El Vikingo: How Struggle Forged El Salvador’s Top Wrestling Star

The concrete floor was unforgiving. Salvador Pérez felt every bone-crushing impact as he executed his hundredth bump of the day, blood streaming from his mouth and nose. Of 200 aspiring wrestlers who started training alongside him, only dozens remained after the first week. By graduation, just two would survive the brutal three-year ordeal that would forge arguably El Salvador’s greatest wrestling export: El Vikingo.

This is the untold story of a man whose journey through war-torn Central America, deadly training regimens, and international wrestling circuits reads like the plot of an impossible sports epic. His path to glory began in the shadows of civil war and led him across 20 countries, facing legends like Ric Flair and managing the Sheepherders before they became WWE’s Bushwhackers.

Discover the incredible price one man paid to become a legend – and how his relentless pursuit of wrestling greatness nearly cost him everything.

El Salvador’s Troubled Past: Why Wrestling Success Seemed Impossible

The mountainous country of El Salvador, roughly the size of New Jersey, possesses an understated charm. Bordered by the Pacific Ocean, Honduras, and Guatemala, El Salvador is a land of great contrast.

Here, you’ll savor delicious Pupusas, the national cuisine of stuffed maize or rice tortillas that worldwide culinary circles rave about.

You’ll also be in awe as you climb scenic volcanoes proudly thrust into the skyline and walk along beautiful sandy beaches frequented by globetrotting surfers, endlessly searching for that perfect wave.

However, it’s also a country whose capital, San Salvador, can be chaotic. Many roads are in dire need of maintenance, proper illumination, and marking.

Drivers spend hours in traffic gridlock daily, which even the country’s wealthiest cannot avoid.

Deteriorating air quality and persistent issues with adequate waste management and garbage disposal threaten to render the city unlivable for locals and tourists, compromising the government’s efforts to attract foreign visitors and investors.

And in a country with a population exceeding six million, only 56% have access to drinking water.

Its complex past also harbors a terrible civil war that lasted from 1979 to 1992 and has seemingly been purposely erased from history, as it is not taught in the Salvadoran public school system. The United Nations estimates the war left a death toll of 75,000 plus 8,000 disappearances.

One of El Salvador’s darkest moments was the El Mozote massacre, where the Salvadoran army killed nearly a thousand people, including pregnant women and children, in the Department of Morazán in December 1981.

And until the recent government’s somewhat controversial gang crackdown called the “Exception Regime” that some assert violates fundamental constitutional and human rights, murder rates had soared to levels worse than the civil war.

Even in sports, soccer, although the number one sport by far that enjoys a fervent following, the national squad holds the dubious Guinness World Record for the most lopsided defeat in the World Cup after falling to Hungary 10-1 in Spain ’82. They have yet to come close to revisiting soccer’s world stage.

On a positive note, El Salvador successfully hosted the Central American and Caribbean Games in 2023 and had their best medal showing in years. Additionally, the government has upgraded most athletic facilities.

However, pro wrestling is its own entity and not part of the upgrades. (Not shocking!)

Central American Wrestling Crisis: How History Was Nearly Lost Forever

When it comes to wrestling, much of El Salvador’s lucha libre history has been lost over time due to various reasons.

Sure, there are grainy pictures, some sparse videos, and saved B&W newspaper clippings from the most dedicated fans. Still, it isn’t nearly as well-documented as wrestling in the USA, Japan, Canada, or Mexico.

And what is out there is, at best, incomplete and, at worst, often ripe with inaccuracies.

Why so?

First, experts say the civil war regressed the country for about 25 years in all aspects, weakening the economy and destroying families, leaving behind a divided and nearly broken society.

Second, perhaps unintentionally, there has been a lack of dedicated historians of the sport. And with many golden age wrestlers gone forever, their stories are forgotten or were never told.

Lastly, there has been a steady decline in interest and financial backing for Salvadoran lucha libre since the late 1990s and early 2000s. The scene still struggles to stay afloat today, but there are flickers of hope.

