.jpg) Brito in 1976 | |
| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Born | Louis Gino Acocella (1941-05-18)May 18, 1941 (age 84)[2] |
| Children | Gino Brito Jr. |
| Family | Jack Britton (father) |
| Professional wrestling career | |
| Ring name(s) | Gino Brito Louis Cerdan |
| Billed height | 5 ft 10 in (178 cm)[1] |
| Billed weight | 240 lb (109 kg)[1] |
| Trained by | George Cannon[2] |
| Debut | 1961 |
| Retired | 2004 |
Louis Gino Acocella[2] (born May 18, 1941), better known by hisring nameGino Brito, is a retired Canadianprofessional wrestler and promoter. He was most popular inMontreal. AsLouis Cerdan, he was aWWWF Tag Team Champion with fellowItalian-Canadian wrestlerTony Parisi. He trained another Italian-Canadian wrestler,Dino Bravo.
Brito was the son of wrestler Jack Britton. Born Gabriel Acocella, he and his brother Luigi were renamedJack Britton andLou Kelly, respectively, by promoterPaul Bowser, who wanted to attractBoston's Irish population to his events by featuring "Irish" wrestlers.[3]
He began working with Detroit promoters Bert Ruby and Harry Light over a year later.,[2] who organized a central booking office for midget wrestlers in the 1950s.[2] Brito had a job for the promotion shuttling the wrestlers from city to city.[2] Before becoming a professional wrestler at the age of seventeen, Brito was anamateur wrestler.[2] At age seventeen, he was trained byGeorge Cannon.[2] He began working with Detroit promoters Bert Ruby and Harry Light over a year later.[2]
He first teamed withTony Parisi in Tennessee, where the duo won the tag titles inNick Gulas's promotion within two weeks.[2] The two also won theWWWF Tag Team Championship in 1975 fromBlackjack Mulligan andBlackjack Lanza.[2] They later lost the title toThe Executioners.[2] Brito continued to wrestle through the mid-80s.
He also promoted shows under theInternational Wrestling banner inMontreal beginning in the 1980s, when he earned a television deal for his promotion.[2] The promotion lost several key players in the mid-1980s, such asThe Rougeaus,Rick Martel, andDino Bravo.[2] It held events that sometimes had up to 20,000 fans in attendance.[4] The company, however, went bankrupt in 1987, nine months after the aforementioned wrestlers left.[2] The promotion was the last Quebec-based promotion to have a weekly television show.[5]
After International Wrestling closed,Pat Patterson convinced Brito to be the WWWF promoter in Montreal, a job Brito held for four years.[2] Brito also appeared in the WWF old-timers battle royal in November 1987 (the first eliminated in a match won byLou Thesz that featured several former world champions).
In 2003, Brito began promoting again with a promotion called Canadian Professional Wrestling (CPW) inHull, Quebec.[6][7] He joined with promoterPaul Leduc and his Montreal-based promotion.[6] The promotion draws crowds of approximately 600 people every couple of months.[6] More than 1,000 people attended the first anniversary event, in whichAbdullah the Butcher andPierre Carl Ouellet also participated.[7] In October 2004, at the age of 63, Brito wrestled a match for the promotion, a loss in a six-man tag team match.[8] 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.[4]
Brito's father, Jack Britton, and uncle were both professional wrestlers.[2] Brito's son, Gino Brito Jr., also worked in the business for a short time.[2]
He is of Italian descent, which is reflected in his ring name Gino Brito.[2] To form the name, Brito shortened his father's name Britton.[2] He was good friends with other Italian wrestlers, such asTony Parisi,Bruno Sammartino, andDominic DeNucci.[2]
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.[9]
After finishing his career in the wrestling business, Brito began working atSubaru car business—buying and auctioning—with his brother-in-law.[2]
,Wrestlingdata,Internet Wrestling Database