Chavo Guerrero: How He Taught Zac Efron To Wrestle For 'The Iron Claw'
Chavo Guerrero: How He Taught Zac Efron To Wrestle For 'The Iron Claw'
Chavo Guerrero Jr. (@mexwarrior) is a third-generation wrestler and is known for his time in WCW, WWE, TNA, Lucha Underground and AEW. He joins Chris Van Vliet in Hollywood, CA to talk about working as the wrestling coordinator on "The Iron Claw", teaching Zac Efron and Jeremy Allen White how to wrestle, what their skillset looks like as actors compared to professional wrestlers, how he became Hollywood's choice for wrestling choreography in TV shows and films, his thoughts on whether they should make a movie like "The Iron Claw" about the Guerreros, his opinion on Dominik Mysterio using Eddie Guerrero's name and much more!
Quote I'm thinking about: "More is lost by indecision than wrong decision." - Cicero
Sponsors:
BONCHARGE: Go to http://boncharge.com/CVV and use coupon code CVV to save 25%
ZBIOTICS: Get 15% off with the code CVV and have a better morning after you drink at http://zbiotics.com/cvv
FITBOD: Get 25% off when you use the code INSIGHT at http://fitbod.me/INSIGHT
MYBOOKIE: Bet on WWE! Get up to $200 cash bonus when you use the code CVV and sign up at http://mybookie.ag
BLUECHEW: Use the code CVV to get your first month of BlueChew for FREE at http://bluechew.com
GHOSTBED: Get 40% of your purchase with the code CVV at http://ghostbed.com/cvv
MIRACLE MADE: Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to http://TryMiracle.com/CVV and use the code CVV to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF
PLUNGE: Get $150 off your Plunge with the coupon code CVV150 at http://plunge.com
On The Iron Claw:
“You know, when I got approached by Sean Durkin, the director to help him make this movie. I didn't know who the production company was. I was kind of like, alright, let's make this movie, sounds like it's a legit thing. And you know, not a lot of legit things in Hollywood are contacting me all the time. So that I agreed to it. I was telling my youngest son who's a junior in college studying film. He researches it and he’s like, Oh, my God, Dad it's an A24 movie. I'm like, Alright, is that good? Like I've heard before, and he's like, No, that's my favourite production company, you don't understand. This is the most incredible thing of all time. Great, awesome. So then, as we keep going, A24 still try to pretend they're a small production company, but they've won the last five Oscars or whatever, you know. So they're getting much, much, much bigger. So it's a really good thing. It's a really cool thing. And just to be a part of, it's like, awesome, but to be more of a part of it, you know, I've said that a long time. Just to be part of this is cool. But to have when the directors be like, Hey, can you help me make this movie? That's pretty huge.”
On being acknowledged by the cast:
“You don't get that all the time, even though you're putting in the work. But, you know, I just created a bond. Wrestling creates bonds with people being on the road, travelling on the road, working for [the company] being in the trenches, we call it that with other wrestlers, of course. But also, when I'm training actors, you know, there's this trust that we have to build on each other, I have to get theirs. And when that happens, you just create this bond. I think that I have a bond with all these actors. I know them as people, not just, Zac Efron the actor or Jeremy Allen White [from] The Bear. I know him as the guy in the ring. Let's do this kinda type thing. So it's pretty cool to be able to get that rapport with people.”
On how big the movie will be:
“I was concerned at first, okay, and we're gonna get a lot of eyeballs on this, how big of a movie this is going to be? How much they're going to put into it? Because there's been other wrestling movies of course, you know, back, you know, for last 40 years from Paradise Valley with you know, Sylvester Stallone basically. But to see the buzz that an actual production studio, like a legit one put behind their movie and made, of all the movies they got coming out, they made us their Christmas release. Yeah, that's pretty big. That's pretty big. And it's one of those moments.”
