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Lince Dorado: The Man Behind The Mask
Lince Dorado (@lince_dorado) is a professional wrestler known for his time in WWE and MLW. He joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about how he got started in wrestling, working as a math teacher, the books that have inspired him the most, being a father of 4, Lucha House Party, his release from WWE, luchadors being compared to Rey Mysterio and much more!
For more information about Chris and INSIGHT go to: https://chrisvanvliet.com
“Anything wrestling related has the masked persona. But if it’s not in the ring, it’s really me. Everything else you see on TV, that had to be me, but now it is me.”
“Well it’s not different, it’s just me. It literally is me, I had to represent an idea of what a luchador is supposed to be. A couple of years later I decided to change it up. Everything a luchador was meant to be, I did the opposite. I wanted to speak English and didn’t want to wear tights, I just wanted to be different. It’s a breath of fresh air to just be me. It’s a great feeling.”
“Honestly, now I don’t have to run ideas by anybody other than myself. Now I can really produce all of the content I want, look and sound how I want and present myself how I want to. We have this idea on how a luchador should be, and I don’t want to be that person. I always told Vince ‘You have got something special here between me and [Grand] Metalik. We understand that wrestling does not come first in WWE, it’s an entertainment and movie company.’ We understood that and wanted to do everything different to lucha libre, but we couldn’t do it dude. But now, on a weekly basis I am doing the wrestling at the weekends and creating content on the weekdays.”
“So my original Lince, and I have been Lince forever, I originally had the eyes closed with the screen and it didn’t have the hair. But everything else was the same, I have always had the ears. As I got into wrestling, right before WWE, I had this mature moment where I aged the mask a little bit. So I grew out the hair and the teeth, I was trying to find myself and it was like a second part of my life. As I got into WWE, I am a businessman and I know the eyes are how we connect, so let’s get rid of the eye visors. The teeth were making it hard to understand me taking, so I got rid of them. I am bald underneath, so I mixed some sideburns mixed in with the beard. We just kept evolving until we got to this part.”
“I think at first that might have been the case. I knew that coming in, so I tried really hard to break that. So I spoke English and tried to be good brothers with anybody, so they thought of me [as someone] other than a generic luchador. It did help because I was able to communicate with the bosses and not hide in catering or the locker room. It did help that I was able to speak English and communicate. But at the end of the day, WWE is like Disneyland. They need one of everything on each show and if you fit the bill, you fit the bill. It’s kind of hard to convince the beast that you are different. I remember conversations between me, Metalik and Vince, it got emotional. Doing things on show days wasn’t beneficial for us, if we had any appointments to go to Stamford, I think we could have been something fire in WWE. But it was hard to communicate in showtimes, and that was the only time we could.”
“I’m just so cold hearted when it comes to that stuff. All those years of not feeling that love as a child. My dad was murdered when I was young and my mom raised me as a single parent, working two jobs. With that there is a lack of love in the house and pain. It’s hard when you're an adult and people look at you as a child, you are 35 but they still see you as this 20 year old punk kid. It’s hard to break that barrier, but never say never.”
“The first 2 or 3 years were really hard, like right before the pandemic. I wouldn’t get to go home to my babies until the weekend. Then I would get like 2 hours sleep and didn’t want to do anything. But then the pandemic hit and it was awesome. I didn’t have to travel, I stayed in Florida in an Airbnb. I worked one day a week, took the kids to school and did things I thought that I would never get to do. Some wrestlers don’t have that advantage at all, but now after the pandemic I do, and that is so gratifying. I now don’t want to change this, but without that break, I would still be stuck in that townhouse, I am very fortunate.”
“If you are realistic, accept death and accept life after wrestling, and I have accepted both. But life after wrestling, I came to peace with that in the past month. I am writing 2 books right now and maybe I will open a wrestling school. But I think once I am done with wrestling I will be done with wrestling. I don't want people saying ‘That guy used to be good.’ I don’t want that in my life.”
“Yeah, but I’ll be honest, I see AEW as the same for me. I will be in the same spot and just be another masked guy, and they already have 2 masked guys there, Fenix and Pentagon. I would love to go to any company who would say to me ‘What do you want to do?’ But nobody wants that, it’s ignorance. They are like ‘Why do we want this lucha guy when we have this lucha guy?’ At the end of the day, I want freedom. Even if the money is great, I don’t care. I have been poor before and broke before, I will be good.”
“My family, my brain and for air.”
