Matt Cross Interview: MLW Return, Current Wrestling Landscape, Lucha Underground, More

What factored into your decision to sign with MLW and to work with such a talented crop of competitors?

Cross: I think you almost answered your question. Just look at that tournament, the rest of the roster, the rest of the show, the rest of the company. What an insane tournament, regardless of borders or companies or anything. You have that level of talent. You have guys like Alex Shelley, who in my opinion changed the scope of independent professional wrestling if not all of wrestling and still is unsung and his contributions still unrecognized. The fact that someone like him could even be available for something like this is sort of a travesty, but he's unbelievable.

Then you have TJP, who was a kid when I met him, but he was already going to Japan and all these other things. Then you have the next generation: guys like Lee [Moriarty] and Calvin Tankman. Maybe their time is now, maybe the tournament will flesh that sort of thing out, but you have the past, present and future in that regard just in this one tournament of some of the best guys out there. It's really insane. Pretty much any matchup you make is good.

Between MLW making moves and everything else going on at the moment, what are your thoughts on the overall landscape of wrestling and how have you seen it evolve throughout your career?

Cross: There's just so much excitement in wrestling in general. When I got in around '99, that was the last high point of wrestling. I believe my “I'm trained, I'm paid, I'm travelling” phase started in 2001 and that's almost the year wrestling died in some regards. The entirety of my career, wrestling was on this steady decline. I wrestled during wrestling's dark ages and I'd like to think, along with guys like Alex Shelley, that we've kept it alive in some regard. We kept it moving forward when it wasn't an exciting or good place. It's almost on the back-end if you will, like a reward, something we worked for for so many years.

You know wrestling's awesome, I know wrestling's awesome, and now a bigger and bigger portion of the population of the world is starting to realize, “Holy crap, this is awesome.” And to do that with MLW, a place that is scooping up some of the best talent and going places... I'm only in wrestling because of ECW, so to go to ECW arena, awesome! To be there with some of talent we're talking about, even better. Again, just genuine excitement around this thing we've been excited about in a dark corner by ourselves forever, and now we can almost escape that. I'm a wrestling fan, but I don't want to be embarrassed to be a wrestling fan. Now we can come of that darkness, bring the world with us and have them check out this thing that is amazing. A great way to do that is through MLW and through Vice TV.

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