John Cena isn’t the only major star retiring from professional wrestling on Saturday.
It’s received far less fanfare than Cena and has not resulted in the demand of the former, but El Hijo del Santo claims that Saturday will be his final match, too.
This retirement is taken with more skepticism, given it’s not the first time the son of El Santo has called it a career.
In the lead-up to this Saturday’s show, a card in Guadalajara was canceled, with Luchablog noting there were low ticket sales but underscoring the whimper that El Hijo del Santo’s career is going out on.
Mexico City is the site of his retirement match at Palacio de los Deportes with El Hijo del Santo teaming with LA Park & Ultimo Dragon against Dr. Wagner Jr., Hijo del Fishman & Texano Jr.
The card has added a match between his son, Santo Jr., and Ángel Blanco Jr. in a Mask vs. Hair match. It’s a twist where if Ángel Blanco Jr. wins, then El Hijo del Santo will lose his mask, so his son is fighting on his behalf. El Hijo del Santo unmasked Ángel Blanco Jr. in March 2012.
The son of Mexico’s most iconic wrestler, El Hijo del Santo, debuted in 1982 as El Korak but was rechristened with the famous moniker within months of his debut. He split his time between the UWA and EMLL (precursor to CMLL) and became world lightweight champion in the UWA.
He defended his mask in many prolific matches and took the hair of Black Terry, Negro Casas, Espanto Jr., Brazo de Oro, and El Dandy, among many. He unmasked El Pierroth, Aristóteles I & II, Espanto Jr., Kato Kung Lee, Silver King, Principe Island, Black Shadow Jr., Super Parka, and Misterioso Jr. this past year.
When Antonio Pena launched AAA in 1992, El Hijo del Santo joined the group and was a mainstay for the next four years before returning to CMLL.
For fans outside of Mexico, he was involved in the famous Double Hair vs. Double Mask affair at AAA’s When Worlds Collide in November 1994. Teaming with Octagon, the pair defeated Los Gringos Locos of “Love Machine” Art Barr and Eddy Guerrero in Los Angeles in the show-stealing match on one of the best pay-per-views in history.
When the WWF experimented with the Super Astros concept, he was part of the experiment and, famously, was asked to unmask and refused. Super Astros only lasted for a few months, but occurred at the height of the Attitude Era as the WWF attempted to expand its audience and observed the success WCW had with Lucha Libre (who were attempting their own concept with a pilot filmed called Festival de Lucha in 1999).
The performer continued to work with CMLL and AAA through 2006 and has since remained a freelancer while running his Todo x el Todo shows. He tapered his schedule down significantly in 2014 and dealt with a serious spinal issue around this time.
He announced a retirement tour earlier this year, but it hasn’t been met with significant demand as compared to working with one of the major offices, as evidenced by the business John Cena and Hiroshi Tanahashi have generated this year.
His son debuted as Tempestad and adopted the “Santo Jr.” moniker in 2016.
