Ricochet recalls a significant point in his career.
Before the former WWE Intercontinental Champion made a splash in both WWE and AEW, Ricochet was quite the commodity on the independent scene. So when Lucha Underground snatched him up, it was a great opportunity for both the company and the man himself.
For Ricochet, it offered him more exposure beyond the independent walls. For Lucha Underground, it showcased one of the best athletes in the business. Ricochet ended up being Prince Puma and was one of the focal points in the promotion for three seasons.
While the AEW star's end in Lucha Underground wasn’t so smooth, Ricochet spoke about his time in the now defunct promotion and recalls on Freddie Prinze Jr.’s Wrestling with Freddie podcast.how persistent Konnan was in trying to get him to play Prince Puma (Transcript courtesy of Fightful).
“I remember, Konnan, for a while, was trying to get me to play this part in this TV show — Prince Puma — Konnan was calling me and texting me and emailing me for months, maybe even a year, up to a year. I remember a long time, Konnan — I would say months — and he kept calling and sometimes I would hear him and sometimes I wouldn’t even — because he kept pitching this new show. It’s like Mark Burnett and Robert Rodriguez were gonna be executive producers on it. It’s gonna be like a new style of wrestling."
Ricochet thought that Lucha Underground was going to be like Wrestling Society X, a failed MTV experiment that only lasted one season.
"He kept trying to pitch it and I kept thinking in my head, like, Wrestling Society X. I don’t know if you remember Wrestling Society X on MTV. They had explosions and they had music artists, and it lasted for maybe a season, and I just remember it not getting any traction, and so that’s what I had in my head. It was gonna be something like that, which wasn’t bad but just at the time, it wasn’t gonna catch on, and so I was just like, ‘Nah, I don’t think so. I’m just gonna wait, I’m just gonna wait, I’m just gonna wait, I’m just gonna wait.’
But once Ricochet understood the concept and got a chance to see the set then he changed his tune about Lucha Underground.
"But then finally, one day, I was going out for PWG, and they said, ‘Well, just come out here’ because they were out in LA.’
They said, ‘Come out here, come through the studio, look at the set, look at some of the photos and stuff that we have and we’ll give you the whole rundown and just see what you think,’ and actually, me and Rich Swann at the time, we fly down there — well, for PWG — then we drove down there, and then they showed me The Temple, they showed me the arena, they showed me Dario Cueto and what he was gonna be and Prince Puma and what he was gonna be and they showed me all the stuff and everything and I said, ‘Honestly, man, this looks cool.’
The art looked cool and The Temple looked cool and everything looked awesome, and I said, ‘They wanted me to be this Prince Puma which is like the main character of the whole thing,’ and I said, ‘Wow, this is crazy’ so, okay, sure, and then we got the talking.”
Check out the full interview where Ricochet talks about finding his love for wrestling again, his matches against Kenny Omega and Will Ospreay, his transition to AEW, and so much more!