In a recent interview with Busted Open Radio, former WWE wrestler/personal ring announcer Ricardo Rodriguez opened up about his decision to leave WWE:
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 that 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.”
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. I got unofficially sent down, then I got hurt by one of their football players and I got punished for it. 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 first person in the ring.
WWE, in a weird way, made me hate wrestling. So I got very bitter, and I realized I had to stop this, and I realized it was the company. So I woke up and said I am not coming in. I called the office and told them I am not coming in – I want a release.
Ricardo further clarifies the “punishment” comment:
I wasn’t on the house shows anymore and I wasn’t on NXT anymore. I was taking off of everything. There was a match that [Kalisto and I] had, and they cut our time against The Ascension; our time was cut in half. Granted, I was hurt at the time. Then they took me off the live events for NXT. They told me it was because of the match I had at Full Sail. I was like f-ck off. You’ve seen me work for three years – either doing live shows or dark matches – and I have one bad one because I was hurt.
But what about Triple H giving him the nickname “Bumblebee Man”?:
With my lucha background, I can do flips: front flips, backflips, 450’s, shooting stars, and all that shit. When I was working with the tryouts and 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. [He said] he used to call him a “bumblebee.” And then I found out he called Super Crazy a “bumblebee.”
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 f-ck up.”
Like any interview with a recently released WWE employee (or basically any wrestler at any point in their career ever), it’s important to take things with a grain of salt. I mean, who knows. Triple H could already be calling Mojo Rawley “Duffman,” or Kevin Steen “Comic Book Guy.”
Or WWE’s employees could secretly be super racist and no one ever wants to fix or address it. Whichever.
