WWE star Santos Escobar recently appeared on Out of Character with Ryan Satin for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling. During the discussion, Escobar commented on having tryout matches with WWE a decade ago:
“It was always my dream to be part of the WWE Universe. I actually had a tryout in I believe it was probably 2010 or 2011. For whatever reason, I wasn’t signed. I guess at that point, I was at a crossroads where I could keep trying and trying and trying to do tryouts and pursue this or become big in Mexico, and I chose to do the latter. I kept doing my thing in Mexico and eventually, I felt like I had reached the top, main-eventing Triplemania, which is the biggest show in the country. It sort of put me in a position where I felt like I needed to grow even more, beyond the Mexican Lucha Libre scene. That’s why things unraveled the way they unraveled and I ended up becoming a part of the WWE family.”
His dad not passing down his wrestling name to him:
“My dad wouldn’t give me his name. Mexican tradition dictates that the name and the mask shall be inherited by your son. Can you imagine how I felt when he didn’t do so and he actually gave his name to someone else? That broke my heart back then and I remember I disliked my dad for a very long time. But guess what? That made me want it even more. I went and trained with other people so that he would know how I was developing this ability and how I was growing. Then eventually he saw me, and my first name, stage name, was Top Secret. That was my name, which was actually the name he was going to work. That was gonna be his name when he first started in the business. He never got to use it. So when the time came for me to start trying, you know, having small matches in the street, and the swap meets in the markets, you know, just having these small matches, I just grabbed that gear and that mask. Eventually he saw me. It was two years after that, he saw me in Mexico City, and that’s when he decided that I was ready for it, but by then, I wasn’t angry. I wanted it. So that’s when I became El Hijo del Fantasma.”
His reaction when he found out he was going to be part of the LWO:
“I’ve always thought that as a minority, we have to stay together somehow to represent who we are, where we come from, and what we’re about. If we present those three every time we go out there, eventually everyone will know what Lucha Libre is, who I am, where I come from, and all these rules and regulations and traditions that Lucha Libre has”
“So the very first conversation I had with Triple H, he asked me, ‘What do you want to do?’ I told him, ‘Can I bring back the LWO?’, and before I said the letter O, He said, ‘No. I want you to be you and I want people to see you and not think of anybody else. I want you to think of something. You want a group? We can do a group, but write something down, think about it, give it to me, and we’ll see.’ So that kind of shut down my initial desire, but Triple H was right. The time wasn’t right. It wouldn’t have been what it is right now and also, it needed a very important ingredient, an OG, an original LWO and that’s Rey. That’s why Legado came about and it was beautiful. It gave me the opportunity to do everything I wanted to do. Who I am, where I come from, what I’m about, and that’s what I did every single time I was out there, every promo, every backstage, every scene, every feud, every rivalry, was letting people know that I’m all about Lucha Libre, that Lucha Libre is about tradition, heritage culture, familia. All the values that you have, whether you’re Mexican, Latino, or not, are the values I had. We relate and that’s how Legado got over. That’s how Santos get really over on NXT because everything I say, it’s real.”
You can check out the complete interview below:
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
