Strickland Credits Lucha Underground Bout For Putting Him On WWE’s Radar

Top AEW star Swerve Strickland appeared on VladTV to discuss several topics, including how he believes his match with AR Fox in Lucha Underground got him noticed by WWE.

Strickland said, “I think so, yeah. That was one of the things, get your name talked about as much as you can. We went out there on a mission to just show that there’s no way you can miss this, there’s no way anybody anywhere can’t talk about this or if you talk about it, everybody knows exactly that match you’re talking about. It was just one of the mixed blends of athleticism, lucha, actual storytelling, brutality, it mixed everything together and it showcased more of not just crash wrestling but actual story arcing with characters and meaning behind it. When I’m in feuds and stories like that, I always like to make the villain more powerful or smarter than the hero because that’s where the arc comes in, that’s where the story comes in. Green Goblin was way more powerful than Spider-Man for like a good portion of those movies. Doc Ock was smarter than Spider-Man, Venom is more stronger than Spider-Man. Saber-tooth is way more powerful than Wolverine, and he knows him longer, so that’s always where that clashing works for me. My whole intention was like Fox comes in, he has to be better than me. He has to right away. That’s where it culminates to something so big like that, it takes all this, throwing him through barbed wire, getting put through glass, him falling off a ledge through all this glass. It took all that to beat him so whether he wins or loses, he’s still a made man because it took all that to defeat this guy. They understood the story and then to audiences that never seen this before, now they know who we are. If they don’t know, they’re gonna go research and tell a friend of a friend of a friend and that’s how you spread that name like that for a WWE to call to be like, I’ve never heard of these guys but I heard about what you’ve done. Your name has to be synonymous with that story.”

You can check out Strickland’s comments in the video below.

(H/T to Fightful for transcribing the above quotes)