Ask 411 Wrestling: Was Tito Santana Considered As a Possible Face of WWE?

Welcome guys, gals, and gender non-binary pals . . . through Hel Stryer and brimstone, it’s Ask 411 Wrestling!

I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and I am here to answer some of your burning inquiries about professional wrestling. If you have one of those queries searing a hole in your brain, feel free to send it along to me at [email protected]. Don’t be shy about shooting those over – the more, the merrier.

Hey, ya wanna banner?

Tyler from Winnipeg is the ultimate maniac:

Did the Ultimate Warrior or Randy Savage say anything negative in shoot interviews towards the other?

Not that I’m aware of. With Randy Savage passing away in 2011, shoot interviews were definitely “a thing,” but we hadn’t yet made it into the era where wrestlers were dropping new interviews every couple of weeks and we now know what Maven had for breakfast the morning after he eliminated the Undertaker from the Royal Rumble.

As a result, you don’t have too many shoot comments from the Macho Man about anybody, let alone the Warrior.

We have more shoot interviews out there from the Warrior, but none of them that I was able to track down were particularly negative on Savage. In fact, he spoke about the two of them working well together and having a collegial relationship.

Steve gets applause like a matador, cry yelling “ole”:

I’ve heard before that when the WWF decided to give main-event pushes to smaller guys who weren’t obviously on steroids in the early 1990s, Tito Santana was one of the talents they considered as the face of the company, a position that ultimately went to Bret Hart and later Shawn Michaels.

This seems a bit unlikely to me, though, as Santana had recently been demoted to the lower card as El Matador and was pushing 40 (not necessarily an impediment today — recent top guy Cody Rhodes is 39 — but kind of long in the tooth for a newly minted main eventer of the time). Was Tito really in the mix? If so, how seriously was he considered, and why did the company’s view of his worth change so drastically? How successful do you think he would have been in the role compared to Hart and Michaels?

You want to know who doesn’t seem to believe that Tito Santana was “in the mix” to become the WWF Champion?

Tito Santana.

In 2022, the man from Mission, Texas sat down with WSI – Wrestling Shoot Interviews and was asked about the longstanding rumors that he was on a shortlist of four names to take the belt off of Ric Flair. Tito denied that he had ever heard about such a list at the time that these events were going down. He went on to say that, after Bret Hart won the championship, he was approached by Pat Patterson backstage with Patterson telling him that the decision for a new champ had come down to him and the Hitman.

However, Santana went on to say that, just a couple of hours later, Ted DiBiase came up to him, and DiBiase reported that Pat Patterson had also told him that he was the last guy under consideration before the call was made to go with Hart.

In other words, Tito felt like Pat Patterson had been blowing smoke up his ass.

I don’t totally deny the notion that Tito Santana’s name may have been mentioned as a potential WWF Champion at one point in time, but given the longstanding history of wrestlers trying to overstate their importance in the pecking order as opposed to understate it, if Santana himself doubts he was ever a serious contender, then he was probably never a serious contender.

How would he have done in the role? I suspect that he would have done at least as well as Bret from a business perspective, keeping in mind that early on the Hitman was not exactly a huge box office success. Though the Matador gimmick was goofy and we all see it now as the death nell of Santana’s career, you have to keep in mind that when he was first given the gimmick, he wasn’t immediately turned into a job guy. Yes, he was cycled down the card, but he still won a lot more than he lost and was competitive on the house show circuit with guys like the aforementioned Ted DiBiase. He was protected. It wasn’t really until 1993 that he started to put over other members of the roster left and right, including newer heel acts like Mr. Hughes, Razor Ramon, and Doink the Clown.

Given his still-protected status and fans’ memory of him as a popular ethnic babyface during the height of Hulkamania and a former Intercontinental Champion, I don’t think that he would have had a credibility issue at all as WWF Champion in 1992, particularly if they tuned down the new cornball gimmick just a bit. In fact, there could have been business opportunities to use him as a headliner to expand more into Spanish-speaking countries, as was done when he main evented a house show in Spain in 1991 that reportedly drew 19,000 people.

