{"id":25405,"date":"2018-09-06T13:36:27","date_gmt":"2018-09-06T17:36:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lwosonprowrestling.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/?p=25405"},"modified":"2018-09-06T13:36:27","modified_gmt":"2018-09-06T17:36:27","slug":"how-rodrigo-garcia-became-the-most-hated-man-in-puerto-rico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2018\/09\/06\/how-rodrigo-garcia-became-the-most-hated-man-in-puerto-rico\/","title":{"rendered":"How Rodrigo Garc\u00eda Became The Most Hated Man In Puerto Rico"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Is often said, &#8220;Real heel heat is dead!&#8221; Well\u2026 not in Puerto Rico. <strong>Rodrigo Garc\u00eda<\/strong>, who employs a Cuban gimmick for <strong>Championship Wrestling Association (CWA)<\/strong> was the center of controversy last week in the island.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-25465\" src=\"https:\/\/lwosonprowrestling.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2018\/09\/32367775_460396954394357_4362542898391023616_n-e1536255278471.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"450\"><\/p>\n<h3><strong>Cuba over Puerto Rico<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>The former <strong>CWA<\/strong> Puerto Rican champion got a lot of angry responses and even attention in the press when a photoshoot of him calling Puerto Ricans a &#8220;muertos de hambres&#8221; went viral on Facebook. For English-speaking readers, &#8220;muerto de hambre&#8221; is a derogative term, it implies that Puerto Ricans live in a third world country, with nothing to eat and that they&#8217;re worthless.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=PLZRuojAEsw<\/p>\n<p>Garc\u00eda statements were part of his gimmick as a Cuban immigrant who feels that his country is better than Puerto Rico. He often brings the Cuban flags to wrestling matches, refers to Puerto Ricans as a savages and that they don&#8217;t have real heritage like Cuba.\u00a0The post where Garc\u00eda told the statement had over 3,000 comments and more than 1.2K shares.<\/p>\n<p>A pseudo-news outlet wrote an article and people quickly jumped to Garc\u00eda&#8217;s Facebook page to tell him to comeback to Cuba. Moreover, dead threats and beatings were promised to the Cuban. It was amazing how in 2018, someone can still gather that kind of blowback. People were quick to call Garc\u00eda racist for his comments, ignoring that this was wrestling and that in Puerto Rico, gimmicks depicting Arabs, Mexicans and other ethnicities have always been rampant.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>A Similar Story\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Back in the 2000s and further in the 1990s, <strong>Bronco I<\/strong> called Puerto Rico a inferior country to his home country of the Dominican Republic. The heat that he got was gigantic, not because it was racist, but because Puerto Ricans, racists themselves towards Dominicans, think that their country is better.\u00a0In the 1980s, <strong>Chicky Starr<\/strong> dared to call <strong>Carlos Colon<\/strong> a &#8220;stinky monkey&#8221;. Again, the heat was because of their love for Colon, not because they thought it was racist.\u00a0Puerto Ricans have always been in the wrong side of race issues. They (we) are very proud. Puerto Rican&#8217;s only see racism when it towards them, but not the other way around, as it happens with racism against Dominicans.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"RODRIGO GARCIA SE\u00d1ALA A UN PETICIONARIO DEL BOICOT\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HpJOCzjpsIE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Back to Rodrigo Garc\u00eda, CWA released a statement apologizing for Garc\u00eda&#8217;s behavior. Many fans viewed this as a poor choice by the company, since their long time heel finally got the heat needed to step-it up from the mid-card. <strong>Willie Urbina<\/strong>, former Impact Wrestling commentator, called the CWA press release a &#8220;real shame&#8221;. <strong>Danny Nieves<\/strong> who now heads <strong>WWL<\/strong> loved how Garc\u00eda was hated in the island.<\/p>\n<p>There was a petition to have the CWA Convention Center canceled, but that didn&#8217;t went anywhere. Plus, Garc\u00eda kept his attacks towards Puerto Ricans intact, which would make <strong>Jim Cornette<\/strong> and <strong>Sami Callihan<\/strong> really proud.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is often said, &#8220;Real heel heat is dead!&#8221; Well\u2026 not in Puerto Rico. Rodrigo Garc\u00eda, who employs a Cuban gimmick for Championship Wrestling Association (CWA) was the center of controversy last week in the island. Cuba over Puerto Rico The former CWA Puerto Rican champion got a lot of angry responses and even attention in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2085,"featured_media":25464,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,3318],"tags":[3399,1026,3400,1022,2787,989,1021],"class_list":["post-25405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-north-america","category-puerto-rico","tag-bronco-i","tag-carlos-colon","tag-chiky-starr","tag-cwa","tag-rodrigo-garcia","tag-wwc","tag-wwl"],"modified_by":"Jamie Greer","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2085"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}