Kidd Bandit reflects on wrestling Cody Rhodes, under the guise of Fuego Dos, on AEW Dark.
Cody Rhodes was once a huge part of AEW in every capacity. Recently, the wrestling world was shocked by the news that Cody Rhodes was leaving AEW where he was a founder and an Executive Vice President.
Prior to his leaving, one of the fun things Cody Rhodes got to experience in AEW was wrestling as Fuego Dos under a mask on AEW Dark tapings in Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida.
One of the matches Fuego Dos participated in was a tag team match alongside Fuego Del Sol against Dean Alexander and Kidd Bandit.
For Bandit, this meant the opportunity to wrestle one of their life-long heroes and they recollected that experience in a new interview with Fightful Overbooked’s Lillie
“So, Dark was stressful. Oh, my. In a weird way, my notoriety went against me there,” Bandit said. "At least on the first night. The second time not so much. But the first time I was at Dark—let me familiarize people with the process. When you’re backstage—I might get in trouble for revealing this—but there’s a process how you find out how you’re facing with, you find out the day of. Maybe even a couple of minutes before the show starts, you find out how you’re working. That’s to be expected. That’s how it is sometimes, especially as extra talent. That’s just how it is, right? But you find out the day of, a couple of minutes before your match.”
I had the luxury of knowing I was facing Cody via the fact that when Cody got to Orlando, to Universal Studios, everybody went up to him to shake his hand. I said, ‘Hello. Hey, Coach. ‘Sup? Good to see you again. Been a couple of months.’ He goes, ‘Oh, Bandit. Perfect. I believe I’m wrestling you with Dean and Fuego.’ I go, ‘Oh! Great. I’m wrestling my childhood idol. Nice.’ Really great for the blood pressure. It’s not like I’ve been the biggest Cody Rhodes fan my entire life and now I’m literally a couple of hours away from my big TV debut, I’m finding out I’m debuting in AEW against my childhood hero. No pressure. No pressure,” Bandit added.
Despite knowing that they were going to wrestle Cody Rhodes, Bandit tried to maintain their composure while being used as a seat filler during a portion of the Universal Studios tapings.
“I had the luxury of knowing I was wrestling him earlier than most. What ended up happening, because I knew I was wrestling him, when they made that list of who’s working what, when I didn’t see his name or my name, I’m like, ‘Okay. I’m free to chill. I’m probably on the second taping.’ So Leva Bates went up backstage and said, ‘Hey, we need extra talent to fill in seats in the crowd, just in case there’s people who don’t show up and honor their tickets.’ So I was like, ‘Okay, why not.’ I get to have ringside seats in AEW for free and then I get to wrestle later? Sign me up. It’s a dream come true. So I sit in the crowd, and I have my hair done. My hair is done, my make-up is even done. I don’t have my gear on, I have my shirt and jeans because I want to be incognito, right? Me incognito, it’s not gonna happen. But I tried,” said Bandit.
Eventually, it was time to actually prepare for the match and Cody Rhodes was kind enough to make sure to give his former student a moment to shine
“So I’m sitting there next to my old teacher, Heather Monroe—I thought it was funny right, because we’re, in a weird way, my career was coming full circle up to this moment—we were watching the show and a producer comes up behind me and says, ‘Are you Kidd Bandit?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah. What’s up?’ He’s like, ‘We need you backstage.’ I get backstage and it’s just Cody. ‘Well, we’re gonna be up in three matches.’ I’m like, ‘Oh! Okay. I’m not in gear. I gotta get in gear.’ So we’re gonna call this match. Cody comes up to me, ‘Bandit, I just want you to think of one move you want to do that you want to get in in the match.’ I’m like, ‘Bet. I’ll do that spinning corkscrew kick to the corner that Mike Bailey does, I do it, too. That’s what I’ll do. Is that cool?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, sure. Absolutely,’” Kidd recalled.
“We’re supposed to call the match with Fuego, Fuego gets there, ‘Alright, let’s figure this out.’ The producer comes up, yanks Fuego away, says, ‘Fuego you gotta get ready for your match with Tony Nese.’ ‘Ah, shoot. Okay, Cody, call my spots. Just call everything for me.’ I’m like, ‘Uh oh, spaghetti-o, I’m not in gear,’” Kidd continued. “Cody’s like, ‘Alright, we’ll call the match.’ Dean gives me an idea of we’ll do the assisted hand ‘rana spot into a powerbomb spot. I’ve taken powerbombs. I’ve done the rope climb thing. I’ve never done the jump up into a ‘rana thing ever. I think that’s the easiest thing. If you’re not sure of your offensive capabilities just make sure you can sell good. At the end of the day, what was my job there? It was to make Fuego and Cody look good. If I’m gonna make myself look good somehow, that’s icing on the cake, right?”
