Santa Tigresa IV

Santa Tigresa
Gender: Female
Age: 35
Date of Birth: November 1, 1980
Height: 5'7"
Weight:   145 lbs.
Hair: Black
Eyes: Brown
Nationality:  Mexico
Hometown: Undisclosed
Alighnment: Tecnico
Entrance Music: K'Naan, "Waving Flag"

Role: High-Flyer

APPEARANCE

Spoiler:

((Tigresa, in her usual ring gear, both before and after a particularly rough training session))

WRESTLING INFORMATION

Santa Tigresa comes from a long line of wrestlers, beginning with her grandmother, a wrestler in the 1930s and '40s.  Keeping with tradition, the current Tigresa is training heavily in traditional grappling and mat-based technique, as well as the high flying, high-risk maneuvers usually associated with lucha libre.  Highly intelligent, with a natural disposition towards wrestling and highly motivated to succeed, the Tigresa has mastered many of the basic holds and reversals, and displays a natural talent for hitting the lucha high spots.  Having wrestled four years in Mexico before coming to AFW, the luchadora seems to bring a lot to the table.

Coming a bit late into her training, however, Tigresa is often reluctant to pull out all the stops, in a match.  A bit older than many of the wrestlers she faces, she can seem somewhat slow, for a high-flyer, which often gets her into trouble.  Additionally, Tigresa's experience in the clergy leaves her a bit conflicted, reluctant to engage in anything she sees as too violent.  More than a few times, this hesitation has cost her, in the ring.

SKILLS

Slams and Throws-  Tigresa Oro's thicker, "hippy" frame allows her to execute power moves on smaller opponents with ease.
Technical Skill- Much of Tigresa's training focused on standard technique, incorporating various holds from the United States, Mexico and Japan.  Having these drilled into her head from the very beginning of her career has made Tigresa rather skilled in counter moves and chain wrestling.
Strikes- While Tigresa is well versed in the basic techniques of strikes, she's actually rather reluctant to use them.  Feeling overt violence a betrayal of her faith, Tigresa will try to avoid strikes where possible; when she does use them, she tends to deliver the blows with a fraction of their potential strength.
Submissions-  Tigresa has been well trained in submission moves, but she often relies on her thicker frame to give her an advantage over her foes.  If she can lock in a seated move on a smaller opponent, she can be quite deadly.  However, she's also been known to release holds quickly, if she honestly thinks she made be doing an opponent legitimate harm.

PREFERRED MATCH TYPES
Free-form match types, such as hardcore matches, or "falls count anywhere" matches.  She would also love to compete in a traditional, Mexican-style trios tag match, if the opportunity ever arose.

FAVOURITE MOVES
Santa Tigresa favors lifts and technical wrestling maneuvers, such as arm drags, suplexes and the like.  While she can pull out more acrobatic maneuvers, from time to time, she knows full well that such moves are risks, and shouldn't be taken too lightly.
Tigresa's favourite moves to pull out during a match include the arm drag, the fireman's carry, the gutwrench powerbomb (against smaller opponents), suplexes, the drop toe hold, the fisherman's suplex, and other traditional lifting moves.  She does manage to pull off lucha maneuvers, as well (such as hurricanranas, springboard moves, splashes, planchas, and the like), but Tigresa doesn't get nearly as much use out of them as she could.  When she does use them, however, they are nearly always executed to perfection.


FINISHING MOVE
La Racha-  After using a drop toe hold to put her opponent on the ropes, Santa Tigresa will run from the opposite end of the ring to the other, getting the crowd behind her, before diving between the ropes to deliver a powerful kick to her opponent.  If she is able to accomplish this, Tigresa will follow up by jumping over the top rope, and deliving a devastating splash attack to her opponent, hoping to secure a pin.

PERSONALITY AND BACKGROUND
With absent parents, the girl who would become Santa Tigresa IV had to learn to care for herself at an early age.  Strong and self-reliant, she took a heavy hand in raising her younger siblings, and would eventually join the church as a nun, extending her "big sister" role to her entire village.  A nun in her mid-twenties, the young lady took charge of the local orphanage, becoming a well-loved figure in the community, and seemingly retired to a quiet life of contemplation and peace.  This wasn't to last, however.

Unknown to her, the reason that her own mother had been so absent in her life was that she was Santa Tigresa III, local legend and heroine to the people of her quiet part of the countryside.  When her mother came home to finally retire, she offered to pass the mask and role down to her daughter.  Despite the conflict with her faith and her new life in the sisterhood, she saw the need her people had for a larger-than-life heroine.  She eventually accepted the role as it was passed down to her, and abandoned her habit to begin training in lucha libre.  However, she refused to sever her ties to the orphanage, dedicating not just her life, but her entire career to ensuring that these children would be provided for.

