Insight with Chris Van Vliet - Luchasaurus: Dusty Rhodes created my gimmick, master's degree, AEW, Jungle Boy, Big Brother

Episode Date: July 18, 2019

Luchasaurus (Austin Matelson) sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Daytona Beach before AEW's Fyter Fest. He talks about how Dusty Rhodes created his gimmick, his master's degree in Medieval History, teaming with Jungle Boy, signing with AEW, his time in NXT, appearing on Big Brother and much more! Audio equipment provided by Samson Technologies: bit.ly/CVVSamson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, y'all? It's Druski, and I've teamed up with Mountain Dew to produce a hilarious new basketball podcast called The Do Zone with Drewski. Learn the backstories of your favorite ballers and celebrities like Jamal Murray. Did you have like a favorite team? Was it the Raptors at the time or no?

Was the Raptors even started around that time? Come on, bro. I ain't that old, fam. You're talking like I was 50. Taylor, Roaks, Asian Wilson, and many more. You won't want to miss this. Listen to the Doozone with Drusky on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts.

It's Chrysomania, brother. That's a great question. Look at you, man. Look at the powerful questions. This is the Chris Van Vleet Show. Chris Van Bleet Show. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris! Greetings and salutations, my friends.

Thanks for downloading another episode of the Chris Van Fleet Show. That's me. I'm Chris Van Fleet. And ever since Delors and Nothing, Luchosaurus has been one of my most requested interviews that you guys have been tweeting me, DMing me on Instagram, or commenting on YouTube. You asked, and I listened.

And here's how it came together. When I interviewed Jungle Boy in Los Angeles a few weeks ago, Lutosaurus actually started following me on Twitter because of it. So I followed him back. Then he DMed me a couple hours later and said, hey, I live in L.A. Since you're here in L.A. for this Jungle Boy interview, we can do an interview too.

I didn't have time on that trip. I wish I did, but I didn't have time. I was in L.A. for like 24 hours. and I interviewed Batista, Kelly Kelly, Eli Drake, and Jungle Boy, but I said to Luchasaurus, we will make this happen in the next month or so. We'll figure it out. And boom, we made it happen at his hotel right before Fighter Fest in Daytona. And what an awesome guy.

Really, really enjoyed this. By the way, thank you to everyone who's been leaving these five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts. I said it in the last episode, but I'm going to read one on every episode as a little thank you. a little shout out to that person and also to encourage you, hint, hint, to leave one so you can be part of this show too. JJ.P.03 writes, woo, as the title. You know that you can never just say woo, right? It's always woo. This is one of the hardest working dudes in the industry. So proud of how far he's come. Prang the ceiling continues to grow. Keep it up, CVV. Well, thank you, JJP.03.

And you know that I have no plans on stopping and we're only going to be growing. So thank you so much for the kind words. Now, before we get to the interview with the masked wrestling dinosaur, yes, who did wear the mask the entire time? Check it out on a YouTube channel if you haven't seen it yet. The Chris Van Fleet Show is brought to you as always by Green Roads. And I'm sure you've heard a lot about CBD oil. And yeah, for me, it's been as good as everyone says. Green Roads has the best in Green Roads.

That's who I go with because they're a pharmacist-founded company that's focused on making the lives of their customers better. There's CBD oil, gummies, tea, cream capsules, all their products are the real deal. They even have CBD oil for pets. Use my code Chris 15 to get 15% off your order of CBD products at greenroadsworld.com. Chris 15 for, yeah, 15% off at greenroadsworld.com. The CVV show also being podcasted in. your ears right now, thanks to Samson Technologies. They've got great affordable audio solutions at Samsung.com. And speaking of audio, I plugged these amazing Samsung mics that I'm using right now

into a recorder made by TaskCAM, a different company, to have some really crisp audio for this interview with Luchosaurus. And the damn thing shut off halfway through the interview and then wouldn't turn back on. I turned the on button on and the screen just goes black every single time. Task cam, more like trash cam. So what you're hearing in this interview with Luchosaurus is audio straight from the camera. It's a little different from having the mics still sounds pretty great and an incredible conversation

with an incredible guy. Did you know that he has a master's degree? Please enjoy it. It's my chat with Luchosaurus. Seeing this in person is pretty amazing. Oh, thank you. Yeah, no, thank you. The green tongue, the mask, everything.

That you know. This is my interview mask. Oh, so there's different masks you have? There's multiple masks, yes. Okay, so this one allows you to talk? Well, they all let me talk because I have a master's degree, but that's the side of place. I had no idea. I thought you could only say that with glasses on.

Oh, of course they're here. They're here. Master's degree. It's actually pretty crazy what your master's degree is in. Yeah, right. Medieval literature? Well, technically I'm a historian, so it's a history degree. And then I did a history graduate degree.