Bryan is a jam up guy:

Who’s Idea was the famous “who are you to doubt El dandy” promo by Bret hart? It was one of the funniest things ever and him mentioning “hypnosis” was the cherry on top. The thing Is, Bret isn’t funny, so I’m curious how such a funny promo came to be.

It was almost assuredly Bret Hart’s idea. This was not an era in which wrestlers were having their promos scripted for them by others. The main point of that promo was to build a television match between the Hitman and Booker T and a PPV match against an as of yet unknown opponent. All Bret probably got in terms of direction was “go talk about those two matches with Mean Gene for four minutes,” and he filled in the rest from there. That’s what wrestling was at the time.

Sadly, we never did get that Bret Hart/El Dandy dream match.

R calls another one for the good guys:

Was Sid Vicious the largest wrestler to take the Outsiders Edge from Scott Hall? Like without rope assistance? I know Scott Hall faced Kevin Nash, but I can’t find any clips of him attempting it, only him getting jackknifed.

Certainly Sid would be the tallest wrestler that Hall ever hit the move on, at least as near as I can tell. However, he might not necessarily be the heaviest. I’ve see footage of Hall connecting with the Edge on Ray Traylor, a.k.a. the Big Bossman, and while Sid was billed at 317 Traylor was billed at 330. Hall also gave the maneuver to Brian “Crush” Adams, who was billed at 315 – smaller than Sid but pretty darn close.

(And, yes, billed weights are worked, but my assumption is that everybody’s inflating roughly the same amount, so they’re close enough for comparison purposes.)

Donny from Allentown, PA runs in with some additional data:

Just thought I would add one omission to your list of wrestlers who pinned Rowdy Roddy Piper:

Adrian Adonis.

Adonis pinned Piper at the Nassau Coliseum on January 30, 1987. The finish however didn’t come without controversy as special guest referee and newly turned heel Andre the Giant helped Adonis keep Piper down as he counted to three giving Adrian the victory.

For those who missed it, this is in response to the column two weeks ago, when I was asked to list everybody who pinned Piper in the WWF.

I was able to verify that Donny is 100% correct on this one, so add Adorable Adrian to the list.

Kyle doesn’t even go here:

Which Royal Rumble event featured the most current/former TNA talent? You can use whatever is easiest for your research to decide what counts (e.g. including the pre-shows, Booker T on a panel/commentating but not actually participating in a match, etc.)

Okay, since Kyle invited me to set some criteria, let’s start by setting some criteria.

First off, I’m only talking about the main card of the Rumble, and I’m only talking about people who competed in matches, both on the TNA side and the WWE side. If you showed up on a TNA card but didn’t wrestle, you don’t count – and the same is true of WWE.

Also, I’m only counting somebody as “former TNA talent” if they wrestled in TNA before wrestling at the Royal Rumble. Cody Rhodes is a great example. He was on many Rumble shows before leaving WWE and wrestling in AEW, ROH, NJPW, and TNA. He’s since come back to WWE and been on several more Rumble PLEs. For this exercise, we are only counting the Rumble shows that occurred after he wrestled in TNA, because only at that point can you truly call him a former TNA talent.

That said, the answer to Kyle’s question is the 2025 Royal Rumble, where a whopping TWENTY-FOUR former TNA wrestlers participated on the show.

Those individuals were: 1) Johnny Gargano (who had two TNA matches in 2009); 2) Tommaso Ciampa (who also has two TNA matches to his name); 3) Alex Shelley; 4) Chris Sabin; 5) Cody Rhodes; 6) Roxanne Perez (who had one TNA bout as Rok-C); 7) Chelsea Green; 8) Zoey Stark (who competed in TNA under the name Lacey Ryan); 9) Naomi Knight; 10) Jordynne Grace; 11) Mia “Michin” Yim; 12) Zelina Vega; 13) Candice LeRae (who wrestled Gail Kim at Turning Point 2013); 14) Penta; 15) Santos Escobar (a.k.a. El Hijo del Fantasma); 16) Ludwig Kaiser (on a European TNA tour in 2009); 17) Joe Hendry (under TNA contract still at the time of the show); 18) Drew McIntyre; 19) Shinsuke Nakamura (who once beat Elix Skipper on an episode of TNA Xplosion); 20) AJ Styles; 21) CM Punk; 22) Seth Rollins; 23) Sami Zayn (who had a couple of TNA dark matches in his old racist El Generico gimmick); and 24) LA Knight (f/k/a Shaun Ricker).

