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.
The Puerto Rico national basketball team represents Puerto Rico in men's international basketball competitions, it is governed by the Puerto Rican Basketball Federation, The team represents both FIBA and FIBA Americas.
Roberto José Hatton Negrón is a Puerto Rican professional basketball player. Hatton has most notably played for Marist College in the NCAA and for the Arecibo Captains, San Germán Athletics, and Ponce Lions in Puerto Rico's Baloncesto Superior Nacional. Hatton has also played professionally in Portugal, Russia, Mexico and France. Hatton has been a member of the Puerto Rico national basketball team since 1993, taking part in both the 2004 Olympic Games, famous for their defeat of the United States team, as well as the 2006 FIBA World Championship. At the youth level he won a silver medal at the 1997 FIBA Under-22 World Championship.
Yvonne Harrison Castro, also spelled Ivonne is a Puerto Rican athlete who specialized in the 400 metres hurdles. She competed at two World Junior Championships, two World Championships, one World Indoor Championships and one Olympic Games.
David Enrique "Quique" Bernier Rivera is a Puerto Rican dentist and politician that has served in various roles in public service in Puerto Rico. Bernier first served as executive director of the Office of Youth Affairs of Puerto Rico and was later confirmed as the youngest Secretary of Sports and Recreation of Puerto Rico in history. Four years later, he was unanimously confirmed as Secretary of State of Puerto Rico for the administration of Alejandro García Padilla. He was the 2016 candidate for Governor of Puerto Rico of the Popular Democratic Party.
McWilliams Arroyo Acevedo is a Puerto Rican professional boxer who has held the WBC interim flyweight title since February 2021. He previously challenged for the IBF flyweight title in 2014, and the WBC and Ring magazine flyweight titles in 2016. As an amateur, Arroyo represented Puerto Rico in numerous international events.
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.
Javier Culson Pérez is a Puerto Rican athlete and Olympiad bronze medalist who specialises in the 400-metre hurdles. After becoming involved with the discipline in his late teen years, he entered the podium in some regional youth events, including the Pan American Junior Athletics Championships. Culson is a two-time silver medallist at the International Association of Athletics Federations's (IAAF) World Championships and an elite contender in the Samsung Diamond League, where he finished second overall in 2011. He has also garnished medals in events with lower profiles, including the Central American and Caribbean Games and the Ibero-American Championships. He currently holds the record as "the world's fastest man" in that category. Culson also competed at the 2012 Olympics in London winning the bronze medal in the 400-metre hurdles race. In the 2016 Olympics in Rio, Culson made it all the way to the finals of the men's 400m hurdles only to be disqualified by a false start.
Emmanuel Rodríguez Vázquez is a Puerto Rican professional boxer who has held the International Boxing Federation (IBF) bantamweight title twice between 2018 and 2024. 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 best active bantamweight by TBRB, and second by The Ring, forth by BoxRec, and
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.
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.
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 a bronze medal at the 2022 World Athletics Championships. In 2024 Paris Olympics she won a bronze medal, making that her second Olympic medal, becoming the only Puerto Rican to have won two Olympic medals.
Puerto Rico competed at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Originally scheduled to take place from 24 July to 9 August 2020, the Games were postponed to 23 July to 8 August 2021, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was the territory's nineteenth consecutive appearance at the Summer Olympics. Like on the 2016 Summer Olympics, Puerto Rico left the Olympics with a single gold medal, this time won by Jasmine Camacho-Quinn. Other athletes fell short of their Olympic medal, with Steven Piñeiro finishing sixth in the men's skateboarding street park final, and table tennis player Adriana Díaz losing a match in the third round.
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.
Puerto Rico competed at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris from 26 July to 11 August 2024. It was the territory's twentieth consecutive appearance at the Summer Olympics. It was also the fourth consecutive games in which Puerto Rico earned at least one medal, it being the first time this happened in Puerto Rico's Olympic Games history.
United States
Puerto Rico
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