But I specialized in 12th century medieval literature, specifically the Arthurian romances. Wow. Okay, so what does one do with that once they've graduated? Obviously become a dinosaur. Yeah, or you just put it on your wall and look at it and tell everyone as a dinosaur that you have a master degree. That's about it. Seriously, though, like the people you went to school with, what are their plans? Well, you know, I was in the history department, and we considered it.

Most of the history department are sickos, weirdos, and freaks. I like to say alternative lifestyle. But they become professors or they go into law or they go off to get a PhD. There wasn't many people studying medieval, and there's not a lot of medieval, there's not a lot of good medieval programs, and definitely not in Los Angeles. I was very lucky to find a great medievalist, Dr. Clementine Oliver, who I worked with. And I started working with her early on in my undergrad because I kind of knew what I wanted to study because I just found a book that I loved.

And she helped me, you know, learn to be a historian and ultimately write a thesis on stuff that happened in the 12th century, which is crazy. Do you watch TV shows now and go, that's not accurate at all? Well, my brain cells have been fried from wrestling now with the concussions. But I was doing that for a while, yeah, for sure. I could always get the jeopardy of medieval questions, right?

It's slowly starting to fade, though, because it's been like 10 years. But, yeah, we specifically in the medieval program, detest medieval times. Oh. Everyone's like, do you go to medieval times? Do you go to that thing? I mean, no.

Medieval times, first off, you're never allowed to call the medieval period or the early modern period medieval times because that is a stereotype of that whole era and we hate that.

Oh. So you've never been to medieval times? I have not been to a Renaissance Fair, medieval times, any of that. And I'm imagining you never will. I mean, unless my girlfriend drags me too. Okay. Is the Luchessora's character

65 million years old? Uh, Luchessori's character is very sarcastic guy And I think because he's so out there He thinks he's 65 million years old But you know We haven't really broached How crazy we're going to take this character's backstory

As of right now I like to say that I also like to say that I'm two tons Plus Jungle Boy when they announce our combined wave Plus the master's degree Which has heavy too Where does this idea come from? Well it did come from my brain exactly Okay.

It just kind of molded over time organically, and I think that's why it works. Essentially, when I was in developmental in WWE, right before NXT kind of happened in the performance center, I was working with Dusty Rhodes and Cody's dad a lot on promos, and he was one of the few guys who really believed in me because he saw this weird guy that had this master's degree, had an interesting look, and he didn't know what to place or how to place it, and he knew there was something like this luchasaurus in his head. We just couldn't put our finger on it, and every week we try something. and when I got to Lucha Underground, they decided to,

the day I started, they're like, here, we got this character for your giant snake with this big helmet mask and I'm like, what the hell? And I'm talking to my buddy Johnny Mundo, John Hennigan. Johnny multiple names.

Everything, right? Yeah, because he's been a close friend of mine since before he even started wrestling and he was like, hey man, you know, just run with us, see what you can do, maybe make it like cane, cut up the mask. So before I went out there, asked him, I got my hair out.

So he started to cut it up a little bit and then when I went out there, the crowd just started chanting something to me and I thought they were making fun of me. I thought they were saying you just started because I looked green or something and I hadn't wrestling in two years so I was all oh man they hated me and then I got to the back and they're like dude they were

chaining luchosaurus I don't know why that's pretty cool you should just run with that on the Indies since you're trying to resurrect your career I was like yeah you know what I'm just going to do that it's crazy and it made me think of Dusty right away because he wanted me to do something like that but I was like you know what I'm not going to talk like I'm a dinosaur grunting I'm just going to

be myself with the master's degree but now I have a mask so all those rough edges are kind of smooth out because I have some crazy character that lets me really just be myself. Yeah. So it's almost like an ode to dusty for me, really, and I just started to run with it. It was hard at first because everyone looks at it as, oh, this is a stupid gimmick. It must be some guy from the middle of Mexico that just, you know, walks around and is really big. So it took me a while to kind of knock down the doors and have people give me opportunities and let me create the character as I go throughout my indie career.

Right. Yeah. Well, I mean, if anyone saw you on Big Brother, you're not a bad-looking guy. So, but then putting you in a mask, though, A lot of people could look at that as being a really bad thing. I thought it was. And I was like, you know what? But I didn't think I was ever going to wrestle again. After I had left developmental, it was 2013-14 that time.

Indies hadn't really boomed yet. They were about to. And it just seemed like if you're not in WWE, there's nowhere else to really go. At least that was the mentality of a lot of us down there. So we were all pretty scared of losing their jobs. And I decided to walk away. And I thought with my injuries and they weren't really healing the way I wanted to. I was like, this is probably hit for me.

So I had stopped wrestling. So just the fact that Lucho Underground gave me a shot. after doing the reality show that I went and did. I was like, this is a second chance. I know what I want in life. I'm just going to go for it. And I'm not going to be too picky about it. I'm not going to say, well, this isn't cool.

