Recently, Fandango spoke about his labrum tear injury and said getting to the WWE Performance Center was the best place he could go to get back into wrestling shape.
“As the days progressed I could feel my cardio getting better, and better,” Fandango said. “So, it’s pretty much just amping the cardio up and getting my injury acclimated to the motions of professional wrestling. You can’t really mimic that at a rehab facility or physical therapy. You can do as much elliptical, sprinting, and stair master at the home or gym, but there’s no replicating being in the ring, the bounce of the ring, the ropes. There’s no replicating tying up and actually wrestling.”
He noted during the six months away from the ring how it reminded him how much he really enjoyed wrestling, once he wasn’t able to do it for a period of time. To help fill the gap, he would take long road trips to mimic his more travel-heavy lifestyle as a WWE Superstar.
“You really realize what you love in life when you lose it for awhile,” Fandango continued. “It’s kind of weird to go from that extremely busy lifestyle and routine to abruptly stopping and your kind of stagnant for six months. At first I was kind of enjoying it, like ‘Wow, I don’t have to fly out, this is nice.’ As the months progress you start to miss the road and miss the guys your around all the time. You miss performing, that’s what I’ve wanted to do my entire life. I remember going on long road trips with my girlfriend, just because I felt like I was going on the road. I’ve had that ‘gypsy blood’ in me my entire life since I was a kid, I’ve been wrestling on the road since I was 16, so it’s a part of your life. You get frustrated, you don’t like it, you hate, but when it’s gone, you miss it. It’s exciting to get back on the road.”
Once he gets back to the ring, it sounds like Fandango is hoping to fill out his body of work a bit more by getting involved in some more serious, hard-hitting matches. Most of Fandango’s time with WWE has been more along the comedy lines, especially with his tag partner, Tyler Breeze. The duo’s Fashion Files were a hit with fans, but with his remaining years, Fandango wants to make sure he checks off a couple other boxes before hanging up his boots.
“2019, you know—I was watching some of my old matches, and I like doing the comedy stuff in the ring, but I think I’d like to have some more serious matches. Dusty [Rhodes] would always tell us, ‘It’s your body of work’ and I’ve checked the comedy box off on my body of work. And I’m proud of a lot of the cool vignettes we’ve done, promos, and being able to show personality, something I didn’t have a lot of 10 or 15 years ago when I was wrestling because I was intimidated by the camera.
“I didn’t really know who I was in terms of personality, so being able to come out of your shell and letting your guard down in front of the camera is something that took me awhile to overcome. Getting back to why I kind of got into wrestling was those hard-hitting matches that I loved growing up. The Bret Hart matches, Ricky Steamboat versus [Ric] Flair matches, that is something I’d like to check off my body of work. I’d like to have some matches with guys like Daniel Bryan or AJ Styles, that’s something that I’ve been thinking about in my time off.”
You can see Fandango’s full comments in the video below.
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