Austin Matelson, known as Luchasaurus is a professional wrestler and reality TV star from USA. He won Millennium Pro Wrestling Heavyweight Championship in 2016. Matelson was part of the 17th season of the Big Brother show in 2015 and ended on the fifth place, leaving after 12 weeks.
Early life, education
Austin Matelson was born on 10 March 1985 in Woodland Hills, California USA. He has four younger sisters. His parents were hippies and they never pressed him for studying.
However he was very dedicated to school so he earned bachelor’s and master’s degree in medieval history at the California State University in Northridge. He knew that he will become a wrestler at the age of seven. Matelson was watching The Ultimate Warrior on TV and decided that it will be his future profession.
Career
Austin Matelson started his career on independent professional wrestling promotions in 2009.
He was performing and winning singles matches trained by the brothers Shane and Shannon Billard. At that time he was using the ring name “W”.
In 2012 he signed the first contract with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). He made a debut under the ring name Judas Devlin in a team with Corey Graves. They defeated Briley Pierce and CJ Parker. Shortly after, he was transferred to NXT, a new brand of WWE, working mostly as performer at house shows.
He had severe injuries that stopped his career until 2016. Matelson came back, as part of the Lucha Underground, television series based on wrestling, broadcast weekly and produced by One Three Media. He performed under a snake mask and his ring name was Vibora. He and the teammates Pindar and Drago won the Lucha Underground Trios Championship.
In 2016 he was using the ring name Austin Draven when he won a match for Millenium Pro Wrestling (MPW). Few month later same year under the name Just Judas he became MPW Heavyweight Champion.
Since the Lucha Undergroung, Matelson started using the name Luchasaurus after his fans shouted it during a performance.
In 2019 Matelson signed for All Elite Wrestling (AEW) and he debuted at Double or Nothing as a part of the pre-show Casino Battle Royale. After he signed full time with the company he performed in a team “A Boy and his Dinosaur” with Jungle Boy. At “All Out” with the third teammate Marko Stunt, they debuted as “Jurassic Express”. In October last year, he didn’t play against the Lucha Brothers in the first round of AEW Tournament due to an injury.
He suffered a hamstring tear, but returned in the ring after a month. His signature moves are Choke to Spanish Fly, Snakebite, Extinction, Betrayal, Ironman, Moonsault and Chokeslam.
In an interview for CSUN Today (The newspaper of the University where he received 2 degrees) last year explained what he finds in common of these two professions: ‘What you’re doing is almost telling a story like a historian tells a story. There’s a lot of correlation in the way you can approach it from that analytical point of view’.
Bill DeMott scandal
Bill DeMott is a former WWE wrestler and the head trainer of NXT. But in 2015 he resigned amid accusations of abuse by wrestlers. He denied those accusations. One of the wrestlers was Austin Matelson, who said in a radio interview that DeMott was constantly bullying wrestlers making inappropriate comments including their sexual orientation and abusing them physically and mentally. Matelson sent an e-mail to WWE executives in 2013 while he was still in the company, informing them about De Mott behavior. He was accused from female wrestlers too.
Luchasaurus responds to claim about his injury http://nodq.com/news/573525007.shtml #AEW #AEWDynamite
Posted by NoDQ.com – Wrestling news and rumors on Saturday, October 19, 2019
Reality Shows
During his break in the career, Matelson was contacted by the Big Brother producers who thought his biography is interesting -a wrestler with a master degree in medieval history. He appeared in the 17th season in 2015 and left the house after 12 weeks. At the end of the show he was on the fifth place.
Matilson also appeared in other shows like Access Hollywood, The price is right and the 19th season of the Big Brother Show.
Personal life
His personal life was in the spotlight during the Big Brother show where he met and began a relationship with another contestant Liz Nolan. They dated for five months. Matilson keeps his private life out of the public eye, so it is believed that he is single, dedicated to his professional life.
Net worth
A professional wrestler gets about $500,000 each year. So, Matilson net worth, as of early 2020 is estimated around $1 million.
65 million and one https://t.co/YYQUuHD0rD
— Luchasaurus (@luchasaurus) March 10, 2020
Appearance
Luchasaurus is 6ft 5ins (1.96m) tall, weighs 234lbs (106 kg). He has a strong and toned body with tattoos. He has long brown hair and his eyes are brown too.
Social media
Luchasaurus has a Twitter account with more than 88,000 followers and he joined in 2011. The next year he opened an Instagram account and now he has 113,000 followers.