I'm not going to have an ego. I'm just going to kind of go with it. I'll take any criticism again. I'm just going to have fun. Let's dive into that injury, though, because it was pretty bad. Yeah, well, there's a lot of things online about the injury of what it was and what it wasn't.

So I can set the record straight. Basically, the main injury I had was a torn hip laborer. A lot of people say it was my back. That came kind of later. So I got to developmental and I was already having some kind of issues after the first few weeks of training. It was pretty brutal. The training was like, wow, you know, they're drilling us hard out there. Plus, you know, we're weightlifting.

Plus, I do gymnastics and parkour. All of that added up. And then, you know, I just felt like something tearing to my hip, but I just kind of worked through it for the next six months. And slowly, like, I was just feeling like I was getting worse in the ring. Not to mention all the pressures of, you know, trying not to lose your job. And I was, you know, I was in a terrible place mentally about it. And finally, you know, I had them check it out and they saw that I had torn kind of something in my abs was torn. So they fixed that.

It didn't solve the problem. They went back in. They fixed my hip. They had to shave down the femur and the hip socket to make it work. I was on crutches for like three months. I went back to L.A. to rehab because they were moving to Orlando and I couldn't physically move. So now I'm in L.A. rehabbing. It's been six months.

It's been nine months. Pretty soon it's been a year. I'm in L.A. still under contract rehabbing. And I'm like, what's going on here? And like, you know, maybe because it's just not getting to the full level where they need to clear me. So maybe you should think about retiring. And before I even could really think of that, that's when I got the opportunity to do Big Brother.

And I was like, hey, let me get out of the contract. Let me do this instead. They're like, okay, so we just kind of went our separate ways, not really knowing what was going to happen with my physical well-being. At the same time, I went to a doctor and found out I had a major herniated disc in my low back that maybe was referring to the pain to my hip that was keeping my hip from healing because there's nerves that go in. So it's very complicated.

But then, you know, the herniaidid disc came after I was down there, so they weren't really liable to fix it. Or they couldn't really prove. We didn't know when it happened. So I just kind of decided to rehab that on my own. I started to get into rehab with athletes. I used my master's degree to go get a certification to work in physical therapy, actually. And I thought I was starting a new career path doing that.

And lo and behold, things just kind of turned around. My body healed and I was able to kind of get back into wrestling. So if you hadn't got injured, you might have stayed in NXT and then who knows? I was right there with the shield. They went up like six months after I got there. Baron Corbyn was Mojo Rolley. Those guys were in my class. So I would have probably been, you know, either fired or on the road.

You know, that's how it worked back than you one or the other, with those guys. So I might have been up there with Baron Corbyn just, and I would never, I feel like I never would have got very good. I think I would have peaked at a much lower level than I, I see. Not that I got a big ego or anything, but I think I was able to make some different strides in the ring and change the way I wrestle completely. because I had freedom on the Indies. And if I didn't do that, I don't think I would be happy or be comfortable in the ring like I am now.

So it's really Lucha Underground that created this character and then you kind of just took it from there. Yeah, I decided, you know what? They gave me as template as this giant snake monster from, you know, the wherever, the reptile tribe.

And I was like, you know, I'm just going to see, I'm going to start playing with the character with elements of my own personality. That's where the master's degree comes in. I changed the look of the character. I changed the mask. I went, got my own kind of mask.

made that kind of fit in my personality more. There's a lot of little, you know, secret tributes like Conan the Barbarian and movies that inspired me as a kid. And then the character kind of, I want to move like reptile and mortal combat. So my offense is very much like taekwondo meets gymnastics.

Do you realize that you probably scare a lot of children? Actually, they seem to love me. I don't know. Kids always come up to me and, like, want me to put them on my shoulders. Yeah. Yeah, which means I got to constantly keep the backworm, though, you know, but that's... There's going to come a point.

Where the AEW lawyers are like, hey, man, please don't get hurt the children up. Yeah. So, but until then, yeah, they seem to be not afraid of me. I guess I'm like, you know, the alter ego of Barney or something. So this is a custom mask. This is a custom mask. Yes, composite effects makes my masks. And I think we're going to start working with them to actually make a

lusaurus mask or something. They want to do that. They want to put it out there. So that's something that's going to be in the works, I think, with them. So you can buy maybe your own lusaturis mask. They're kind of expensive, though. Made out of silicone. But if they made like a plastic version of the mask.

That's different. That would be cool. Yeah. This is going to be a thing. I hope you realize that. Well, that's what we're wearing it today. I wasn't going to wear it during the interview. And you're like, well, maybe I should.

I'm like, maybe I should. Yeah. We went back and forth quite a bit about like, should you wear it? I don't know. With AEW, it's very excited because it's all so new. It's all so new. There's really no. I asked too before we did the interview.

