Matt Striker Discusses Lucha Underground, Learning From Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler, More

– Matt Striker recently spoke about working with Lucha Underground and more. Here are the highlights…

What is it like to be a part of this new promotion, Lucha Underground? : To be a part of something new is like anything in any walk of life; you get a new girl, you get a new toy, you get a new phone. It is all very cool and it makes you feel like you’re a part of something. I feel like that’s human nature. Just look at the success on Facebook and Twitter, “Oh, look at me. Like me. Follow me.” You’re a part of something with Lucha Underground but it’s real, it’s not a fad.

Are you enjoying being on the play-by-play part of things? : In other places, those roles were really defined. Like anything else in Lucha Underground, the direction is to be yourselves and just allow what happens organically to happen organically. And I think it took Vampiro and I literally 5 minutes of sitting together to realize how this is going to go. He is the veteran. He has been around for 818 years because he is a vampire and they don’t die. I got my snarky, witty banter or my observations. If there was a couch and beer or whatever you are into, that is what we would be doing. We would be sitting and watching wrestling and making comments to each other.

Do you have the freedom now to throw out certain things to a different type of audience? : Commentary in any regards, independent of where or which umbrella I was working, I had the freedom to say anything I wanted. It was up to the editors on the tape of the show if they wanted to keep it in or what we call ‘bladed’ the comments that were there. On a live show, that is a different story. You have to be careful with the things you say live. Yeah freedom is freedom; you just have to think about that from an editing standpoint.

How much does Mark Burnett play a role in Lucha Underground? : Being around someone successful and productive can only rub off on people positively. Everything Mark Burnett has done has been really good. You see how good things are done and go, “Oh!” It’s nice to be around successful, passionate, creative, kind people.

It’s got to be exciting to work on the character development side and not just behind the scenes. : I learned two important lessons: one from JR (JimRoss) and the other from Jerry Lawler. As far as character development stuff, Lawler’s thing was, don’t try to learn too much about the backstory of a guy, because you have to tell that story in 30 seconds and you can’t do that. Let the wrestler tell the stories to the fan, and you can embellish. Let the wrestlers tell the story. You can take a guy like John Morrison and cut his hair and make him fat but the wrestling is what holds up. And to compliment that, the vignettes, they’re changing story telling in the wrestling genre. They’re little movies. There’s character depth there. You don’t need someone there to tell you. You see it. I was told by JR; kid you look at the monitor and call wrestling. And that’s what I do now. The stories will tell itself. You don’t need someone telling you that Dick Murdoch is a badass. You don’t need a commentator to tell you that.

Who should we keep an eye out for?: Drago. I dig this guy a lot, I like everything about him. He doesn’t remind me much of anyone in particular but at the same time he reminds me of a lot of a bunch of guys all at once. I like Fenix. We saw him last week and we are going to see him a lot more. Obviously I don’t want to be a perv but Ivellise is like the hottest thing in the world and so is Katrina. There are new people coming. Do you remember when we were in the Monday Night Wars and the stuff you always wanted to see like who was going to show up or in ECW when Paul E (Heyman) would black out the lights and everyone knew someone new was coming out? It’s going to be like that.

Credit: Busted Open Radio