Giants WR Victor Cruz, known for his signature “salsa dance” touchdown celebrations, claims the dance is a loving tribute to his late Grandmother Lucy, who deeply loved taunting people.
“Oh yeah, my Grams had an enormous passion for taunting,” said the wideout, who performed the move on Sunday evening after scoring his eighth touchdown of the season during New York’s 38-10 rout of the Packers. “Growing up, I used to spend warm sunny days with her playing checkers out on the porch. She’d jump two of my pieces, then leap out of her chair and start salsa dancing all around me, shouting, ‘boo-ya! How you like me NOW, sucka?”
Cruz remembers his “Gram-Grams,” who passed away in September, as a vivacious, energetic woman with a passion for life, love, and most of all, condescending belittlement of her foes.
“There was this one time, we went down to the corner grocery store,” recalled Cruz. “They only had one can of olives left on the shelf, and Grams needed those olives to make her patented arroz con gandules. But there was this other lady there who was eyeballing the can too, and she had to be at least 20 years younger than Grams. Well old Granny just took that as a challenge. She hauled ass up that aisle, dove headfirst, and snatched that can of olives just before the other lady could get there.”
“Then of course, she jumps up and starts doing her salsa in a circle around the woman, singing, ‘I got dem olives, and you don’t get none, I got dese olives, and they’re delicious…’ Then she spiked them, which probably wasn’t the best move, but she was just in the moment, you know?”
Although Cruz still mourns the loss of his beloved relative, he thinks of her every time he crosses the goal line and tees up the patented moves she showed him so many years ago.
“I know that Gram-Grams is up there somewhere, watching me,” Cruz concluded. “And when she sees me score six points, I can almost hear her shouting, ‘Hells yeah, sonny! You taunt the shit outta that DB. He can’t cover your ass. That punk-ass bitch ain’t got nothing!’”