However, overall, it is on life support, with two companies that refuse to unite and prefer to continue bitter but petty rivalries, choosing to wage war on social media and further fragment the fan base.

And yet, in moments of despair and hopelessness, Salvadorans have proven their resiliency time and again. They wake up every morning smiling and treading forward, always with their noses to the grindstone and always moving forward with a purpose, even if that purpose is survival.

After all, they are told that things are finally improving and want to believe just that.

Wrestling Arrives in El Salvador: The Birth of a National Obsession

So, how did wrestling arrive in El Salvador?

While visiting Mexico, bohemian businessman Salvador Guandique became enthralled by the squared-circle battles between good and evil he witnessed. He had never seen anything like it!

It isn’t far-fetched to assume that he saw luchadors like El Santo, Blue Demon, El Cavernario Galindo, Huracán Ramírez, and Black Shadow in action, who have since become icons not just of lucha libre but of Mexico’s pop culture.

He was determined to introduce this new and exciting sports spectacle back home, and he was confident it would become a smash hit.

So, while in Mexico, he convinced fellow countryman Alfonso Portillo “El Turco” Ocón, an international star in his own right, to help introduce the sport and break in all the new talent. Even before the country ran local shows, he was El Salvador’s first international wrestling star.

Wrestling in Guatemala and El Salvador was still barely a blip on the map during the mid-’50s. The first wrestling cards in El Salvador were held at Cine (theater) Popular (later called Libertad), which stood until October 2024 but is now demolished. The National Gymnasium also became Salvadoran Lucha libre’s temporary home.

With the success of these first shows, the theater could no longer accommodate the throngs of fans who wanted to attend. So, Salvador Guandique founded the now-mythical London Gym (often spelled Jim London’s or Londos), providing a single venue for wrestling instead of having to roam from place to place.

He trained alongside athletes specializing in Freestyle, Greco-Roman wrestling, boxing, and weightlifting. And now, pro wrestling had a home, too.

Later, the first Arena El Salvador was established. It was a small venue, but it soon moved to a much larger location, where it stood until 2009.

Mexican promoter Jorge Panameño then came into the picture. He held the license to bring in Mexican talent to El Salvador, and he teamed with Don Antonio “Toño” Lopez Gudiél and Salvador Guandique to open the famed Arena Metropolitana, which at the time had no equal in terms of infrastructure. It was soon christened the “Cathedral of Salvadoran lucha libre.”

Arena Santa Anita, Metro (also owned by Don Toño), and Coliseo followed, but none are wrestling venues today and are merely sad, hollowed-out fossils of their storied past.

Concrete Floor Hell: The Brutal Training That Created Champions

On the La Vuelta Podcast, hosted by Savio Vega’s younger brother, Dennis Rivera, El Vikingo shared his amazing journey in wrestling.

In the very challenging decades that followed, Salvador Pérez El Vikingo proved that great things come to those who refuse to give up. He paved the way for future generations in El Salvador and all the other countries he wrestled in. And boy, does he have stories!

In the 1950s and ’60s, many Mexican luchadors arrived in El Salvador, including The Tempest in 1967, who resembled El Santo but also incorporated martial arts into his repertoire.

At 13 years old, he’d watch them and the local talent from Arena Metropolitana on Channel 4 on Saturdays sponsored by the ADOC shoe company, which was also simulcast in Honduras. Unfortunately, all archival footage is thought to have been lost forever in a warehouse fire.

Like a kid looking in a candy store at unaffordable goodies, he was watching out in the street behind the window of the downtown department stores;  most people couldn’t afford TV sets.

Arena Metropolitana wanted to ensure its continued growth, and at 16, Salvador Pérez learned of a scholarship program for aspiring talent who wanted to become luchadors.

When referring to lucha libre in Latin American countries from Mexico downward, including Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama (to a lesser extent Honduras and Nicaragua), and South America, Salvador Pérez emphasized that to finally appear in the wrestling ring in front of an audience, wrestlers endured some of the most grueling training you’ll ever learn about. And if you appeared before an audience, it meant that you had earned it. Nothing was handed to you.

