Scorpio Jr.

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Scorpio Jr.

Name Scorpio Jr. Real name Rafael Núñez Juan Nicknames El Guapo (The handsome one) El Principe Feo (The Ugly Prince) Name history Imágen (debut - 85), Scorpio Jr. (85 - ), Red Scorpion (New Japan, 1994), El Bandido (WWF, 1999) , Sadam (2003) Family Scorpio (father), Scorpio 2.0 (nephew) Maestro(s) Scorpio, Rafael Salamanca Birth date, location October 11, 1966 - Mexico City Obituary date November 7, 2024 Debut, location August 30, 1985 - Arena Actopan - Hidalgo Lost mask to Negro Casas & El Hijo del Santo - March 11, 1999 - Arena México Height 5'9"/174 cms Weight 216 lbs/98 kg Signature moves Power Bomb, Spinebuster Bomb, Inverted Atomic Drop, Senton Titles: UWA World Trios Titles (3, w/ Shu El Guerrero & Engendro twice, w/ Shu El Guerrero & Villano V), UWF Intercontinental Tag Team Titles (w/ Shu El Guerrero), CMLL World Tag Team Titles (2, w/ Bestia Salvaje), IWRG Intercontinental Heavyweight Title (4), Tijuana "WCW" Cruiserweight title, IWRG Intercontinental Trios Titles (w/ Cerebro Negro & El Veneno), IWRG Intercontinental Tag Team Championship (w/Ricky Cruz), FCW World Heavyweight Title, IWRG Rey del Ring, 2011 IWRG Nuevas Promesas Tournament (w/ Comando Negro)

Biography

Returned to IWRG in 2011 as a surprise 2011 Rey del Ring entrant.

LuchaBlog Obituary:

Scorpio Jr. (Rafael Nunez) passed away Thursday. He was 58. Record reports Scorpio Jr. passed away after an ulcer burst.

Scorpio Jr.’s started his career at the age of 18. His father was a regular in UWA and his son started there in the late 80s, continuing through the effective in off the promotion in the mid 90s. His biggest win during that time would’ve been a mask victory over Black Scorpio (a touring Too Cold Scorpio). Scorpio Jr. had a brief stint in 1995 AAA alongside other UWA refugees but landed in CMLL for the long term. (Scorpio’s father, who was a Mexico City lucha libre commissioner by this point, may have had a role in that move.) Scorpio Jr. was an upper-level rudo for that CMLL run, running from 1995 until 2004. He was a jacked-up muscle guy in a promotion where there weren’t many of that type. His biggest role was as a character in the Negro Casas/El Hijo del Santo drama in the late 90s. The Arena Mexico crowd started cheering rudo Casas over tecnico Santo, including on the 63rd Aniversario show. El Hijo del Santo left Arena Mexico for a few months, Casas turned tecnico in the interim, and Santo shockingly decided to become a rudo for the first time in his career to continue to fight him. Santo teamed up with Scorpio Jr. and Bestia Salvaje for that run. When it was time for Hijo del Santo to turn back tecnico, Scorpio Jr. first beat Santo in the first-ever Leyenda de Plata tournament a year and a half later, a match he talked about with CMLL back in 2020. Salvaje & Scorpio also attacked Santo in a trios tournament, and fate happened to have Negro Casas as one of those saving him. That led to a tag team program between Santo/Casas and Salvaje/Scorpio and a hair/mask match at the first ever Homenaje a Dos Leyendas in 1999. Santo & Casas won, of course.

(Around this time, Scorpio Jr. also had a run on WWF’s Super Astros programming, which used a lot of CMLL talent booked through Victor Quiñones. Scorpio wrestled as the unmasked El Bandido on five matches, most taped before he lost his mask in Mexico.)

Santo also beat Scorpio Jr. in a 1999 Leyenda de Plata rematch, closing the book on that story (and ending Scorpio’s run on top.) Scorpio Jr. had already moved onto a new angle. He and Bestia Salvaje teamed with rising star and recent rudo convert Shocker to form Los Guapos, a tongue-in-cheek idea of these not-conventionally-handsome men playing off like the world’s most beautiful men. (Scorpio’s Sr. had been billed as ‘the ugliest man in the world,’ so Scorpio Jr. was a natural.) The gimmick wasn’t successful from a box office standpoint, but it became the iconic version of those wrestlers. Shocker and Scorpio Jr. are still playing that same Guapos character to this day, and AAA currently has a group based on this two-decade-old angle. (The Guapos did better business on Tijuana shows.) In the early 2000s, Shocker was an incredibly charismatic wrestler, too big for this semi-comedy group. CMLL eventually added Emilio Charles Jr. to the unit with the idea of him pushing Shocker out. This was CMLL’s peak period of doing outside-the-ring vignettes, so there were bits about Shocker and Emilio feuding over a woman and Shocker messing with their hair dye that are well remembered. Shocker would win Emilio’s hair to end that program and Scorpio Jr.’s hair in the last days of his time in CMLL. Before that – and after Shocker had messed up the Guapo’s good looks – Scorpio Jr., Emilio Charles Jr., and Bestia Salvaje found religion and became Los Talibanes following the 9/11 attacks. It was meant as a parody and not to be taken seriously, though it may have played differently outside of Mexico. (Scorpio also briefly played a masked Sadam gimmick in Pierroth’s gang, but it didn’t go anywhere.) Scorpio Jr.’s last Arena Mexico booking came on February 13, 2004, though he hung around most of the year working smaller shows before leaving the promotion.

