Court Bauer Reveals Dario Cueto Will Receive A New Name In MLW

Luis Fernandez-Gil reprised his role as former Lucha Underground owner Dario Cueto in the season finale of MLW Fusion earlier this week. He has signed a long-term deal with the promotion and will be a regular on MLW TV going forward. 

Cueto was revealed as Azteca Underground's mysterious El Jefe in the season-closing scene and he admonished Salina De La Renta before she was taken away to be sacrificed as part of preparations for his new temple. 

More will be revealed about El Jefe and Azteca Underground when MLW Fusion returns on July 10, but Luis Fernandez-Gil won't be known as Dario Cueto going forward. 

Court Bauer revealed to POST Wrestling that the company has had to create a new name for the character because of "IP adjustments."

"Whether you go from Nash and Hall, who were Razor Ramon and Diesel, to WCW, sometimes you have to make some IP adjustments and so that's what we'll do here with this. His new name, which I will hold on telling you what it is, but it might leak because these things just end up getting out. But he will have a new name, but it will be very true in spirit to the person and mischief and chaos and violence he conjured up elsewhere," Bauer said.

The scene involving Cueto was filmed last month in Burbank, California and Bauer also detailed the lengths MLW went to in ensuring the reveal remained a secret. 

"It was a fascinating process to go through just shooting that scene alone. We shot some other stuff and continue to over the course of the next few months. We're shooting everything on skeleton crews because of the pandemic, even though people are vaccinated, we just want to try and do what we can to minimise risk," Bauer stated.

"So, we shot that in Burbank almost a month ago and we had everyone - the cinematographers, sound guys, PA's, you name it, they all signed NDAs. Everyone has non-disclosures because I wanted this to be as tight of a shoot as possible. People look at the end of season two of 'The Mandalorian' with Luke Skywalker - like no one knew the surprise - they taped it a year in advance or something and it really was a skeleton crew and that's, kind of, in the same spirit as what we did. I saw that and thought, that's exactly how I want this. I want this airtight," he continued.

"People were probably like, 'Okay, we're connecting the dots, this is who it is' but until you see it, you don't know if you're going to get that payoff. We wanted people guessing, we wanted people wondering and we wanted the element of surprise for the creative and the reveal. It was a lot of fun, Luis (Fernandez-Gil) is fantastic to work with and we're thrilled to have closed a deal with him to be with us for many years to come."