El Santo

About me:

To say that El Santo is just a lucha legend would be a huge understatement. He was more than a luchador with a parallel acting career. Santo is a cultural icon, a social phenomenon whose impact in the Mexican society is enormous in many different ways. Santo was a superhero like Superman, Batman or Spiderman - but with the difference that Santo was real and you could go to watch him wrestle every week, while the others were just comic characters. It's safe to say that Santo is the most popular wrestler ever in his home country, and he's much popular Inoki, Choshu, Thesz, Hogan, Austin and many others were and are. The only one that comes close to Santo is Japanese cultural hero Rikidozan, and anyway, he's actually Korean


On January 26, 1984 he appeared in the lucha special of the talk program "Contrapunto" (Counterpoint), and partially removed his mask in a totally unexpected way. Some say that he did this because he felt that he was dying


As on February 5, two weeks after he took his mask off on a national TV program, Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta felt a tremendous pain in the chest after his debut as an escapist at the Teatro (teather) Blanquita. He was taken to the Mosel Hospital but nothing could be done. Santo was dead.


The following day this was the biggest piece of news all over the country. Each and every magazine and newspaper extensively covered the news in the first pages, and all the TV and radio stations had special Santo programs


During his life, Rodolfo had the opportunity to be two different persons, but during death he chose to be Santo. The following day he was buried with his mask on in what is considered to be the biggest burial in the history of Mexico. Proof that the whole country mourned Santo's death was that an estimated crowd of 10,000 showed up and literally blocked the streets to the point that it took several hours until the coffin made it to the mausoleum. Several wrestlers like Mil Mascaras and Blue Demon, Ray Mendoza, Charles Bronson Mexicano, Enrique Llanes and a teary Wolf Ruvinskis showed up to give Santo his last goodbye. Hijo del Santo and Huracán Ramírez among others, carried the coffin to the Mausoleo (mausoleum) María del Ángel where Santo rests in peace.


Up to this day, Santo is still an important piece of the history of the country and also a relevant part of the Mexican folklore. Even now, more than fifteen years after his death, everybody in Mexico knows about El Santo. His films are still shown on TV from time to time and after all those years they are still good ratings grabbers. Many magazines (not just lucha or movie magazines) still publish Santo articles or even special issues. In November of 1999, Somos ("We are") published a Santo special that included several pictures of Rodolfo Guzmán without his mask. El Hijo Del Santo threatened to sue Televisa (owners of the magazine) but since the source of the pictures was one of his brothers the lawsuit was dropped


One could say that as long as there is lucha libre in Mexico, there will be Santo, but even if there wasn't lucha, Santo would still be alive in the heart of the Mexican citizens


(written by Jose Fernandez) This page is just a tribute and not officially affiliated with El Santo.