Johnny Mundo recently spoke to the News Hub about his time in Lucha Underground, the return of Tough Enough and more. You can check out the full interview at this link and read some highlights below:
Lucha Underground has proved a new beginning for you. How have you found working with the El Rey Network?
I’ve been completely blown away by the professionalism, by the people and the talent of those on the roster on Lucha Underground. Being on the El Rey Network, being one of the companies that puts the vignettes together from Skip Chasen who is putting the backstage vignettes together to the other people the Lucha Underground people specifically that set up this interview. I’ve could talk about Lucha Underground for hours and hours and how great it is. The quick bullet points are that the vignettes, I love and I’ve been doing a bunch of movies since I left the WWE and loved where we were shooting the vignettes in the style of the gritty action film where we are doing coverage and I like that we are doing the vignettes in English and Spanish. I know it gets more views in Spanish than it does in English which is interesting and challenging.
The in-ring psychology is faster paced and harder hitting then the WWE for example. I like that it definitely has been a challenge for me physically and mentally because it allows me to reinvent myself and make Johnny Mundo relevant and a competitor in the style of Lucha Underground which I believe is a combination of Lucha, American pro wrestling and also Japanese and European pro wrestling. Everything is combined in Lucha and it’s cool to revitalize my career and make me think about pro wrestling and it’s made me excited about pro wrestling again and I’m super excited for season 2 and can’t wait to come back.
What differences would you see between the John Morrison character and Johnny Mundo?
Mundo can speak Spanish, that’s the one. There’s a meme somewhere out there of Captain Picard hitting himself in the forehead saying ah, damn it. That time where a wrestler changes his name but not his gimmick. As Johnny Mundo I feel like I haven’t changed a ton from the babyface John Morrison gimmick that I started Lucha Underground with but I’ve just evolved to where we are now on TV, I am now a rudo which in English means bad guy and it’s been fun let’s put it this way Johnny Mundo now is darker and more sinister than John Morrison ever was.
What is exciting to me is Lucha Underground feels like the opportunity to go even darker and have a deeper character than I had with WWE. It is there in front of me and I’m looking forward to doing it. To taking Johnny Mundo places athletically, emotionally, creatively that I never went with Johnny Nitro or John Morrison. I think people that have been watching it have been giving it good reviews and feedback on the character choices and as everything continues with Lucha Underground you are going to see Johnny Mundo slowly evolve into a very dark and villainous character.
