Ricochet On Loving His Time in Lucha Underground, Coming On Board, How Frustrating His Departure Was

Ricochet discussed his run in Lucha Underground and the difficulties he had when leaving on the Wrestling With Friends podcast. The WWE star worked for Lucha Underground as Prince Puma, becoming the top star in the company and becoming the first-ever champion for the promotion. However, his exit was not an easy one due to the terms of the company’s now-infamous no compete clauses combined with their decision to split season three without warning or notice to the talent into two parts. It led to a delay in his signing with WWE, which didn’t happen until January of 2018 which was a full eighteen months after he taped his last Lucha Underground match.

Ricochet also talked about how he initially came on board and had to be convinced by Konnan, as he worried it would be a one-and-done promotion like was seen with MTV’s Wrestling Society Xm which ran for just three months back in 2007. Highlights from the discussion and the full podcast are below:

On how he ended up with Lucha Underground: “It was actually funny, because I actually — I fell in love with it, but at first, Konnan tried for like a year to get me. He was talking about this Lucha Underground project. Lucha Underground, Lucha Underground. He called me once a month maybe. He was like, ‘We want you to be this guy. We want you, we want you.’ And I kind of always just, I always had like Wrestling Society X stuck in my head … [it] had a sweet feel, and it was something different, it just didn’t catch fire. Which I wish it would have, because it was a good idea. And that’s literally what I thought this was gonna be, the next Wrestling Society X. So I just kept saying, ‘Nah man, I don’t think so, I’m just gonna stick with Japan.'”

On finally coming on board: “He tried forever, and then finally one day I was just like, ‘Well, screw it. I might as well just try it, I mean.’ I don’t know why, I just decided one day, I think it was like — honestly it was like a Wednesday, and then they were like, ‘Okay, we’ll get you a plane ticket tonight. Tomorrow we’ll fly you out, we’ll talk to you about it. Friday we’ll shoot some stuff.’ I was just like, ‘Alright.’ So I want to say it was around October 2014, I went out and I saw the Temple. I saw, and I talked to Konnan, I talked to some of the producers. And it seemed pretty cool, and so I just said, ‘Sure, why not?’ Tried it, and it turned out to be one of the best decisions. And it was so much fun, I made a lot of good friends there. I made a lot of good memories that I’ll always have forever. I loved the feel, I loved the look of it. I loved how it was shot, I loved how it was filmed. I loved the wrestling, the location. It was great dude, it was so good.”

On the frustration surrounding his exit from the company: “So yeah. Season three, they filmed like 36 episodes or something, it was crazy. Season three was so many episodes. And in the middle of the season — because I was supposed to wait until season three aired, then I had a 90-day no-work clause after that. Then I could start doing stuff. And so I had to wait until season three’s finale aired before the 90 days started. But then without telling anybody — none of the wrestlers, nobody — they took a three-month break in the middle of the season. So not only now that I have a three-month break in the middle, but then they started back up the rest of the season, and then I had to wait 90 days after that finale.

“So I was like, ‘Oh, come on guys, what the F?’ And then so I even tried to talk to them, I was like, ‘Hey, can we get the 90 days taken down to 60 or 30 days? Can we get that at least taken down or something? Because you guys are now, I can’t go do stuff because you’re holding me to this contract. Because you decided, without telling anybody, and you’d never done it in the first two seasons, but this season all of a sudden you’re taking a mid-season break. And it’s not like a two or three week break. It was like a three month break. So now I had to wait half a year before I could do anything, basically. So that was kind of frustrating. But I guess everything happens for a reason, you know what I mean?”