Rosita Williams

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Rosita Williams
	Name Rosita Williams Real name Rosa Contreras Nicknames Name history Rosita/Rosa Williams Family Tony Lopez (husband) Maestro(s) Birth date, location Obituary date August 28, 2018 Debut, location Lost mask to Height Weight Signature moves Titles: Mexican National Women's Title (x2)

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1950s luchadora and former national Champion. Retired near the end of 1956 after getting married to fellow wrestler Tony Lopez.

LuchaBlog Bio (from Clinch 227):

One bio that caught eye was a long profile of Rosa (Rosita) Williams, the current national woman’s champion. The headline feels very 50s: “Rosa Williams, weaker sex? Yes, but she’s also a champion!” There’s more of a point to it. Young Rosa saw a photo of a woman covered in blood in a newspaper, noticed it said “This is the weaker sex?” and asked her father about it. He explained it was a luchadora. She forgot it about it, but later got became a boxer when a friend was invited here to her own match. Williams says she was an undefeated boxer until the day her boxing match toured a bit, eventually fighting in the semimain of a show main evented by a Pantera Surina match. (This has to be a previous Pantera Surina luchadora; the famous Pantera Surena was born the same year this magazine was published.) Williams had never seen lucha libre before, and talked to luchador Octavio Gaona Jr. at the show to understand what was happening. She fell in love with it, starting training, and gave up boxing completely.

Williams’ first match was a mixed tag in Plaza el Progreso Guadalajara, teaming with Mario Prado against Golden Terror and the same Pantera Surina. She was very nervous, but her partner helped her get through it and they won the match. Her hardest match was in Torreon’s Palacio de los Deportes, another mixed tag with Raul Torres against Rudy Galindo and Pantera Surina again. Galindo was not yet a Cavernario but fought like one; Williams talks about all the hard shots she took in the match, which left her crying in the corner after the she tagged out. She had a headache for two weeks, and ended up shaving her head to reduce the pain. Williams wrestled around Mexico as a tecnico for five years, got tired of the beatings, and retired – to become a bull fighter instead. That didn’t work out (she didn’t have the right size for it) and she ended up returning to lucha as a ruda instead. She seems to be having much more fun in that style, and won the title as a ruda.

Williams says she won the women’s championship from Irma Gonzalez in El Toreo Cuatro Caminos (!) in February 1955. That’s a pretty big building for a women’s title match and suggests Mexico State didn’t ban women’s wrestling immediately after Mexico City did. Gonzalez is also said to be the first champion, which is different than what we have on the wiki right now. (There, Dama Enmascarada is the first champion; Williams actually says Enmascarada’s never had a chance but would make a good champion.) Williams says she’s since defended against Irma Gonzalez in Cuernavaca and Acapulco, with another match coming in Guadalajara.

Williams plans on getting married to fellow wrestler Tony Lopez in February or March of 1957 and retiring then. “Like any other woman, I want a home, a spouse, and a couple of children.” She cautioned one of her sisters not to train wrestling like Rosa. Her sister isn’t an athlete and won’t want to take the beating. William’s parents also have mixed feelings about this career: her mother hates seeing her get beat up, and her father wish he had never let her see the bloody woman photo, thinking she might have never taken this path. That bloody woman turns out to be Mildred Burke, and Williams is very proud to be the champion and The Best just like Burke was. She wants to retire as champion.

(The story doesn’t end the way Rosa Williams plans here; she’s back wrestling and champion again in 1959.)

Gallery

as Mexican National Women's Champion

title defense