Paul London On The Night Vince McMahon's Limo Exploded, What The Roster Was Instructed, His Smile

With the new season of Lucha Underground ready to premiere on Wednesday September 7th on The El Ray Network, and coming off being named one of Rolling Stone.com's "18 Wrestling Podcasts to Follow", The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling welcomes a familiar face to wrestling fans but a new competitor to Lucha Underground, former WWE Cruiserweight Champion Paul London. In an interview publishing Friday (9/2/16) John, Chad and London discuss what led to him signing with LU and what he feels makes the Lucha Underground product stand out so much to the modern day wrestling fan base. The full Lucha Underground Season 3 preview will kick off the interview but it is in this preview clip where Paul London breaks down the night Vince McMahon's limo exploded on Monday Night RAW and what the story is behind his infamous "smile" that can been seen very clearly as Vince walks ultimately to his supposed demise. You can also read transcribed excerpts below.

Advertisement

"I showed up to the building that night or that morning and I was already in trouble for something else and it's going back to that lack of comradery because in that environment there are no friends. The word exists but the meaning does not. So my career was already being sabotaged for other reasons by another performer. So I was being addressed for that very reason right off of the bat. So it is almost as if the chips were against me on that day to begin with. So I was in a very frustrated mindset. Fast forward to later in the afternoon and they said let's throw all of these guys a bone and let them all be in this segment so they can get some screen time (heaven only knows that we aren't going to write anything for them) so let's throw them in here as background. It's basically like make your stars the extras. The instruction was very clear. There was no "gaff" on the direction or the instructions that we were given. It was extremely clear and I will tell them to you right now. They said to get us all in a group (because you are all not important enough) to be spoken to individually."

Advertisement

"They said Vince is going to be acting very weird. He's going to be in the ring and he is going to be acting very "queer". The reason I say the word queer is because that is the exact word that they used about a thousand times. "

"I thought that was a very unusual choice of words for them to describe how he is acting because I know they mean he is acting odd or funny and it is not how other people could take it but either way that was the direction we got. He was going to be acting very strange and very peculiar."

"With that being said, my only motivation was here we are again (as) wrapping paper. You can either rip that paper off or maybe you like that wrapping paper and you look for where the tape is and you carefully un-do it but either way the paper is not at fault and that is how I looked at it. I don't know what the prize is here, I don't know what this is leading to but whatever it is don't attack the wrapping paper. I'm just standing here man, whatever happens I'm the village idiot. It clearly wasn't me. Whatever is going on here it is not me clearly. So if you are going to kill somebody don't kill the guy smiling, I'm just the idiot standing here smiling. That was my motivation. That was my mindset. It wasn't this is so stupid and I'm going to laugh so I can wink at my friends back home and let them know I'm too cool for this. "

Advertisement

"Looking back at it the funniest thing about that segment is really all of the other wrestlers reactions or attempt at reactions and just how bad and funny it looked to see all of these actors or wrestlers, how hard they were trying to feed into this whatever it was so that was pretty comical. But we did that thing 9 times at least and I smiled every single time. Each take. It wasn't the same smile but that was my motivation and they didn't say anything different. I figured if they had a problem they would tell me. Vince even looked in my face on a few of these takes as he was walking around and doing these takes and looked at me. So it wasn't like he didn't see it 8 or 9 times."

For more on The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling you can follow us on Twitter @TwoManPowerTrip of subscribe to us on iTunes, Podomatic.com, PlayerFM and Tune In.

Comments

Recommended