Where Are The Stars Of Lucha Underground Today?

It has been over a decade since the El Rey Network aired the pilot episode of their new wrestling show, "Lucha Underground." At the time, no one knew the impact that the show would have on the wider wrestling world, but despite only running for a total of four seasons, Lucha Underground has become one of the most beloved wrestling products of the last 20 years.

The show managed to combine the exciting Lucha Libre style from Mexico, a grimy B-movie aesthetic that wouldn't look out of place in the Robert Rodriguez universe (who also acted as one of the show's developers), and a cinematic style of storytelling that would not only become influential, but extremely pivotal during the COVID-19 pandemic. After all, there would likely be no Firefly Funhouse without Lucha Underground.

Throughout the four seasons that the show was on the air, dozens of wrestlers from around the world passed through the doors of the famous Temple in Boyle Heights, and a number of them, despite going by different names on the show, have gone on to become some of the biggest stars in wrestling today. Which begs the question: where are the stars of Lucha Underground today?

Starting with the man who was arguably the first true ace of Lucha Underground, Prince Puma. He was in the first main event in the promotion's history, the first-ever Lucha Underground Champion, a title he won by winning the first-ever Aztec Warfare match, and was one of only two men to hold the title more than once.

If you couldn't already tell by the tattoo covering half of his chest, Puma was played by Ricochet, who could still work for companies like NJPW and PWG during his three-season run with Lucha Underground. However, Ricochet would opt out of signing a new deal with the promotion, one that would have made him one of the highest-paid wrestlers in the world not signed to WWE, and would wait until season three's finale aired in October 2017 to sign with WWE.

These days, Ricochet is now flying high as a big-time player in All Elite Wrestling, debuting for the company at the All In London event at Wembley Stadium in August 2024, and has since made a very successful heel turn that's kept him in and around the main event scene.

Lucha Underground was the place where a lot of wrestling fans got their first look at the men who would become more commonly known as The Lucha Brothers. However, despite it being common knowledge that Pentagon Jr. and Fenix are real-life brothers, they were better known as singles stars in Boyle Heights.

As previously mentioned, there was only one other man besides Prince Puma that held the Lucha Underground Championship more than once, that was Pentagon Jr., who later became Pentagon Dark, and was one of the biggest names associated with Lucha Underground across the four seasons it was on the air. Fenix was another of Lucha Underground's top stars as he would become the first-ever Triple Crown Champion in promotion.

After winning almost every piece of tag team gold imaginable in companies like Impact Wrestling, Ring of Honor, and AEW, The Lucha Brothers are now back on their own respective singles journeys in WWE, with Penta being one of "WWE Raw's" most popular talents, while Rey Fenix has only just started on "WWE SmackDown." They will most likely reunite later on down the line, but the future for Penta and Fenix looks bright in WWE. 

The other half of the first ever Lucha Underground main event, Prince Puma was seen looking at the lights on episode one of season one thanks to Johnny Mundo.

By the time he arrived in Lucha Underground, the former "WWE Tough Enough" winner had fully immersed himself in the independent scene following his exit from WWE in 2011, and was able to fully reinvent himself by being the other man after Fenix to win the Lucha Underground Triple Crown. Mundo's work on Lucha Underground would eventually lead to a successful stint in Mexico, working primarily for AAA, before heading to companies like TNA and MLW, gaining a variety of different second names along the way to the point where his Wikipedia page says "various other ring names" when listing what he has wrestled as.

Mundo was the only man to wrestle on both the first and last episodes of Lucha Underground, and if you wanted to see him wrestle these days, you would find him wrestling as Johnny TV in All Elite Wrestling and Ring of Honor, where he is working regularly with his wife Taya Valkyrie, who is also a former member of the Lucha Underground roster.

As part of the Lucha Underground roster, Killshot had a fair amount of success. He won the Lucha Underground Trios Championships on two occasions and was one of only a few wrestlers to feature in all four seasons of the show. However, of all the people to pass through the doors of the iconic Temple, one could argue that Killshot has surpassed everyone in terms of success and has become one of the biggest stars in the entire industry.

That is because the man who played Killshot was Swerve Strickland, a staple of AEW's main event scene, and a former AEW World Champion who became not only the first African American World Champion in AEW history in April 2024, but also the first black wrestler to headline a show at Wembley Stadium when he wrestled Bryan Danielson at All In London later that same year.

Strickland hasn't forgotten about his time in Lucha Underground either as he has routinely crossed paths with Prince "Ricochet" Puma, with their past being brought up in the 2025 feud, and the man he faced in the iconic "Hell of War" match from the first night of "Ultima Lucha Tres" in season three, AR Fox.