The time had come for Kidd Bandit to show the world what they could do and fortunately, Cody Rhodes even allowed Bandit to hit a suicide dive.
“I’m just going to get one spinny kick in and somehow it ended up with my doing a Naruto run suicide dive on Cody, I don’t know how that happened," Bandit said. "I really don’t remember. It just became a blur after that. After we called the match, I’m scrambling to put my gear on. I’m freaking out. I saw [Ish] just chilling, ‘Why are you rushing?’ I’m like, ‘My match is right now.’ So we do all of that. We do all that, we do our match. The funniest thing was since I was literally in the crowd, not even five minutes ago, and suddenly in the ring, barely in my gear, I haven’t even tightened my belt strap—some people saw me and they’re like, ‘What is that? What are they wearing?’ Because for a lot of people that was their first exposure to me. The second time around people recognized me and they were chanting DPW because I was in Deadlock. I do think the first time around it was a lot of, ‘Okay, this is my chance to show the world who I am, what I can do and I’ve really only got three moves to do it to. So I might as well make ‘em count.’”
Bandit calls the wrestling Cody Rhodes, even under the mask, the highlight of their life up to that point. Furthermore, Bandit recalled crying backstage after it was all over because, no matter what happens, that moment provided validation of their hard work.
“At that point, ‘cause Cody’s wearing a mask—he’s Fuego Dos. Oh shit. Cody is not Fuego Dos! That imposter is not Cody! If you’re in AEW and you’re listening, I’m not breaking kayfabe. We are fantasy booking. This is a fantasy booking. So Fuego Dos, I’m wrestling him and I forget that’s my favorite wrestler of all time and I’m about to kick the shit out of him into that corner right now. My life is weird right now, dude. That to me was the highlight of my life until that point,” said Bandit.
“The best part was I go backstage, I’m crying, dude,” Bandit continued. “This validates all the hardships I’ve ever had to deal with in my life to get to this point. I’m 5’5. I don’t lie about that. I don’t have a ‘billed height.’ Being a wrestler at my height, my build, it’s not easy. You understand your role is to be a ragdoll, get tossed around. Sometimes you get lucky like a Marko Stunt. I looked up to Marko. Marko made it to the big time being the height he is. I wrestled Fuego del Sol, and I forget he’s my size. The way he carries himself is larger than life. You don’t look at him and think, ‘Oh, they’re short.’ You look at them and think, ‘Oh, wow. That’s Fuego del Sol.’ That’s what people see ‘cause he’s a star.”
Reflecting on the backstage environment, Bandit says that there were three individuals, for one reason or another, that word difficult to say hi to. Those three individuals were Abadon, Shawn Spears, and Sonny Kiss
“Sometimes when I watch [Abandon’s] matches, I’m like, ‘She really is a zombie now.’ I met her backstage, I was hesitant to talk to her because I’m like, ‘Oh, my God. You really do scare me. I’m an adult human being and you scare me.’ It’s polite to just go around and say hi to everyone. When I was backstage, there were three people I had a really hard time saying hi to just because I was a big fan of or they did something really great for me that I just never got over,” Bandit says.
“With Cody, it wasn’t hard because I’ve trained under him. But Shawn Spears, I couldn’t bring myself to say hi to him because I remember watching NXT when he was Tye Dillinger and there was a part where he went outside to hand over hot chocolate to fans because it was cold and I was one of those people,” Kidd recalled. “I was like, ‘Whoa, this is so cool.’ So I could never bring myself to say hi to him backstage and I was kind of low-key worried that he might think I’m ignoring him. I’m not. He did a kindness to me that made me too awkward to approach him. It was Abandon, like I said earlier, she scares me in a good way. Her character scares me. As a person, I’m sure she’s a sweet human being. But her character legit scares me. It was hard to talk to Sonny the second time around. I’m glad that they approached me and actually initiated conversation because I look up to Sonny a lot. I didn’t know how to approach them.”
We have coverage of all episodes of AEW Dark and Dark: Elevation in our results section
Kidd Bandit continues to travel and hone their craft in their quest to collect the seven Dragon Balls all the pro wrestling championships.
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