Lince Dorado signed with WWE to take part in the Cruiserweight Classic in 2016 and remained part of the division throughout his tenure with the company.
While Lince was on and off television as a member of the Lucha House Party with Kalisto and Gran Metalik, he says he never stopped working on different ideas to get him more TV time.
"We came up with pitches, we had powerpoints, we had ideas. Just a disconnect, a culture disconnect. They didn't understand why we wanted to do it or how it could be successful, among other things," he said on the Two Man Power Trip podcast. "The chain of command is your writer, I'll be honest, I had maybe two or three writers out of 12, that were on point and knew exactly what they wanted, they were great writers, they understood wrestling, entertainment, the culture, and their job. Other than that, the other ones, I didn't trust and didn't see their drive. I saw them prioritize other things, especially when they're talking to your face and you see them thinking about other things and you're frustrated because they are distracted."
Lince continued, saying he would always go to the top of the chain when he had a pitch.
"Whenever we had an issue or idea, we always went right to the man, Vince McMahon, or Bruce Prichard, or John Laurinaitis. I wasn't going to entertain the idea of talking to writers who may not be here in six months or three months or they may move to NXT or back to SmackDown or they may go to the office. I'm not going to entertain those guys because I'm wasting my time and my time is precious. I need to go right to the source and that's what we always did whenever we had an issue or idea. I always stood on my own two feet and talked to him. I never cowered, I don't believe in it," he said.
When asked how his ideas were received, Lince recalled Vince taking an interest in an idea to the point where he pulled out his pen and notepad.
"Never combative, sometimes, they could come off as genuine where they look interested, sometimes you could tell they were just nodding their head and getting me out of their face. One of the coolest things I had ever seen, it was never from a writer, only Vince McMahon. I had a conversation; me, Kalisto, Gran Metalik where we're having a conversation, I'm talking to Vince and he's giving me the same thing, nodding and agreeing to get through the conversation. All of a sudden, we had said something interesting to him and I remember reading Jericho's book, 'if you ever see him pick up a pen and a pad, he's probably really interested.' At this point, we're talking, and he's going along with the flow, and all of a sudden he picks up a pen and pad. 'Oh shit, he's interested in what we're saying, now we can't lose him. We got him.' That's when I knew, 'we're not just Lucha guys to him, we could be something special.' We're not being cowards and not pitching ideas, we're here talking to him with our balls in our hands saying, 'put the ball in our court and let us do this, let us entertain, let us be superstars.' Priorities. We weren't a priority," he said.
Lucha House Party was formed in 2018 as Lince, Metalik, and Kalisto came together as a fun-loving group who loved lucha.
According to Lince, the original pitch was much different.
"The original Lucha House Party concept was a little bit harder, a little bit darker, we were supposed to be in suits the whole time. We wanted to have the lucha lounge-esque kind of background where it was totally different. We didn't want to be in our gear or flashy colors. We wanted to look like sophisticated men, the only difference is, our faces have masks. We kept telling them that. 'We do everything a normal person does, everything we do, we do it in our mask, we don't do it in our gear, that's silly.' I don't think I'm really a cat, I'm just agile like a cat. When we started explaining that to him, he started to understand more the culture of lucha libre rather than, 'these are guys in masks who do incredible things.' We told him, 'let us wear suits in our promos.' I had pitched to be like Charlie's Angels where we all had a specific personality, but we were all entertaining and did cool stuff. Once we got to me and Gran Metalik, I said, 'we could be like Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan from Rush Hour' where we have incredible action stuff but can also put each other in cool dynamics. We had all these cool ideas, but for some reason, we were just the lucha guys. Every promo, 'lucha, lucha lucha,' Come on, is this really what you got for us?" he recalled.
Lince continued, saying he found Vince to be accessible and got his ear when he needed it, but knows Vince was a busy man.
"The problem was pitching during the show day. We did get a chance to really sit down with him for a good 30 minutes, but that whole day, he's thinking of that show. It's hard to really communicate what you really want and have it be consistently on his mind. You have to show up the next week and pitch the same idea and hopefully he remembers or pitch it to a writer and hopefully he has the balls to go to him and go, 'I have this idea.' There's none of that. You have to be consistent and you have to be a priority," he said. "He was more accessible back then. but he's still accessible now. You just have to know the times. on show days, it's very limited time that you're going to be able to talk to him because he's got a schedule and you have to respect that as a man. Everyone has a schedule and he has a specific amount of time that he can chit chat with everybody if his schedule allows it. He is accessible, but some people don't have the balls enough to go to his door and knock on his door. They're scared for that first interaction where he's like, 'come in' or 'not right now,' okay, cool, accept that and move on. Some people can't accept that as adults, which is baffling to me, but we would always knock on the door and wait there, even if he would be like, 'come back in an hour.' We're going to wait there for an hour, I don't want anybody to come in front of me or that I wasn't here in an hour. All three of us waited every once in a while. Every time we wanted to talk to him, we did talk to him. There was probably one or two times that we couldn't, for whatever reason, we were running out of time or it was last minute, but he was always accessible."
Lince previously noted that he always had a good rapport with Vince McMahon. You can find his full comments by clicking here.
Lince was released by WWE on November 4. He has since wrestled for CZW and Warrior Wrestling.
If you use any of the quotes above, please credit the original source with a h/t and link back to Fightful for the transcription.
