Victor Quiñones
Victor Quiñones (June 30, 1959 - April 2, 2006) was a Puerto Rican professional wrestling promoter, the founder and owner of International Wrestling Association. Quiñones was primarily a manager for The Headhunters and Mr. Pogo, but was affiliated with Terry Funk, Mike Awesome, Hisakatsu Oya and Cactus Jack in the stable Funk Masters of Wrestling.
Quiñones was one of the prominent managers of the pioneering hardcore wrestling promotion Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling, and also was the founder and owner of two hardcore wrestling promotions in Japan:
- Wrestling International New Generations (W*ING)
- International Wrestling Association of Japan (IWA Japan)
In July 1988 when Bruiser Brody was stabbed in Puerto Rico, Quinones had to call a radio station, to broadcast that they needed an ambulance urgently and a local ambulance driver heard the call over the radio at a local restaurant and made his way to the scene.
Quiñones retained strong connections with many professional wrestling federations outside Puerto Rico, and was known for his extraordinary booking/promoting faculty. He was a very rich person and took very good care of wrestlers. Japanese wrestler Taka Michinoku was heavily helped by Quiñones when he had been to outside Japan. Thanks to Quiñones, he could wrestle in ECW, WWF (USA), AAA (Mexico), IWA (Puerto Rico), FMW (Japan), and he has stated that without Quiñones' help, he wouldn't be able to start Kaientai Dojo and that Quiñones was like a father to him.[1] Kintaro Kanemura reminisced about Quiñones as "If I didn't meet him, maybe I would die in the middle of America" (when he first arrived in North America, he had only ¢20).[2] Mitsunobu Kikuzawa described Quiñones as the No.1 promoter in the world.[3] Tajiri has referred to Quiñones as his biggest mentor in wrestling.[4]
On April 2, 2006, Quiñones died in his home in San Juan, Puerto Rico.[5] Soon after the death, several Japanese federations and wrestlers, including Taka Michinoku and Tajiri, paid tribute to him by having special ceremonies.
References
- ↑ An article of Taka Michinoku's official blog(in Japanese)
- ↑ An article of Kanemura's official blog(in Japanese)
- ↑ An article of Kikuzawa's official blog(in Japanese)
- ↑ Tajiri's official blog article November 24, 2010 (in Japanese)
- ↑ An article of wrestling journalist Kagehiro Osano's official blog (in Japanese)