Charlotte gave him Ricky Steamboat’s real name
Tito Santana broke down on the In The Front Row podcast how he wound up with the ring name that stuck for 40-plus years. The first stop was Charlotte, where they handed him a name that already belonged to another future legend.
“When I went to Charlotte, they changed my name to Richard Blood, which was Ricky Steamboat’s real name. And I was there for a couple of years, and then I was going to come back to New York, and I was going to come to Andre the Giant helped me get into New York.”
Andre, he said, was the one who got him in front of Vince McMahon Sr.
Vince Sr. told him ‘Merced Solis’ was not catchy
When the senior McMahon got involved, the conversation went directly to marketing.
“Vince McMahon SR says, come up with a name with a catchy name. Is it Merced Solis? Just not catchy. And I liked there was a guy in my hometown. His name was Santana, so I went to do my first TV taping in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and he says, You’re going to be Tino T i n o Santana and I went and wrestled and signed. You know, those autographs got to be pretty valuable, if anybody kept them. Tino Santana.”
The name Tino lasted exactly one taping.
“I came through the curtains, and Vince McMahon, senior and senior, they were both waiting for me, and he says, From now on, you’re going to be Tito Santana. And I said, Okay, you can call me whatever you want. You know, I knew New York was the biggest territory, and you know, I got to wrestle in front of in Madison Square Garden from the 24,000 people. And I knew there was a place to be. And you know, I was getting a break.”
Dino Bravo gave him the Arriba catchphrase in Minneapolis
After about a year in New York, Vince McMahon Sr. told Santana he needed more seasoning. Santana lost the tag titles and was sent to the AWA in Minnesota, where he found himself working with Dino Bravo.
“Dino was in Minneapolis. Dino and I had become friends in Atlanta in 1977 so, you know, I went to Minneapolis. You know, he, you know, back then, it was like the mafia, you know, the promoter, the promoters would share the talent, and you know, everybody worked together. And I got there, Dino Bravo was there, and I was doing my interviews, and I finished my first interview, and Dino says, Dino, you need to come up with something catchy.”
The next week at TV tapings, Bravo had a plan.
“He says, do your interview in English. Finish it, you know, in Spanish, and get, you know, kick it in gear in Spanish. And then when you finish, when you right before you leave, holler, raise your fist up and Arriba, you know, it’s actually doing it before you know it. Everybody was doing Arriba, and they still do it.”
Hearing 24,000 fans yell it back at him
Santana said when the catchphrase took hold, he knew he had broken through.
“It was, it was unbelievable, unbelievable to be able to get the response from the fans. You knew, I knew I made it when they were hollering, Arriba, you know, I’d get to arenas. You know, I was in the prime of when everybody, everything started expanding. Where we went from going to small arenas to all of a sudden doing nothing but big arenas. And I remember, you know, we go to the coliseums, and there was, like, people. All lined up, wrapped around the building, you know, completely sold out.”
He said the WWF was turning away as many fans as they were letting in. “As soon as they’d see me, man, they go, you know. And I would always, you know, I was always a good guy. So, you know, I was always grateful that they, they were responding to me. And, you know, I think, you know, we made a connection with the fans.”
Santana, born Merced Solis on May 10, 1953, was billed during his WWF run as hailing from “Tocula, Mexico,” a fictional reference apparently meant to evoke the actual Mexican city of Toluca. Ricky Steamboat’s real name is Richard Blood, and Steamboat was working out of Charlotte’s Mid-Atlantic territory in the mid-1970s when Santana arrived. Dino Bravo, born Adolfo Bresciano, died of a gunshot wound at his Montreal home on March 11, 1993 at age 44. Andre the Giant died of congestive heart failure in Paris on January 27, 1993 at age 46. Vince McMahon Sr. died on May 24, 1984.
You can click below to watch the full interview.