Former WWE Superstar and Alberto Del Rio’s personal ring announcer, Ricardo Rodriguez, was recently a guest on the Busted Open radio show with Doug Mortman and Dave Lagreca.
Rodriguez spoke on a number of topics, including his WWE departure and what led to it, his working relationship with Alberto Del Rio, and more. You can read a few excerpts from the interview below:
Ricardo Rodriguez on his WWE departure:
Well, it wasn’t just one thing. It was a serious of events that I was like ah, just screw it. A lot of was they had nothing for me. Del Rio and I kept pitching ideas to bring us back together. We thought we did pretty well together and we eventually knew they were going to split us up. One day they came up to us and told us ‘Okay this is what we are doing’. We’re like oh ok, thank you. It wasn’t just that though they had issues with money, I wasn’t making money anymore. If you talk to anyone from WWE they will tell you that you make your money on house shows and not on TV, your money is on the house show. I got unofficially sent down and I got hurt by one of their football players and I got punished for it, which I weird and I took all these things into consideration and I realized this is not fun for me. I have been an extra for WWE and they know what I do backstage. Regal and I were running the tryouts for the extras so there is nobody in the world can I tell me I never had passion for wrestling. I was always the 1st person in the ring. WWE in a weird way made me hate wrestling so I got very bitter and I realized I got to stop this and I realized it was the company. So I woke up and said I am not coming in. Yeah I called the office and told them I am not coming in; I want a release.Ricardo addressing the rumor that Triple H called him names:
I am a little bigger; I am not fat by all means. With my lucha background, I can do flips, front flips, back flips, 450’s, shooting stars, and all that (explicative); Yeah so when I was working with the tryouts and being extras. We would do spots and I would flip around and take bumps like a clothesline and shooting stars. Triple H would call me a bumblebee; I was in Puerto Rico not too long ago and I saw Savio Vega and he used to call him a bumblebee and then I found out he called Super Crazy a bumblebee. He was a referring to an American guy doing flips. He would always make this comment about me being Mexican and Del Rio being Mexican. I and Del Rio use to call ourselves stupid names but when someone else would call us those names we would go whoa hold the (explicative) up.Ricardo on working with Alberto Del Rio, and the negative effect of their split:
I agree and I think Del Rio would agree as well. We talked about it and after we broke up we made pitches to the office to get us back together because we knew. As for wrestling, Del Rio he is an A-Class (explicative) wrestler. You can’t have a bad match with Del Rio but when it came down to segments and promo’s and stuff and we felt like there was something missing; when they put me with RVD that was awkward. They told me when I showed up at the area ‘Hey you are with RVD tonight’ I was like hey whatever puts me back on TV. For Del Rio English is his 2nd language he was still learning. I knew when he got stuck and he would pause and me being a spot monkey I would remember the promos and help him. Even in the matches I would tell him or tell his opponent hey, do this and do that and go to the corner and such and such. I would do that because I am a spot monkey. When they broke us up, we would still hang out and drive together and WWE would tell us to stop driving together; which was awkward because I only made that friendship with Del Rio.
Busted Open airs on Sirius XM 92 and the Sirius App. For more with Rodriguez, including his thoughts on being pulled from house and NXT events, working with Vince McMahon or Triple H, John Cena being the focus of WWE and more, visit the Busted Open site.
