El Signo

Personal life

Most wrestlers in Mexico try to maintain a separation between their professional career and their personal life, which is also true of Antonio Sánchez Rendón, confirming only the most basic details of his life such as birth age and location etc. He was born on September 4, 1954 in Ocotlán de Morelos, Oaxaca, Mexico and trained for his professional wrestling career under Billy Robinson, Chamaco Azteca and El Carnicero. Sánchez has at least one child, a son born in 1985 who now wrestled as the enmascarado, or masked character Hijo del Signo, but since he is an enmascarado his birth name is reported on out of respect of lucha libre traditions. It is not documented if he has other children or if he is still married to the mother of Hijo del Signo.

Professional wrestling career

Sánchez made his professional wrestling debut on September 16, 1971 a few weeks after turning 17 years old. He began wrestling as the enmascarado character "El Signo" ("The Sign"), wearing a mask (most often black) with an upside down question mark on the front of it. Sánchez started his wrestling career in the lighter weight divisions, often in the Lightweight or Welterweight divisions, where the official limits were around 70 kg (150 lb) and 78 kg (172 lb). In 1974 El Signo lost a Luchas de Apuestas, or bet match to Gatúbedo and as a result was forced to unmask and reveal his birth name as per Lucha Libre traditions. While he had unmasked he retained the ring name El Signo and began working for the Universal Wrestling Association (UWA), one of two major wrestling promotions in Mexico (the other being Empresa Mexicana de Lucha Libre (EMLL)). In the UWA he defeated El Matemático to win the UWA World Lightweight Championship, his first championship ever. During that time period he formed a regular tag team with Lobo Rubio, and the two hand an extended storyline feud with the team of El Matemático and Black Man that started with the UWA title match and came to an end on January 29, 1978 when Signo and Lobo Rubio lost a tag team Luchas de Apuestas match and both were forced to be shaved bald as a result. In late 1978 El Signo vacated the UWA World Lightweight Championship for unexplained reasons, although the most likely being that he moved up into the Welterweight division and was too heavy to be considered a Lightweight. On June 24, 1979 El Signo won the UWA World Welterweight Championship from Bobby Lee, fully establishing him as a Welterweight wrestler.

Los Misioneros de la Muerte

In the late 1970s the UWA promoters were noticing that rival EMLL had achieved financial and critical success with their lighter divisions, often having Lightweights or Welterweights in their main events while the UWA relied primarily on their heavyweight division for their main event matches. promoter Francisco Flores wanted to develop his own group of smaller, faster wrestlers into top level competitors and came up with the idea to team El Signo up with two similar sized wrestlers Miguel Calderón Navarro, known as Negro Navarro and Juan Conrado Aguilar Jáuregui, who was working under the name El Texano, forming a trie known as Los Misioneros de la Muerte ("The Missionaries of Death"). They were paired up against another trio of young, lightweight and high flying wrestlers, a trio of brothers dubbed Los Mosqueteros de Diablo (The Devil's Musketeers), Brazo de Oro ("Golden Hand"), Brazo de Plata ("Silver Arm") and El Brazo ("The Arm"). Early on in the storyline Brazo de Oro defeated El Texano in a Luchas de Apuestas, or bet match, which forced El Texano to unmask. The storyline expanded and saw the unmasked Misionaros clash with the masked Mosqueteros on UWA promoted cards all over Mexico. The fan reception to those matches and the positive coverage in various Lucha Libre magazines was so big that other promoters around Mexico wanted to book them on their shows, not as individuals but as teams, which was the start of the trios match becoming more and more prominent in Lucha Libre. With the team being so in demand UWA started to feature Los Misioneros more often that by 1981 Los Misioneros began working high on the card, often working the main event match starting a trend of having trios matches instead of singles matches as the regular main event match format, something that helped make that match format the most common match type in Lucha Libre since then.

In 1981 the Los Misioneros de la Muerte name became a household name after a match in El Toreo de Quatro Caminos, UWA's main venue. During the main event Los Misioneros faced off against then 64-year-old El Santo, who was teaming up with Huracán Ramírez and Rayo de Jalisco. During the match El Santo collapsed in the middle of the ring, suffering a heart attack after a hard blow to the chest. His life was only saved due to the actions of Ramírez who administered CPR at ringside. After the match the Lucha Libre magazinez, prompted by Francisco Flores, played off the real life tragedy by promoting Los Misioneros as the team that nearly killed the biggest name in Lucha Libre ever. The event made the team the most hated trio in Mexico for years to come and helped fill El Torero arena to the brim when Los Misioneros teamed up with Perro Aguayo to face El Santo, Gory Guerrero, Huracán Ramírez and El Solitario in El Santo's retirement match. Following Santo's retirement Los Misioneros feuded with the top faces (wrestlers portraying "good guy" characters) such as Los Tres Caballero (Aníbal, El Solitario and Villano III) both in trios and in individual competition. During the storyline El Solitario turned on his two partners, when he attacked El Signo with a bottle and costing Los Tres Caballeros an important match. The attack made the smaller Los Misioneros more sympathetic to the crowd, who began to support them more and more despite Los Misioneros being booked on the shows as heel characters ("bad guys"). On June 10, 1983 El Signo won the UWA World Junior Light Heavyweight Championship from El Solitario as part of their long running storyline, marking the third division El Signo had won the UWA title in. He would later be stripped of the title for making an unsanctioned title defense on a non-UWA show. Their popularity as a trio also led to them being invited to tour Japan, facing off against New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW) light weight wrestlers such as Gran Hamada, Tiger Mask, George Takano, Akira Maeda and Osamu Kido.

