He was born José Jorge Arriaga Rodríguez in El Paso, Texas, the son of Mexican immigrants, raised in the gritty streets of El Segundo Barrio. His earliest days weren’t spent dreaming of bright lights or championship belts but helping out at his grandfather’s funeral home across the border in Juárez. Between embalming lessons and lugging caskets, he picked up wrestling — first on the mats of Burges High School, where he became an undefeated Texas state champion in 1996, and then in the world of lucha libre, where a mask promised reinvention.
Arriaga’s road to fame was anything but straightforward. Wrestling first as Místico de Juarez and later as Incognito, he bounced between Mexico’s AAA, the NWA, TNA, and indie promotions in the U.S. He was good — fast, technical, and creative — but the shadow of another Místico (Luis Urive, who would later become the original Sin Cara) forced him to keep reinventing himself, his ring names shifting like the masks he wore.
By 2009, WWE came calling. Arriaga signed a developmental deal and began working in Florida Championship Wrestling, eventually becoming Hunico, part of a tag team called Los Aviadores. He was solid, versatile, bilingual — the kind of talent WWE could plug into almost any storyline. And then fate intervened.
In 2011, WWE needed a new Sin Cara. The original had been suspended, and Arriaga was handed the mask. For a while, there were two Sin Caras — Sin Cara Azul (Urive) and Sin Cara Negro (Arriaga) — culminating in a Mask vs. Mask match in Mexico City, where Arriaga lost and was unmasked. But instead of fading, he reinvented again. As Hunico, he played a street-tough character riding to the ring on a lowrider bicycle. Later, when Urive was released, Arriaga became Sin Cara full-time — this time with staying power.
Alongside Kalisto, he found new life as half of The Lucha Dragons, winning the NXT Tag Team Championships in 2014 and thrilling crowds with high-flying double-team spots. For five years, he was WWE’s Sin Cara, a steady mid-card presence who could connect with Latino fans in both English and Spanish. But by 2019, frustration with creative direction led him to walk away. “The character was dead,” he was told by WWE brass. Arriaga wanted more.
He went back to Mexico, adopting a new-old name: Cinta de Oro (“Golden Ribbon”), with the blessing of the family of the original luchador who carried the moniker. It was more than rebranding; it was a nod to legacy, to keeping history alive while carving out his own.
In 2023, Arriaga doubled down on independence, founding Cinta De Oro Promotions, his own company. At 46, he’s still wrestling, still wearing the mask, still navigating the fine line between anonymity and stardom that lucha libre demands.
But the story of Cinta de Oro isn’t just about masks or championships. It’s about resilience. From El Paso’s barrio to WWE’s global stage, from being the “other Místico” to becoming the longest-tenured Sin Cara, José Jorge Arriaga built a career on survival, reinvention, and stubborn perseverance.
And when the mask finally does come off for good, it’s likely the man behind it will still be telling stories — about lucha libre, about family, about El Paso — and about how a kid from the borderlands wound up living out the kind of improbable journey that wrestling, at its best, was made for.