I get, whatever you want. Which is great. By the way, I do a lot of wrestling interviews. That would never happen for another company. I remember those days. I just don't ask. You ask for forgiveness, not permission. Right.

But, I mean, it's one show in. There's obviously so much excitement around AEW. What's changed for you over the last handful of months? Just, you know, I'm kind of doing the same thing I've been doing, but now all of a sudden there's a lot of eyes on me that weren't there. So I'm getting a lot of feedback that I wasn't getting before. And, you know, when you're constantly trying and you're not getting the feedback you want, sometimes you want to give it up, there was a lot of times I thought maybe I should ditch this giving it can be a normal guy.

because normal guys seem to be able to get over in different territories around the country and all the 80s. But I talked to my friends, Trent, who was in AW, he was big on me keeping this mask. He's like, this is your look, man. I don't know if you keep the name of leachiosaurus or not. Once you get there, we'll see what they like.

But he's like, this is the look. And he's right. And I think this finally worked. And when I came out at Double or Nothing, it just, the crowd just gravitated to it. And it could have gotten either way, I thought. It could have been like, oh, this is ridiculous. And I think some people still think that before they see me, but if they give it a chance,

people are usually like, no, this is cool. I don't know why it's cool, but for some reason it's cool. Were there big men that you looked up to in wrestling growing up? I wasn't really into the high flyers more. Oh, okay. Because I love gymnastics, and I always wanted to do all that kind of stuff. I just say this, because people don't realize how big you are. Yeah, six five?

Six five, yeah. You know, if anyone I look up to like today, pure weather, I would study like Drew McIntyre a lot what he did in the Indies and then going back to WWE because he was like a real good template for me on how to boo as a big man that's current. So I love and I knew him as a person too when I was

down there and he's a really nice guy. So that's someone current I looked up to. As a kid though my favorite was Brett Hart actually. I was a huge he got me, Ultimate Warrior was the kind of thing that turned me on to wrestling at seven years old because it was flashy and it looked like Conan the Barbarian and I was like, well I need to see this. And I didn't have an older brother or anything so I had to

find all this on my own and I was very persistent on finding all the pay-per-views, my dad let me get them. But then Baltimore kind of left at that time, the new generation started, and Brett Hart was my guy. Like, he was my hero. And I would, you know, do anything to see a Brett Hart match. And I finally met him at Double or Nothing, which was like my own, my first fan moment in years. Right. Which, you know, was great. So then after Brett Hart left WWE, went to WCW, who were the people you gravitated to? That's, you know, that's right in the attitude era happen. I love the NWO. I was always into the bad guys. I was like a fan of, you know, anything

not squeaky clean. I like things that are rough edges. And I started to love after 2000s into the next decade, I was a big fan of Edge. And the radar Super Stargivic was probably what got me back into wrestling really hardcore. I never went away from it,

but when I got into school, I got into basketball in high school, even though it was homeschooled, which is a whole other story. I just got into other sports. And I watched wrestling, but I wasn't like, you know, as hooked as I was when Brett Hart was around. But guys like Edge kind of brought me back into the fold, like,

oh, this is a really cool character, and I love what's going on here. Well, since you touched on, we have to talk about you being homeschooled. Yes. Everyone has a different reason. Yeah. What was your parents' reason?

Well, it wasn't my parents. It was my choice. Oh, okay. My parents have always been very open. I'm the oldest of six. I have four sisters and a brother, and my parents are very close, and our whole family is really close,

but my mom is very open-minded about education and about exploring who we are as people, and I was never really given rules other than, you know, how to conduct yourself socially, and to be a nice person. But they let me kind of make my own decisions, especially when it came to education.

And I hated school. I hated classrooms, bells, being told what to do. Since I was a little kid, I could never be told no to things. I always wanted to question everything. And I just felt suffocated in those environments. And, you know, kids picked on me a lot when I was a junior high. So I was one of those kids. It was bullied, as most kids are.

And I just hated it. And I just wanted to do my own thing. I was really into working out, believe it or not already. Like, 13 years old I started to train on my own. They didn't really know what I was doing. I was doing it and I just liked to study what I wanted to study and most of it was reading history books and things like that from an early age and writing my own stories and I just wanted to do that on my own and kind of be left alone and you know socially when I got to the college years

I was like like freaking jungle boys character you know what's going on here I'm going to talk to a girl but mentally I was way ahead of the other students and I was really good at getting all my work done and I took school really seriously and it really helped shape my mind to be kind of I think more open than a lot of structured minds are from high school. Huh. So did that, when you went into college, do you think that that also gave you an advantage? Absolutely, yeah, because it set me on a course where, like, a lot of other kids would procrastinate and had trouble interpreting and analyzing things.

