Former multiple time WWE Tag-Team Champion, Paul London spoke with Ring Rust Radio about numerous topics including London’s former partner & current 205 Live star, Brian Kendrick’s current success. London’s new character in Lucha Underground was also discussed as well as the mid-season breaks of the promotion.
Here are the highlights:
Lucha Underground’s Mid-Season Breaks:
“It’s definitely a ballsy approach and I think Lucha Underground hasn’t made any secret that they are risk-takers and trail blazers. It’s unique to be a part of something like that and it’s a trendsetting thing, to say the least. When you think about it, a lot of show posters for independent and even the big-league show’s card posters as far as the card itself, with who’s going to appear at the event this weekend. I believe a lot of the artwork and things of that nature are uniquely influenced by what Lucha Underground has brought to the table. Even from a design standpoint, they have been trailblazers and kind of revolutionize the approach towards marketing. As far as to take a break between the momentum building for season three, it’s ballsy and it is a risk. Do you lose that momentum and have people say they are so excited but now they can’t remember what happened? I think it’s quite the opposite. I think in wrestling with the current climate with the constant overfeeding, it becomes a binge type situation. I think it’s good to be able to pull that back and make people wait. This way there’s that hunger that continues to build back up because you know the product will deliver. You figure these guys didn’t take a break to come back with a dud so they’re either going to come back and jump the shark or give you something to remember. So, the excitement kind of organically starts to mature in its own right as opposed to having the same ice cream fed to you every week and you know what you’re going to get. I get very over-saturated on a lot of the wrestling that’s out there now and that’s why I don’t watch any of it. I can turn away and come back and still see the same things. I think it helps continue to separate it from the rest of the herd and say that we aren’t really part of the cattle. We are something completely different and it forces you to watch.”
Brian Kendrick’s Current WWE Run:
“I only watch 205 Live whenever I’m at someone’s place that has the network so it’s pretty rare. One friend in Los Angeles has it but he is so busy all the time. He’s a pretty big producer so whenever he has time I will hang out and maybe watch some wrestling. Other than that, I was just on the road and a buddy of mine, JT Dunn and I caught it. Other than that, it feels like a Divas revolution thing to me because the ropes are different color and they want it to be such a standout product so bad that they almost kind of overproduce it as they are known to do with everything they touch. Let’s be honest, they always do that with any shows other than Raw, right? So, I’m watching it and I didn’t watch SmackDown which is sad because I consider that my own stomping grounds. Well, it was Velocity but let’s not be specific. The show started off with a big talking segment and I was pretty sure that is how SmackDown starts off now. So, it’s like this show with characters that may be kind of familiar with, maybe not, but nowhere near the push or the draws of what you are going to get on SmackDown. So that’s like the after party show but let’s start this party off with a bang and let’s have a talking segment. It was just really strange to me you know? I can’t say I am a real fan of what I have seen on there because I guess it does seem to have a ton of preservatives and it just doesn’t taste very good. I’m not saying that because I’m me and I’ve worked there and I didn’t have the greatest of time when I was there. I think it’s just because I feel as though I’m watching a video game and I don’t really like video games unless I’m standing up and I have a pocket full of quarters and I’m actually at an arcade. So, to sit there and watch a video game when you don’t have a controller in hand and can’t do anything about it, it’s kind of frustrating. Especially when a lot of it doesn’t make sense to me. So, it kind of reiterates me and why I don’t watch it. As far as Brian’s character, in the few times I’ve seen it I’m still trying to figure out if he is a psychedelic pirate or like an ice pirate? I don’t know. Is that what people in Venice do? I’ve been to Venice a lot of times and I met a lot of weirdos but man I just don’t know. I’m trying to think if I was walking down the street in Venice Beach, California and I saw this guy with sparkly cheetah pants and a jacket that looked like it was an excellent arts and crafts project walking down towards me, I don’t know what I would think to myself. I guess it would be kind of scary if anything? His characters really scary just because he seems so angry. The verdict still out and I’m just trying to figure it out. I do like that he’s using a different finisher. It’s a submission finisher when applied right it would really hurt. I do like that a lot because he really whored out his sliced bread to where you knew everybody was going to kick out of it. I remember watching a match he had a while back with Silas Young, who is awesome and I love the guy, a real man’s man. Brian hit him with the sliced bread and he kicked out. Then he hit him with this super sliced bread with both of them on the top rope, Silas kicked out again. Who’s possibly going to believe Brian is still going to win this match? It’s obvious he isn’t going to win and of course, he didn’t win the match. Where else can you go after that? People just aren’t going to buy it anymore after that. I thought it was really refreshing to see him come up with a different finisher. I should probably take some note from that but I am pretty protective of my shooting star press. I should still take some note of that. It’s good to have some variety and I do have some tricks up my pant legs, not my sleeves. Tricks are for kids, right?”
