You may have never heard the name Rodolfo Guzman, but his silver-masked alter ego, El Santo, was a larger-than-life presence in professional wrestling rings, in comics and on the silver screen, helping popularize Mexico’s lucha libre around the world and entering the pantheon of pop culture icons.
“Lucha libre wouldn’t be what it is today if it weren’t for El Santo,” Mexico City’s Old Toy Museum art director Roberto Shimizu said. “And for us Mexicans, El Santo is a figure of rectitude, of integrity, of dedication. He represents every virtue.”
Even as Mexico remains in shock from this week’s devastating earthquake, the country has been quietly marking Saturday’s centennial of the birth of El Santo, or the Saint.
On Friday his son — also a pro wrestler who wears a silver mask and goes by El Hijo del Santo, or “El Santo’s Son” — hosted a Mass in memory of both his father and the victims of the quake.
Born Sept. 23, 1917, in Tulancingo, a small city about two hours northeast of Mexico City, Guzman’s family moved to the capital’s notoriously gritty Tepito neighborhood with his family as a boy. Today a statue of El Santo stands in Tepito, where he began his career.
He became a superstar after a legendary match in 1953, around the dawn of the television era in Mexico, in which he wagered his mask against nemesis Black Shadow.
Soon afterward a comic book series featuring El Santo was a smash hit, and the next step was obvious: movies.
El Santo shot his first, Santo vs. the Evil Brain, in 1958, and went on to star in nearly 50 films including the most celebrated, 1962’s Santo vs. the Vampire Women.
“While Americans had Superman, Batman or Spider-Man, we had Rodolfo Guzman, El Santo, fighting everybody from the mummies to the Nazis,” El Santo expert Felipe Carrillo Montiel said. “But unlike those American superheroes, he was a real man — you could read his comics during the week and then go see him wrestle on the weekend at your local arena.”
The silver screen cemented El Santo’s international celebrity and laid the foundations for what remains a profitable brand.
El Hijo del Santo, his youngest son and the only one who followed him into wrestling, has similarly crossed over into films and comics and even environmental activism. The younger Santo runs three stores where you can buy all manner of merchandise, from T-shirts to posters to El Santo-brand tequila.
Last week’s earthquake led to an El Santo event in Tulancingo being partly rescheduled, and a lucha libre show planned for Saturday was also postponed.
Yet, despite the muted celebrations, observers said Guzman’s legacy at 100 is palpable. This summer an exhibit in Mexico City’s Chapultepec Park showcased 100 photographs to mark the centennial, and El Hijo was the guest of honor at a celebration at city hall honoring his father.
“He was the original action figure,” Shimizu said. “His image was reproduced millions of times and every single kid in Mexico had one.”
Guzman died of a heart attack in 1984. He was buried wearing his silver mask.
Inter’s defense of their Italian Serie A title was hit with a setback on Sunday as they lost 1-0 at home to AS Roma, while Scott McTominay netted a brace as SSC Napoli beat Torino 2-0 to go top of the table. No fixtures were played on Friday or Saturday because of the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome, meaning the full round of Serie A matches took place on Sunday and yesterday. Matias Soule’s first-half strike for Roma knocked Inter off top spot earlier in the day before new Napoli opened up a three-point buffer with victory in Sunday’s
FOCUS: ‘We came out here with a goal in mind ... to keep our foot on their throat and on their neck, and continue to play 48 minutes of basketball,’ Donovan Mitchell said The Cleveland Cavaliers on Monday thrashed the Miami Heat to cruise into the next round of the NBA playoffs as the Golden State Warriors battled past the Houston Rockets 109-106 to move to the brink of a series victory. After pounding Miami 124-87 in game three on Saturday, No.1 Eastern Conference seeds Cleveland once again piled on the misery for their outclassed opponents with a crushing 138-83 victory to complete a 4-0 series win. The 55-point drubbing was the largest series-clinching victory in NBA playoff history and sets up a series against either the Indiana Pacers or Milwaukee Bucks in
Freddie Freeman homered and drove in four runs, Shohei Ohtani also went deep and Roki Sasaki earned his first major league win as the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Atlanta Braves 10-3 on Saturday night for their seventh straight victory. The Dodgers have won the first two games of the series to improve to 5-0 against Atlanta this year. Los Angeles’ three-game sweep at home early in the season left the Braves 0-7. Sasaki allowed three runs and six hits over five innings. The 23-year-old right-hander gave up a home run to Ozzie Albies, but received plenty of offensive support in his
Shuttler Lin Chun-yi yesterday kept Taiwan on the board as they faced their first major challenge of the group stage after marching into the last eight at the Sudirman Cup Finals in Xiamen, China. Taiwan were losing 3-1 to South Korea as of press time last night, with only the men’s doubles match remaining. Taiwan and four-time champions South Korea have already progressed to the quarter-finals, after Taiwan on Monday blanked the Czech Republic 5-0 without giving up a single game. Before last night’s tie, Taiwan were undefeated in Group B, with a 9-1 match record, ahead of South Korea, who, although also
RSS