Carlos Edwin Colón González Sr. is a Puerto Rican wrestling promoter and retired professional wrestler, better known as Carlitos Colón or simply Carlos Colón. He is, along with Victor Jovica, an owner of the Puerto Rican wrestling promotion World Wrestling Council (WWC), where he has held the WWC Universal Heavyweight Championship a record 26 times. He is the patriarch of the Colón wrestling family, composed of his sons Carlos and Eddie, daughter Stacy and nephew Orlando. In 2014, he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame and the following year into the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame.
Sports in Puerto Rico can be traced from the ceremonial competitions amongst the pre-Columbian Native Americans of the Arawak (Taíno) tribes who inhabited the island to the modern era in which sports activities consist of an organized physical activity or skill carried out with a recreational purpose for competition. One of the sports which the Taíno's played was a ball game called "Batey". The "Batey" was played in U-shaped fields two teams; however, unlike the ball games of the modern era, the winners were treated like heroes and the losers were sacrificed.
Peter John Ramos Fuentes, nicknamed as Mr. Beast, is a Puerto Rican former professional basketball player and professional wrestler. He is the sixth athlete from Puerto Rico to play in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the third drafted, gathering success in the NBA Development League (NBDL), where he was an All Star during the 2006–07 season. Ramos has also played in Baloncesto Superior Nacional (BSN), the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) and the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA). He was a member of the Puerto Rico national basketball team from 2004 to 2016, making his Olympic debut in the game where Puerto Rico defeated the United States at Athens.
Juan Rivera is a Puerto Rican professional wrestler. He is known for his work in the World Wrestling Council, where he won the WWC Universal Heavyweight Championship three times and the WWC Puerto Rico Heavyweight Championship three times. During the 1990s, he worked for the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), initially under the masked, villainous and venom-spewing Kwang gimmick. He later portrayed Savio Vega, the eventual leader of a Puerto Rican stable, Los Boricuas.
The International Wrestling Association is a conglomerate of professional wrestling promotions that originated in Puerto Rico and currently operates there. Founded in 1994 by wrestler promoter Víctor Quiñones and wrestler Miguel Perez Jr. it quickly entered an agreement to serve as a development territory for the World Wrestling Federation that lasted until 2001. During its first decade, IWA grew to rival the long-standing World Wrestling Council (WWC). Its business model relies on pushing younger talents, using veterans and foreign wrestlers to get them over with the public.
José Anibal Laureano Colón is a Puerto Rican professional wrestler and manager. He is better known by his ring name, Chicky Starr. He is best known for his work in the World Wrestling Council (WWC) and International Wrestling Association (IWA) of Puerto Rico. Starr won the WWC Universal Championship when he defeated Carlito in San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico in early 2003. Laureano has led stables including The Chicky Starr Sports Club and the Starr Corporation.
Héctor Soto is a former volleyball player from Puerto Rico, who was a member of the Men's National Team that ended up in sixth place at the 2007 FIVB Men's World Cup in Japan and received the Best Scorer individual award. He played in the 2006 FIVB World Championship, being also named Best Scorer of the tournament.
Emmanuel Rodríguez Vázquez is a Puerto Rican professional boxer who has held the IBF bantamweight title since August 2023 and previously from 2018 to 2019. As an amateur he represented Puerto Rico at the 2010 Summer Youth Olympics and won a gold medal in the flyweight event. As of July 2020, he is ranked as the world's fifth best active bantamweight by The Ring, seventh by BoxRec, and eighth by the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board.
Dennis Alexis Rivera Rodríguez is a Puerto Rican professional wrestler. He is part of a tag team known as La Malicia along Noel Rodríguez, which after holding the International Wrestling Association's World Tag Team Championship on several occasions participated in the only unificatory tag team contest co-sanctioned by the two major Puerto Rican promotions of the 2000s, when they challenged for the World Wrestling Council's titles on September 24, 2011. The result of the match remains controversial, Rivera and Rodríguez were originally declared winners and left the building with both sets of belts, but WWC revoked the original result to a "no contest" minutes later. However, the IWA still recognized the coronation of the first Undisputed Tag Team Champions in Puerto Rico. Rivera also worked in the World Wrestling League, where he held the WWL Trios Championship.
Carlos Omar Cotto Cruz is a Puerto Rican professional wrestler and boxer. As a wrestler, he perform under the alias of El Chicano and has performed mostly for the International Wrestling Association and the World Wrestling Council. While performing for the first, Cotto became the only person to win all eligible championships, later becoming a Universal Heavyweight Champion in the second. Locally, he has held the main title of a promotion nine times. Abroad, Cotto has worked for AAA in 2010 and Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre in 2016.
