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It has been a long journey for Marty 'The Moth' Martinez, from Tough Enough to the Lucha Underground Championship. While he may portray an unhinged character on the show, Martin Casaus comes across as a friendly, affable individual over Skype.
Nobody expected him to cash in the 'Gift of the Gods' Championship on Pentagon Dark on the very week that he won it and become the Lucha Underground Champion in the action-packed fourth season of the show.
But champion he is, and things are certainly going to change with him ruling the roost. And then there's the question of Chelsea Green showing up and assisting Marty to become the Lucha Underground champion:
Chelsea is amazing to work with. She's an amazing wrestler. She's obviously beautiful. She's obviously quite helpful in winning championships. (Laughs). I'm very excited to work with her. But look at the situation the champ is in right now. I have the beautiful Mariposa to my left. I've the beautiful Chelsea Green to my right. I have two bodyguards that happen to be awesome looking.
Marty tells me that while everyone referred to him as champ before this, now the word 'champ' has a whole new meaning in his case. Someone even made a video of him from Tough Enough to now, and Marty was surprised to see just how far he has come. So, how does it feel to be one of the few unmasked characters on Lucha Underground?
Number 1, I hate wrestling in masks. I can't see or breathe. I don't know how these people all do it. Half my character is the facials that I make and how I react to things. If you put a mask on me, it does not have the same effect.
In an industry dominated by a monopoly, Lucha Underground has carved out a very unique niche for itself. Marty The Moth is very proud of where the company stands in today's wrestling landscape:
I think Lucha Underground stands alone, because what other wrestling promotion has time travel? What other promotion has a guy who came back from the dead? We have a show with an element of the supernatural that no other wrestling show has. We're a TV show with supernatural elements that happens to be about a wrestling promotion.
But does he prefer it this way?
Abso-frikkin-lutely. I can kill people on TV and it would be okay. How can I be a serial killer without killing people?
Serial killers have been a very integral component of the Marty 'The Moth' character, and Marty draws much of his inspiration from murderers who could be nice and congenial on the outside and still have a body in the basement. I ask him about the wrestlers who've influenced him:
See, I try purposely not to delve into the crazy characters of wrestling so I didn't want to copy any of them. I got a lot of my character from serial killers, The Joker, but of course, Jake the Snake is a man whose psychology I'd like to emulate.
I say that I see many similarities between Marty The Moth and Brian Pillman's character:
I've heard that. I've heard different people resemble the Marty The Moth character. I've heard Dean Ambrose, but he's less crazy now. He's just Dean Ambrose. I've heard Bray Wyatt. I've heard all these names but I just like to do my own different brand of crazy.
How then was he able to develop such a unique character, and put his own spin on the unhinged heel?:
They tell you when you have any sort of line in a movie, you need to create the entire backstory for your character. So Lucha Underground came up to me and said you're going to be Marty The Moth. You're kind of a big kid from the Moth Tribe, but you're not all there. So, I created a backstory for myself. I did a lot of research into serial killers.
So, what does Lucha Underground look like with Marty The Moth running things as the champion?
The fun is about to begin. That's the way I can put it. It came out of nowhere. No one expected it. It only gets better from here. There are a lot of twists and turns with the five or six episodes we have left. You have the crazy man running the asylum. You have him guarded by two beautiful women. Marty The Moth is sitting pretty and Lucha Underground better be ready for anything.
Lucha Underground has changed for good, with Marty The Moth as the face of the promotion. Things will only get darker, grittier and most likely, become a lot more entertaining from hereon.
Visit Marty's official website here. What do you think of the brand new Lucha Underground Champion?
