Ricardo Rodriguez Reflects On Matches With Bret Hart And Roman Reigns

Former WWE star Ricardo Rodriguez (Jesus Rodriguez) spoke with Fightfulโ€™s Sean Ross Sapp on a number of topics, including his match with WWE Hall of Famer Bret “The Hitman” Hart during his run with the company.

Rodriguez said, โ€œI mention that a lot and I feel like the more that I talk about it, the more theyโ€™re going to be like, โ€˜You know what? Letโ€™s take that away from him.โ€™ Yeah, right? Donโ€™t give him ideas. Iโ€™m grateful for it, Iโ€™m grateful for that. To this day, thatโ€™s still a thing and I hope it stays that way because itโ€™ll stay in the record books. โ€˜Cause I know for like the longest we were Edgeโ€™s last match. We were his last match and obviously he came back and Iโ€™m very happy that he came back. But we had that distinct honor for a little bit, for a couple years.โ€

On facing Roman Reigns in FCW:

โ€œRoman, yeah. Roman back when he was Leakee. He was married to me for a couple months and when he was first starting to get his groove there was a couple of us that were assigned to him. So him, Husky Harris. I have Brayโ€™s early ones. There was this other character he was doing before he became Bray. It was Axel Mulligan.โ€

On other talent he faced in FCW and NXT:

โ€œThat was his first match or two. When Kalisto came up to NXT, I was his first match. Yeah, thereโ€™s a whole list of series. But then this is one of those things where I didnโ€™t get at the time. Because again, the ego, how it works and youโ€™re like, โ€˜Man, why am I losing? Why am I this? Why arenโ€™t I the big star?โ€™ Until later on you realize like, โ€˜I get it, they trusted me to be able to guide these talents.โ€™ So in retrospect, itโ€™s one of those things that after the fact you realize why and you appreciate it and I get a chance to do that sometimes at MLW as well too. Where itโ€™s like, โ€˜Hey, we need somebody to put this guy over, who can we trust to make him look good?โ€™ Thatโ€™s where I come in. We used to call them like the workhorses or like the [caballos de batalla] in Spanish. Where theyโ€™re like, โ€˜Yeah, we can trust these guys to go and get something out of them,โ€™ and I was very lucky that I was placed in that position quite a bit.โ€

You can check out Rodriguez’s comments in the video below.

(H/T to Fightful for transcribing the above quotes)