On Zac Efron's training:
“You squish in as much as you can. And whatever they can absorb. Every actor is different. But, you know, Zac was able to absorb a lot. So we kind of sped them through it. But I threw a lot, at him. And when you're creating the scenes, there's a lot of things you have to take into consideration. You have to take in the script, what the director wants, how the DP wants to shoot it, but also what your actors can and can't perform. So you have to work within their parameters. Once I can get them to give me trust, and just know that I'm never going to put them in harm's way. Safety is the number one important thing for me. Of course, we have to get the shot, but at the same time, if I ever have a hurt actor, it's bad. So the number one thing is safety. And I won't let them do anything that I am sure they can't repeat 100 times. It's one of those things, you know, there's fluke accidents and freak accidents, things that happen. But I explained it to the to the actors. Same thing with my GLOW girls, you know, everybody on like that awesome Netflix show? I explained to them. Y'all know how to wrestle. You just don't know yet. And they're like, What do you mean? So I portray it to acting a lot. What do you do in acting? Constantly you're, you're convincing the studio that you're better looking than you are, you're a better actor than you are. You're taller than you are. You're much more handsome or much more beautiful than you actually are that like, Yeah, well, that's what I've been doing and wrestling for the last, you know, 20 years, 25 years. People every time they see me they go, I thought you were a lot bigger. Well, yeah, I portray myself a lot bigger. There are little tricks that we have, and I take a lot of those tricks and put them into the act and put them into Hollywood. So those actors I’m showing them, you may not be able to do that move, and that's okay. There's 100 ways to get from A to B. Let's figure out what's best for you. And let's make that work. And then I got a lot of Hollywood tricks as well.”
On being the go-to guy for Hollywood wrestling projects:
“You know, when I stepped away from WWE, I was like, What am I going to do? I just couldn't be on the road at that time. We were on the road 250 days a year there was one year I was on the road, I was in a hotel room 300 days that year, so I was only home 65 days the entire year. So I was like I can't do that anymore. Nott just mentally but my body I knew my body had started breaking down, I'm gonna have to start getting an exit plan. I should have really started five years before this, 10 years before this, but the Guerreros was wrestling, wrestling, wrestling, wrestling. So when I stepped away I was like, What am I going to do? Let me possibly try get into some stunts and some acting this was what my uncle Mondo did when he left wrestling. He retired with you know, a SAG pension that was all about acting in stunts and stuff like that by his mentor, Gene LaBelle, my mentor as well. So I started doing that a little bit and started taking driving courses and high fall courses, and my wife looks at me, she's like, why are you doing that? You're not just a stuntman. You're like, super specialised in what you're doing. And I was like, I guess you're right. So like, the pieces fell into play and in the right spots, and I became the person for GLOW. And that morphed into, you know, Young Rock and all these different TV shows that I've done, you know, like one-offs, like I just did another show on Apple TV called Loot with Maya Rudolph and they had a wrestling scene. They had a wrestling episode. So they called me up and I put Ron Funches to work through it. So it's like, there's a wrestling show and they're calling me and if they can afford me to do it.”
On how training for wrestling in a movie:
“[It’s] 80% different, so different. I'm not training these actors to be in a Wrestlemania match. I'm trying to look like a wrestler in a scene.”
On filming for The Iron Claw:
“In Iron Claw, we filmed entire matches. Sean Durkin, the director really wanted to get the feel of a real match, and then pick and choose what he wanted. There's other productions that I'm shooting like 30 seconds, or 10 seconds or sometimes they want one move. But Sean wanted these wrestling sequences. So, if you see one of the opening matches, that happens to be me and Zac. That's probably a 10 to 12-minute match. And we film that probably 10 or 15 times. So I tell the actors that go, sometimes this is easier than what we do in WWE. But sometimes it's much harder, because give me 20 minutes in a match at WrestleMania. Great, lets do it on a pay-per-view. But I'm 20 minutes and I'm done. I go you're doing this three to four to five or 10-minute match 10 to 15 times you're doing over four hours, and then you're taking a break to go to lunch and you're coming back and filming it again. So that's it's very difficult by the end of a couple of those matches that Zac had, he was spent. You couldn't tell in the match. But afterwards, he even came to me. He goes, Man, this is maybe one of the hardest days I've ever had on set. This is really hard. Well, yeah.”
On avoiding bumps:
“I tried not to bump them as much as I can. There's sometimes you can't avoid it. But I work around it. So a lot of times I'll have the actor in there with another actor who's maybe a wrestler in a perfect world, that they can bump and it hides those bumps. I mean, that's what we do in wrestling as well. There are a lot of times I'm in there with somebody who's hurt. You'll never tell if they're hurt. Because I'm the one doing all the moves. I am the one bumping around.”