The first of many surprised expressions from the La Vuelta podcast host occurred after Vikingo explained that he started training to be a wrestler, not on mats and certainly not in a ring, but on concrete floors.

“Months of hundreds of bumps on the concrete floor! I still have many scars from my training. We’d laugh, cry, bleed from our mouths, noses, and everywhere because we’d be bumping on the floor. Hundreds of bumps on the floor daily for months! We had to train at least three years before climbing in a ring in front of an audience,” recounts Salvador Pérez.

He claims there are ten different ways to fall or “bumps,” and at least one hundred and fifty holds one must learn if you are to call yourself an actual professional wrestler. And if the school where you train doesn’t teach the fundamentals, you’re getting robbed.

Cardio, bumping on the floor, and learning the holds before climbing in a ring were his training. So, his whole body felt relieved once he finally bumped in a ring (which usually still had less give than today’s rings).

Two hundred students got scholarships for an opportunity to become wrestlers. After the first day, twenty-five participants quit, having only completed cardio, which consisted of approximately 45 minutes to an hour of non-stop exercises. With each passing day, twenty to twenty-five also quit.

“They thought being a wrestler was simply showing up, climbing the ring, and that was it; you’re a star now,” says Salvador Pérez. “I remember many students collapsing after the cardio workouts, falling down stairs, and hurting themselves. Their legs couldn’t handle it.”

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Survival of the Strongest: How 200 Students Became Only 2

Vikingo chronicled his brutal trial by fire.

“First of all, every three months (for those that hadn’t quit), we’d be tested, and if we didn’t know all the holds that had been taught to us, we’d fail. Still, I have not seen something in Puerto Rico since I first came here in ’73: they would place a wrestler in each corner and one in the middle of the ring.

“We had to endure at least four minutes of them stretching us. One minute each. They wrote down on a notepad who had survived and who hadn’t. Those who hadn’t were sent to the showers and told to forget about being a wrestler and never return.”

While covering his face and with a pained expression, Vikingo continued.

“They used closed fists, and we got our mouths busted open, broken teeth, ankles…they told us, ‘Whoever can’t take it, just get out of the ring because we aren’t holding back.’ Some cried, others even pissed and crapped on themselves!”

“I remember this like it was yesterday. There was a student who measured 6’9” and weighed around 290 lbs; his name was Esteban. And the others told him:

“‘Esteban, switch spots with us.’

“‘Why?’ he asked.

“‘Because you’re bigger, and you’ll tire them out so that when it’s our turn, we’ll be fresh.’

“So, while we all sat in a row anxiously waiting but also dreading our turn, we had convinced him to get in front of the line.

When he stepped up, this old timer applied a cruceta on his legs (a variation of a figure four leg lock), and the bone popped out! We were speechless because Estaban was much bigger than us, so what chance did we have? An ambulance arrived, and he was gone.”

El Vikingo’s Emerges: From Nervous Rookie to Nordic Warrior

After three years of arduous training, Salvador debuted at 17 in 1970. Only two of the 200 prospects, including him, made it to the end. The other, he told me, was a wrestler called El Tapatío (real name Jorge Chain), who was also El Campesino 2 (Farmer 2) but tragically ended his own life after finding out he had throat cancer.

The veterans then admitted to both that the reason they had been treated so brutally was so they’d quit, and because they were wary of who they’d brought in. Plus, they didn’t want to lose their place to anyone, and they’d never appreciate their spot if they made it easy to become a luchador.

In Spanish, this is called “celos profesionales,” which translates to “professional jealousy,” where insecurity and fear of losing one’s job or place in a hierarchy can lead to questionable actions.

With only two left, they finally began taking it easier on them!

The Viking character surfaced because Salvador enjoyed those films and their outfits. He even began using hydrogen peroxide to dye his hair blond.

