Tully Blanchard pitched him on wrestling at West Texas State
Tito Santana broke down how he traded football for professional wrestling on the In The Front Row podcast, and the entire transition started with his college quarterback at West Texas State.
“Tully Blanchard was, was our quarterback at West Texas State, and he started talking to me after the my junior year, and his father was a promoter in San Antonio of professional wrestling. He owns South Texas, and he says, My dad thinks you can make a lot of money, you know in wrestling. And I’m thinking, you know these guys know that I don’t know anything about wrestling, and they’re talking about a lot of money.”
Santana had signed with the Kansas City Chiefs as a free agent for $18,000 a year. Joe Blanchard told him a different number entirely.
“I met the Father. We went to the very last game of my senior year, and he says, Merced, you could be making I signed with the Chiefs for $18,000 a year, was my contract as a free agent, and I was making more than some of the other guys that signed as free agents. And he said you could be making 85 grand.”
The Chiefs cut him after a bad ankle injury
Santana said an injury in training camp ended his shot in Kansas City before it really started.
“I had a little brief moment with the Kansas City Chiefs. You know, I was a free agent, and I was there, actually, I started every preseason game, and then I got before preseason. I two weeks before I really had a bad ankle injury, and I had some cortisone shots, and I was in crutches for a week. And then, you know, long story short, I turned in a real bad 40 time when they timed me and when I got caught, the coach said, Coach Wiggins, he says, You’re a hell of an athlete, but you’re too slow. And I was not smart enough to tell him to re tie me.”
He went to the BC Lions in the Canadian Football League and played there before finally calling Tully back.
“I told Tully, after my first year in Canada, I came back, and I said, I want to play one more year in Canada, and then I want to give wrestling a shot. So, you know, Joe Blanchard talked to me, and he says, You know, I hope I’m not repeating myself. You could be making 85 grand in wrestling, and I’m thinking 18,085 grand.”
Florida training under Hiro Matsuda almost made him quit
Santana said the reality of starting at the bottom in Florida hit hard. He was paying rent and watching his football savings drain away.
“I went for Christmas and I said, Mama, I’m not, I’m not gonna spend Christmas with you guys. I’m gonna go start training to be a professional wrestling My mom says, professional wrestling. What is that? Because none of us were wrestling fans in South Texas.”
He moved to Tampa and trained under Hiro Matsuda. The early payoffs were brutal.
“I’m on my way to, you know, to Georgia Championship Wrestling. And you know, I got a guarantee… Little did I know Joe Blanchard had talked about 85 grand? I thought once I started wrestling, I had no idea the payoffs. I mean, I go to, I drive 300 miles, make 50 bucks, spend 60, you know, to make the trip.”
Terry Funk and Eddie Graham saved his career
Santana said he was ready to walk away and go back to football until Terry Funk intervened. Funk was the world champion at the time and on his way to wrestle Dusty Rhodes.
“He called me in to the heels because back then, you used to keep the good guys against, I guess the bad guy, you kept them in different locker rooms. So they walked me over to the heels locker room. And he says, How do you like it, my boy? And I said, Well, I kind of liked it, but, you know, but I’m not making any money. I said, I think what I’m going to do is, because I had signed a contract to go back to BC, to Canada, and I said, I think I’m going to just give it up and go back and started getting ready for football.”
Funk made a phone call that changed everything.
“He said, Well, let me talk to Eddie Graham. Eddie Graham was a promoter in Florida, so in the morning they called me, they said, Eddie Graham wants to meet with you. So Eddie Graham took me out to lunch, and we had a discussion. And one thing led to another. He says, I don’t think you need to go to football, and they started booking me a little bit.”
After Georgia Championship Wrestling and a stop in North Carolina, the money kept climbing. “In about a year, I was making quite a bit more than I was playing, doing, playing football, and, you know, turned out to be a, you know, great move for me.”
Santana, born Merced Solis on May 10, 1953 in Mission, Texas, was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2004 with an induction speech delivered by Shawn Michaels. He played tight end at West Texas State (now West Texas A&M University), where he and Tully Blanchard were teammates. Joe Blanchard founded Southwest Championship Wrestling in San Antonio in 1978 and ran it until selling the promotion in April 1985. Joe Blanchard died of squamous-cell carcinoma on March 22, 2012 at the age of 83. Terry Funk died in August 2023 at age 79, and Eddie Graham died in 1985.
You can click below to watch the full interview.
