Lince Dorado Reveals Original Pitch To WWE For Lucha House Party
In an appearance on the Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling Podcast, former WWE star Lince Dorado went in-depth about the Lucha House Party stable.
Consisting of himself, Gran Metalik (now Mascara Dorada) and Kalisto (now Samuray del Sol), the vision for the group was much more serious than what fans eventually saw on WWE TV. Alas, regardless of their pitches or visions, in the end, they always wound up being, as Dorado put it, "the Lucha guys."
"The original Lucha House Party concept was actually a little bit harder, a little bit darker," Dorado said. "We were supposed to be in suits the whole time. We wanted to have this Lucha Lounge-esque kind of background, where it was totally different. We didn't want to be in our gear, we didn't want to be in our flashy colors. We wanted to be sophisticated men, the only difference is our faces have masks. And we kept telling them that, we kept telling them 'we do everything that every normal person does. We go grocery shopping, sneaker shopping, we go to the mall. We just do it in our mask. We don't do it in our gear, that's silly. We only wrestle in our gear.'
"When we started that to him, he kind of started to understand more the culture of lucha libre, rather than 'oh these are just guys in masks who do incredible things.' We had told them 'hey, let us wear suits in our promos. Let us cut promos like those old Santo movies, where they're almost like little action movies.' I had pitched for us to be like Charlie's Angels, where we all had a specific personality, but we were all entertaining and doing cool stuff.
"And when we got to me and Gran Metalik, I was like 'we have a cool dynamic here where we can be like Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan from Rush Hour, where we could have all this incredible action stuff but also put ourselves in cool dynamics. We had all these cool ideas. And for some reason, we were just the Lucha guys. Every promo it was like 'finish with lucha! lucha!' And I was just like 'come on man. Is this really what you've got for us?' I don't know."
One thing Lince Dorado won't blame WWE for however was the incorporation of the piñata into the group's act. According to Dorado, the pinata became part of Lucha House Party's presentation after one of the members of the group, who Dorado wouldn't name, brought the prop into a meeting with Vince McMahon, who immediately loved it. Dorado also revealed suggestions to make the piñata more than a stereotype, which also fell on deaf ears.
"It wasn't WWE's fault. Nope, it was not their fault," Dorado said. "It was somebody in our group, I'm not going to say any names. It was a time where if Vince or somebody thought it was a good idea, they're going to run with it. I remember us being in the prop truck and somebody picked it up, and I remember saying 'we're about to go into this guy's room. Please don't bring that in, and if you bring it in, don't mention it. Don't even bring attention to it. Let it just be a prop in the background. If we bring attention to it, we're dead in the water. We're going to come out with it, it's going to be on our shirts, all this, all the bullsh*t.' As soon as we got in, man, homie looked right at it and was like 'I love it!'
"I was like 'oh my god, no!' I said 'bro, please, listen.' And then I was like 'okay, then let us put weapons in it. Let's have a hardcore match, but let us put weapons in it, so that way when it breaks weapons would pop out. And then at least people would be excited to see a piñata because you never know what will come out of it.' But they never wanted to do that.
"Then I had the idea of having the pinata have a bazooka coming out of its ass, and shooting out candy or shirts and stuff like that. I was like 'if we're going to have fun with it, let's have fun with it. Let's get a pinata that shoots sh*t out of its ass or something.' They were like 'nah, just throw the candy out until we eventually give it to someone else' which they ended up doing. That's why we stopped throwing out candy, they gave it to somebody else. I was like 'man, this sucks. These piñatas, I'm over it.'"
As for who originally pitched the Lucha House Party stable, Lince Dorado revealed it was none other than himself following a several-month layoff. He reiterated once again all the ideas he had, only for most of them to never be used. In the end, it left him creatively unsatisfied.
"I was home for about three or four months, dealing with some other stuff. When I got back, Kalisto was on 205, he had just lost the title and wasn't really doing anything, and Gran Metalik was in the same spot he was in when I had left for a second, when I got sent home for a little bit. When I got back, I was getting the idea. I knew Kalisto for a while, before WWE, and I know he can work. Maybe people don't see his confidence in him talking, but between me and him we could kill the talking.
"And between all three of us, we can kill the wrestling. The original idea, like I said, was for us to be a harder version of Lucha House Party. It was actually supposed to be LHP, Lucha House Party. We just wanted to be LHP. Stoic luchadores in suits who were sophisticated, who were gangsters, who were like the mob but taken serious.
"I don't know what happened. Just all of a sudden, they took every idea that we had and either just said 'forget it. No', or just didn't entertain it. The pinata was just so overpowering that they just turned this into that. It just kind of was like, a little bit of me got mad at myself, because I fell into it. Like 'well alright. If this is what you're going to do, let me go ahead and do it', rather than fighting back like 'no I didn't want to do it.' But once we started to, it started to get better. But again, creatively it just wasn't enough for me."
To quote this article, please credit Two Man Power Trip Of Wrestling Podcast and provide an h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription