The generally big places in the world, the big countries for pro wrestling or lucha libre are Mexico, U.S.A., Japan, and U.K. And now WWE is in all countries and it's different.
'Lucha Underground' is like a combination of Lucha Libre, American Pro Wrestling, and gridy action films. It's got a lot of things I like - action, wrestling, and really good storytelling.
Hopefully, when people watch 'Lucha Underground' and WWE, Ring of Honor, New Japan, AAA, and any other promotion out there, they fall in love with pro wrestling. Pro wrestling, as it affects pop culture, is bigger than any one promotion.
I kinda started watching wrestling through Lucha Libre because my grandmother was always watching Lucha Libre.
I was just lucky to be there ahead of the curve to be the driving force behind bringing this amazing style of wrestling from Japan that combined Lucha Libre, American professional wrestling, Canadian professional wrestling and Japanese wrestling all into one beautiful mix that fans worldwide absolutely can't get enough of.
I go to Mexico quite often, and wrestling the Lucha Libre style, the pageantry - those experiences, you truly have to live. Television or social media doesn't do it justice.
The typical big Japanese company has somewhere between a third and 40 percent of its revenues coming from developing countries, and about a third of Japan's exports are also to the emerging countries, so in a strange way, Japan, which has very little internal growth, its big companies are a good way to play the emerging markets.
I trained at All Pro Wrestling in the U.S. Later, I signed up with the New Japan Pro Wrestling. Then WWE noticed me.
I came up in the U.K., which is a very catch-as-catch-can style, and then I somehow ended up in Japan and spent eight years there learning strong style. I got to spend some time in Mexico learning the lucha libre style, and the WWE is a hybrid style of everything mixed together.
I think the retirement crisis globally is a major problem. I think it's especially prevalant in countries such as Japan, where immigration is an issue. I think the US is more shielded from it than most countries in the world. It has a higher birth rate than Japan, immigration is tolerated here unlike probably it is in Japan. I don't think it's as big an issue in the US as it is elsewhere in the world.
I was a young age, 16 years old, in Mexico. I traveled to these different countries, and I have the new style from Mexico and TNA. I wrestled two years in Florida, then back in Japan, and everything combined for a new style. It's different. I was looking for old school wrestling that looked new.
'Lucha Underground' is the evolution of wrestling. It's high-style, high-flying, fast-paced hybrid style wrestling, and we're actually paying homage to lucha libre for the first time.
I encourage you to find your punk-rock, your lucha-libre, your pro-wrestling
My favorite part of working with 'Lucha Underground' is learning more Lucha, combining that with my WWE psychology, and taking wrestling to a place we've never seen before in the evolution of wrestling.
I mean, the world has already done a big, big effort to forget debt to countries heavily indebted and with low income. And that has given good chances to countries to get out of poverty.
For the fans to be able to enjoy a lucha libre match between Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio, I think, I don't want to be flattering myself, but that's probably some of the best lucha libre matches that I had throughout my career, and we were able to demonstrate it to the fans around the world.
We have years of tradition in lucha libre in Mexico.