Posted in: Movies, Sports, TV, WWE | Tagged: John Cena, lance catamaran, luke gallows, southpaw regional wrestling, srw, tex ferguson, wrasslin, wrestling, wwe
John Cena Reveals WWE Has Unearthed More Southpaw Regional Wrestling Footage
On Variety's Playback podcast, WWE superstar John Cena spoke about Southpaw Regional Wrestling, the series of parody videos WWE released back in March that were, and will probably remain, the best thing to happen in wrestling this year. Cena spoke about his character, Lance Catamaran:
I like you was a fan of Gordon Solie. I tried to get a little bit — even thinking of the name, Lance Russell came to mind — and I tried to get a commentary name that would sound like Lance Russell, but not Lance Russell. Almost sound like Ron Burgundy. I remember passing the Catamaran Hotel in San Diego, and I went, "Lance Catamaran. Holy shit. That's it. It's Lance Catamaran. It sounds like a sailboat. It's distinguished. He's Lance Catamaran."
On Catamaran's backstory as a news anchor in Utica New York who feels SRW isn't living up to the professional standards of broadcasting he's used to:
The reason I chose Utica was because Ithica college has a wonderful broadcast program. Nobody tells you this, but once again, you get out of it what you put into it. That's what is fun about the creative environment.
Cena said he really enjoyed doing the show, and that the WWE audience appreciates it as well:
It was a hit. I think there's a great core audience in the WWE that looks for stuff like that. Yes, they like to see heated rivalries and they love that good vs evil story, but they also have a sense of humor. They're human beings. And we are essentially laughing at the industry. We are parodying the industry, the way it was, and people enjoy it. Here we are, thirty years removed from that era, and we can now look back and laugh at the way things were done and especially the small time promotions trying to keep up with quote unquote New York when Vince was doing crazy global stuff and everyone else was falling by the wayside, and this was just their crazy last ditch attempts to keep up with the frontrunner.
But perhaps the most important revelation is that, despite the initial episodes being billed as the only remaining footage from the failed fictional promotion, there's more Southpaw Regional Wrestling on the way:
It was really fun, and there's more on the way. I'm much looking forward to it.
And Cena had some praise for Luke Gallows' performance as Tex Ferguson:
Bro, I have seen Tex Ferguson unleashed. Be on the lookout for more Tex Ferguson. He is a superstar. He is just a superstar, man.
For that, we can't wait.
Here's the original four episodes, which were released back in March: