Tito Santana born Merced Solis played tight end for West Texas A&M University, where he was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity. The team was quarterbacked by future professional wrestler Tully Blanchard, who would introduce him into the world of professional wrestling. After graduation, Solis was cut by the Kansas City Chiefs during training camp. He played one season for the BC Lions of the Canadian Football League, appearing in 13 regular-season games. He pro debuted in Championship Wrestling from Florida in 1977, also worked in Georgia Championship Wrestling in 1977-78, until he joined the World Wrestling Federation in 1979. After a near 3 year run in the American Wrestling Association from 1980 to 1982 he returned to World Wrestling Federation in 1983. In July 13, 1979 Santana paired with The Jaguar of Colombiain a match for the WWF Tag Team Championship, but lost against Johnny and Jerry Valiant in a bout that held place in Newburgh, N.Y. Santana had his first taste of WWF success in 1979 when he teamed with Ivan Putski to defeat Johnny Valiant and Jerry Valiant for the WWF Tag Team Championship at Madison Square Garden in October 1979. The duo held the titles for close to six months before losing to the Wild Samoans in April 1980 In 1983, he engaged in a lengthy feud with Intercontinental Champion Magnificent Don Muraco. Santana finally won the title on February 11, 1984, becoming the first Mexican-American wrestler to win the WWF Intercontinental Championship. Shortly before winning the Intercontinental Championship, Santana fought The Iron Sheik to a double-disqualification for the WWF World Heavyweight Championship at the Philadelphia Spectrum. After successfully defending the Intercontinental Championship against Muraco, Santana would be targeted by Greg Valentine, and in September 1984 in London, Ontario, Valentine defeated Santana to win the title. Soon after, the plot had Valentine injuring Santanas knee and putting Santana out of action for several months. Santana returned in December 1984 and set his sights on getting the Intercontinental title back from Valentine. During this time he started using The Hammers finishing hold, the Figure four leglock and also wrestled in tag-team competition with Blackjack Mulligan. Santana wrestled at the first ever WrestleMania at Madison Square Garden in March 1985, and in the opening match defeated a masked wrestler known as The Executioner (Playboy Buddy Rose), making him submit to the figure four in 4:05. Santana made an appearance in the ring later in the card during the IC Championship match between Valentine and the Junkyard Dog, Santanas friend. Wearing street clothes, Santana rushed to the ring to inform referee Dick Kroll that Valentine had used his feet on the ropes to help pin JYD. Despite having already called for the bell, Kroll restarted the match and Valentine was counted out as he didnt get back into the ring to continue. Santana and Valentine went on to wrestle a memorable series of singles and tag team matches with neither gaining the upper hand. They wrestled in a variety of different types of matches such as regular title matches, No Disqualification matches, and Lumberjack matches. Santana recaptured the Intercontinental title from Valentine in a brutal steel cage match in Baltimore on July 6, 1985. Valentine, incensed over losing the belt, destroyed it by repeatedly bashing it against the steel cage. This forced the WWF to get a new Intercontinental title belt (in reality, the WWF had made a new IC Championship belt to go along with the new image they were trying to promote and smashing the old IC belt was seen as a way of moving forward with Santana being the first to wear the new belt). Tito would hold onto the title until February 8, 1986 when he lost it to Randy Savage at the Boston Garden after Savage knocked him out with a foreign object that went unnoticed by referee Danny Davis. Although Santana lost the IC title before the WWFs storyline that Danny Davis was a corrupt official who clearly favoured the heels, the WWF used Santana losing the belt because of Davis bias to include him in a six-man tag team match at Wrestlemania III on March 29, 1987 where he teamed with The British Bulldogs against The Hart Foundation and their new partner, former referee Dangerous Danny Davis. Davis had also been the assigned referee when the Harts stole the WWF World Tag Team Championship from the Bulldogs in January 1987. The story for WM3 being that the Bulldogs and Santana wanted revenge on Davis as the one responsible for losing their respective titles. The Harts and Davis won the match when Davis used manager Jimmy Harts megaphone to knock out and pin the Bulldogs Davey Boy Smith. Santana making his way to the ring in the late 80s. Santana formed the popular tag team Strike Force with Canadian Rick Martel in the late 1980s. They defeated the Hart Foundation for the WWF World Tag Team titles and held them for five months before losing to Demolition at Wrestlemania IV. Due to a neck injury inflicted on Martel (kayfabe) shortly after the loss, the team was inactive for several months. Immediately after the injury, Santana introduced a new tag team to the WWF, the Powers of Pain, whom he briefly managed. The Powers were introduced as mercenaries to help Martel and Santana gain revenge on Demolition for both the title loss and the injury to Martel. The Powers would later find more permanent management with The Baron before finally turning heel at the 1988 Survivor Series by stealing away Demolitions manager Mr. Fuji, leaving the champions as babyfaces. Martel returned at the Royal Rumble in 1989 and reunited with Santana. However, in their WrestleMania match against the Brain Busters (Tully Blanchard and Arn Anderson), Martel turned on Santana during the match after accidentally being hit by Santanas Flying forearm smash. Martel refused to tag in and walked back to the dressing room leaving Santana to face both opponents alone (the Busters then easily defeated Tito with a Spike piledriver). In an interview with