Athletes - Merced Solis

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	Athletes - Merced Solis

Merced Solis (born May 10, 1953, Mission, Texas) better known by his ring name Tito Santana, is best known as a former Mexican professional wrestler whose career spanned from the late 70s to the early 90s. Despite his Mexican heritage, he rarely competed in Lucha Libre promotions, being more accustomed to the American style of professional wrestling. He is currently a teacher and hair salon owner, and is happily married to his wife Leah and has three sons named Matthew, Michael, and Mark.

Before Wrestling

Before becoming a wrestler, Santana played football for West Texas State University. The team was quarterbacked by future professional wrestler Tully Blanchard. After he graduated, he played football for the Kansas City Chiefs and in the Canadian Football League. After his time in football was up, he entered the world of professional wrestling.

Career

He worked briefly in the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) and the American Wrestling Association (AWA), but gained his fame by wrestling in the World Wrestling Federation. On October 22, 1979, he earned the Tag Team Championship with the Polish superstar Ivan Putski. In 1984, he feuded with the Magnificent Don Muraco for the Intercontinental Championship, which he won on February 11. He then entered into a historic and bitterly contested feud over the Intercontinental Championship with Greg Valentine. Valentine captured it from Santana in September, 1984 in London Ontario Canada. The rivalry intensified with Valentine injuring Santana's knee with his dreaded figure four leg lock putting Santana out of action for several months.

Tito retuned at Wrestlemania, and in the opening match defeated a masked Wrestler known as The Executioner. Tito and Greg Valentine would go ont to wrestle a memorable series of singles and tag team matches with neither gaining the upper hand. During these matches they would wrestle in a variety of different type of matches from regular title matches, to no disqualification matches, to lumberjack matches.

Tito would also employ a variety of partners in attempt to gain the upper hand. These regular partners included the Junkyard Dog and Ricky Steamboat. In these tag matches Tito would even force Valentine to submit to his own version of the figure four leg lock and this earned Santana another series of title shots at the Intercontinental Title. It is interesting to note that in this series of tag team matches we see the origins of the team of Brutus Beefcake and Greg Valentine.

As spring rolled into summer, the Santana-Valentine feud like the weather got hotter and began to really sizzle. In July, 1985, Tito Santana regained the Intercontinental Title in a memorable steel cage match. The match had one of the better endings in wrestling history. With both men trying to escape the horrors of the cage, Tito over the top and Valentine through the door it appeared that the champ would retain his title. However with Tito climbing over the cage, he was in a position to kick the door closed into "the Hammer" as he tried to escape.

The Hammer losing his title was incensed. Greg Valentine smashed the title belt repeately into the cage,destroying it, which led to the creation of a new belt design. Santana held the title for another 7 months before losing it to Randy "Macho Man" Savage. In late 1987, Tito Santana formed a tag team with former AWA World Champion Rick Martel named Strike Force. The team quickly won the Tag Team championship from the Hart Foundation (Bret Hart & Jim Neidhart) in October, 1987. The successfully defended it until WrestleMania IV (March 1988) where they lost it to Demolition (Ax & Smash). The team disappeared for the rest of 1988 until WrestleMania V in 1989. In a match against the Brain Busters (Tully Blanchard & Arn Anderson), Rick Martel left Tito to face both opponents alone.

Santana remained as a single wrestler, later adopting a Spanish bullfighter gimmick and the name El Matador. Tito more or less fell into jobber status during his last years until leaving in 1993.

He won the ECW (Eastern Championship Wrestling) Championship in 1992 by defeating Don Muraco but lost it later that year to Shane Douglas.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Merced Solis ]

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