On learning production:
“I didn't come in the very first time and pretend I was a Hollywood guy. I would definitely step back and let the Hollywood people do their part and then me do my wrestling part. But I'm a really good learner by watching and that's how I learned to kind of how to do all this really not only from my family, from watching Vince McMahon, from watching Kevin Dunn, from watching Triple H, from watching to all these guys and how they did they didn't take me side and Vince wasn't going okay job. Well, this is ABC, [this is] how you do things. No, but I learned all that by watching him. And then the same thing with Hollywood. Once I started getting a little bit more and more, I had some really, really good teachers really good people that I was watching. That's kind of how I became that guy. So now I am that guy behind the camera. Eventually, I'm gonna direct that's where I'm going. I follow directors all the time on different movies and really kind of watch the same things, studying how they do it. That's my next role is directing. That's really where I'm going.”
Could Zac Efron and Jeremy Allen White have a match on WWE TV:
“Really tough. Really, really tough. Now saying that they aren't awesome. But I didn’t train them for that. I didn't train him to go to a match. Give me a month with them. Absolutely. Jeremy was incredible in the ring. He was so good. He will just kind of sit in the corner and kind of thinking, I'm gonna get right. He's like, hold on, hold on. He's like, Alright, I got it. Let's go. Yeah, he was really, really good like that. They're all really good just in their all different ways. But I didn't train them to go have a match. I trained them to look like a wrestler in a scene. But give me time with them, if I was training for a match is totally different. It's a different thing.”
On one of the Von Eirchs not being featured:
“I brought that up to Sean when I read the script, I said, you know that there's the other [brother], Chris Von Erich is not in the movie. And Sean had a great point. He just said it’s just, It was too much tragedy. I mean, we only have a certain amount of time to tell the story. I explained this to, I think it was Lacey and Holly. And they kind of mentioned you know, Uncle Chris isn't in the movie. And I said, Well, this thing about where the movie wanted to go, are we doing a great movie or are we doing a documentary? Two different things. And they're like, Yeah, you got a point here and I said the documentary and we're gonna put it on on Discovery Channel. You know, the whole three-part series, you know, whatever. Great, let’s do it to tell it justice. I go before a movie. I mean, who wants to see a three-and-a-half-hour movie? Yeah, with more and more tragedies and more and more. It's gotta be tough.”
On Dominik Mysterio:
“Dominik Mysterio is killing it. He's doing so good. He's far beyond where he should be. As far as being good as well. It’s pretty cool to see them doing all this stuff. And we talked about that before. You get a lot of people especially because of Eddie and how monumental and like cult following he has and how many people see how really great he is and was. You get a lot of people really trying to capitalise off of the Guerrero name and Eddie's name. You'll see it all the time. I just saw it on our house show the other day I was on and they started doing Eddie spots. And I'm like, why are you doing that when I'm was next after you guys? Oh, yeah, we didn't think about that. I'm like, Guys, I get it. But you just did it. And everybody thought about Eddie. They didn't think about you. And they're like, Yeah, you're right. But I see that a lot. And anybody can do it. Dominik can do it. And Rey can do it because of what you know the history with them and stuff.”
On issues with people imitating Eddie Guerrero:
“[It bothers me] When Eddie's daughters aren't reaping the benefits yes. To me, I'm always looking. And if anybody should be making money off of Eddie Guerrero, it should be Eddie's daughters. [They are making money from the merchandise]. I don't know if that's correct. I don't know that's correct. At least talking to them about it. I'm not them. I'm not the say all be all, but that's something that I would definitely wish that they were. That's her dad, they shouldn't have to worry about that. That should be in his will. His persona. His name and likeness should be to them. Just like Elvis Presley, it first went to Priscilla, but his granddaughter who was in that when did the TV show right, Riley? She owns Graceland now. She had a fight with Priscilla for it for a little bit from what I understand. But she owns that. It's the daughter's, you know, and then after her mom died. After Lisa Marie died it went to her. But Lisa Marie had that own that Graceland stuff. So I just Eddie's daughters don't have and I really, that upsets me a little bit. I mean, anybody, right? It's just gone up to the daughters for sure. So that's maybe something we hopefully we can change. In the future. I really would wish them because not for me. I don't need to. I got my own thing. Yeah, let them make the money off of their father.”
What is Chavo Guerrero grateful for?
“Family, faith and to be able to wake up every morning.”