Interview Highlights: Lucha Underground’s Chris DeJoseph discusses Lucha Underground’s return to El Rey this week

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The following are highlights of Ring Rust Radio’s interview with Chris DeJoseph regarding the return of Lucha Underground for a fourth season on June 13 this week. The interview highlights were provided to PWTorch from Ring Rust Radio…

Ring Rust Radio: On June 13, Lucha Underground returns to El Rey Network for its fourth season. What is the excitement level from the wrestlers and the backstage crew for the launch of another season?

Chris DeJoseph: I think it’s probably like above 100 percent, like 125 percent excitement rating. I think it’s been a while and everybody is super excited to be back on the air and on El Rey Network and to be back and let the fans finally see what we have held secret for a few months now. It’s can be well worth the wait.

Ring Rust Radio: The Lucha believers were left with a lot of question marks following the season 3 finale. What are some of the biggest changes fans should expect when tuning back in for season 4?

Chris DeJoseph: One thing for sure is that we are in a whole new warehouse. It’s a whole, new temple and basically, it’s based off of the end of Season 3. The Temple had to relocate to this old icehouse. It’s a pretty cool thing, but just like the old temple, this new temple is just as big of a character in the show as the original.

Ring Rust Radio: Most wrestling companies, with WWE serving as the prime example, are year-round entities with programming or shows every single week throughout the year. From your perspective, what are some of the biggest advantages for Lucha Underground when it comes to taking breaks in the middle of and in between seasons, and what are some of the biggest challenges you have to overcome?

Chris DeJoseph: For me, the challenge is we are not on every week. It’s not necessarily appointment viewing every single week. You’re used to watching Raw every Monday or you’re used to watching Smack Down every Tuesday or Friday or whenever it’s on. Lucha Underground is on Wednesdays when it comes back. It’s there for a shorter period of time. For me, one of the advantages of not having 52 shows a year; it gives a bit of an off-season, gives the fans a bit of time to digest, everybody a little break and some rest. It even gives the audience some time to build anticipation again and to get really hyped up for it to come back. I think that’s one cool advantage is it’s not the same thing every week. You get a little bit of rest and you get excited when Lucha comes back and you can’t wait to watch it.

Ring Rust Radio: As an impact wrestling fan, the relationship between the promotions has grown in recent months. How did the partnership come about and does Lucha plan on expanding on the business relationship?

Chris DeJoseph: I think really the partnership started with AAA and then Dorian [Roldan] is an executive producer and investor Lucha Underground and we have a connection with AAA and we have a connection with Impact. I don’t want to speak for them, but it just made sense for everybody business wise. We can keep everyone working, we can all work together to achieve the same goal and work together rather than wrestling companies, or in our case two TV shows, competing against each other. In this way we try to help each other and elevate each other and I think bring more eyeballs to each other’s brands.

Ring Rust Radio: Prince Puma was my favorite character from the debut episode. Was it difficult to see him leave after everything that was built for three seasons and were there any challenges from a writing perspective in trying to replace such an iconic character?

Chris DeJoseph: Obviously, there’s challenges to replace your main character of a show. The first three seasons were based around Prince Puma in his mythology, in his place in the world of Lucha Underground. It was tough, it was tough to lose Trevor, Ricochet, Prince Puma for those who don’t know. He was kind of the heart and soul of Lucha Underground but I’m glad he had the opportunity to go somewhere else and had the chance to show the rest of the world what he can do. As far as replacing him, I think we set ourselves up pretty well with a bunch of characters that are over and people care about. I wasn’t too concerned about that. We have guys like Johnny Mundo, Phoenix, Mil Muertes, those are characters that we’ve invested a lot of time in and not to mention we have Pentagon Dark. Ultimate Lucha was kind of a passing of the torch from Puma to Pentagon as kind of the kingpin of Lucha Underground.

Ring Rust Radio: How do you believe getting Lucha Underground on Netflix has helped in terms of growing the popularity of the product and generating hype for season 4, and what are you hoping to get out of that partnership moving forward?

Chris DeJoseph: For me, if anything being on Netflix gave the opportunity for a lot more people to be able to see Lucha Underground that may not have. I can’t say how many times I’ve run into people and they’ve noticed it on Netflix and they didn’t even know it existed. I’ve seen tweets from people that say, “I’m watching Season 1 of Lucha Underground, it’s so awesome!” and these are tweets that a came out a couple of months ago. The show has been existent for three years. I think that’s a good thing and it gives fans an opportunity to binge watch it. So, you can go on Netflix if you haven’t seen it and it’s very easily bingeable television. It has a lot of cliffhangers, a lot of great action and episodes are only 45 minutes with no commercials. It’s pretty quick and before you know you can watch six or seven episodes of Lucha Underground and lose your whole day. I think that’s a great thing. In the future, I don’t know what the future holds between Lucha Underground and Netflix. It’s not really a decision for me to make, but hopefully we continue to be on there and more people get to see Lucha Underground, and we will see.

CHECK OUT THE INTERVIEW ON YOUTUBE HERE.