Professional wrestling has had its share of scary gimmicks. The Undertaker, of course, leads the way, along with Kane, Bray Wyatt, Mankind, and Papa Shango. Wrestlers have also portrayed horror movie icons Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th and Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street in the ring as well. Then there’s Leatherface. The human skin wearing, chainsaw-wielding bad guy from Tobe Hooper’s 1974 film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is not only one of the scariest film villains, but he was also a gimmick for a former WWE wrestler. Here’s how the man behind Corporal Kirchner went on to become Leatherface.

Corporal Kirchner Was Meant To Be A Replacement For Sgt. Slaughter

Drug Use Led To Corporal Kirchner Leaving WWE

• Michael Penzel first went by RT Reynolds.
• Sgt. Slaughter left the WWE in 1984.
• Corporal Kirchner feuded with Nikolai Volkoff and the Iron Sheik.

Michael Penzel was signed by WWE in 1984. He started out in obscurity as a wrestler named RT Reynolds, but then Vince McMahon came up with a better character for Penzel. Since he served in the 82nd Airborne, Vince turned him into a pro-American babyface gimmick named Corporal Kirchner. He dressed in camo and spoke about his love for America, which is all a babyface really needed to do to get over in the 1980s.

In a 2006 interview with Slam Wrestling, Kirchner said his character was to replace Sgt. Slaughter, who had left WWE. While he had a few memorable feuds, including with Nikolai Volkoff and the Iron Sheik, he never became a big star. Part of that, sadly, was from his own doing. He told Slam Wrestling:

“I had my drawbacks, I got suspended for drug use up in Canada, it was right outside Toronto. Me and six other wrestlers were suspended that night for testing positive for drugs.”

That was in 1987. Kirchner was suspended for six weeks, which gave him a lot of time to think. When it was time for him to return, he called WWE and told him he wouldn’t be coming back.

Corporal Kirchner Then Went To Stampede Wrestling In Calgary

In Calgary, Kirchner Met Japanese Wrestlers Who Changed His Life

• Corporal Kirchner was out of a job after quitting WWE.
• Kirchner loved working for Stu Hart.
• Kirchner befriended Japanese wrestlers in Stampede Wrestling.

After leaving WWE, Kirchner had to decide what to do next with his wrestling career. He ended up in Calgary, working for Stu Hart’s Stampede Wrestling. It wasn’t anywhere near as big or as popular as WWE, which is exactly why he liked it. Kirchner told Slam Wrestling:

“It was a good crew. It was a nice change of pace, smaller territory. It was almost a time off. The money wasn’t the same, but like I said, I really enjoyed being up there and working for Stu. He was a great guy.”

Working in Stampede Wrestling also led to his next adventure. It was there that Kirchner met Japanese wrestlers Hase and Shinya Hasimoto. He then decided to join them in Japan, where he would spend ten years of his life, and become one of the wildest wrestling characters imaginable.

In Japan, Corporal Kirchner Became Leatherface

Corporal Kirchner Was Suspended For Punching A Fan

• Kirchner competed in New Japan Pro Wrestling.
• Leatherface was born in a new promotion called W*ING.
• After Rick Patterson became Leatherface, Kirchner became Super Leather.

Kirchner then went to New Japan Pro Wrestling and a new Japanese promotion called W*ING. It was then that Leatherface was born. The owner of W*ING, Kiyhoshi “Mickey” Ibaragi, wanted more horror characters in his company, so Kirchner, who loved The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, decided to portray the film’s main villain. Leatherface made his W*ING debut in 1992 with an insane entrance that saw him coming through the crowd with a chainsaw, which he would use to scare the audience and make them run away. A wrestler that looked and acted like that couldn’t be a traditional mat specialist, so Leatherface went hardcore in bloody matches, even using nail brushes and nail beds. It’s hard to look at him and not see the later likes of Terry Funk’s Chainsaw Charlie in WWE or Mick Foley’s Mankind.

Just like he messed up his WWE career, Kirchner then messed up his time as Leatherface, but not with drugs this time. While out one night with other wrestlers in Tokyo, a man told them to go back to America. At first they just pushed the man away, but when he kept antagonizing them, Kirchner struck back. He told Slam Wrestling:

“I turned around and, bad judgment, I just hit him one time in the jaw. I knocked him out. I just set him against the building and we just kept walking. I thought nothing of it. That’s what happened there. So I did four months in a Japanese prison for bad judgment, a $10,000 fine, and I got banned for a year.”

A year later, in 1995, Kirchner was back, and the character was bigger than ever, now rechristened as Super Leather because Rick Patterson had been portraying Leatherface in IWA while Kirchner was gone. Kirchner kept working in Japan, winning championships, and in 1999, as Super Leather, he even worked one ECW match, defeating a rookie named Rhino. He retired from wrestling full-time a few years later. On December 22, 2021, Mike Penzel, the man behind Corporal Kirchner and Super Leather, passed away from a heart attack. He was only 64. Penzel may have never been a huge star in WWE, but he was influential on the wrestling scene and created one of the scariest characters in history. How many other superstars do you know who got to portray movie characters and chase after people with chainsaws?