His “Rabbit Tribe” Character In Lucha Underground:
“You’ll love this. Kung-Fu is a real deep love of mine and at the time I was studying a lot of Kung Fu. I haven’t studied as much lately but I do study on my own instead of being in an organized class which can become heavy during shooting a season. I actually appeared at the end of season two on a test run kind of as just me. I had this weird mindset where I wanted to try to use some of this Kung-Fu in my matches and see if it really works. It tended to make my character more serious. I had this match with Davari on the final taping of season two but thankfully didn’t air because it was really a stinker. Fast forward to the pre-production of season three and I’m kind of down on things because I’m thinking like man, I really want to come back as something really fresh, something that connects with who I am as a person and something I can show up as and haves people say, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t know that was him,’ and be different and exciting. I was approached with this idea of this rabbit character idea and I thought I love Battle Beasts but I don’t know if this is quite what we were thinking here. So I envisioned like Warriors of Virtue were bad ass rabbits and nobody is going to be laughing at us. Automatically I’m thinking we’ve got a Puma, we got a moth, we got people from the dead, this is before the snake people so we didn’t quite have them yet, we did have a Dragon, guys from space and just this huge spectrum of characters in Lucha Underground. Then you think of adding this kind of furry, friendly character in a rabbit with a Trix are for kids type of thing. I just didn’t want it to turn into this thing and on a defense, my mind went to Battle Beasts/Warriors of Virtue. Then it turned out that was not the approach either so that was strike two for yours truly. One of my current members was an experiment for the Battle Beasts but the general feedback was you guys look like scuba divers and we can’t tell who’s who. Then it was okay, let’s throw the drawing board out, smash it up, take it out to the field like the nerd dude from Office Space because it is obviously not working. Chris DeJoseph, who is this kind of like, I don’t like to use the term genius because it so whored out term, but he just has this direct cleverness that when he spits something out you think, “Man why didn’t I see that!” It’s just like a fat-free type of creativity. He has a really efficient mindset that gets right to the punch line or the joke or the real crux of the matter. So he goes, “No, no we’re thinking Alice in Wonderland” and the second he said Alice, he didn’t have to finish the Wonderland part because everything clicked and my mind went through the looking glass so to speak. So I thought in my head, you want to go here okay let’s talk because this is exactly up my alley. He must have been looking through my window, he might’ve been he’s a pervert but aren’t we all? So then my immediate response to that I was thinking more Mick Jagger and Freddie Mercury, codpieces and Elvis. I remember responding with I think a page of eight to 12 different attachments of just codpieces and close ups of codpieces and I was like, this has to be a part of it because this is where my character’s power will emanate from. Truth is all of us as individuals harness our power from our crotch area. I know it sounds funny but there’s a reason we call them our private parts and there’s a lot of vulnerability right there at the epicenter of our existence. It doesn’t matter for male or female or both combined, you have that region where there’s a lot of vulnerability and there’s a lot of power and we really harness so much power in the crotch area. That kind of became a seed itself and it started to become its own thing. It was almost as we started to finish each other’s sentences after that. We really wanted each character to be unique and you would see this guy in a match and you would know it’s that guy, not as though it’s the red one of the blue one. I think we did a really good job with that as far as making sure each individual has their own personality and flavor to add to the group because I wouldn’t want to do any of that stuff with those guys. It’s a more at home and also allows me to really feed off the creativity which I had never been allowed to do in a wrestling circle. We are very stoked for the rest of season three.”