In some additional interesting trivia unearthed while answering this question, though TNA formed in 2002, former TNA talent did not appear on a Royal Rumble card until 2005. Since that show, there have been former TNA competitors on every Rumble card. As you probably guessed, the addition of the women’s Royal Rumble match greatly increased the number of former TNA wrestlers on the show, since it greatly increased the number of people overall on the show. Prior to the first women’s Rumble in 2018, the average number of former TNA talent on the show was six to eight, while the average in later years has been in the mid-teens.

In addition to the names I listed above, here are a few more names that his exercise caused me to realize I had totally forgotten were ever in TNA – and you probably didn’t remember them, either: Paul London (had several X Division matches in 2003); Kenzo Suzuki (did a one off match with Perry Saturn of all people); Joey Mercury; Umaga; MVP (later as a star but in the early days as enhancement talent Antonio Banks); Jim Duggan; Hunico (under a different mask as Incognito); Fandango (enhancement work in the weekly PPV era as Johnny Curtis); and Nikki Cross (on the British Bootcamp “reality” show).

There you go. More TNA coverage than should legally be allowed.

Redmond the 2nd wants some historical analysis:

Going in 5 year increments starting in 1984 (start at the beginning of the Hogan run) up to today, list the 5 most over acts in the WWF/WWE, be they singles/tag team/manager/some other role. See any trends there?

Here goes:

1984: Hulk Hogan; Andre the Giant; Wendi Richter; Roddy Piper; Jimmy Snuka

1989: Hulk Hogan; Randy Savage; Ultimate Warrior; Roddy Piper; Ted DiBiase

1994: Bret Hart; Shawn Michaels; Razor Ramon; Diesel; Undertaker

1999: Steve Austin; The Rock; Mick Foley; The Undertaker; D-Generation X

2004: Triple H; Shawn Michaels; The Undertaker; Eddy Guerrero; John Cena

2009: John Cena; Randy Orton; Triple H; Dave Batista; The Undertaker

2014: John Cena; Randy Orton; Brock Lesnar; Daniel Bryan; Roman Reigns

2019: Becky Lynch; Brock Lesnar; Roman Reigns; Seth Rollins; The New Day

2024: Roman Reigns; Cody Rhodes; Gunther; CM Punk Drew McIntyre

What lessons can we take away from this?

The guys who the promotion pushes as its biggest stars are almost always the ones who are most over with the audiences, even though fans often like to pretend that they are controlling the narrative instead of being controlled. On this list, I see only two instances (Bryan, Lynch) where you could argue that the fans made the wrestler rather than the promotion making the wrestler.

Large, physically imposing wrestlers make up a disproportionately large number of entries on this list, though there’s a fair question to be asked about whether this is the case because they are intrinsically more equipped to get over whether it’s because they are pushed more heavily, in line with the immediately preceding point.

Stables and tag teams are almost never tops on this list.

Female wrestlers are almost never on this list, though to be fair they have not been pushed seriously for nearly as long as men have.

The Undertaker’s career was scary long and scary successful.

So, if you want to be a headliner in the WWF, be a large male who is a singles act . . . but, most importantly, be somebody who the promotion takes a shine to.

That does it for this week. We’ll return in seven-ish days, and, as always, you can contribute your questions by emailing [email protected]. You can also leave questions in the comments below, but please note that I do not monitor the comments as closely as I do the email account, so emailing is the better way to get things answered.