Cortez Castro On Why He Knew CM Punk Wouldn't Succeed At MMA
Cortez Castro has wrestled all over the world and is currently with Lucha Underground. He's incorporated many wrestling styles into his repertoire including the Japanese style made famous by Antonio Inoki.
Castro even got the opportunity to learn under the tutelage of Inoki at his wrestling dojo and he talked more about that on The Roman Show.
"It was an honor and privilege training with Mr. Antonio Inoki; I just love Japanese wrestling. When the Inoki dojo opened in 2002 I was invited. There were a select few people invited to come down for a first couple of months when the dojo opened," said Castro. "I just remembered walking in two or three years into wrestling, I was intimidated, but I knew that it is what I wanted. I remember telling myself I am never leaving this place. It was hardcore training. We trained mixed martial arts style more than anything else; we didn't train pro wrestling at all.
"It was our job to translate what we learned in the mixed marital arts and turn it into pro wrestling. That was Mr. Inoki's vision which is the LA dojo now. It was to be a fighter first and pro wrestler second. His idea for it was that we can translate a real fight feeling to wrestling fans if you really did a real fight. The training each day was a different discipline."
Castro also spent some time in Ring of Honor which coincided with CM Punk's tenure from 2002-06. He was even a part of the tag team which took the tag titles from Punk and Colt Cabana in 2004, but Castro says Punk never had the right mentality to succeed at Mixed Martial Arts.
"Punk is a good friend of mine. We don't talk nearly as much now a days but you have those friends that are friends forever. There's been times I haven't talked to him in months or almost years then I see him and it's like I spoke to him an hour ago. We are good friends," said Castro. "He came to the dojo when he worked for PWG and he would come in for a few days and train with us. Unfortunately, I know he fell in love with jujitsu. It really is a beautiful sport once you start to learn it and there are so many things you can learn. That was his love for MMA and he was learning Brazilian Jujitsu.
"To have a fighter mentality you can't just say I love one small aspect of it; it doesn't work that way. He got an opportunity to fight in the UFC because of who he was and how attractive that was to a pay-per-view audience. But he is not a fighter. There's a different level of fire in someone – he liked training it and stuff like that – but there is a different switch that he wasn't born with from a physicality point. He is one of those guys where you can beat him and beat him and he won't give up. I knew when I rolled with him for the first time; I rolled with him on the mat. I was better than him because I amateur wrestled."