El Diablo Rojo’s Final Test: The Match That Made El Vikingo

Even after three years of training, his nerves almost got the better of him, and his legs shook. His debut was against El Diablo Rojo. Records show that Vikingo was El Bucanero’s student, but he says that the trainer who’d beat him up the most was El Diablo Rojo.

He still has scars in his mouth to this day. And once, after he got kicked in the mouth by him, he lost a tooth.

Finally, in the ring with an audience, his mind and body were ready after years of training (or so he thought!).

He wasn’t prepared for El Diablo Rojo’s words once the bell rang: “You didn’t think the instructor taught his student everything, did you?” He proceeded to taunt and rough up Vikingo in his debut.

After the match’s conclusion, El Diablo Rojo explained to Vikingo that this was on purpose so that he’d bring out that fire from within and show emotion during the match.

“In the dressing room, he later hugged and congratulated me. I appreciated that surprise lesson above the ring that brought out the Viking in me, and I’ll never forget it. He wanted me to prove the name I’d chosen to wrestle with,” says Vikingo.

Soon, El Vikingo made his debut outside of El Salvador at Guatemala’s Teodoro Palacios Flores Gymnasium. It was a two-week tryout to gauge the fans’ reaction. He did so well that they asked him to stay the whole year. With Guatemala’s proximity to El Salvador, he would wrestle on weekends and return to El Salvador during the week.

“Earn your spot in the ring and let the people decide, instead of trying to smooth talk the owner and promoter,” is a philosophy Vikingo says he lived by.

He noticed a high quality of wrestling in Guatemala and even more in Mexico, but he’d already learned the basics of what was taught there in El Salvador.

“You have to live and feel wrestling in your heart,” he says. “Give it your all and savor every moment, and the fans will return,” Vikingo says.

20 Countries, Countless Battles: El Vikingo’s International Wrestling Conquest

In Guatemala, Mil Mascaras and Huracán Ramirez, who were passing through, invited him to go to Mexico. He worked for two weeks with Dr. Wagner and Angel Blanco of the famed Ola Blanca faction at the Arena Coliseo.

“In Guatemala, I learned that if the fans hated you, they’d yell at the top of their lungs, ‘Que se muera!’ Which means ‘Drop dead!’. And I was often taken out of the arena through the back. Believe it or not, still to this day, I have people [I hope jokingly] yell this to me on the street!”

He later attended Jack Veneno’s Dominican Republic promotion and was invited to stay for a year after a two-week tryout. Then, in 1971, he worked in Panamá for a year, facing Sandokan, Joe Panther, and Mr. Panamá, their most famous stars. And El Jaguar de Colombia was there, too. Vikingo later went to neighboring Colombia.

“In Panama, I was once attacked in the movie theater! I was sitting down, enjoying the movie, and someone started attacking me from behind. They had to turn the light on and everything!” remembers Vikingo.

Martin Karagadian of Argentina’s Titanes en el Ring even contacted him during his two-week tryout in Panama, but when contracted for a year, he turned down Titanes.

He thought he’d work in Nicaragua and finally return to El Salvador and relax. But he then received a call from Costa Rica, where he remembered wrestling with El Chaparrito de Oro and the Dominican Republic again, this time with Vampiro Cao, in 1973.

Then his big break came when Carlos Colon’s Capital Sports Promotions came calling, and Vikingo went for two weeks and wrestled Miguel Perez Sr. at a sold-out Roberto Clemente Stadium.

Then, the broadcaster and producer of their “Superestrellas del Ring” (“Wrestling Superstars”) show, Rickin Sanchez (later substituted by Hugo Savinovich), asked El Vikingo if he wanted to stay for the whole year.

Next, he worked in Canada for Stu Hart’s Stampede Wrestling in 1978, where he wrestled daily, traveling the circuit with the boys and rested only once a week.

There, he even wrestled a bear. He recalls Stu Hart’s curious way of speaking when asking him if he’d be willing to wrestle the 750-pound beast. At first, Vikingo thought he was being ribbed!