For as athletically gifted as many luchadors are, many of them are made to look even better when they are working with someone who is a great base, and for the high flyers in Lucha Underground, they had the man simply known as Cage. A monster of a man who famously ripped the original version of the Lucha Underground Championship in half during the show's first season, Cage went on to win the Lucha Underground Gift of the Gods Championship and was a staple of the promotion until they closed the doors of The Temple.

Nowadays, Cage has his first name back, and Brian Cage has been a prominent figure in All Elite Wrestling since 2020. A former member of Team Taz, a former FTW Champion, and now a current member of The Don Callis Family, who at the time of writing is sidelined with a knee injury. However, while Cage might be seen as one of Lucha Underground's greatest stars to never hold the promotion's top prize, it was in his personal life where he won his biggest prize as he met Lucha Underground's ring announcer Melissa Santos, whom he would end up marrying in July 2019.

Long-time fans of CMLL and AAA will have been familiar with King Cuerno long before he arrived in Lucha Underground, as he regularly wrestled in Mexico as El Hijo del Fantasma. Cuerno is the son of legendary luchador El Fantasma, who is also the head of the Mexico City Boxing and Professional Wrestling Commission, but was given the chance to carve out a new path for himself on the El Rey Network with a new name, leading him to win the Lucha Underground Gift of the Gods Championship.

However, Cuerno would end his time with Lucha Underground on very bad terms as he, along with several other roster members, sued the promotion, the El Rey Network, and Lucha Underground's production company over the contract he signed illegally restricting him from making a living. The promotion would eventually release him before his contract expired to avoid more legal problems, and after losing his mask at AAA's TripleMania XXVI event in 2018, he would go on to sign with WWE and become the man many people know today as Santos Escobar, the leader of Legado Del Fantasma which is own his way of keeping his father's professional wrestling legacy alive.

The only faction in Lucha Underground's short history to hold the promotion's Trios Championships with two completely different groups of three. The Reptile Tribe was eventually comprised of six members in total, all of whom have gone on to achieve wildly different things in the wrestling world.

The first trio of The Reptile Tribe to become champions consisted of Pindar, better known as Steve Pain in Mexico and on the California wrestling circuit, who is currently the head trainer of the House of Pain wrestling school in Los Angeles. Drago, one of Lucha Underground's earliest signings, who still wrestles frequently around Mexico as Dios Del Inframundo, and Vibora, who would keep his reptilian roots when signed with AEW as Luchasaurus, before being renamed to Killswitch.

Later on the group's lifespan, Daga, Kobra Moon, and Jeremiah Snake won the titles. Daga has since taken his talents to Japan and is part of Team2000X in Pro Wrestling NOAH, Moon has since achieved immense success in both the NWA and AEW as Thunder Rosa, and Snake, formerly known as Jeremiah Crane, continues to wrestle under a name that is far more familiar to the current fans of TNA, Sami Callihan.

There is arguably no one who is more synonymous with Lucha Underground than South Africa's own Angelico. Many people's first exposure to Lucha Underground was through the viral clips of Angelico performing two outrageous dives from the top of The Temple in an attempt to help his partners Ivelisse and Son of Havoc, as they went from being an unlikely trio that didn't get along, to being both the first-ever Lucha Underground Trios Championship, but the only trio to hold the titles twice.

Even though he's South African, Angelico has spent the majority of his career in Mexico after receiving training from the legendary Ultimo Dragon. His work in AAA and IWRG would lead him to The Temple, and even though a large portion of his run was hampered by injury, his insane viral moments earned him a cult-like following which ultimately earned him a contract with AEW in 2019, and was part of the company's first-ever pay-per-view alongside fellow Lucha Underground alum Jack Evans. While Evans has since moved on from AEW, Angelico is still with the company to this day, and primarily wrestles on Ring of Honor programming as part of the Spanish Announce Project with Serpentico.

The voices of Lucha Underground, who provided the backstory, the insight, and the energy into every broadcast. Vampiro and Matt Striker might sound like an unlikely duo on paper, but they gained a lot of fans working together in Boyle Heights, while Vampiro earned a lot of new fans by being able to hang with one of the promotion's best and brightest.

While Striker primarily stayed at the announce desk, Vampiro famously revealed himself to be Pentagon Jr.'s master at the end of season one, resulting in a brutal "Cero Miedo" match that saw Vampiro go through a flaming table. He might not have had a match in Lucha Underground after that, but Vampiro would continue wrestling, primarily for AAA, including going on a retirement tour with the promotion throughout 2024, when the company's goal was to lean more into nostalgia. Despite this, Vampiro still wrestles sporadically on the Mexican independent scene.

As for Striker, he would land commentary gigs with AAA (alongside Vampiro no less), as well as calling NJPW's Wrestle Kingdom 9 and 10, and working for TNA during the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, unlike Vampiro, Striker is very much retired from in-ring action.

