Dirty Dango is changing the perception that he’s only a comedy act in TNA Wrestling.
TNA Wrestling‘s Dirty Dango recently sat down with WrestleZone Managing Editor Bill Pritchard. When asked about unlearning his routine as a comedy wrestler, Dango admitted it’s difficult and compared it to being a stand-up comic.
“Even like Tommy [Dreamer], is my producer, mentor in TNA, he’ll kind of come to me sometimes and be like, ‘Hey, stop!’ You could see me working as a comedy wrestler sometimes, and they obviously want me to be more aggressive and lean towards being more of a serious top guy,” Dirty Dango said. “It’s hard, man. It’s like being a stand-up comic, and you’re used to going back to your zinger jokes.
“[Tyler] Breeze and I did it for years. Short 3 to 7-minute segment matches where it’s kind of more haha. It’s in-and-out character and storyline-based matches. You’re kind of doing the wrestling to get the character stuff over. The wrestling is more secondary to the storyline or the character. So having matches with Maclin, it’s really not a storyline. You’re just going out and having a good wrestling match.”
A lesson from The American Dream
Dango went on to talk about how what Dusty Rhodes taught him while in FCW about one’s body of work and being able to play different characters throughout your career.
“It kind of reminded me of being back in FCW back in the day, which was good,” Dirty Dango continued. “It’s body of work. That’s what Dusty [Rhodes] always talked about is your body of work over your career. You want to be able to play different characters and have a full body of work. Being able to show different sides of your personality, whether it’s being an ass-kicker, making people laugh. That’s that longevity in the business is being able to play different characters. If you can only just be one facial, one promo, one type of character, just like being an actor, they’re not going to want to see the same dancer over and over again.
“You have to reinvent yourself. That’s why guys like [Chris] Jericho, Edge, and Christian are still in the game and at the top level. It’s because they put thought and ideas into their characters, and they think about the stuff when they’re not on the road. How can they reinvent themselves? Keep coming up with a new hit all the time. That’s really hard to do, to stay relevant for 3 to 4 different generations of wrestling, which is something PCO has done, which is pretty impressive.”
Watch our full interview with Dirty Dango in the embedded video below:
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