Google honors El Santo, Mexico's masked pro wrestling hero
In addition to helping popularize professional wrestling in Mexico, he was a folk icon and actor in superhero movies.
You may not recognize the name Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta, but you are probably familiar with his face -- well his mask, really.
Better known as El Santo (The Saint), he was a masked professional wrestler whose career in the ring spanned nearly five decades. As one of the most famous Mexican luchadores, El Santo was a folk icon who helped popularize professional wrestling in Mexico.
To honor the 99th anniversary of Santos' birth on Friday, Google created a slideshow doodle that gives us a glimpse of key rounds in his life. It progresses from his childhood in a lower-income neighborhood in Mexico City to his rise to fame as a pro wrestler who appeared in dozens of movies and comic books focusing on his wrestler persona as superhero. Closing with the statues that have been erected in his honor, the doodle also highlights the reverence people still hold for him more than 30 years after his death.
El Santo, who retired in the early 1980s, removed his iconic silver mask without warning for the only time in public during a TV broadcast, just a week before his death from a heart attack in February 1984. He was buried wearing his famous mask.