While new fans to professional wrestling will know Swerve Strickland as one of the biggest stars in AEW, older fans will remember that he cut his teeth in companies like CZW, MLW, and DEFY. However, it was his time in Lucha Underground as "Killshot" that introduced Strickland to an entirely new audience, with some of his matches in "The Temple" still being talked about to this day. Strickland opened up about his time in Lucha Underground on a recent edition of the "No-Contest Wrestling" podcast, explaining how his time there made him a better wrestler.
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"It was a challenge," Strickland said. "That's one of the most competitive rosters that you'll ever see in wrestling, and AEW is like that too in a lot of senses. But Lucha Underground was just filled with like the premier athletes from Mexico, from America, from Canada, from the UK, everybody was coming in, in a melting pot and we were trying to figure out 'what can we create?' Because now, the universe is endless."
Strickland explained that Lucha Underground was unlike any other wrestling show as the storylines gave fans time travellers, dragons, death, and Brian Cage punching people's faces off. While working within such an insane universe was one challenge, on a personal level, the challenge was trying to find his spot on a roster filled with so much talent.
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"I'm not a luchador, because I can't Lucha as good as Aerostar, I can't Lucha as good as Fenix. I'm not going to, there's no way, I'm not going to out-Lucha those guys. I can't flash as good as John Morrison or Johnny Mundo at the time, I can't fly higher than [Prince] Puma, I can't jump further than Angelico...how do I fit into this?"
Please credit "No-ContestWrestling" when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
