Josh Mathews has been playing a very specific character as of late over on Impact Wrestling, in that he wants everyone to hate him, and he has convinced himself that he is the greatest wrestling commentary in the history of the game. It has pretty much become THE central storyline in the company, and at Slamming Anniversary, he will be teaming up with Scott Steiner in hopes of not being banished from the announce desk forever. I think!
Anyway, Mathews is possibly the most polarizing announcer among pro wrestling fans besides Matt Striker, who does play-by-play on Lucha Underground. Interestingly enough, the LU announcing gig almost fell to Mathews instead of Striker.
In a new interview with Fightful, Mathews shared the story of the time he almost became the voice of Lucha Underground.
“I remember when Lucha was starting and here I was, ready to go to Nashville and sign my contract with Impact. Lucha Underground approached me with doing their shows and their first episodes. I flew out to Los Angeles and I saw the thing and I was blown away, but their contracts were pretty iron-clad, and I wasn’t ready to sign that deal.
” … Yeah it was [a seven-season type of deal], and I was in L.A. doing Undercover Boss, a lot of people don’t know I did work on that show for a couple of seasons,” Matthews said. “We were shooting an episode of Undercover Boss in L.A. and Lucha Underground called me and said, ‘Our play-by-play announcer can’t get into the states. He’s in Mexico and can’t get into the shows tomorrow. Could you please do it?’ I couldn’t do it. It didn’t work out. They flew Matt Striker from the East Coast, but it came very close. I was in the same zip code as they were in.”
Depending on how you feel about Josh Mathews and Matt Striker, Lucha Underground either dodged a bullet or … got hit by a bullet? I’m not really clear on the opposite of “really dodged a bullet.” Got shot, I guess. This is a shoot, brother.
