Former WWE Superstar Fandango had one of the biggest debuts in WWE history. The ballroom dancer-turned-WWE Superstar wrestled his first match at Wrestlemania 29, beating the legendary Chris Jericho in his first outing in WWE.
He seemed destined for greatness from that day on. Championship runs and big money matches seemed like a safe bet for his future, but alas something went wrong along the way. He was left in limbo for a number of years before he and Tyler Breeze teamed up together as “The Fashion Police” and won the NXT Tag Team Championships together.
Former WWE Superstar Fandango was recently a guest on Renee Dupree’s podcast, “Cafe de Rene.” Now known as “Dirty Dango”, the former Fandango spoke about his WWE career, including his debut match with Chris Jericho, his iconic theme song and his tag team with Tyler Breeze.
He also spoke about how Fandango was set to have a run with the Intercontinental Championship in 2013. Allegedly, the plan was for him to win the championship soon after his debut, due to his growing popularity and the incredible success of theme song (which even charted on the UK Singles chart).
However, he revealed that injury caused by The Great Khali caused Triple H to pull the plans and knock him back down to the undercard.
“Yeah, I got a concussion. I was wrestling the Great Khali and I didn’t — I got knocked out and I didn’t tell the office. So I knew that I was gonna pay-per-view and they’re gonna put the strap on me, so I tried to hide it from the office and I got a s*** ton of heat for that.
“So yeah, I think I was wrestling like Zack Ryder. I took like a shoulder tackle and I was completely out of it, he kind of carried me through the match. I got to the back and I thought I just wrestled Kali because you know your brain’s like a computer, and you pour some water over it and it just wasn’t computing right. They were like, ‘No, dude, you just wrestled f****** Ryder.’ Then Hunter came in and I just stooged myself off without even knowing it.”
Fandango would never win a singles title in WWE after that. He would challenge for the Intercontinental Championship later that year, after defeating Dolph Ziggler on the Christmas edition of Friday Night Smackdown. The pair battled in a Christmas Present On A Pole Match, with Fandango grabbing the present and earning himself a shot at then-champion Big E.
Fandango was released by WWE in 2021 as part of the budget cut releases due to the global pandemic. This was in spite of WWE’s record profits for the year. He has since announced his intention to retire, although in the meantime he did sign on to wrestle for Billy Corgan’s National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) promotion as Dirty Dango.
He had been with WWE since 2006, when he signed for the company to wrestle in their developmental system. He was known as Johnny Curtis when he made his main roster debut in the NXT game show, but changed over to Fandango in 2013 when he would become a fully-fledged main roster member.
Do you think Fandango could have been a singles champion in WWE? Let us know in the comments or click below to read more about why WWE broke up The Bar as a team