They were very good at memorizing things as you learned in high school just to, like, write in multiple choice questions. But I always had mine that was a little bit more open to ideas. And I think that's why my professors gravitated to me as well and saw, wow, this guy has some potential to actually write some interesting history here. Well, the crazy thing about college is professors gravitate to people who, like, actually try. Yes. Because I went to college.

I majored in drinking for a while and also communication studies. But, like, most of the people are going to class hungover and, like, you know, handing an assignments at the last second. Exactly. So when you're actually putting in work, they're like, oh, my God, this guy tries. I was really aggressive with it, too. I have a good, my personality can be very OCD, I guess, or passionate. I like to say passionate. Sure.

And if I decide to do something, I'm going to do. it to I get it done and I said I'm going to go to school I had like an epiphany I'm gonna be a history major I'm gonna go into the grad program and I'm gonna write a thesis on this Arthurian romance literature and I decided that in my undergrad like the first year and my friends are like you're you're crazy go do something else I'm like no I'm gonna do this and I have no end game I'm just gonna do it because I like it and that was it wow what did you want to be when you were a kid I wanted to be a wrestler okay from the time I was seven, I told everyone to be a wrestler.

And look at you now. I know, so I'm somewhat of a wrestler, right? Tell you, man, you are wrestling. Oh, thank you. Of course. Yeah, you believe me. The teachers would tell me not to, though. My, you know, my relatives was, you know, get into wrestling with the business side of it. You know, I do something smarter.

I'm like, no, I'm going to be a wrestler. That's what I want to do. And I even was saying that into my grad program. And eventually it came upon, like, I got to get to a wrestling school. And I kind of realized that, like, in the graduate program, like, I better start doing this and I'm going to do it. So, but there was, like, back, even then, it was like, 2010. 2009, right?

And you just don't, there wasn't like readily available schools that you get to choose from. I didn't know how you get into wrestling. I never really crossed my mind. I probably would have gotten into it earlier. How did you get into it then? I was at the gym and a friend of mine said, hey, my friend does a wrestling in school. This guy named Rick Drazen, who was like a bodybuilder wrestler in the 80s. And it was right, go check it out, man.

We always talk in going to talk in wrestling in here. I'm like, you're right, I'll go check it out. So I went and checked it out, and it looked cool. And that's where I met Jungle Boy. This is 2009 when he's a little kid. Oh, my God. We started like the same week. He would have been like 11 years old.

Yeah, we started the same week. And there's actually a picture of us in the ring that we're going to tweet out pretty soon that we found from then that we're going to do a comparison phone. We looked totally different, obviously. It's pretty funny. But he's like above me in the ring, so it's kind of close to my shoulders. But we started the same time, and we used to have matches together. Like, we were horrible.

At least I was. He always got some natural talent. But it was funny how this all kind of comes together. And when did it come together for you and Jungle Boy to kind of be teamed together? We never thought, you know, we kept crossing paths. Like, when I got into Lucha, he was doing Lucha training too, and we kind of met some of the classes again. And it finally happened at Bar Wrestling for Joey Ryan.

Like Joey said, hey, I want to put you in Jungle Boy together as a team because I was trying to get Jungle Boy there to wrestle him. And then I was like, wait a minute, you're right, Lucha Soros in Jungle Boy, that sounds like a good combo. Yeah. So you put us together as a team. We came out to the ring. I said, like, why don't you come out on my shoulder or something,

let's do something like where it's together. And the crowd's reaction, there's a lot of hardcore fans there that don't give you good reactions, It's just on purpose, right? That's just, they're part of the show in their minds. And which, you know, they were part of the show, I guess. But they all were smiling. Like, you're watching a Disney movie, like the inner child in them came out.

Like, they could help but smile. Like, people that never smile are smiling, just seeing this. And we could believe the reaction we were getting. But it was just like the story was just there without us having to give any backstory. All of a sudden, our characters who were kind of out there on their own that need backstory to make sense, didn't need it. Yeah. As soon as you put us together, the story was complete. Yeah.

And everyone just got it. Yeah. And it's the boy. riding the dinosaur, the misunderstood monster with the boy who doesn't see the bad, doesn't see judgment, because he's just a boy coming out of the jungle, it just works. But there's such a juxtaposition

between this look and the degree that hangs on your wall. I suppose so, right? But that's the absurdity of it. And like, I consider myself an existentialist and my favorite philosophy is like kind of 1950s absurdism, existentialism, where you have, like,

authors like Albert Camus or Simone du Beau Du Bois, talking about how there's a, there's a, There's a mind, there's a world, and then there's our interpretation of it. And we try to, everything we do is really absurd. But you can still do it because it's all about rebellion against what you should do. And the religious source is almost that. It's an act of rebellion. I'm putting on a mask to kind of be my true self, which is a major juxt position.

