Gino Brito

Gino Brito
Birth name Louis Gino Acocella
Born (1941-05-18) May 18, 1941[1]
Montreal, Quebec, Canada[1]
Residence Canada[1]
Children Gino Brito Jr.
Family Jack Britton (father)
Professional wrestling career
Ring name(s) Gino Brito
Louis Cerdan
Billed height 5 ft 10.5 in (1.79 m)[1]
Billed weight 240 lb (110 kg)[1]
Trained by George Cannon[1]

Louis Gino Acocella[1] (born May 18, 1941), better known by his ring name Gino Brito, is a Canadian professional wrestler. He was a popular wrestler in Montreal, and was one of the promoters in the city in the 1980s. As Louis Cerdan, he was a WWWF Tag Team Champion, teaming with fellow Canadian-Italian wrestler Tony Parisi.

Professional wrestling career

Active wrestler

Brito was the son of wrestler Jack Britton, who was organized a central booking office for midget wrestlers in the 1950s.[1] Brito had a job for the promotion shuttling the wrestlers from city to city.[1] Before becoming a professional wrestler at the age of seventeen, Brito was an amateur wrestler.[1] At age seventeen, he was trained by George Cannon.[1] He began working with Detroit promoters Bert Ruby and Harry Light over a year later.[1]

He first teamed with Tony Parisi in Tennessee, where the duo won the tag titles in Nick Gulas's promotion within two weeks.[1] The two also won the WWWF Tag Team Championship in 1975 from Blackjack Mulligan and Blackjack Lanza.[1] They later lost the title to The Executioners.[1] Brito continued to wrestle through the mid-80s.

Promoting

He also promoted shows under the International Wrestling banner in Montreal beginning in the 1980s, when he earned a television deal for his promotion.[1] The promotion lost several key players in the mid-1980s, such as The Rougeaus, Rick Martel, and Dino Bravo.[1] It held events that sometimes had up to 10,000 fans in attendance.[2] The company, however, went bankrupt in 1987, nine months after the aforementioned wrestlers left.[1] The promotion was the last Quebec-based promotion to have a weekly television show.[3]

After International Wrestling closed, Pat Patterson convinces Brito to be the WWWF promoter in Montreal, a job Brito held for four years.[1] Brito also appeared in the WWF old-timers battle royal in November 1987 (the first eliminated in a match won by Lou Thesz that featured several former world champions).

In 2003, Brito began promoting again with a promotion called Canadian Professional Wrestling (CPW) in Hull, Quebec.[4][5] He joined with promoter Paul Leduc and his Montreal-based promotion.[4] The promotion draws crowds of approximately 600 people every couple of months.[4] More than 1,000 people attended the first anniversary event, in which Abdullah the Butcher and Pierre Carl Ouellet also participated.[5] In October 2004, at the age of 63, Brito wrestled a match for the promotion, a loss in a six-man tag team match.[6] In January 2005, the first of six events began airing on Canadian pay-per-view, which featured wrestlers from Brito's CPW, as well as footage from his International Wrestling promotion.[2]

Personal life

Brito's father, Jack Brito, and uncle were both professional wrestlers.[1] Brito's son, Gino Brito, Jr., also worked in the business for a short time.[1]

He is of Italian descent, which is reflected in his ringname Gino Brito.[1] To form the name, Brito shortened his father's name Britton.[1] He was good friends with other Italian wrestlers, such as Tony Parisi, Bruno Sammartino, and Dominic DeNucci.[1]

Brito was arrested in October 1992 on extortion and loan sharking charges in relation to his work as an "enforcer" for Loan Sharks in the Montreal area.[7]

After finishing his career in the wrestling business, Brito began working at Subaru car business—buying and auctioning—with his brother-in-law.[1]

In wrestling

Championships and accomplishments

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Oliver, Greg. "Canadian Hall of Fame: Gino Brito". SLAM! Wrestling. Retrieved 2008-05-02.
  2. 1 2 Lacroix, Corey David (November 12, 2004). "CPW secures PPV deal". SLAM! Wrestling. Retrieved 2008-09-14.
  3. ↑ Leroux, Yves (January 16, 2005). "Gino Brito honoured at inaugural MWO show". SLAM! Wrestling. Retrieved 2008-09-14.
  4. 1 2 3 Oliver, Greg (July 16, 2003). "Brito's CPW trying to grow". SLAM! Wrestling. Retrieved 2008-09-14.
  5. 1 2 Lacroix, Corey David (November 5, 2003). "CPW celebrates in style". SLAM! Wrestling. Retrieved 2008-09-14.
  6. ↑ Lacroix, Corey David (October 22, 2004). "Gino Brito returns to the ring". SLAM! Wrestling. Retrieved 2008-09-14.
  7. ↑ https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/500x9k/wrestling_observer_rewind_oct_19_1992/
  8. 1 2 "Gino Brito profile". Online World of Wrestling. Retrieved 2008-09-14.
  9. ↑ "North American Heavyweight Title (Maritimes)". Wrestling Titles. Retrieved 2008-11-11.
  10. ↑ "International Wrestling International Tag Team Title (Montreal)". Wrestling Titles. Retrieved 2008-09-14.
  11. ↑ "History of the World Tag Team Championship". World Wrestling Entertainment. Retrieved 2008-09-14.
  12. ↑ "International Heavyweight Title/WWWF International Heavyweight Title History". Solie's Title Histories. Retrieved 2008-09-14.
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