Tito Santana

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

[Grimmas]

Is anybody else going to advocate him?

 

I think his selling was tremendous, his fire was great and he was just an all around great babyface through out his WWF career. In 1990 he had an awesome match, when given the chance with Mr. Perfect.

 

Heck, he was the stand out of the AWF in 94 and had one of their few awesome matches with Bob Orton Jr.

 

I'm definitely considering him. Outside of that awesome AWA match, is there any other pre-WWF matches out there?

[Childs]

He's got a shot for me. He was the best babyface worker in the WWF for a few years, and his series with Valentine was among the best in-ring feuds in company history. My gut tells me he's a just-miss once I really consider everybody. If his peak run had been twice as long, he'd be a lock.

[shoe]

I know he made my Smarkchoice list. I've been a fan. Of course their are the Valentine matches that are great. His feud with Savage was off the

charts as well. His Strike Force tag team produced strong matches with the Islanders.He had Ron Bass and Barry Windham's best match in the WWF. He also rates as one of Hennig's best matches in the WWF. I enjoyed some of his matches with Flair , and Martel . The Lawler handheld from MSG was a lot of fun. Had good matches with Bob Orton.He's a guy who they could put anywhere on the card. He truly was one of the workhorses of the WWF in the 80's.

[Childs]

I forgot about the Henning matches. I loved those and they speak to him being really good several years after his perceived peak.

[JerryvonKramer]

Tito has a shot at my top 100 for sure.

 

For me the real question will be how he measures up against the other 80s blow job babyfaces. Not just the obvious comparison points of Martel and Steamboat either ... Tommy Rogers, either of the Rockers, Jay Youngblood, Tommy Rich, Jim Brunzell ...

 

That's ultimately how I'm going to get the measure of Sananta. He's got Tom Zenk beat for sure.

[goodhelmet]

If I am going to put on Garvin and Valentine, I can't leave Tito off. He won't go high but he'll be on the list for sure.

[shoe]

With Tito I want to say the Valentine feud produced the best series of matches in the 80's in the WWF. I also think as part of Strike Force he partook in maybe the best series of tag team matches in the 80's WWF. To me that is quite the feather in his cap.

[Superstar Sleeze]

I agree, Parv, you ought to compare him to his contemporaries, but he was totally different beast than Steamboat or Martel. He was a blood feud worker. He is going to sell, but on that comeback he is going to let those fists fly. Closer to a Bruno or Hogan, but more athletic and bumpable. Top 5 WWF worker of the 80s. Great series with Valentine and Savage and then ripped it up in Strike Force. He does lack versatility. He wrestles all matches like blood feuds like The DiBiase and Rude matches post-Strike Force. As I watch more different wrestling will fall out of zzz Top 50, but should be a lock for Top 100.

[shoe]

I'll say in the WWF between 84-89 his output was better than Bret Hart. I'll say only Valentine's , or maybe Savage's output is greater between 84-89 than Tito's. Than you have your Steamboat's , Adonis, Orton types .

[ohtani's jacket]

The trouble is that '84-89 output isn't very good when compared with the rest of the wrestling world. I love Tito, but when you get outside the Valentine and Savage feuds, some of the Strike Force tags and a few random matches like the Bob Orton Jr ones, there's not a lot to hang your hat on. I always wanted to see that early Adonis/Santana match that Kevin recalled. I sometimes check to see whether it's popped up yet, but I think it's a bit of a lost cause.

[khawk20]

Perhaps you might change your mind on his 84-89 run if you measured his volume of good stuff against some of the other top WWF-only guys of the time frame. I mean, all things considered, the Valentine, Savage, random Orton matches (and at least that one St. Louis Adonis match) and Strike Force stuff seems like a lot, all things considered.

 

 

I might be wrong on that, of course, but who knows?

