWA, who probably looked at him soaring off the ropes and thought: this kid’s either going to change wrestling or break his neck trying. Both were true. By the early 2000s, Red was the face of a new kind of wrestling: high-risk, high-speed, high-body-count.
The X Division’s Sparkplug
When NWA-TNA launched in 2002, Red wasn’t just part of the X Division—he was its living, breathing, front-flipping manifesto. He won the X Division title, then doubled down by holding the NWA Tag Titles with Jerry Lynn at the same time. In an era when AJ Styles was carving out his legend, Red was right there beside him, a crash-test dummy turned cult hero.
Fans loved him because he looked breakable. He wasn’t Samoa Joe smashing skulls or Jeff Jarrett politicking his way into another reign. Red was the underdog who could hang with anyone because gravity was more of a suggestion than a rule. Every time he climbed the ropes, you thought: he’s going to kill himself. Every time he landed on his feet, you thought: he might be immortal.
Of course, immortality doesn’t last. Victory Road 2004 saw him tossed into a 20-man gauntlet, and not long after, he was gone. TNA moved on. But his fingerprints were everywhere.
The Brothers and the Phenomenon
Red had blood in the business. His cousins Joel and Jose Maximo were his tag partners in The S.A.T., and together they introduced tag-team moves so ridiculous you needed a physics degree to understand them. With AJ Styles, he formed Amazing Phenomenon, an indie superteam that won the ROH Tag Titles and feuded with The Prophecy and the Briscoes.
It didn’t last. Red’s knee exploded in All Japan in 2003—ACL shredded, dreams paused. He wrestled under names like Misterio Red and Airwalk Spriggan (because apparently “Amazing” wasn’t extreme enough), but the damage was real. The knee surgery benched him for a year, and he learned the hardest truth: wrestling remembers what you did, but it never waits for you to come back.
WWE’s Drive-By
WWE flirted with Red the way it flirts with every indie darling—call him in, let him wrestle a dark match, then quietly ghost him. In 2005, he wrestled CM Punk in a match no one saw, then in 2012, he did another tryout. WWE didn’t bite. Red was too small, too fragile, too… amazing. They didn’t know what to do with someone who could outshine their carefully built stars by accident.
The TNA Return: Glory and Punishment
By 2009, TNA brought him back, and he rewarded them with fireworks. He tangled with the Motor City Machine Guns, Suicide (yes, an actual character name), and eventually won the X Division title for a second and third time. He beat Samoa Joe, retained at Bound for Glory, defended against Brian Kendrick. For a moment, it felt like Amazing Red had finally broken through.
Then reality checked him. Doug Williams cashed in on him, Matt Morgan turned on him, Kurt Angle beat him like a rented mule. He had title runs, yes, but he was still treated like a firecracker—fun to light, even more fun to watch burn out.
And then came Sangriento.
TNA, in its infinite wisdom, put a mask on him, renamed him Sangriento, and made him wrestle Suicide. Imagine being Amazing Red—one of the most innovative wrestlers of his generation—and being forced to play Luchador #3 in a storyline that could’ve been written on a cocktail napkin. He left TNA in 2011, likely with more scars than paychecks.
House of Glory: Building His Own
If WWE and TNA didn’t know what to do with him, Red figured it out himself: he built a house. Literally. House of Glorybecame his training school and promotion, producing the next wave of wrestlers, including Private Party and giving a stage to countless dreamers. Red wasn’t just a flier anymore—he was a builder, a mentor, the guy who handed kids the wings he’d almost broken.
And in HOG, he became champion on his own terms. He held the Heavyweight Title for 364 days, lost it in a no-ropes match, and even turned heel against his own students. Red the mentor became Red the villain, because in wrestling, you can teach your kids one minute and betray them the next. That’s not bad booking—that’s life.
The Retirement That Didn’t Stick
In April 2019, Red announced his retirement. His neck was shot, his body a roadmap of surgeries, his legacy secure. Fans mourned. The high-flyer who changed the game was finally grounded.
But like every great wrestler, retirement lasted about as long as a hotdog at intermission. A few months later, New Japan called, and Red answered. He walked into the Super J Cup, squared off with Will Ospreay, and got beaten in the first round. But the match wasn’t about winning—it was about being remembered. Ospreay called him an inspiration. Fans stood up. Amazing Red was back, even if just to remind us that he’d never really left.
Wrestling’s Broken Angel
Red is married now, with two kids, a family man who spent his youth wrecking his body so his students wouldn’t have to. Except they will. Because that’s wrestling. The road repeats itself.
He’s not in the Hall of Fame. He doesn’t have statues or mainstream recognition. But ask anyone who wrestled in the indies in the 2000s, or anyone who flipped off the top rope because they saw Red do it first, and they’ll tell you: he mattered.
Will Ospreay calls him a pioneer. Fans call him underrated. His students call him coach. His body probably calls him an idiot. But in the grand carny world of professional wrestling, Amazing Red is something rarer: the guy who made the impossible look normal, until normal wrestlers tried it and broke themselves trying.
Jonathan Figueroa, the fragile acrobat, the fragile god. Amazing, even now.