Gino Brito

Brito was the son of wrestler Jack Britton. Born Gabriel Acocella, he and his brother Luigi were re-named Jack Britton and Lou Kelly, respectively, by promoter Paul Bowser, who wanted to attract Boston's Irish population to his events by featuring "Irish" wrestlers.[2]

Britton 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] 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.

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 20,000 fans in attendance.[3] 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.[4]

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.[5][6] He joined with promoter Paul Leduc and his Montreal-based promotion.[5] The promotion draws crowds of approximately 600 people every couple of months.[5] More than 1,000 people attended the first anniversary event, in which Abdullah the Butcher and Pierre Carl Ouellet also participated.[6] In October 2004, at the age of 63, Brito wrestled a match for the promotion, a loss in a six-man tag team match.[7] 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.[3]