Chavo Guerrero On Training the Cast of GLOW For Season Two, Keeping the Show Historically Accurate

– Chavo Guerrero spoke with WrestleZone Radio for a new interview promoting the second season of GLOW, for which he served as a wrestling consultant. Highlights and audio are below:

On the differences in training the cast for season two as compared to season one: “We trained them in season one to do a lot but once you get to the point you are wrestling, you can’t go back. So, we wanted to ease them into it. Season one you see some of it but not all of it. It’s the same thing as like what happened in the original GLOW series. In the original GLOW series those girls weren’t as good in that first season as they got throughout the years. We stay true to how it was in the actual, original GLOW.”

On trying to keep the show historically accurate: “When Liberty Bell did the body scissor run on Welfare Queen… that was her idea. I was like, ‘I don’t know if you can do that, it’s a little advanced.’ Betty Gilpin looked at me and said, ‘I can do it.’ We practiced it and she got it right away. She was jumping and got right into it. They were doing head scissors and stuff like that. They wanted to do it. In fact, they wanted to do other things and I was like, ‘No, you can’t do that because that move wasn’t invented yet. That move didn’t come out until 1995. You can’t be doing it in 1985!'”

On Kia Stevens’ acting this season: “How awesome was she? You didn’t know that she was that kind of an actress. I didn’t know she was that kind of an actress when she was Awesome Kong. I knew her as Awesome Kong. So, when I first saw her in the first season I didn’t know her as Kia Stevens. I just knew her as the Mother Hen of all the girls. I just knew her as this monster who was going to kill people! That’s how good she is. She can switch from Awesome Kong to Welfare Queen to Kia Stevens. Our writers are so good and they obviously had confidence in Kia to put her in that heavy episode and they didn’t shield her and protect her from being an actress. They put her in there full force and she knocked it out of the park. She was in there with Betty Gilpin, who is an accomplished actress, and then Betty would turn around and hang in the ring with Kia! It was awesome.”

On the racially sensitive nature of Welfare Queen: “It’s TV, it’s a movie and that’s the way I approached any character in the WWE. People didn’t like the Kerwin White. They’d say, ‘It’s too racist, it’s too this…’ or too that. I was always like, ‘We’re playing a character, it’s not real. I am not really walking down the road denouncing my Mexican heritage and dressing in a polo with pastel colors.’ It’s the character I am playing. If I was playing a character in a movie or tv show and they are a racist or a… whatever, homosexual… whatever, it’s a character! Kia knows. She’s from that world. She’s pulling on people’s heartstrings and making you forget she’s Awesome Kong.”