On a recent episode of The Steve Austin Show – Unleashed! Lucha Underground star Johnny Mundo (formerly known as John Morrison and Johnny Nitro) was featured.
The former WWE Superstar spoke about moving to Lucha Underground, his experience on the third season of Tough Enough and much more.
To listen to the podcast in full, you can do so by clicking this link. Below are just a few of the highlights:
On his fitness routine, which is something he has created:
“I have a whole fitness product that I created, it’s called Out of Your Mind Fitness, it’s a functional training regiment, it’s a lot of body weight exercises using weight equipment for assistance rather than resistance. And I’d say I do that exact program six days a week for an hour to an hour and a half, it’s like resistance training like lifting weights. In addition to that I usually do some kind of skill based training five times a week, like boxing, MMA. I train sometimes downtown with your buddy Josh Barnett.
So usually the weight training and some kind of skill based thing, and the skill is more like training cardio so if it’s MMA or boxing or parkour or some kind of stunt cardio, that’s usually just what happens based on my schedule.”
On transitioning to the Lucha style of wrestling:
“It wasn’t that different from the way that I worked in WWE. I mean, my first match, when MNM debuted in 2005, our very first match was Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio, we won the tag championships. I had the chance to work with Rey, maybe not a hundred times but a lot with WWE and we had feuds with the Mexicools and Super Crazy and Psicosis and Juve so I had some experience, so it wasn’t like I was venturing off into uncharted territory.
I definitely learned quite a bit, I think the language barrier is a little difficult sometimes and the difference in psychology is hard, and sometimes instead of completely adapting to Lucha, what I think makes Lucha Underground unique and different is blending American psychology with Lucha psychology and getting some of the moves to mean more.”
On his experience on the third season of Tough Enough:
“When I got there I felt like it was perfect for me because I was a fan of the business, I had all this gymnastics training and all these ideas and all this energy and it was an opportunity to learn from the best and it was Al [Snow], Bill [DeMott] and Ivory were the trainers on that season of Tough Enough.
For where I was on Tough Enough, Bill was perfect, I mean he’s a hard ass and he’s aggressive but he makes sure you have respect for the business. And on that show of Tough Enough, that’s what you need because there’s a bunch of kids, some are respectful, some aren’t but everyone is green as grass and you need somebody like Bill, and you need somebody like Al and everybody has got a role, everybody is there for a reason and I thought that, I still think my season was the best season, probably because I was on it.”