Jaime Yusept Espinal Fajardo is a Dominican-born Puerto Rican freestyle wrestler. In 2012 he became the first Olympic medalist in wrestling for Puerto Rico by winning a silver medal in the 84 kg division. He also became the first Puerto Rican who was born somewhere else to win an Olympic medal for the country.
Professional wrestling has been considered one of the most popular forms of entertainment in Puerto Rico for more than fifty years. It is considered the highest source of income in the sports entertainment industry on the island; a minor industry within its tertiary sector in its overall economy. After sports commentator José Antonio Géigel and a group of wrestlers founded the first promotion based in Puerto Rico, the discipline has consistently remained being broadcast in local television. Originally a mixture of foreign wrestling styles, the Puerto Rican wrestling style developed into a unique form of performing. Most notably, local promotions relied on unusual matches, often involving foreign objects or odd arenas. Local wrestling is considered to be one of the pillars that contributed to modern hardcore wrestling, being the territory where the first "fire" and "death" matches took place. Local promotions exploited the innovation and held their cards in large stadiums, eventually becoming an element of popular culture. During the course of six decades, Carlos Colón Sr. has developed over 70 scars in his forehead that are product of this method of performing, becoming the main symbol of the style's nature. The storylines in Puerto Rico have historically revolved around the "foreign heel" formula, with local wrestlers obtaining victories over notable figures that include Ric Flair, Harley Race, Hulk Hogan, Terry Funk, Diamond Dallas Page, Scott Hall, Booker T, Samoa Joe and Curt Hennig among several others.
Lynda Morales is a Puerto Rican indoor volleyball player who plays for Criollas de Caguas in the Liga de Voleibol Superior Femenino (LVSF). She was a member of the Puerto Rican national team from 2011 to 2016. She participated in the 2016 Summer Olympics and the 2014 FIVB World Championship.
The Osos de Manatí are a professional basketball team based in Manatí, Puerto Rico, that competes in the Baloncesto Superior Nacional (BSN), the top division of basketball in Puerto Rico. Prior to 2017 the team was named Atenienses de Manatí. In October 2022 they returned from hiatus, when local Puerto Rican singer Ozuna had purchase the Brujos de Guayama and relocated the team to Manati.
Tommy Ramos Nin is a retired Puerto Rican artistic gymnast and former member of the Puerto Rican national team known as the Golden Boys. He participated in the men's rings event at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London where he finished six among eight participants.
Jasmine Camacho-Quinn is a Puerto Rican track and field athlete who specializes in the 100 metres hurdles. At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, she became the first Puerto Rican of Afro-Latino descent and the second person representing Puerto Rico to win a gold medal. In the semi-finals, Camacho-Quinn set her personal best and Olympic record of 12.26 seconds, which is tied for the fifth fastest time in history. She won bronze at the 2022 World Athletics Championships.
Peter Concepción Arbelo is a Puerto Rican professional wrestler better known by his ringname El Nazareno. He has performed under several personas during his career including Ash Rubinsky, Bull Bronski, Face of Fear Ash, Damián and Superstar Ash. Concepción has wrestled in all of the major local promotions winning the IWA Caribbean Heavyweight Championship, IWA Junior Heavyweight Championship and IWA World Tag Team Championship in the International Wrestling Association (IWA), the WWC Puerto Rico Heavyweight Championship, WWC World Tag Team Championship and WWC Television Championship in the World Wrestling Council (WWC) and the WWL World Heavyweight Championship in the World Wrestling League (WWL). He has also been regularly active in the independent circuit, making appearances in New Wrestling Stars (NWS), where he held the NWS Tag Team Championship and NWS Television Championship, CWS, NWG and 100% Lucha where he won the tag team titles. Currently, the leader of the interpromotional West Side Mafia stable, he has been involved with several stables during his run, including Los HPs, Faces of Fear, Los Templarios and El Consejo.
Nicholas Raymond Suriano is an American freestyle and folkstyle wrestler who competes at 57 kilograms. In freestyle, he claimed the 2021 Henri Deglane Grand Prix gold medal and the 2021 Matteo Pellicone Ranking Series silver medal. As a folkstyle wrestler, Suriano was the 2022 NCAA Division I national and Big Ten Conference champion at 125 pounds for the Michigan Wolverines, repeating what he accomplished in 2019 at 133 pounds at Rutgers University, where he also was an NCAA finalist in 2018.
Joseph Christopher McKenna is an American freestyle and graduated folkstyle wrestler who competes at 65 kilograms. In freestyle, he is a two-time Pan American Continental champion, multiple-time Grand Prix medalist, and a U23 World medalist and US National champion.
The 2024 Puerto Rico gubernatorial election will be held on November 5, 2024, to elect the governor of Puerto Rico, concurrently with the election of the Resident Commissioner, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the mayors of the 78 municipalities. Incumbent New Progressive Party Governor Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia is running for re-election to a second term in office.
United States
Puerto Rico
(2023)
