But he reinvented himself in Bullet Club, had a public split with the group, faced a cancer diagnosis that nearly ended his career, and made a comeback to become a two-time singles champion in his forties. He was rarely the main star, but he often stole the show.
El Phantasmo – Vancouver Roots
Riley Vigier was born on October 24, 1986, in Vancouver, British Columbia. He made his wrestling debut on October 30, 2005, for Extreme Canadian Championship Wrestling, training with Scotty Mac, Aaron Idol, and Disco Fury.
He came up in the same West Coast Canadian scene as Kyle O’Reilly, spending nearly a decade on the regional independent circuit as El Phantasmo. He became known as a flashy, comedic high-flyer with a real mean streak beneath the showmanship.
By 2016, he had outgrown the Western Canadian scene and moved to the United Kingdom, where he became a regular in Revolution Pro Wrestling.
The move paid off quickly. He won the British J-Cup in his first year and later captured the RevPro British Cruiserweight Championship. RevPro’s strong ties with New Japan Pro-Wrestling helped him get noticed by the right people.
Landing in New Japan and Joining Bullet Club
Phantasmo’s debut in NJPW was shrouded in mystery. On the first night of the 2019 New Japan Cup, a vignette teased the arrival of a new talent.
On May 4, 2019, at Wrestling Dontaku, ELP became the newest member of Bullet Club. He made an immediate impact by beating Will Ospreay in a tag match, which set the platform for a rivalry that would shape his first NJPW run.
In August, Phantasmo entered the 2019 Super J Cup, which featured top names like Sho, Yoh, Ryusuke Taguchi, Robbie Eagles, Dragon Lee, Amazing Red, and Ospreay, who was the defending IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion.
Phantasmo was not expected to win. He defeated Eagles and TJ Perkins to reach the semifinals, then surprised everyone by beating Ospreay again, having already done so earlier that year in the Best of the Super Juniors. He then faced Dragon Lee in a nearly thirty-minute final and won the tournament.
Phantasmo did not give a gracious victory speech after his win. He disrespected the Super J Cup trophy in front of the crowd, called out the soon-to-retire Jushin ‘Thunder’ Liger, and insulted Ospreay while demanding a title shot.
This kind of heel behavior made him a controversial figure, not a fan favorite, even when he won. This led to a rivalry: Ospreay and Robbie Eagles later challenged Phantasmo and his new tag partner, Taiji Ishimori, for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship.
The team of Phantasmo and Ishimori became a major force, winning the tag titles three times and the Super J Cup a second time as a duo.
Bullet Club’s Inner Circle — and Its Breaking Point
Phantasmo spent years as one of Bullet Club’s most relPhantasmo spent years as one of Bullet Club’s most dependable members, moving through different sub-factions as leadership changed from Jay White to KENTA to David Finlay.
But that stability ended. In 2023, tension grew between Phantasmo and Finlay over how to handle Jay White’s status after Finlay attacked him.
Phantasmo reportedly disagreed with Finlay’s tough approach, and Finlay remembered it when Phantasmo tried to break up a post-match beatdown Finlay and KENTA were putting on Tama Tonga, only to have the assault turned on him instead, effectively expelling him from the group he’d called home for four years.
Finlay didn’t let the moment pass quietly, either. In a scorched-earth promo aimed directly at his former stablemate, Finlay accused Phantasmo of going soft and mocked him for ever thinking he belonged among killers: Davis Finlay told him he’d gone soft and probably was never a real killer to begin with.
“ELP, when I took over Bullet Club, you put up a lot of resistance. You made my job harder than it needed to be, Mr.’ Oh, what we said in the group chat, we weren’t going to kick Jay out.’ I was never part of that group chat.
Clearly, that means you went soft. Now, I told you my Bullet Club, my War Dogs are for killers only.
Now, you’ve come a long way from being a killer. Matter of fact, I don’t think you ever were a killer. But here’s what I really want to know.
Do you regret it? Do you look yourself in the mirror, and do you regret not listening to me? I told you Jay [White] was a piece of s**t;
I told you Juice [Robinson] was a piece of s**t. I said, ‘Follow me, and I will make sure you get all the gold and all the money that you could dream of.’
But no. You wanted to be Mr. Nice Guy. Hikuleo left you. Tanga Loa left you. Tama Tonga left you.
All you have left is Jado, and where has that gotten you? You said yourself, your career has been the absolute drizzling shits, and I couldn’t agree more.
Matter of fact, you took the words right out of my mouth. Look what I’ve gone on and done.
I’ve created the War Dogs. I’ve created this [IWGP Global Heavyweight Championship].
I have made myself champion time and time again. I have made my boys champions time and time again. The people out there wear War Dogs merch.
It is a sea full of War Dogs fans. I haven’t seen one damn ELP shirt. When they cheer for you, it’s not because they love you.
It’s because they motherf***ing pity you. But I will put you out of your misery, motherf***er. Here’s the thing.
You say you’re gonna beat me within an inch of my life? What is more realistic, you beating me within an inch of my life, or me beating you within an inch of yours?
I have ten points. If I make it to 12, if I got the brackets right, that’s an automatic first place for me because I win all the tiebreakers.