He then went to Japan for two months in 1978 to work with Giant Baba’s All Japan Wrestling.

In total, he wrestled in twenty different countries.

El Vikingo Returns Home: Building a Wrestling Empire in a War Zone as a Promoter

Salvador Guandique, one of the first individuals to help introduce wrestling to El Salvador, retired during this period, and others began promoting the sport.

Once back in Puerto Rico, the partners of Capital Sports Promotions (later renamed World Wrestling Council) proposed that El Vikingo return to El Salvador to open a branch of Capital Sports Promotions.

Puerto Rico during this era had some of the craziest and most intense wrestling action you’ll ever see, and CSP wanted to combine their style, bring international talent to El Salvador, and combine both with the solid local talent already in place.

“All the partners, including myself, spoke with Channel 4 in El Salvador and showed them recorded matches to try and sell them the concept of wrestling we offered. The manager was impressed. They even gave us guaranteed money to start working together.”

Vikingo says that the partners for El Salvador’s CSP branch were Carlos Colon, Victor Quiñones, Victor Jovica, and himself.

The Arena Riber Escalante used to host boxing on Saturdays, and Sundays were for wrestling. It was soon renamed Capital Sports Promotions/Arena Santa Anita and became a venue solely for professional wrestling.

Revolutionary Wrestling Business: How El Vikingo Changed Everything

In addition to sound financial backing and experience in the wrestling business, CSP’s partnership with Vikingo in El Salvador significantly changed the lucha libre landscape in Central America in two notable ways.

First, they became heavily involved with television, something the previous promoters had not done. Sure, wrestling had been on TV, but it wasn’t seen as a significant revenue source or primary promotional vehicle.

Until then, the other promoters relied heavily on newspapers, flyers, and barkers to announce the shows instead. This is understandable because most people didn’t have televisions before the early ’80s, but now that was quickly changing.

The second strategy CSP used effectively was selling wrestling shows and touring the country. Now they no longer depend on the gate of a single venue.

From Tuesday to Sunday, CSP toured the different towns, which became very lucrative for the company and allowed them to pay the wrestlers weekly.

The payroll system they used was based on the Mexican model of lucha libre at the time, which was a 40% cut off the top for the talent and 60% for the partners.

And depending on where you were on the card’s hierarchy (main event, semi, curtain jerker, etc.), that was the percentage of the 40% you got. And from that, 10% went to the referees. The promotion paid the ring announcer.

It was perhaps a short-lived second golden era in Salvadoran lucha libre, where wrestlers could make a living solely from wrestling and didn’t need a shoot job or side hustle, as they say.

In the early 1980s, if working for the newly established CSP in El Salvador (not sure if the case with the other promotions) and depending on a wrestler’s spot on the card, one could earn the equivalent of $934 in today’s money weekly (and up to three times more for main eventers). This was substantial money, considering that the Salvadoran monthly minimum wage is around $400 USD per month today.

In time, Vikingo wanted to unite (or absorb?) with Arena Metropolitana. But the owner of Arena Metropolitana, Don Toño, refused. And so, the rivalry between El Salvador’s “Big Two” of the time continued.

When comparing the pair, I’ve been told that CSP was more like Mexicós AAA: a more open and entertaining style than sport. The Arena Metropolitana was more traditional and conservative, similar to Mexico’s CMLL, emphasizing sport over glitz and glamour.

When Bullets Flew: How Civil War Destroyed Wrestling Dreams

Trouble erupted in nearby Nicaragua after the overthrow of the government and the Salvadoran Civil War in late ’79, so CSP experienced some tough times.

The violence, social unrest, and difficulty conducting everyday business steadily eroded CSP’s profit.

When things got bad, and buses were being burned, buildings destroyed, people getting kidnapped for ransom, and increased casualties, the government issued a curfew, and CSP had to run their shows at odd hours.