Mean Gene Okerlund immediately following the match, Martel called Santana a loser and said he was sick and tired of carrying him. His feud with the newly heel Martel would last throughout 1989, with both men on opposing teams at both SummerSlam and Survivor Series and Santana defeating Martel in the finals of the 1989 King of the Ring tournament. Tito even allied with his former archenemies Demolition against Martel, defeating him and The Fabulous Rougeaus in a six man tag match on June 22, 1989 in Hartford, Connecticut. After the Ultimate Warrior won the WWF Championship from Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania VI and vacated the Intercontinental Title, Santana took part in an eight-man tournament to name a new Intercontinental Champion. Santana made it to the finals, where he lost to Mr. Perfect. Following that loss, Santana occasionally teamed with fellow fan favorite, Koko B. Ware. At the 1990 Survivor Series, he teamed with Nikolai Volkoff and The Bushwhackers. He was the winner and sole survivor in the elimination-style match against Sgt. Slaughter, Boris Zhukov, and The Orient Express. As a result, Santana advanced to the final elimination match, teaming with Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior against Martel, Ted DiBiase, the Warlord, and Power and Glory. Santana would eliminate the Warlord before being pinned by DiBiase. Santana would then wrestle at WrestleMania VII, losing to The Mountie in a little over a minute. While taking a short hiatus from the World Wrestling Federation, he wrestled in IWCCW briefly where he held a feud with Tony Atlas. On an IWCCW card in Brooklyn, New York, Atlas defeated Dusty Wolfe. After the bout, he openly challenged any of his fellow wrestlers to try and beat him. Tito Santana immediately responded, charging out and dropkicking Atlas out of the ring. Following the event, Santana and Atlas scheduled a match for June 15 in Nassau, Bahamas for the IWCCW title, where Santana sought to avenge his former tag team partner Ivan Putski, whom Atlas had hung over the ropes previously. Santana had the upper hand in the bout until Atlas manager Tony Rumble interfered by distracting and enraging Santana from the ring apron. During the verbal altercation between the two and then Santana going after Rumble, Tony Atlas took the opportunity to blindside Santana with a pair of brass knuckles from behind. The referee saw this illegal attack, and disqualified Tony Atlas. Santana then adopted a Spanish bullfighter gimmick and the nickname El Matador in 1991. Under this gimmick, he faced Shawn Michaels in the opening bout of WrestleMania VIII at the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis, Indiana. Santana claims that at the time he was being considered for a run with the WWF Championship but says that the spot was given to Bret Hart; the WWF was considering expanding into South and Central America, and felt that having Santana, its most high profile Latino wrestler, as champion would aid its cause. The plan was eventually scrapped and the decision was made to expand into Canada, thus making the Canadian-born Hart a more viable option as champion. In any case, Santana wrestled under the El Matador gimmick through 1993, mostly as a jobber to the stars. This included a loss to Papa Shango at SummerSlam (1992). In his final in-ring WrestleMania appearance, he defeated Shango at WrestleMania IX in the untelevised opening match. In his final appearance on WWF programming, Santana defeated friend and frequent tag team partner Virgil on a 1993 episode of Wrestling Challenge. As a sign of mutual respect between the two, both men embraced after the match. Santana, along with only Hulk Hogan, holds the unique distinction of appearing in the first nine WrestleManias, accumulating a 2-7 record during that time. Officially he is recognized only for the first eight Wrestlemanias and a 1-7 record as the match against Papa Shango at WrestleMania IX was dark. On Right After Wrestling, hosted by Arda Ocal and Jimmy Korderas, Tito stated that he was somewhat disappointed with being in the first match at the original WrestleMania in 1985.[6] Vince McMahon told Santana that his reason for putting him in the opening match was to kick the show off with a quality match, something he knew Tito, as a solid fan-favorite and former Intercontinental Champion, would produce. Unfortunately for Santana, despite winning the IC title later in 1985 and two years later winning the Tag Team title as part of Strike Force, he would never again win a televised match at a Wrestlemania event. Santana played a role in the formative years of ECW. Then known as Eastern Championship Wrestling, he won the ECW Heavyweight Championship in August 1993 by defeating former WWF rival Don Muraco but forfeited the championship later that year to Shane Douglas. After leaving ECW, Tito Santana returned to IWCCW where he wrestled some of his old WWF rivals such as Hercules Hernandez, Rick Martel, and Greg Valentine. During his second stint, he won the vacant IWCCW Heavyweight Championship (a title which had been vacated by Tony Atlas a man Santana first feuded with during his first stint in IWCCW back in 1991, Tony Atlas had left IWCCW for WCW back in 1992) with a tournament victory over Greg Valentine who later claimed the title in a rematch. In IWCCW Santana resumed his feuds from the WWF with Rick Martel and Greg Valentine. Santana also agreed to a title vs title match with Valentine when Valentine was IWCCW champion and Santana was AWF champion. During 1994 and 1996 Santana wrestled in the short-lived American Wrestling Federation. He was both the first and last AWF Heavyweight Champion, defeating Bob Orton, Jr. in a tournament final for the inaugural belt in November 1994, and losing and regaining the title from Orton on the same night in October 1996. Santana was slightly considered the top babyface of the company, and its major champion along with Orton (who was the top heel)
Posted on: Mon, 28 Jul 2014 12:16:53 +0000
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