[shoe]

He also had a couple of good matches with Orndorff. I know JDW enjoyed his Jake match . I wasn't a fan. To me he has quite a lot of good matches that made tape. Also I saw a lot of his house show matches in the WWF from 85-89 and he always had one of the better matches.

[ohtani's jacket]

Perhaps you might change your mind on his 84-89 run if you measured his volume of good stuff against some of the other top WWF-only guys of the time frame. I mean, all things considered, the Valentine, Savage, random Orton matches (and at least that one St. Louis Adonis match) and Strike Force stuff seems like a lot, all things considered.

 

 

I might be wrong on that, of course, but who knows?

 

His resume is good by WWF standards, but for a list like this we need to compare him with guys from outside the WWF. I don't meant to handicap him with the working environment he was in, but if you compare him to today's WWE guys they have much better week in/week out stuff.

[goodhelmet]

I think the Valentine feud saves him. It wasn't just a couple of title changes and gimmick matches. It was a legitimate weekly (at the very least monthly) year long feud that helped give credibility to the IC title. There are very few, if any, WWF feuds that were as good as Tito - Valentine in the history of the promotion.

[khawk20]

Available AWA material:

 

TV angle with Sheik Kaissie where Kaissie hits him with his sword, and two follow up matches in Winnipeg (5/14/81) and Minneapolis (circa 5 or 6/81).

Santana vs. Bockwinkel (AWA title, May 1982)

Santana vs. Bockwinkel (3/1/81, Minneapolis, #1 contenders match)

Santana vs. Sgt. Jacques Goulet (11/81, St. Paul)

Santana vs. Bobby Duncum (3/25/82, Winnipeg)

Santana vs. Patera (11/5/81, Winnipeg)

Santana vs. Billy Robinson (9/24/81, Winnipeg)

w/Martel vs. High Flyers (7 minutes of 7/18/82 and almost all of the 8/29/82 rematch, both in St. Paul)

Santana/Buck Zumhofe vs. Patera/Duncum (1/82 AWA TV)

Santana vs. Jerry Blackwell (Winnipeg 12/11/80).

 

Most of these AWA matches are JIP in the usual AWA style. There might be another match or two kicking around that I'm forgetting about right now but this is most if not all of it currently available.

[Dylan Waco]

I love the Robinson clip which is about fifteen minutes of a thirty minute match as I recall

[fxnj]

The trouble is that '84-89 output isn't very good when compared with the rest of the wrestling world. I love Tito, but when you get outside the Valentine and Savage feuds, some of the Strike Force tags and a few random matches like the Bob Orton Jr ones, there's not a lot to hang your hat on. I always wanted to see that early Adonis/Santana match that Kevin recalled. I sometimes check to see whether it's popped up yet, but I think it's a bit of a lost cause.

 

It almost feels like people are rating 80's WWF guys on a curve. If he were in any other promotion I doubt a guy who had a couple good feuds over 5 years would be getting much top 100 consideration, especially when as you said, even if it may be good for 80s WWF it doesn't hold up too well when you compare it to the puro and lucha from the time period.

[khawk20]

One thing that Wrestlers from 84-89 in the WWF have going both for and against them is the amount of footage available of their regular arena work being super-sized compared with pretty much anywhere else.

 

By this, I mean that a guy like Tito might have appeared almost every month on the Boston/MSG/Phila shows from 84 through 89, and while he would have some stellar performances available, he would also have more stinkers out there than a comparable NWA guy, since they didn't have monthly big arena shows televised.

[Grimmas]

 

The trouble is that '84-89 output isn't very good when compared with the rest of the wrestling world. I love Tito, but when you get outside the Valentine and Savage feuds, some of the Strike Force tags and a few random matches like the Bob Orton Jr ones, there's not a lot to hang your hat on. I always wanted to see that early Adonis/Santana match that Kevin recalled. I sometimes check to see whether it's popped up yet, but I think it's a bit of a lost cause.

