"El Santo" (January 1981)

"El Santo" presents Dusty Rhodes with a baseball and a plaque.

Championship Wrestling from Florida, January 1981.

"In January, 1981, I appeared on Florida television wearing a mask.     However, it wasn’t the Assassin’s mask.     It was the loose-fitting, white, sequined mask.     I called myself El Santo.     El Santo was an extremely well-known, masked, Mexican wrestler, and there was a heavy concentration of Latinos not only in Tampa, but in Miami and Fort Lauderdale.     I pretended that I couldn’t speak English.     My Spanish accent was so bad that it made Lucy Ricardo sound like a native of Mexico.     I praised Dusty Rhodes on television and called him out to present him with a plaque and souvenirs from Mexico.     One of the items I had for Dusty was a baseball.     When Gordon Solie asked me to present it to Dusty, I pretended that I didn’t understand him.     Gordon said, "El base-ee-bahl."     I nodded and took it out of my bag.     Gordon then said, "I understand you also have a plaque for Dusty."     Once again, I looked at him questioningly.     Gordon described the plaque by drawing an outline of a plaque in the air with his hands.     I pulled the plaque out of the bag and bashed Dusty over the head with it.     I then pulled off the El Santo mask, revealing the black-and-gold Assassin mask that I wore underneath, and said, "Do you remember this?"

Hamilton, Joe; Teal, Scott (2014-04-05). ASSASSIN: The Man Behind the Mask (Kindle Locations 3598-3599). Crowbar Press. Kindle Edition.