Chavo Guerrero was a recent guest on the Steve Austin Show and the “Mexican Warrior” had a great deal to share about working behind the scenes on the Netflix series GLOW. The show premieres this Friday, and Chavo talked about how advanced the actresses have become with training in the ring. Chavo noted that season one started off light, but now it’s to the point where they can get back to being ready to film in a matter of days.
“I get them a month before we start filming so we’ve filmed three seasons so I get them for a whole month and I get them throughout the season, depending on how we’re shooting, what storylines, that kind of stuff. So the first season was getting newbies that knew nothing about wrestling. Nothing about wrestling, they didn’t even know how to enter the ring.
They weren’t even athletes—well I can’t say that—they didn’t think they were athletes. I trained them, me and two other stunt girls that helped me, I trained them in wrestling and they trained the girls in the feminine version. Remember I’m not training wrestlers as you were trained – where we’re just beating the crap out of them, I’m training actresses to do wrestling in scenes so at the same time, I need to train them to protect each other and to learn how to fall and protect themselves because it’s not just doing a five minute match, you’re doing that five-minute match for eight hours, that’s what they’re doing, it’s almost harder at times.
So the first season, man, it was the basics: I mean rolls and protection, how to bump, not be scared of that mat, how to take care of each other and then the next season we start with a review of that and then I grill about that: now doing hammerlocks and chain wrestling and all that kind of stuff. Now it’s the point where we’re caught back up within 10 days. Remember, I’m not having them do top rope hurricanranas and that kind of stuff, but we are doing chain wrestling. That’s them doing all the moves, they’re doing whatever the moves were in the eighties.”
Chavo went on to talk about other aspects of his role with GLOW and how he’s there the entire time during the filming process, even when he’s not showing them technique in the ring:
“Not only am I the wrestling coordinator, I’m the wrestling consultant of the show. Verbiage, costumes, set design, all that stuff, anything to do with wrestling.
“We train ’em first. After I train ’em, then the first script will come out and I’ll read and I have to go through everything wrestling in the script. So if there’s a wrestling scene in the script, cause the writers they’re just writing ‘Okay, we want them do do a match.’ So then I kind of got to put together the match in my head, then I’ll run it by the producers. Then the producers will say, ‘Okay that sounds good.’ So then I’ll teach it to the girls and then I’ll get the director in here. I’ll give him three or four different options, how does he what to shoot it, what’s his vision? I’ll switch things around, we’ll have that done and then when we film, I’m on set, right behind the camera, with the director. So as he’s directing the scene, I am directing the wrestling, me and the stunt coordinator.”
Listen to “Chavo Guerrero Jr. on GLOW and Beer” on Spreaker.
