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WWE signs Puerto Rican star Apollo Print E-mail
Saturday, December 22, 2007
ImageWorld Wrestling Entertainment has reportedly signed IWA Puerto Rico star Germán "Apollo" Figueroa and are sending him to the Florida developmental territory Florida Championship Wrestling. 

Figueroa, known by most fans as Apollo, has been a mainstay in Puerto Rico for most of his career, appearing mostly for IWA Puerto Rico, though he spent a short period with the rival World Wrestling Council and even held their Universal title briefly on two separate occasions. He had left IWA Puerto Rico on bad terms and was involved in a messy legal battle over a contractual dispute. He returned to the company a year later after leaving the WWC. Most fans residing in the mainland United States will likely remember Apollo for his multiple runs in Total Nonstop Action where he briefly held the NWA World Tag Team Titles with D'Lo Brown and was originally a member of LAX with Homicide.

Fiqueroa made headlines on June 29th when it was reported that he had been arrested for domestic violence when Verónica "Havana" Polera, his wife, accused him of assaulting her. He was released on bail, and on October 8th pled guilty. He was sentenced to one year of anger management with the risk of jail time should he fail to attend. Figueroa was also reported as having been arrested in October 2006 on similar charges, though little information is available on this alleged incident.

An interesting note is that WWE's Puerto Rican promoter is Carlos Colon, who of course is the father of WWE superstar Carlito and heads IWA Puerto Rico's main rival, the World Wrestling Council. According to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer, Colon has been attempting to make the WWC a WWE Developmental territory and has thus far been rebuked, much to his dismay.

The news of Figueroa's signing was broken by the IWA Puerto Rico website, iwapr.tv. The site claims that Figueroa's stay with Florida Championship Wrestling is expected to be a brief one as there are already plans to bring him up to either "RAW" or "Smackdown!". Whether or not that is true is anyone's guess.
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