Sadly, in Mexico, Santa Tigresa IV's career ended up being a bit of a failure. Even after giving her all to her training, she fell short of the more spirited and experienced competitors she faced in the rings of Mexico.  Seeing the disappointment on the faces of her fans and family, the young Tigresa vowed to travel the world, improving her skills until she was ready to compete on the level of her legendary predecessors.  Coming to AFW, Santa Tigresa plans to give her all in the ring, and serve as an inspiration to her fans as she strives to rise through the ranks and learn all she can about professional wrestling.


QUIRKS AND FUN FACTS
-  Despite abandoning her life as a nun, Santa Tigresa is still devoted to her faith, and the role she held in her community as a nun and orphanage director.  This makes her a rather popular figure in her home country, even having a comic book published about her (highly fictionalized) exploits.  Apparently, luchadoras really hate werewolves ...
-  The orphanage that Santa Tigresa IV managed in Mexico still avidly follows her career, and the majority of the proceeds from her matches go to the benefit of the children back home.  Tigresa's simply glad that noodles and such seem to be so cheap, in Japan.
-  More than a few times, Tigresa has seen the face of Jesus in unlikely places, such as grilled cheese sandwiches, tomato soup, and tee shirts featured long-haired, bearded dudes.
-  While her English isn't the best (and her grasp of Japanese pretty much nonexistent), Tigresa has been consuming a massive amount of English-language television.  Even if she doesn't get all of the jokes, cartoons are her current favourite, as she marathons long stretches of Adventure Time, old Looney Tunes and Teen Titans.

AFW RECORD-
Matches: 8
Wins-5/ Losses-3/ Draws-0  


MATCH HISTORY
1.  Santa Tigresa defeated Kia Manaputo via pinfall:  Santa Tigresa IV's first match in AFW ended in a surprise victory for the luchadora.  While shocked at her opponent's bitter reaction to the result, La Santa still managed to relish in making her AFW debut with an unexpected victory.

2.  Claire Garland d. Santa Tigresa via submission:  For her second match, the Tigresa encounters a purple-haired dominatrix who exposes her to an entirely different style of competition.  One that, for all her effort, Santa Tigresa doesn't seem able to compete with the dominatrix's mental and physical submission tactics, and suffers her first, brutal loss.

3.  Santa Tigresa d. Hinata Huerta via submission: A hard-fought match against a fiery young rookie, Santa Tigresa found herself fighting with everything she had to keep on top of Hinata.  While the Tigresa's experience carried her over in the match, Hinata impressed with skill and vigor.

4.  Santa Tigresa d. Daisuke Takeuchi:  Following Daisuke's brutal beating of Santa Tigresa's young friend Vida Fenix in the ring, and Daisuke's attack on La Santa in the locker room, the Tigresa found herself in a falls-count-anywhere match with the self-proclaimed "wrestling prince."  While the luchadora came out on top of the actual match, Daisuke's continued disrespect and a brutal attack from his sister Ami (in which she stole La Santa's mask) only served to heighten their animosity ((Match via YIM))

5.  Daisuke & Ami Takeuchi d. Santa Tigresa & Vida Fenix via pinfall:  In an attempt at redeeming their honor, Santa Tigresa & Vida Fenix team up against the Takeuchi siblings.  A hard-fought match, but in the end the Tigresa let herself get distracted and vulnerable to a (tights-assisted) roll-up pin by her hated opponent.  ((Match via YIM))

6.  Santa Tigresa d. Daisuke Takeuchi: A match to recover the mask which Daisuke had stolen from Santa Tigresa, this cemented the pair's highly competitive feud.  The Tigresa came out on top, in the end, and had her mask and honor restored.  However, even that victory does not seem to have put a complete stop to their rivalry ... ((Match via YIM))

7.  Santa Tigresa d. Daisuke Takeuchi:  Returning to Japan after a lengthy absence, Santa Tigresa faced her heated rival in yet another contest.  Hotter and heavier than her previous encounters with the wrestling prince, the Tigresa still prevailed.  However, the match was far from conclusive, and their rivalry seems far from over.  ((Match via YIM))

8.  Juniper d. Santa Tigresa via submission:  After a hotly contested match-up, the Tigresa is completely thrown off her game and forced to submit by her powerful and fiery opponent's unorthodox tactics.((Thread currently in progress))

RELATIONSHIPS:

Allies:
Vida Fenix, the young woman that La Santa inspired in Mexico, who came to AFW and is now under her watchful eye.  The two are currently in the tag team known as La Superestrellas!

Enemies:
Daisuke Takeuchi:  After the disrespectful young man's assault on Vida, La Santa has sworn a vendetta against him, promising to avenge not just her protege's honor, but the dignity of lucha libre as a whole.