And it's something that allows me to connect to something deeper inside me that I never thought I'd find in performance. So it's kind of just worked to kind of fulfill who I already felt I was, but didn't know how to express it. it. Wow. We weren't really deep there for us. I guess so. I like that. I can go deeper.

Wow. Okay. It's a kid show. Sorry. Who was it that reached out to you from ADW? Originally it was Cody. Cody reached up me. I had a discussion with the Young Bucks at Bar Wrestling.

And then the next thing I have Cody reached out to me on my messages and saying, hey man, are you signed anywhere else? Because they thought I was signed with Ring of Honor. It was out there on my Wikipedia for some reason. And I never signed with them. I did some matches, but we never got to contract negotiations. and I was probably going to just keep coming back here and there. And I was like, no, I'm not signed.

Like, well, we want to bring you into double or nothing and, you know, don't sign anywhere else. So it's really cool that Cody kind of reached out like that because I felt like this character was kind of his dad's idea for me somehow that we never got to. So it was like a special moment for me. And then how long ago was that? That was probably March. Okay. Yeah. So it was March they reached out.

I remember I was talking to Trent, text him because I text him and bug him all day usually. And he's across the country from me. He was riding somewhere with the Bucks. And I was like, hey, Reginalditor says they're not going to probably sign me anytime soon. So I shouldn't, like, be hoping on that, you know, go do whatever else I wanted to do. And as soon as I told him that, he was in the car with Bucks and said, hey, Luciusaurus isn't signed. So they're like, oh, shit. Right away, they got a hold of that info.

And so trying to help me too by just mentioning it to them. Wow, yeah. Because everyone thought I was signed, so they weren't really considering me. I talked to Jericho and he said, yeah, I kind of pitched you, but they went, oh, he's signed. So I would, maybe it would have signed a lot earlier. I think it worked out because I got signed after a double or nothing and it gave me momentum because people saw who I was at double or nothing. Yeah.

Well, and when people saw you at double or nothing, they realized how gigantic you are. Yeah. You're, I guess, the biggest guy in AEW. Oh, yeah. That's what they were telling me there. They said, we don't really have a big guy yet signed and we're looking for one. And I'm like, I can do that. I can try to do that.

I think I'm kind of big. I mean, I wasn't big in the sense of the old school style. Like, I'm being normal-sized guy. Jericho was talking about all the guys he would wrestle back in, you know, the 90s. It's like I wouldn't be a big man. It's true. But now I am. It's a different era, which is cool because I've kind of learned to adapt the lusaurus

to being a big man. And at first, you know, because I wanted to do all the flips and the kicks and just wrestle like the other guys that are smaller. And I realized, well, that doesn't really help me or help anyone. It doesn't make sense for Lusosaurus to be doing that. So I've learned over time working guys who are really good. A lot of matches at bar wrestling with guys who are really good on the Indies that help me because Joey let me wrestle there every month

as I was figuring this out. So that all really played into it. It was that time on the Indians that let me kind of get to a point where I think I can now go on TV with this character and do what the TV guys want me to do and what the fans want me to do.

And you giving that chokeslam to Joey Janella? Yeah. Put you over huge? Also put Joey over huge. But I could have put him in the hospital. Seriously. Is that how it was supposed to go? Oh, of course.

It never goes the way it's supposed to go, right? Like the ring was bigger than we expected the from the ropes to the apron is wider than a normal ring. So as we were doing the show, so we kind of realized, oh, I got to kind of push him out more. And he just, it's almost like he just wanted it to go that way because I was trying to keep it as flat as possible when I dropped it. But I saw that he was tipping and he didn't try to resist it. I was like, here we go. And I looked at and I was trying to go, oh, my God, are you okay? So when the camera for a second, it hit me, my head's down.

And then I looked up at the camera. But I was like at first scared. And then he was fine. It was like, oh, this is awesome. This is what he wanted, is what I wanted out of it. It was a good moment that gets replayed. And if it was just a normal bump on that table, it would have been cool for a second and no longer you're talking about it.

But it worked out for both of us. He got his moment, I got mine. And the way he sold it, it folded up like that. Yeah, that's only Joey Janella. That's what Joey Janala does. Exactly. So it was the perfect combo for me to really go, oh, now people are noticing me all of a sudden.

Now the Lugia Solis chance are starting. Yes. Thank you, Joey. And as we sit here right now, Fighter Fest is a few hours. hours away. Joey Janelle might be doing other crazy stuff that we're talking about. And that's the fear, right? I think he wants to die in the ring, which I know it sounds like the glory thing on paper, but please, Joey, don't do it.

Yeah, please, Joey, don't do that. When you first got signed with AEW, did they tell you, all right, you're going to be at double-in-nothing, you're going to be in the Battle Royale? They told me, yeah, hey, before I got signed, they were like, hey, do you want to spot at the Battle Royal? That was the first conversation. And I was like, yes, definitely I want to spot. And then I was doing a few things with impact. And they told me, don't sign anywhere else before you talk to us. Like, we really want to use you even after that.