Not only am I gonna beat you. I’m gonna make sure you feel every bit of pain. I’m gonna powerbomb you so many damn times ELP that you wish you never became a professional wrestler.
I mean that from the bottom of my heart. I despise you. I look at you, and I think you’re a disappointment. I hate everything about you. So when we face off, it will be my absolute pleasure to torture you,”
– David Finlay’s promo against El Phantasmo via Fightful
Phantasmo responded by joining the Guerrillas of Destiny, teaming up with Tama Tonga, Tanga Loa, and his old tag partner Hikuleo.
He officially joined the group that August after they faced off with Finlay’s War Dogs. Phantasmo and Hikuleo reunited as a tag team in G.O.D., winning the NJPW Strong Openweight Tag Team Championship twice, adding to Phantasmo’s junior heavyweight achievements.
He also became one-half of the IWGP Tag Team Champions during this time, moving beyond the junior division for good.
A Cancer Diagnosis and an Unlikely Return
The Guerrillas of Destiny eventually broke up. Tonga, Loa, and later Hikuleo all left NJPW for WWE’s Bloodline offshoot by 2024, leaving Phantasmo as the only member still in New Japan.
Then, in October 2024, his singles run hit an unexpected obstacle when Phantasmo revealed he had been diagnosed with cancer and would need to step away from wrestling.
The story had a happy ending. He returned in December at NJPW’s Road to Tokyo Dome event and announced he had beaten cancer.
Just weeks later, he challenged for his first singles title in the company, the NJPW World Television Championship, in a four-way match against Ren Narita, Ryohei Oiwa, and Jeff Cobb at Wrestle Kingdom 19.
He won, using his Thunder Kiss ’86 finisher on Narita for the pin. It is his first individual championship in New Japan after five years, and several tag title reigns.
He won the belt again in 2025, taking it back from Great-O-Khan at Wrestling Hizen no Kuni that April, and set a promotion record for combined and consecutive days as champion.
Where Things Stand in 2026
New Japan looks different now than it did. New Japan has changed a lot since Phantasmo joined in 2019. Hiroshi Tanahashi retired at Wrestle Kingdom 20.
Longtime Bullet Club members like Finlay, Gabe Kidd, Clark Connors, EVIL, and Hiromu Takahashi have all left the company.
Bullet Club itself ended earlier this year when it merged with a rival faction to form a new group, closing the chapter on thirteen years of history.
El Phantasmo did not sound nostalgic about losing the group he previously fought to stay in.
Instead, he seemed at peace with how wrestling works: he said he genuinely likes a good blockbuster trade in, comparing the roster changes to Wayne Gretzky moving from team to team and noting that each city benefited from it and about his own career arc since leaving Bullet Club, a run that’s included a babyface stretch, the Hikuleo tag team, and a stint he’s openly called “depressing.”
“You know, everyone wants Wayne Gretzky to stay with the Edmonton Oilers forever, but when he went to L.A. and went to New York and St. Louis, wherever the hell else he went, it helped those places, too.
I do find it exciting that people come and go. Okada couldn’t stay in New Japan for his whole career because then he’d just get bored and stale, and they’ve [the fans] already seen him do everything. Why wouldn’t they want to follow his journey doing something else?…
“..It was me and Naito in Korakuen, and ELP in Bullet Club had louder chants than Naito, and I was like, ‘Does anyone else hear this?’
That was kind of the catalyst of getting kicked out of Bullet Club. Because I guess Finlay and those guys did hear it, and they didn’t like that.
Then I had the babyface run, but then didn’t quite capitalize on [the popularity]. Then I had the tag team with Hikuleo, and then he left.
And then I had my whole depression arc, and then nothing really capitalized on that either. It’s been a lot of going up and then nothing happens.”
He described it as going up over and over without anything ever quite capitalizing on it</cite>, from the babyface momentum he never fully cashed in to the Hikuleo pairing that ended when his partner left for WWE.
It’s a rare level of honesty from a wrestler about his own booking, and it lines up with a career that has always rewarded him more in the ring than on the card position sheet.
Even so, El Phantasmo is still one of the busiest and most versatile wrestlers on the NJPW roster. He has continued cross-promotional work through 2025 and 2026, appearing at AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door events for three years in a row, wrestling on AEW’s Collision and Dynamite shows, and touring with CMLL in Mexico as part of NJPW’s partnership there.
He even scored a win over Barbaro Cavernario in June 2026 before another Forbidden Door match against Ospreay.
He also entered the 2026 New Japan Cup, but was eliminated in the first round by Boltin Oleg. Even after twenty years, Phantasmo is still fighting for his spot instead of relying on his past achievements.
The Long View
What makes Phantasmo’s story interesting is not a simple path to one big title, but the variety in his career. He has been a British Cruiserweight Champion, won the Super J Cup twice, held the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team titles three times, won the IWGP Tag Team Championship, and is a two-time NJPW World Television Champion.
He is also a cancer survivor who returned to win a title just months after being cleared. El Phantasmo has been both a Bullet Club insider and outsider, a junior heavyweight and a heavyweight, a villain and sometimes a reluctant fan favorite.
Twenty plus years after his first match in a Canadian independent gym, El Phantasmo is still finding new ways to make an impact in a promotion that keeps changing around him.