Soon, the other partners sold their business shares to Vikingo, and he held on for a couple more years.

But the final straw that broke the camel’s back in El Salvador may have been a wrestler’s union that had organized unbeknownst to Vikingo.

The grapplers began demanding better salaries and a percentage of the pay from the various international talents frequently brought in for the shows. They even tipped off the tax revenue department about supposed unpaid dues Vikingo hadn’t met.

A desperate El Vikingo called Carlos Colon in Puerto Rico to explain how critical the situation in El Salvador had become. Colon was surprised he was still over there and urged him to return.

The experiment of Capital Sports Promotions in El Salvador finished in 1985, and Viking returned to Puerto Rico.

On October 10, 1986, a magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck, with the epicenter right downtown. That was the beginning of the end of the now heavily damaged Arena Santa Anita, which later went through a turnstile of various administrators with varying success.

It finally closed in 2002. It is now a warehouse for Petrov Vodka.

Puerto Rico Salvation: El Vikingo’s Escape to Wrestling Glory

Once back in Puerto Rico, El Vikingo didn’t miss a step. He no longer fled from bombs, bullets, or agitating wrestling unions, but being assigned to the Sheepherders as their manager caused tremendous heat.

These were the same Luke Williams and Butch Miller who became the lovable Bushwackers in the then-WWF, but as the Sheepherders, they were one of the most brutal and bloodthirsty tag teams wrestling has ever known.

And when Ric Flair, the Road Warriors, Kamala, Abdullah the Butcher, The Infernos, and Jos LeDuc came to town (WWC was now an affiliated NWA territory), El Vikingo managed them.

He didn’t only manage; he also continued to wrestle as needed. In 1986, he also faced The Great Muta, Bruiser Brody, and Invader 3, Johnny Rivera, in WWC. He also worked in various US cities in the last years of the territories.

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Did you know? Barbed wire matches had become commonplace, but El Vikingo asserts that when he returned to Puerto Rico in 1985, he introduced matches that featured fiery ropes – specifically, towels soaked in kerosene wrapped around the ropes. Additionally, he developed ropes that delivered electric shocks. He came up with this idea while he was in El Salvador.

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In the late ’80s, thinking that maybe his wrestling days were over, WWC quickly called him back and asked him to work as a referee, where he was introduced to a whole new generation of fans.

But fans who were familiar with his infamous cheating ways were hard-pressed to believe that now he was only an impartial referee!

Legacy of a Legend: El Vikingo’s Impact on Wrestling History

Salvador Pérez El Vikingo’s journey from concrete floor beatings to international wrestling stardom stands as one of wrestling’s most remarkable, yet untold, stories. While most wrestlers dream of glory, El Vikingo lived through a nightmare that would have broken lesser men – surviving brutal training that hospitalized fellow students, escaping a civil war that claimed 75,000 lives, and conquering 20 countries when few believed a wrestler from tiny El Salvador could compete on the world stage.

His scars tell the story better than any championship belt ever could, and he proved that greatness isn’t given – it’s forged through unimaginable sacrifice.

The Vikingo bloodline continues this legacy of perseverance. His son, Jaime Salvador Perez Pasada, carried the family name into the ring as Tornado #1, while his grandson, Mike Mendoza, debuted in 2009, ensuring the warrior spirit lives on. In 2018, Mike opened Espiritu Pro Wrestling Dojo, where El Vikingo’s philosophy of earning every opportunity through blood, sweat, and determination shapes a new generation.

In a world where instant gratification reigns, El Vikingo’s story reminds us that true legends aren’t born – they’re tested by impossible odds and proven worthy through decades of unwavering dedication. His legacy isn’t just about wrestling; it’s about the price of refusing to surrender your dreams, no matter how impossible they seem.

These stories may also interest you:

• El Salvador Wrestling: Stories of Grit, Near-Death, and Triumph
• Wrestling Stories from El Salvador: Its Wild History and Bright Future
• 5 Dark Lucha Libre Stories With Questions Unanswered

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