I was like, okay, this is cool. Okay, so now I know it's not just a one-off. Maybe we're actually doing something. So I was just preparing for that weekend. So I was just focused on that weekend. I wanted to have a good performance, no matter what they asked of me. It's such an exciting time to be a wrestling fan,

but you're on the inside of this. How does it feel being a wrestler in this world? I definitely feel pretty fortunate because it's the right time to be doing this. like the character for me wasn't ready two years ago. It wasn't definitely ready five years ago. But it seems like it all was kind of coming together for me personally and professionally at the same time.

And it took me, you know, the 34 years old, it took me this long to kind of figure out not only who I am, but who I am as a performer. And it's the right time in wrestling to be doing that. So I'm pretty excited about it. I'm also pretty focused on it. And I feel like, you know, I don't feel like a kid in awe. I feel like something that's ready to actually be a part

of something big and put in performances that are important for a company that needs people to do it. to deliver. Did you think that being on Big Brother was going to help or hurt you in your wrestling career? I was thinking, at that point, I thought it could only help because any exposure at that point was good because I was dead.

Like, you know, my character was dead. I never really got to do a character in WWE. I was leaving WWE. I had no prospects. So I said, this is like my last chance to see if anything comes of this. You know, there's like, they get like 8 to 10 million people watching a week on that show. So I said, okay, I'm going to try to do my Judas thing. I didn't really know what it was yet, but I'm just going to try to do it in this

environment. and that environment was very difficult to navigate because he didn't realize until he got in there. Oh, yeah, this is not just fun. People are competing for money. So it's a pretty ruthless environment. And then I got wrapped up in that world and I didn't really think about anything else for a while.

Did you find out quickly that Big Brother fans are pretty crazy like wrestling fans? Yeah, it's a different level of crazy. They're very passionate about it. They're watching you in that house, a lot of them 24 hours a day. And they log in and I used to do it when I was a kid because I was a real big fan of the show when I was younger. and you can watch those live feeds and get addicted to it.

Oh, yeah. And it's something else, and they feel like they know everything about you. But the funny thing is that even when you've got a camera on someone, you think you're getting the full picture, you're not, because it's still one perspective. And that's the thing about any kind of, that's the thing about history, about anything that's recorded, it's never the full picture, no matter what you think it is.

And also, when there's cameras on you, no matter how much you think you're being yourself, you really aren't. And you don't realize that until much later. And then I kind of did a few months after the show, and you get, go through it, I did, I went through a depression afterwards. And that really helped me kind of confront things about myself that were immature, that I hadn't really fixed yet, that I wanted to fix about myself. And ultimately it was a very good learning experience for me to kind of reach a point where, okay, I'm comfortable with who I am. Was the depression from seeing yourself on camera realizing things you didn't like?

I didn't really go back and watch it too closely to get to that. And I was okay with how I looked on camera. It was more about kind of me as a person and where I was in life. And like I went through a whole thing on the show. I got right into it. I was in the final five. I was in a showmance with one of the girls. And afterwards, you know, I didn't have a job.

I didn't have a career in wrestling. I didn't really know what I was doing. I was trying to ride a wave of this fame you get from reality TV. That's not really money producing. And I was trying to make the relationship work, but we were two completely different people. And yet it seemed like we were very close because we were in the house. In that context, when there was no money, no power,

and you're just living in this utopia, we were close, but when you get into the real world, you realized, oh, wait a minute, I don't really know who she is. She doesn't really know who I am. And it kind of fell apart a few months later. And I remember just feeling like I was at a low. Like I did that relationship was gone. My time of Big Brother was now faded completely. I wasn't in wrestling.

I was kind of doing this personal training thing working with athletes, but I wasn't too passionate about it. Like, where am I going in life? And I remember driving home from Vegas after, you know, seeing some friends. And I was by myself. I was single, alone. money is dwindling and I drove to John Hennigan's house and he had just got a ring in his backyard and say hey man let's just get back to training and then two weeks later I got the call from Joy Ryan and go do extra thing for Luchin Underground they signed me wow so it just kind of fell

into place and at that point because I had reached that low I was ready and I was ready to you know commit to wrestling 100 percent and that was it I was going to dive in in the next couple years I went under you know I went into the basement right I went underground and I was studying and I was training it was nothing was going to stop me because I needed to catch up and get to a level and And it took me a while to figure it out. And I didn't, you know, the guys were so ahead of me because they've been, I missed a couple years. But I just put myself into a situation where if I, if I work hard enough at this, I could do it. Do you look ahead and go, all right, I need to change these things or do these things to get to other goals that I've set for myself?

