In an exclusive for WrestlingNews.co, Steve Fall interviewed Impact Wrestling star Dirty Dango, aka former WWE star Fandango. Scroll down to watch the video interview.
On the origins of the Fandango character:
“Tyler Reks, Brian Majors, Curt Hawkins were lower card tag team kind of just doing Superstars, Main Event, whatever that syndicated television show is or Sunday morning. They were just kind lower card guys. Triple H goes, ‘We have an idea for you guys. We want you to be essentially male strippers which was Breeze and I would come out dressed up as different, you know firefighters or whatever. Kurt and Tyler would come out dressed as sexy firefighters, do a dance routine, and strip. They’re essentially d*ck dancers. Tyler decided he didn’t want to do the character and asked for his release,. Hawkins comes up to me, who’s a good friend of mine. Hawkins and Cardona, we all started together in Deep South, known each other since the beginning, Brian’s like, ‘Hey do you want to do this dancing?’ I’m like, ‘Sure.’ I mean I’m not doing anything at the time. I’m just sitting in catering. He goes up to, I can’t remember the lead writer at the time, he goes, ‘What about Johnny Curtis as my partner since Reks is gone?’ He goes, ‘We love the idea. Let me talk to Vince.’ Triple H comes up to me, or someone comes up to me, and goes, ‘We’re gonna make you the dancer.’ I’m like, ‘Cool.’ They’re like, ‘But we’re not going to use Myers. We’re just going to use you. Don’t tell him.’ I’m like, ‘It’s his idea. All right’, but of course, I went and told him because he’s my boy. He’s like, ‘It’s okay man. I didn’t really want to be a dancer anyway.’”
“They sent me to a strip joint in Tampa. I think it was like a Colombian girl. They’re like, ‘Go have her teach you how to strip.’ I’m like, ‘All right.’ I actually started going and learning how to be sexy for about a month or two, and then one day we’re at Full Sail, like 2012, and Paul, Triple H, pulls me aside and goes, ‘No more strip dance school.’ I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, sweet.’ He goes, ‘Take ballroom dancing classes now.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, okay’, so that’s how it happened. I actually moved out to Houston at around that time and they sent me to Arthur Murray’s Dance School. I’d go once a week for three or four months.”
If there was pushback from Chris Jericho because he was losing to Fandango at WrestleMania 29:
“Chris and I were always really cool. He’s a legend in our business and he’s done a lot. He was one of the reasons why I got into wrestling. I remember when he came over to WWF in I think ‘99, I was just getting in the business at the time. I think he was under the impression that he might have been working someone else going into WrestleMania 29. I believe it was Ryback and then that got switched up and Ryan ended up, I think he worked with Mark Henry or Kalisto or something like that. I think February or March, Mr McMahon goes, ‘Hey we’re gonna have you work with the kid with the dancing gimmick. You have five to six weeks to build this angle to Mania and he’s gonna go over on you.”
“I can understand him being a little irked about the situation. I kind of felt like I was in the crossfire. I’m debuting on the main roster after being developmental for 25 years and I’m working with a guy that I looked up to, a legend, and I’m Vince’s pet at the time. He’s producing the vignettes and stuff. So I feel like I’m kind of stuck in the middle here where Chris, I think, personally likes me, but he’s not too excited about wrestling a ballroom dancer at WrestleMania, which I can understand.”
On the Fashion Files:
“We would come to TV every week and grab one of the dot com guys and just start cutting promos. Then it kind of organically grew into the Fashion Files. We would dress up as cops and we ordered gear from Amazon. It started to get a lot of traction online and the social media guys loved working with us. I think it got back to the production meeting and they said, ‘Listen, they’re doing these dot com segments and they’re getting a lot of social media buzz.’ They would go off social media attraction and stuff. They said, ‘Let’s put the segment on television.’ So that’s how the Fashion Files started.”
“From day one to the last day we did it, Vince did not laugh once. He did not understand any of the jokes. He didn’t get any of the pop culture, like any of the movies, he did not understand it. He didn’t like it, but he knew the fans liked it so he kept it on his show. He didn’t understand any of it. There would be people in Gorilla watching the segment and everyone would pop while the segment was airing and Vince would just, I guess this is what they would tell us, Vince would just look around. The dry sense of humor just wasn’t his thing, which if you’re a 70-something-year-old guy, you’re probably not getting Twin Peaks jokes. It’s understandable. It’s nothing against him, but he didn’t like it at all, but he knew that some people did.”
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