WWE Superstar Ricochet recently joined the Wrestling With Friends podcast where he discussed his time working for Lucha Underground as Prince Puma. Ricochet quickly became one of the top stars in the company and became the first-ever Lucha Underground Champion.
In this interview Ricochet discusses several different topics including Konnan convincing him to join Lucha Underground, thinking LU was going to be a one-and-done promotion like MTV’s Wrestling Society X, loving his time in LU, and the frustration around his exit of the company.
Check out the highlights or listen to the full podcast below.
Ricochet 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.’”
Ricochet on finally joining Lucha Underground:
“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.”
Ricochet on the frustration surrounding his exit from the Lucha Underground:
“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?”