At this point, it's more like, you know, every match is a chance of study myself and critically analyze little nuanced things that I don't like and talk to other wrestlers who I respect and get their input. Because every match you have a chance for you to grow as a performer. And I don't think I'll ever be at the level where I'm completely content because I want to always get better. So it's more for me at this point. It's a matter of – I really like what I'm doing now. It's a matter of being challenged by some of the guys that wrestle for AW that are really good, seeing how they put matches together with me. And I think that'll be the next step in my maturation process.

Do you still have people that are recognizing you as Austin from Big Brother? All the time. Yeah. When the mask isn't on and I'm going through airports or anywhere where there people go on – go to travel. A lot of people from the Midwest will always recognize because it's very big in the Midwest. Well, it's tough. Look, I just moved from Cleveland to Florida. Yeah. I know what it's like. Yes. Watch TV in the winter.

Exactly. So I get, yeah, I got recognized at the airport yesterday a couple of times. And it's, it's starting to be, they're starting to get a few of the Jesaurus recognitions as well finally. I'm like, okay, that's what I want. As soon as you guys start on television in the fall, it's going to be a complete reversal of that. Well, then I'll start wearing the airport, in the mask of the airport. now they're all going to have to. You wear the mask in the airport. You might have other problems.

That's true. Imagine if I didn't. Imagine if they finally just, you know, I got it on the idea and everything. Well, just show the master's degree. It's fine.

When I tweeted out that I was going to interview you, you retweeted it, thank you for you. And then we got a barrage of very silly questions. Okay. Like, what's your favorite dinosaur?

I did see that question. I was trying to think of how to answer that. Because I was going to say, I don't know what my favorite dinosaur is, but I wanted to say that Barney was my least favorite. dinosaur. Because he's stereotyped dinosaurs as this kind of like squeaky, clean image of like, I know he's educational like, and I'm supposed to be educational, but like there's no flaws,

there's no layers to that guy. And I just want to see more layers. So it just, it just bothered me as a kid. What about Barney's friend? Baby Bob? Baby Bob, yeah. That was probably even worse, because Barney's educating baby bob to just be another Barney. So I think the whole show is kind of messed up. I think kids need to see a little bit rougher images. All right, well, there we go. That's Luciusaurus's Leaves favorite dinosaur. Yeah. Maybe one of the Jurassic Park dinosaurs, I don't know. What, like a raptor?

Yeah, they're cool. Tyrannosaurus. Tyrannosaurus, the ones that make the roars. Ankleosaurus? You know more about dinosaurs than I do. Stegosaurus? Stegosaurus? Damn.

Triceratops? I studied in the medieval period. Who is your favorite historical character? Oh, well, that's easy for me. It would be Lancelot or Parsivol. Lancelot was the knight who followed his heart over his head going after the married Guinevere and that's a very interesting story that I actually wrote about in my thesis

and he ended up in prison because of it but it was all about society kind of getting away from the norms and what you're supposed to do and kind of following your intuition and your passion so I was identified with that character and then Parsval was the boy raised in the forest who didn't understand society and had to figure it out on his own and had this higher destiny kind of like I feel like what the Jungle Boy character is

so those are my two kind of characters that kind of guy to me for a lot of years, and it's something I feel like we're almost playing out now for AEW, which is cool. I like that you came with the green tongue. Yeah, yeah. It's sticking out for us. Yeah. It's still green.

Oh, yeah. Even after talking this whole time, it's still green. Yeah. I like that. I don't know if we want to reveal how you did that, but it was very impressive. It was a very complex process. Yeah. We'll keep that secret here.

Yeah. I don't know if you can see the shift the eyes there. Yeah, right. Yeah. All the comments are going to be like, how do you do it? How do you get the green tongue? It's such a pleasure to sit down with you. Thank you so much for making this happen.

It's great. Yeah, I can't believe I interviewed a dinosaur. You did? Yeah, that's me. I'm a dinosaur. Well, there you go. Yeah, he's a dinosaur. Isn't it great that it was Dusty Rhodes

that came up with the original idea for the Luchessaurus character? Now he's working for Cody Rhodes. Just coming full circle here. Also, there's some real heat there with Barney the dinosaur. We've got to make that happen. Thank you for taking the time to listen to this. Thank you to our sponsors.

Greenroads. Go to greenroadsworld.com. Use the code Chris 15. That's my name with the number 15 after it to save 15% off your CBD products. Also, Samson Technologies, go to samsontech.com for their podcasting equipment. Who else is excited to see what happens from here on out with Luchosaurus? Yeah, I know I am. If you enjoyed this chat, I hope you did.

Please leave a five-star review. and subscribe that five-star review if it's a good one. Like, make it super original and fun and funny. I'll read it here on the podcast. And subscribe so you can be notified of my upcoming interviews. Upcoming interviews like the one I'm doing this weekend with the Young Bucks. Can't wait for that. Have a great day.

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