Here’s to Johnny Dango Curtis for one hell of a pro wrestling career

We just said goodbye to a pair of all-time greats in John Cena and Hiroshi Tanahashi. A few more big names are confirmed or expected to be following them into retirement soon. So it’s understandable that a long-time mid-carder calling it a career — in the mid-card of a WWE partner promotion’s b-level PPV — wasn’t the biggest story of a busy weekend.

Which isn’t to say there wasn’t any fanfare for Johnny Dango Curtis’ final match at TNA Genesis Saturday night (Jan. 17). It was one of the main things being talked about on the Genesis card, and something we made sure to break out the night of the event here at Cageside.

But a couple days later, with new wrestling content coming out every day and news cycling at internet speed, I’d all but forgotten about it until this video from Dango showed up on one of my feeds…

I admittedly missed the “Sun Dragon” phase of his career, but I’m pretty sure I watched some or all of everything starting with his run on the interim version of NXT as “Weird” Johnny Curtis after beating Brodus Clay to win season four of the reality competition version in 2010.

The original Fandango gimmick/phenomena might be hard to really understand if you weren’t around for it. If you were, watching Dango get the Vince McMahon-conceived Dancing With The Stars parody character ironically-over, then — with an assist from Chris Jericho — have it on the verge of being actually-over was pretty exciting. Then WWE misunderstood the fun and ruined things by having Jerry Lawler explain the viral “Fandango-ing” fad to an audience that was already doing it.

With help from Summer Rae, Santino Marella, and Emma, Dango kept going as a lower level comedy heel for a while, then tweaked things a bit for to team up with a similarly creative-and-creatively adrift guy in Tyler Breeze. They made their Fashion Police act and their “Fashion Files” vignettes the best thing about SmackDown for a while, then were sent back down to NXT where Dango & Breeze won the NXT Tag titles — the only belt of Dango’s 15-year WWE run.

His 2021 release ended that run, and after a year or so to recalibrate on the indies Dango showed up in TNA. First he was Dirty Dango, then JDC. Either way, he was good for a laugh with his (usually) heel schtick — at least for someone like who seems to share Dango’s taste in comedy. And he could still put on a match worth watching when called on to do so.

It’s a great video, with a song that fits Dango’s career even if, or maybe because, you can’t Fandango to it. My only complaint is it leaves out one of my favorite things Dango’s ever done: playing drunk, brokenhearted color commentator Chet Chetterfield on Southpaw Regional Wrestling.

Curtis Hussey (Dango’s government name) was never a household name, and will honestly probably never be much more than an “oh yeah, that guy!” guy to a lot of wrestling fans as time goes by. But it’s hard to be a pro wrestler, let alone who was relevant for most of a 20+ year career. And Dango remained relevant because he was always entertaining, interesting, or at least different every time we saw him.

Thanks for everything, you beautiful weirdo. Enjoy retirement.