When Santos Escobar signed with WWE in 2019, it wasn't met with incredible fanfare from the general RAW and SmackDown-viewing masses.
Sure, Escobar, then known as El Hijo de Fantasma, was a known commodity on the indies, working great matches for Lucha Libre AAA, Lucha Underground, and Impact Wrestling, among others, but he wasn't a known commodity in the same way as, say, Cody Rhodes, who was immediately launched into a WrestleMania match upon his return against Seth Rollins.
Fortunately, behind the scenes, Escobar had multiple big supports who believed he could be something special in an NXT and eventually a WWE ring, with one champion in particular, William Regal, helping him secure a spot on the roster, as he detailed to Ryan Satin on Out of Character.
“I guess, a person that, from the moment I met this person, he was always on my side, and he was always very supportive was (William) Regal. So when I did my tryout, he was very high on me, and he told me that he liked my style and that there was a high probability that I would be hired. It didn’t happen, but he told me let’s just stay in touch, and we can revisit this down the line,” Escobar said.
“When the time came, and I terminated my relationship with AAA and Lucha Underground, I thought to myself, there’s two places where I haven’t been full time, and one of them is WWE, and the other one is probably Japan. So right before anything, when this whole thing happened, there was this buzz on social media that I was going to become a free agent, and so I just sort of reached out, and that was it. I didn’t even reach out to Japan; that was it. On the very first contact, I was offered to come to NXT, and I took it, I always wanted that.”
Would Escobar have eventually signed with WWE had Regal not been with the company? Potentially so, Escobar is one of the best luchadors in the world today, and his well-rounded offense is seemingly designed to thrive on WWE television, where some more traditional high-flyers have struggled. Still, it's good to know that Regal saw something special in Escobar and championed his career, as that trust has paid off in a big way.
Santos Escobar explains how the lWo returned to WWE.
Elsewhere on Out of Character, Escobar was asked about the return of the lWo and how the pairing of himself, Rey Mysterio, and company came together.
Surprisingly, Escobar has been on the idea for a long time but received some pushback on the idea from none other than the head of creative for NXT and then the whole promotion, Paul “Triple H” Levesque.
“The very first conversation I had with Triple H, and he asked me, ‘What do you want to do?’ I told him, ‘Can I bring back the LWO?’ Before I said the letter ‘O,’ he said, ‘No. I want you to be you, and I want people to see you, and not think of anybody else. I want you to think of something. You want a group? We can do a group. But write something down, think about it, give it to me, and we’ll see. So that kind of shot down my initial desire, but Triple H was right. The time wasn’t right, it wouldn’t have been what it is right now. Also, it needed a very important ingredient, an O.G, an original LWO [member], and that’s Rey,” Escobar said via Fightful.
“So that’s why Legado came about, and it was beautiful. It gave me the opportunity to do everything I wanted to do. Who I am, where I come from, what I’m about, and that’s what I did every single time I was out there. Every promo, every backstage, every scene, every feud, every rivalry was letting people know that I’m all about lucha libre, that lucha libre is about tradition, heritage, culture, familia. All the values that you have, whether you’re Mexican, Latino, or not, are the values I have. We relate, and that’s how Legado got over; that’s how Santos got really over on NXT. Because everything I say, it’s real.”
Would the Santos Escobar character have worked on the main roster if he was still a member of Legado Del Fantasma instead of lWo, even with Zelina Vega as the team's manager instead of Elektra Lopez? Potentially so, but pairing the 37-year-old luchador up with the now-WWE Hall of Famer under the lWo banner has certainly helped to supercharge Escobar's main roster run and kept the legacy of Fantasma alive and well, which, you know, was sort of the whole point of Legado Del Fantasma in the first place.
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