bit of a surprise, as he was asked by the local Juárez wrestling promoter to fill in when one of the scheduled wrestlers failed to show up for that night's show. Wearing what was described as "underwear and old boots" (in reality sports shorts and a pair of borrowed boots) Nájera wrestled under the ring name "Goliath Reyes" and lost the match. He continued his training for several months before he began working as a full-time luchador. Instead of working as Goliath Reyes he created the masked character "Titán", complete with a colorful jacket that his mother helped him create. After working as Titán for about a year Nájera was inspired by an off-hand comment from a tag team partner that the eyes on his mask looked like a fish. Taking that comment and pairing it with the popularity of superheroes such as Batman and Superman he came up with the character "Fishman". He designed a gold-and-black-colored mask with a design that was inspired by the shape of a manta ray wrapped around his face. After making a name for himself in Juárez as Fishman Nájera was called on by Empresa Mexicana de Lucha Libre (EMLL), Mexico's largest wrestling promotion, and began working regularly on shows in Mexico City. When he came to Mexico City EMLL officials asked him to change the colors of his mask as the gold and black was too close to the mask of El Solitario, one of EMLL's headline wrestlers. Nájera changed the colors to a bright emerald green base and yellow markings, a color scheme that would later lead him to be dubbed El Veneno Verde ("The Green Poison") by wrestling magazines and fans. Empresa Mexicana de la Lucha Libre (1971–1978) In Mexico City he would stay at the guest house of wrestlers José Luis Mendieta and Jesus Reza, known as Rambo and Mano Negra respectively, as he started to work for EMLL full-time. He made his debut on the same night that El Solitario unmasked Ángel Blanco, working in front of a much larger crowd than he had in Juárez. Fishman's more brutal wrestling style, common in Juárez but not so in Mexico City, almost immediately made him a rudo (wrestlers who portray the "bad guys") with the fans. During his early days he won a couple of low ranking masks, defeating El Médico I, El Monarca and Professor Konak in Luchas de