Scorpio Jr. got one more run in the big time, thanks to Shocker. He had jumped to AAA in 2005, who thought they were getting the star of just a couple of years prior and instead got someone dealing with significant substance abuse issues. (Shocker has since said he doesn’t remember a thing of his 14 months in AAA.) After running with Shocker as a tecnico didn’t work out, AAA pulled from the past to redo Los Guapos. Emilio Charles Jr. and Bestia Salvaje were still in CMLL, but Scorpio Jr. was available. So were ex-CMLL wrestlers (and participants in later Shocker Guapos concepts) Alan Stone and Zumbido, as well as the new addition of micro manager Guapito. Shocker bailed back to CMLL in 2006, but AAA kept the idea going without him. Scorpio Jr. got a feud and hair loss to Super Porky (a rare achievement to lose a hair match with Brazo de Plata), and Decnnis eventually also got added to the group. Scorpio Jr., a poor in-ring wrestler during this AAA run, was quietly phased out of the group. He continued to work about 30-50 matches, a lot for Tinieblas’s micro-promotion FULL. Scorpio Jr. also introduced a Mini Scorpio, a Scorpio 2G and a Scorpio 3G at different times; SuperLuchas bio says at least one of those was his real son.

Scorpio Jr. wrestled twice on AAA TV this year, wrestling the June Mexico City show and again in August on Verano de Escandalo, back again with Alan Stone and Zumbido. He looked old and far past his prime, but he also had looked far past his prime in the 2006-2008 Guapos U run they were referencing. AAA apparently thought there was more they could do with the Guapos, but again, not with Scorpio Jr. That second appearance included an injury angle to replace Scorpio Jr. with Bello Stone (Chris Stone Jr.), and Scorpio hadn’t been mentioned since. I don’t have a record of him appearing on other cards past that night. Scorpio Jr. and his wife spent his last years running a food stand in Mexico City, which he appeared to enjoy. The great El Arte de Gotch YouTube channel caught up with Scorpio Jr. back in September. The title has Scorpio talking about retiring in a year. Visually, he looks much thinner and older in the face than he had even a month prior in AAA, as if there was some illness he was battling.

AAA mentioned Scorpio Jr.’s passing. IWRG had a moment of applause on Thursday’s show. CMLL has not said anything, as of this writing.

Luchas de apuestas record

Date	Apuesta	Winner(s)	Loser(s)	Arena and/or Place
????/??/??	hair	El Dragón	Scorpio Jr.	unknown
??/??/??	hair	Scorpio Jr.	Aristóteles I	unknown
92/08/09	mask	Scorpio Jr.	Tortuguillo Karateka I	El Toreo - Naucalpan, Mexico State
92/10/25	mask	Scorpio Jr.	Black Scorpio	El Toreo - Naucalpan, Mexico State
99/03/19	hair/mask	Negro Casas & El Hijo del Santo	Bestia Salvaje & Scorpio Jr.	Arena México - Mexico City
00/12/22	hair	Nicho el Millonario	Scorpio Jr.	Auditorio de Tijuana - Tijuana, Baja California
2002/12/19	hair	El Hijo del Santo	Scorpio Jr.	Arena Naucalpan - Naucalpan, Mexico State
03/07/??	hair	Scorpio Jr.	Enterrador	Arena Naucalpan - Naucalpan, Mexico State
04/03/21	hair (1)	Shocker	Scorpio Jr.	Arena Coliseo - Guadalajara, Jalisco
04/07/03	hair (2)	Shocker	Scorpio Jr.	Toluca, Mexico State
05/12/01	hair	Villano III	Scorpio Jr.	Arena Xalapa - Xalapa, Veracruz
2005/07/16	hair	Hijo del Santo	Scorpio Jr.	L.A. Sports Arena - Los Angeles, California
06/12/08	hair (3)	Scorpio Jr.	Brazo de Plata	Centro de Convenciones - CD Madero
07/11/30	hair (4)	Alan Stone	Scorpio Jr.	Centro de Convenciones - CD Madero
08/12/14	hair (5)	Scorpio Jr.	Masada	Arena Naucalpan - Naucalpan, Mexico State
09/02/26	hair	Villano III	Scorpio Jr.	Arena Neza - Nezahuatcoyotl, Mexico, State
10/09/16	hair (6)	Oriental	Scorpio Jr.	Arena Azteca Budokan. Cd Nezahualcoyolt.
2010/11/19	hair (3)	Último Guerrero	Scorpio Jr.	Deportivo Agustin Millan - Toluca
12/10/06	Hair(7)	Super Muñeco	Scorpio Jr.	Arena López Mateos, Tlanepantla
2016/11/03	hair (8)	El Terrible	Scorpio Jr.	Arena Afición - Pachuca, Hidalgo
2017/12/05	hair	Tinieblas Jr.	Scorpio Jr.	Arena Coliseo Monterrey - Monterrey, Nuevo Leon
2024/05/25	hair (9)	Negro Casas	Scorpio Jr.	Orizaba - Veracruz
(1) Guapos vs. Scorp/Emilio/Texano cage match; (2) Finals of 6 man tournament; (3) Four way match w/ Alan Stone & El Intocable; (4) JAULA: Super Calo, Intocable, Zumbido & Decnis; (5) Three way with Veneno; (5)Jaula Electrificada: Juventud Guerrera, Black Warrior, Marco Corleone, Charly Manson, El Oriental, Zumbido & Oriental; (6) did not get his hair shaved, (7) Final of a Ruleta Rusa w/Toscano, Místico, Sagrado, Misterioso II, Felino, Shigeo Okumura(7) Cage Match: Super Muñeco, Super Pinocho, Super Ratón, Black Terry, Shu el Guerrero, Scorpio Jr.; (8) Cage match with Lizmark Jr., Vangelis, Alan Stone & Último Guerrero, (9) Four Way Cage Match w/Alan Stone and Intocable

Gallery

La Corporacion in IWRG

as Sadam

2009 w/ Black Metal and Capitan Calico