In 1984 Los Misioneros won the UWA World Trios Championship for the first time, although it is not documented for exactly how long. On January 1, 1985 Negro Navarro won his first singles championship, the UWA World Junior Light Heavyweight Championship, when he defeated the then champion Anibal. The title run only lasted 50 days, ending on February 25, 1985 when he lost to Mano Negra. In the mid-1980s the "War" between the UWA and EMLL had cooled off enough for Los Misionerios to actually wrestle on the EMLL 53rd Anniversary Show, losing a trios Luchas de Apuestas to Ringo Mendoza, Américo Rocca and Tony Salazar. Los Misionerios regained the UWA World Trios Championship in 1987 defeating Los Villanos (Villano III, Villano IV and Villano V), after what was considered the "peak" of Los Misionerios. With an influx of other popular trios both in the UWA and in Mexico in general Los Misioneros days on the top of the Trios scene came to an end, which was followed by the end of Los Missioneros de la Muerte in its original form. During a UWA World Trios Championship match against Los Villanos El Texano threw in the towel to save his partner El Signo any more punishment. After the match and title loss his partners turned on El Texano and attacked him after the match. The attack was done primarily to write El Texano out of the UWA storyline as he had given notice that he was leaving.

UWA Promoter Francisco Flores decided to try to keep the Los Misioneros de la Muerte team active even after the departure of El Texano and experimented with a number of different partners for Navarro and El Signo. Teaming with the masked wrestler Black Power Los Misioneros defeated Los Villanos (Villano I, Villano IV and Villano V) to win the UWA Trios Championship. Negro Navarro won the UWA World Junior Heavyweight Championship from Shu El Guerrero on December 27, 1993 and would hold that title until the promotion closed in 1995. The trio held on to the Trios Championship for 454 days, until May 1, 1993 where they lost them to El Engendro, Shu El Guerrero and Scorpio, Jr., they regained the championship later that year, on December 25 and held them into 1994 where they lost the belts back to Engendro, Shu el Guerrero and Scorpio, Jr. Black Power was later replaced by Rocky Santana and that version of Los Misioneros did win the UWA World Trios Championship on two occasions, holding the distinction of being the last team to hold the titles before the UWA closed in 1995. After the end of the UWA Los Misioneros made a few appearances for AAA, UWA's successor of sorts and one of the two biggest wrestling promotions in Mexico along with CMLL. The appearances included a match at Triplemanía III-A where a version of Los Misioneros (Navarro, Signo and a masked wrestler called "Misionero") defeated the team of El Torero, El Mexicano and Dragón de Oro.

Independent Circuit

After the closure of the UWA in 1995 Negro Navarro and El Signo split up, going their separate ways on the Independent circuit, only teaming together for special occasions. Signo joined AAA and was given a new ring character, a masked heel character called "Piromaniaco" (Pyromaniac) but he only made a few appearances under that name before reverting to his unmasked El Signo identity. In 1996 El Signo began working for Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL; previously known as EMLL) during a time where CMLL were given the rights to the Mexican National Trios Championship by the Mexican boxing and wrestling commission. El Signo teamed up with Blue Panther and Fuerza Guerrera, two wrestlers with a similar background and age to compete in the tournament for the titles. On July 6, 1996 the team defeated El Brazo, Brazo de Plata and Super Electra in the tournament finals to win the championship. During his time in CMLL he had an occasion to team up with Negro Navarro again, for the Salvador Lutteroth Memorial Tag Tournament held as part of Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL; formerly known as EMLL)'s 1999 Homenaje a Dos Leyendas: El Santo y Salvador Lutteroth show on March 19, 1999. Navarro and El Signo teamed up to represent the "old school" wrestlers of Lutteroth's era and defeated Olímpico and Tony Rivera in the first round of the tournament. In the semi-finals they lost to eventual tournament winners Mr. Niebla and Shocker. El Signo stopped working full-time for CMLL in 1999 or 2000, despite still being part of the Mexican National Trios Championship team, leaving the title to be mainly inactive and not highly promoted. El Signo made a special appearance for CMLL on March 3, 2001 on their Juicio Final ("Final Justice") show, losing the Mexican National Trios Championship to Mr. Niebla, Olímpico and Safari. In 2003 El Signo worked a number of matches for AAA, including a match where the original Los Misioneros were reunited for AAA's 2003 Guerra de Titanes show where they defeated El Brazo, Sangre Chicana and Pirata Morgan. In the following years El Signo primarily worked on the Mexican independent circuit, wrestling other wrestlers who were considered "Old School", wrestlers who made their debut in the mid-1980s or before. He had a number of matches against Villano III, including at least two occasions where he lost a Luchas de Apuestas against him. El Signo had his last professional wrestling match on May 1, 2010 as he participated in a ten-man steel cage match that was the main event of the "El Signo Retirement Show" in Arena Neza. The match saw Halcon Dorado, Jr. lose the match and was forced to unmask.

In wrestling

Championships and accomplishments