Johnny Mundo Says He Left WWE For More Creative Autonomy, Talks Working on GLOW

– Johnny Mundo spoke with Open Mike’s Brandon Kravitz for a new interview discussing his WWE departure, working on GLOW and more. Audio and highlights are below. Transcript credit to Bill Pritchard and WrestleZone.

On his experience working on Netflix’s GLOW: “GLOW was rad. First of all, it was one of the first names in wrestling I’ve had where I wasn’t using ‘John’ and one of the coolest names I’ve had, Salty ‘The Sack’ Johnson, was my name for GLOW. The whole cast and crew on GLOW was super dope; Marc Maron, Alison Brie, I also got to work with Marty Elias, the referee from Lucha Underground and Chavo Guerrero, who is getting more and more into doing a lot of stunt coordinating work in television. It was a real pleasure being on set. Jenji [Kohan], Carly [Mensch] and Liz [Flahive] the show creators and writers, really set a precedent for that show to have a really friendly tone. Everyone had a good time on set and I think it came across (to me) when I was watching the show. Me and Taya [Valkyrie] binged the entire season in two days. We loved it.”

On why he ultimately left WWE: “Really I left because I wanted more creative autonomy. At the end of my contract I got offered another deal to sign for another 3-5 years, and I wanted to take off to start doing some TV and film. Really, I left, ultimately to make a film like ‘Boone The Bounty Hunter’. I didn’t realize that ‘Boone The Bounty Hunter’ was the the movie I was going to put all of my time into and make when I left, but it’s why I left because I wanted to have some more control over my own time, and to be able to think about who I want to spend my time with and what I was spending time doing. I’ve been really happy knowing that everything’s worked out…In addition to wrestling wise, wrestling is big time right now. MLW, December 7th [Never Say Never live event in Florida] is an example of another hot promotion right now that will be a really cool place for me to go work, and for fans to go see top notch wrestling. Lucha Underground season 4 was renewed, Impact Wrestling is happening. I’ve been involved in all of these new, really cool alternatives to WWE. It’s a really good time, I think, to be outside of [WWE], and like you said [WWE] has been number one for a long time, but if you’re not there, now’s the time where it’s possible to have good matches with hot crowds and have a good time as a professional wrestler with some more control over your own time.”