Corporal Kirchner

Corporal Kirchner was one of wrestling’s most unusual dual figures, remembered in the United States as a straight-ahead patriotic soldier and in Japan as a wild, masked brawler in some of the most violent matches ever staged.

In the mid-1980s WWF boom he came across as a rugged, square-jawed babyface in camouflage, fighting for the American flag. A few years later, he was stalking Japanese deathmatch cards under a Leatherface mask, swinging chainsaws and steel chairs instead of saluting the colors.

He was born Michael James Penzel in Chicago in September 1957 and joined the United States Army as a teenager, serving as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division before leaving the service in his early twenties.

After the army, he settled in Minnesota, working as a mechanic and bouncer, and met Hulk Hogan in a gym. Hogan put him in touch with AWA promoter Verne Gagne, who brought him into the company’s training camp and helped him break into the business around 1980.

Penzel spent his early years on undercards before the WWF picked him up. At first, he wrestled as R.T. Reynolds, mostly as enhancement talent. When Vince McMahon learned about his army background, the office repackaged him as a military hero named Corporal Kirchner and aired vignettes of him doing survival drills to sell the idea of a tough, no-nonsense soldier.

He was positioned as a new patriotic figure after Sgt. Slaughter left the company, complete with fatigues, dog tags, and promos about discipline and country.

On WWF television in 1985 and 1986 he feuded with the hated Soviet heel Nikolai Volkoff, trading national anthems and brawls around the ring. Their rivalry peaked at WrestleMania 2, where Kirchner beat Volkoff in a short but memorable flag match in Chicago, waving the American flag afterward in one of the high points of his WWF run.

Inside the locker room he had a reputation as one of the tougher and stiffer workers on the roster, and over time that rough style plus a failed drug test in 1987 hurt his standing. After a suspension he chose not to return and quietly exited the WWF.

Kirchner moved to Canada later in 1987 and worked in Stu Hart’s Stampede Wrestling as Colonel Kirchner, mixing it up with names like Jason the Terrible and Makhan Singh, then did short tours with New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) in 1989 and 1990. The real turning point in his career came in the early 1990s, when he went to Japan’s W*ING promotion and reinvented himself as Leatherface, borrowing the horror movie villain’s look.

There, he became known for savage brawls that spilled into the crowd and used tables, barbed wire, and beds of nails. An altercation with a fan outside the ring led to his arrest and a short jail term, during which another wrestler took over the Leatherface role.

When he returned and briefly teamed with the new Leatherface in IWA Japan, a notorious 1994 nail-bed deathmatch ended with Kirchner legitimately injuring opponent Hiroshi Ono after the bell, and the promotion announced that he had been fired.

After that controversy, he signed with Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling (FMW), where he worked from the mid-1990s through 2002 under a tweaked version of the gimmick as Super Leather.

In FMW, he teamed with Chris Romero and Jason the Terrible and became part of the promotion’s core foreign crew, winning the FMW Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Championship, the Brass Knuckles Tag Team Championship with Jason the Terrible, and the World Street Fight 6-Man Tag Team titles alongside the Headhunters.

His matches there were built around heavy punches, big power slams, and stunt-style brawling that fit FMW’s crash-and-burn atmosphere. When FMW closed, he drifted between smaller Japanese groups and semi-retirement, working less often and living back in the United States.

In 2006, WWE mistakenly reported his death on its website, confusing him with another man, which led to Kirchner and his mother calling the company to correct the story.

At the time, he was making a living as a truck driver and was quoted as being surprised that so many fans still remembered his old WWF run and his decade as Leatherface. He wrestled only occasionally after that, bringing the Leatherface character back for a few special appearances and having his final match in Tokyo in January 2010.

Michael Penzel died at home in Siler City, North Carolina, on December 22, 2021, after a heart attack, at the age of 64. Fans who remember him think of two very different careers: the short, patriotic burst of Corporal Kirchner on 1980s WWF TV and the longer, darker run as Leatherface and Super Leather in Japan’s hardcore rings, both carried by the same square-jawed soldier who turned his army past into a rough and often dangerous presence in the ring.