It almost feels like people are rating 80's WWF guys on a curve. If he were in any other promotion I doubt a guy who had a couple good feuds over 5 years would be getting much top 100 consideration, especially when as you said, even if it may be good for 80s WWF it doesn't hold up too well when you compare it to the puro and lucha from the time period.

 

I think the WWF gets advocated more by the folks who are voting more on great performances than for great matches. If Randy Savage was in the NWA from 84-94 he would had had more great matches to his resume, but his performance as a wrestler would be similar. Some people will vote him higher based on that, some lower. There is a real divide between Loss and Matt D in this type of thinking.

 

As for Tito, he was a great seller who showed amazing fire. Those are two really important things to me and he'll end up on my list (I think)

[DylanZero]

I was listening to a podcast where "Machine Gun" Karl Anderson said he was never a fan of Tito.

 

He's now my working number 1.

 

(But seriously he'll probably make it in as a later guy, deserving for sure)

[Dylan Waco]

 

The trouble is that '84-89 output isn't very good when compared with the rest of the wrestling world. I love Tito, but when you get outside the Valentine and Savage feuds, some of the Strike Force tags and a few random matches like the Bob Orton Jr ones, there's not a lot to hang your hat on. I always wanted to see that early Adonis/Santana match that Kevin recalled. I sometimes check to see whether it's popped up yet, but I think it's a bit of a lost cause.

It almost feels like people are rating 80's WWF guys on a curve. If he were in any other promotion I doubt a guy who had a couple good feuds over 5 years would be getting much top 100 consideration, especially when as you said, even if it may be good for 80s WWF it doesn't hold up too well when you compare it to the puro and lucha from the time period.

 

 

This is a bizarre claim. Tito's rep has gone up with many people precisely because of the fact that his feud with Valentine - and to a lesser extent his feud with Savage - are regarded as top level feuds. The Valentine feud in particular is something I would stack up next to any feud or series of matches from any place on earth from any time in the history of wrestling.

 

I also don't get the argument coming from OJ, mainly because it's coming from OJ. You are a guy who is likely to rate Euro workers based on a couple handfuls of matches. You think Satanico is the best guy of all time based entirely on his 80's footage as I recall. You have always championed peak over longevity. So are you arguing that in the case of Tito he has too much excess so the peak is hurt, or are you arguing that the peak isn't that impressive, or...what are you arguing? It just seems very inconsistent with the line you have historically taken in these discussions.

[ohtani's jacket]

I haven't decided which Euro wrestlers I'm voting for, but the number of matches we have on tape will be a factor as it has been for the lucha candidates thus far. I probably won't vote for a guy who only has a half dozen matches on tape. The only locks so far are Breaks and Grey. Grey has a better output than Tito and Breaks was a better performer, so I don't have any qualms over that. Satanico has better output and is a better performer to boot so I'm even less bothered about that.

 

To answer your question, if those years represent Tito's peak, then no, I don't think they're enough for him to be a lock for my list. My comment was really suggesting that he didn't have enough good matches during his peak to compete against a stacked field. Obviously, if people think he had all-time great feuds against both Valentine and Savage they're probably going to need less convincing, but as much as I liked those feuds, I'd probably take one match from each above the others and therefore when I run through the matches he had in my head those feuds' representation is probably smaller than in other people's minds. I could easily be swayed if I find a handful of Tito matches I've never seen before and like (matches like the Bass one, for example.)

 

I should also point out that among US guys there are only a few who are locks and a large number of famous workers whom I haven't decided about yet, but that's just my thought process. If I were making a list of the top 10 US guys in the 80s, I'm not sure Tito would make it. I'm not even sure about top 15. If he can't crack that sort of list, I wonder about his chances of making a top 100 that includes workers from all around the world and throughout history.

[shoe]

Parv and I just finished an interview with Tito for Titans of Wrestling. We talked about his career, story telling in the ring.A lot of cool insights about working a match.

[Matt D]

Did you talk about Ricky vs Tito vs Martel?