Where Wrestling's Regional History Lives!
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Where Wrestling's Regional History Lives! |
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- Manuel Gonzalez Welcome to the WWC region here at Kayfabe Memories. As I stated on my first article several months ago, Puerto Rico’s WWC was and actually is a promotion that had great competitive action and was, at a time, considered the third top promotion in the world, behind WWF and NWA in the mid-late 80's. But how this promotion began? Well, this is the topic of this issue, the very first steps of the WWC. Going back into the history, in late 1973, several wrestlers, probably José Miguel Pérez, Carlos Colón and Victor Jovica, among probably others, began studying the idea of forming a promotion in Puerto Rico, where wrestling was reigned by the NWA who traveled one or two times per month from the Florida (promoter Clarence Lutrell) and did good shows, with crowds well more than 5000 fans, since the mid 70's. Since the NWA promotion basically didn’t use local wrestlers, some local wrestlers, like Perez, who had been in a promotion in 1969 that brought Abdullah for the first time to Puerto Rico in 1969, gave birth to what is today, WWC, in late 1973. That year no wrestling shows were presented and basically they used those final months to prepare to launch the promotion in 1974. Sketchy details exist of their very first show. International Wrestling Association, IWA promoter Victor Quiñones, told me some facts about the very first WWC show. It took place at the Hiram Bighorn Stadium, on January 6, 1974. Jose Miguel Perez was billed on the show as Puerto Rican Champion and probably defended the title. Meanwhile, Gino Caruso, who was Colón’s partner in Stampede in mid 73, teamed with Carlos Colón, in his first match in Puerto Rico, to work against two wrestlers that had international fame and that has worked in Puerto Rico for other promotions, Maravilla and Huracán Castillo. He didn’t remember what names they used, probably those, because they were known in the USA and Canada as the Castillo Brothers, Raoul and Fidel, respectively. According to Quiñones, Colón and Caruso won the North American Tag Team Titles. Castillo and Maravilla were billed champions on arrival and lost the titles there. Quiñones remembered that because his father was the promotion’s lawyer and he worked selling tickets for the show and remembered just a couple of events of that show. More...
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