It’s no secret that we’re huge fans of Lucha Underground here. We love everything they stand for and every episode has something to love in it. After the scare that the show wouldn’t come back following the first season, they’ve pretty much gone nonstop, and we’re well into season three now. If you were wishing the promotion did more live shows, or that you could have a chance to see your Lucha Underground favorites close to where you live, well, you may be in luck.
Lucha Underground executive producer Eric Van Wagenen recently appeared on Sam Roberts’ Wrestling Podcast to talk about their tentative plans for a fourth season of the show, and how they’re intending to “slowly” build up the promotion as a touring act, which will run half the year.
“One of the things that we’re wise about is we try to watch the mistakes of others and it’s better to go too slow than it is to go too fast and people get caught, a lot of the times, when their expectations for touring are too high. That’s how you lose a lot of money really quickly. I’m not saying anything about TNA ever. And I think that there are some limited dates that are going to happen this year still and then there will be a bigger expansion of that next summer.
“We’re getting ready to shoot. We’re planning. There’s no official pick up or anything, but our idea is to shoot our episodes in the first five months of the year. Then, go on tour for the last seven months of the year. Limited, not five nights a week. Rey is going to be our new ring announcer. It’s not going to be a week in, week out thing. It would be selected cities, marketplaces that love the product, yeah, [New York] could be one of them. And we’re just going to grow it slow.”
On paper, this seems like an awesome idea. Limited dates that will allow people all over the country to see their favorite Lucha Underground stars live, but not too often. The show will continue to be the focus, and only touring seven months out of the year will more or less give the LU-contracted wrestlers that “offseason” that we are so often asking for.
The only hope is that an increase in touring and live dates doesn’t distract or take focus away from what makes us love Lucha Underground so much, which is the actual show part of the show, with the backstory and vignettes that make it so much more than every other wrestling promotion out there.
(h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription)