Far and away the biggest name to have ever stepped foot in a Lucha Underground ring, Rey Mysterio's time with the promotion came at a time when they were on the rise, and Mysterio himself needed something to give his own career a shot in the arm following his WWE departure in 2015. 

Between appearances for AAA and on the independent scene, Mysterio (complete with the Jr. at the end of his name again) would be a focal point of seasons two and three of Lucha Underground, acting almost as a legend who wanted to help pave the way for the next generation of luchadors. He would win the Lucha Underground Trios Championships with Dragon Azteca Jr. and Prince Puma, the latter of whom would go on to have a dream match with Mysterio at the end of season two.

Mysterio would choose not to renew his deal for season four, opting to travel to various companies across the next two years, including the original All In event, NJPW, and a cameo for WWE at the 2018 Royal Rumble. He has been with WWE since 2018 and has even been inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.

While he only appeared in the final season of Lucha Underground, Jake Strong left a lasting impression on the promotion by finishing the final season as a double champion. When Lucha Underground was discontinued, Strong was still the holder of the promotion's top title, as well as the Gift of the Gods Championship, making him one of the most successful champions in the show's history by default.

As many people will now know, Jake Strong was the name for the former Jack Swagger in WWE, who would later go on to have a lengthy run under his real name of Jake Hager in AEW. He debuted for the company on the first episode of "AEW Dynamite" and was regularly featured on TV thanks to his affiliation with Chris Jericho. He would leave AEW in the spring of 2024, and has since remained active on the independent scene, wrestling for the likes of Black Label Pro, AIW, and SMASH, but doesn't look to be returning to AEW any time soon as he alleged in November 2024 that AEW President Tony Khan threatened to fire him over his public support of US President Donald Trump, before calling Khan a communist.

A group that has become very well known amongst wrestling fans these days, The Black Lotus Triad, was made up of a group of women that fans saw and went "wait, THEY were in Lucha Underground?"

Formed off the back of The Black Lotus, who WWE fans will remember as former ring announcer Savannah, having her arm broken by Pentagon Dark, the three women that Lotus recruited to get revenge on Penta were Hitokiri, Doku, and Yurei. While not recognizable names on paper, the women who played them have gone on to be three of the most successful women in all of wrestling.

Hitokiri is none other than current WWE Women's World Champion IYO Sky, who retained her title at WrestleMania 41. Doku was played by the woman WWE fans will know as Kairi Sane, and Yurei was the former IWGP Women's Champion Mayu Iwatani, who is still considered to be the ace of STARDOM in Japan. The three women were incredibly close when they all worked in STARDOM together, and even though their history in Lucha Underground is rarely mentioned, Sky and Sane are still paired together in WWE as members of Damage CTRL.

The Black Lotus didn't just have her connections in Japan, she also had her eyes set on a man known initially as Matanza, who she believed had killed her parents, leading to her trying to kill Matanza herself.

Matanza would later be revealed to be the dark and twisted brother of Lucha Underground owner Dario Cueto, who unleashed his brother upon his own promotion as Dario knew what his brother was capable of. Matanza Cueto would go on to win the second-ever Aztec Warfare match, as well as being one of the most dominant Lucha Underground Champions of all time, but who was the man behind the solid steel mask?

The answer is Jeff Cobb, another man who sought legal action against Lucha Underground over his contract situation, meaning that he wasn't allowed to make any televised appearances until his character was killed off in season four. This led to him taking his talents to PWG and NJPW, as well as making sporadic appearances in AEW in recent years. However, at the time of writing, Cobb has wrapped up his successful eight-year stint with NJPW and is seemingly on his way to WWE in the near future.

The mad scientist who let all of the chaos take place inside The Temple, Dario Cueto is widely regarded as one of the most unique original characters that any wrestling promotion has produced in recent years.

Portrayed by Spanish actor Luis Fernandez-Gil, who had previously starred in movies like "Jack and Jill" alongside Adam Sandler, and TV shows like "The Mentalist," Cueto was a character that was so deranged he was shot and killed at the end of season three, only for Gil to play Dario's father Antonio (who looked virtually the same) in season four. However, given what Dario did in the first three seasons, some fans will say that he deserved to be killed.

Gil is still acting to this day, and is still running an underground wrestling promotion to a certain extent as he now portrays Cesar Duran in MLW, where he is the leader of the Azteca Underground stable. In storyline, he is also in charge of the "MLW Azteca" events, which are seen by many as the spiritual successors to Lucha Underground, with the next "Azteca" event currently scheduled to take place on May 10, 2025, in Cicero, Illinois, in partnership with CMLL.