Former WWE Star Fandango Reflects On WrestleMania 29 Match With Chris Jericho
Former WWE star Fandango found himself in an awkward predicament going into WrestleMania 29, where he made his main roster debut against Chris Jericho.
On the one hand, Fandango was excited to wrestle the man who inspired him to enter the business. Conversely, he was uncomfortable at the thought of defeating Jericho, especially since the latter was promised a different program heading into "The Showcase of Immortals" in 2013. As Jericho himself has revealed in the past, he was slated to wrestle Ryback, until Vince McMahon made a late change.
"It was around February or March when Vince [McMahon] tells Chris, 'Hey, we're gonna have you work with the kid with the dancing gimmick. You have five to six weeks to build up this angle. And he's gonna go over on you,'" Dango recalled in a recent interview with "WrestlingNews.Co."
"I mean, I can understand him being a little hurt about the situation," Dango continued. "I feel like I was in the crossfire. I was finally making my main roster debut, against a guy I looked up to, so I don't want to disappoint him. I'm also Vince's pet [project] at the time, he's actually producing the vignettes and the montages for the match. I felt like I was stuck in the middle."
'Vince didn't even want us to have a match'
Fandango was convinced going into WrestleMania 29 that Chris Jericho liked him "on a personal level," but the legendary wrestler wasn't too excited "about wrestling a ballroom dancer at WrestleMania." Speaking further on the awkward situation, he stressed that while he "didn't take any heat" for being put in the position, he was uncomfortable with McMahon and Jericho not seeing eye-to-eye over the booking decision.
"If I put myself in Chris' shoes, I'd be a little pissed off, too," Fandango admitted. "If you're kinda told one thing, and then something else happens ... the thing is Vince didn't even want us to have a match. It was supposed to be ... he wanted everyone to chant 'bulls**t,'" he added.
Before Fandango debuted his dancing gimmick, he had numerous conversations with McMahon about developing a character rather than being "a generic, good wrestler," of which WWE already had many.
"I remember Vince telling me, 'I already have a roster full of good wrestlers. You're not a wrestler, you're a ballroom dancer,'" he recalled. "So, I'm obviously trying to find ways to translate that to television. I was always concerned about going through Gorilla and pulling off the dance routine and maintaining my dancer's voice. I was always comfortable in the ring, but Vince didn't want me to be a wrestler. So, at WrestleMania, he made it very clear we were not having a wrestling match. Vince said, 'Chris will beat the s**t out of you for 3 or 4 minutes and you just roll him up.'"
Despite McMahon's instructions, the two wrestled for nearly 10 minutes, following their pre-match conversation in which Jericho urged Fandango to not hold back on his wrestling moves.
"Chris wanted to have a good match, and so did I," Dango added. "Vince just wanted it to be more of a spectacle."