Lucha libre legend Konnan was a recent guest on the Wrestling Inc. Daily to discuss a number of topics, most notably how he feels about intergender wrestling and how he believes there is an audience who would really enjoy watching it. Highlights are below.
How he’s a big proponent for intergender wrestling:
“I haven’t talked to Court, but he knows I’m a big proponent of that, and I’m also a humongous proponent, which everybody’s so afraid of and Court’s not a big fan of either, is intergender wrestling. Bro, get on the bandwagon now because it’s going to happen. It doesn’t matter how much you resist it. It’s going to happen, and those matches are so fun to do. The thing is, since people don’t know how to do them here because it’s not part of this culture. You got to remember in Mexico, bro, that’s been going on for over 20 years. So we know how to do it. People love it. People accept it. They get into it, and it’s another tool that you can use to give a different match to the fans. And you always want to do that. AEW doesn’t really do intergender matches. Nobody does intergender matches.”
Believes that intergender wrestling is similar to lucha-libre and that it will eventually find an audience:
“Doesn’t matter what people say. I’m telling you, and I’m gonna say this emphatically, it will happen. And you will see the creative matches that you can get out of this. It’s one of the things that I use in Mexico a lot, and people like it. It’s just something that hasn’t been accepted here. Bro, it’s just like when lucha first came here. ‘What is that? What’s going on?’ And now everybody does lucha. You see a lot of lucha moves now, which you did not see before. Most guys didn’t know, didn’t want to take it, work with it or against it, but look at where it’s come now. It’s prevalent everywhere. You see the lucha-centric style prevalent everywhere. So like I said, intergender matches will happen, and you’ll see how creative you can get with that and the different combinations that you can do. It’s another tool that I use for to entertain the fans.”
Believes that a lot of wrestlers are not the same without crowds:
“1,000%. They’re that element that’s missing in the matches. A lot of wrestlers, you see them without a crowd, they’re not the same. There are certain wrestlers that need that pop from the crowd, the crowd favorites, the energy you get from the crowd. So obviously, everybody misses the crowd, plus the generating income aspect of it, making money. How do you pay your talent if you’re not generating that ancillary income? I know that almost everybody’s getting TV rights, but unless you’re WWE or AEW, you’re not really getting a lot of money for that.”