During his appearance on the ROHStrong Podcast, Matt Sydal spoke about his time on Wrestling Society X, stating that the main reason the concept didn’t work was because MVP wasn’t truly invested in making it a success. Here’s what he had to say:
Well, what attracted me to the project was being offered work on TV. laughs] It was just a really cool concept. And actually, I was involved in the pilot episode, so I was honored to be like, a part of it in the super-early days. It did feel like a slimy TV show with the contract stuff, and like me as a young kid was like ‘Oh, I guess I’ll sign this even though it’s completely upside down and backwards, and is insane and locks me down for five years or something.’ But you know, I was able to work with them and kind of add a few amendments to my contract.
But it was this great — it was filmed in LA, we got to go out there for a week, they put us up in a really nice hotel. They had a pretty well-organized show structure. We would sometimes do two shows a day. But like, you mentioned the litany of quality wrestlers that were there. For me, my first match there was against Jack Evans, who is — you know, when you said I’m one of the greatest high flyers, for me, Jack Evans is that guy for me … We might have been the first thing you saw of the entire series outside of the ring announcer. We were the first match out of the gate. And looking back, even today I’m not realizing this until now, how important and how much they believed in us, and how much they bet on us.
The reason it failed had nothing to do with the wrestling or the wrestlers. [laughs] No, the reason it failed was just [because] MTV wasn’t behind it. It was just — you know, it wasn’t a project they were into, that they promoted. I don’t believe they even aired the last episode, I think they just aired eight and then just canned the show. I mean, that’s how TV shows are so we didn’t take it personally. I mean, there was nothing guaranteed that it was going to succeed, so we just did it, you know. We just put our hearts there and go. I don’t hold on to any matches or anything like ‘Oh my gosh, we deserved better, MTV should have given us another season.’ Those decisions are sort of out of my hands. And I believe it was the executive, the VPs at MTV got shuffled around. And if wrestling isn’t their cup of tea for the next executive, then no one is going to push for it and get that through. And really it was that they were just blind to see how brilliant of an idea it was. And I think that idea was just rehashed, worked through a little bit better, and then given better production and upgraded in what became Lucha Underground.
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Credit: ROHStrong Podcast. H/T 411Mania.