Joey Ryan spoke with Chris Van Vliet from WSVN-TV (Miami) over the weekend about his marriage proposal video going viral, his famous finishing move, making the move to Lucha Underground and more. Here are some highlights of what he said about:
How he pulled off a mid-match marriage proposal to his girlfriend and fellow wrestler Laura James:
“She had no idea. We had a completely different finish planned for the match. At the point where I went to the get the ring, she thought I was going to get a weapon. I was going to win, but by DQ. She was going to get the weapon from me, then the ref was going to catch her with the weapon leading to a DQ. But after the proposal I figured we still need to finish this thing. The referee was in on it, the promoter was in on it, the ring announcer was in on it because he slipped me the microphone but that was it. I whispered in her ear ‘don’t kick out’ and I rolled her up really quick.”
How to properly do a YouPorn Plex:
“It can go massively wrong. We don’t necessarily physically practice it, I tell my opponent you just kind of want to cup. You don’t really want to put too much pressure on that”.
Working for Lucha Underground:
“It’s great, it’s my favorite. It’s so fun and so different. I think a lot of wrestling companies pop up and see the WWE model of how to be successful in wrestling and they think that they have to emulate that and what you get is a bootleg version of WWE. What I like about Lucha Underground is it completely flips the script and says we’re not going to present this as a live sporting event, we’re going to present this as an episodic TV series like an HBO series or a Netflix series or whatever. I just thought that was a great spin on wrestling to modernize it and change it up and present something different for the audience.”
Why didn’t WWE sign him after he worked several matches for them?
“They kept inviting me back so there was interest at some point. But it’s not like how it is today where you have NXT and they’re building that brand and they’re using a lot of smaller guys. The times I was there they would pretty much tell me ‘we’re really not looking for guys your size right now but we like you and we’ll invite you back next time.’ They were land of the giants more at that time, now especially with NXT, they are evolving to have more cruiserweights. It’s good for the guys coming in now and I’m happy going what I’m doing, I love Lucha Underground.”
