Who Is The Mat Man? 1989 - Portland Wrestling Mystery

The Matman Mystery....

In 1989, a masked wrestler named Matman joined Portland Wrestling. At first, we just had an interview. Everyone agrees that Scotty the Body was donning the mask and cape that night.

In July of 1989, Moondog Moretti had a match with the Matman, who was, in Moondog's words, "The Shits!" It has been said that Bert Prentice was in Portland at the time, and he had a "friend" or protege with him that took the Matman gimmick to the ring for the first time. No one knows who that might have been. Matman came to the rescue of Rex King on the 8-5-89 episode, and it was clearly a different wrestler. The general consensus is that Pat Tanaka was under the mask this time.

Many members of the Fans of Portland Wrestling group on Facebook thought it might have been Ricky Santana, instead of Pat Tanaka, but Ricky confirmed, in the comments, that it was never him.

Thanks to Mike Rogers for covering this interesting topic in

The Encyclopedia of Portland Wrestlers book.

I was scanning some photos and came across this one. This is marked 6-17-89 on the back, but that date could be wrong. That's not a Scotty the Body chin. Is it a Pat Tanaka chin? Or is this the Bert Prentice protege?

The full episode with Matman.

8/5/89