K.J. Orso is turning the page.
After being forced to unmask at GCW and Joey Janela’s Spring Break 9, Fuego Del Sol left his boots in the ring and stepped away from the character he had lived for over a decade. Out of that moment of transition came a rebirth—enter K.J. Orso.
Now wrestling under his real name, Orso spoke in-depth on Busted Open Radio about his transformation, revealing that the idea to unmask had been simmering long before it played out in GCW. In fact, he once pitched the concept to AEW President Tony Khan.
“Like I said, I tweeted it out a couple of days ago that I’ve been plagued by the thought of becoming K.J. Orso for years. I pitched it to Tony Khan at one point to take my mask off in AEW. Just throwing things at the wall. I knew that, versatility-wise, I needed to showcase and show off a different side of me and I got text messages from every big name that you can imagine. Hitting my phone up, ‘Is this really the end?’ ‘Thank you so much for all you’ve done.’ ‘We’re gonna miss you, man.’ ‘I hope this is all a work.’ ‘I hope this isn’t real.’ People at the top of the industry all the way to the bottom. So many colleagues that I’ve made over the years, so many fans. Just being truly grateful, even though they didn’t know what was coming. We were entering an unknown time. I feel like everyone had good things to say. It’s kind of like seeing your funeral, being at your funeral all at once. But, we live in the crazy world of professional wrestling where everyone thinks that everything is a work and some people might have guessed that the next step was coming.”
While he hoped for the opportunity to evolve in AEW, Orso admitted that the company never truly saw long-term value in him. According to him, it was the support of the fans and his peers that ultimately led to his signing.
“I’ve said this in the past. I don’t think Tony Khan ever had any true plans for me. I think the fanfare and the respect I earned from the locker room almost forced his hand to signing me… I am an outside puzzle piece that he just fits in when he wants. ‘You could do some stuff with Sammy. Cody Rhodes really likes you. When Cody wants stuff with you, we’ll do stuff with you and Cody.’ But there was no real plan for me ever. So I’m throwing a thousand pitches at the wall.”
Among the ideas he pitched were teaming with Lance Archer or Sammy Guevara, and even an excursion to Japan’s DDT Pro-Wrestling. However, none of these ideas were greenlit. Orso believes he became a “lovable loser” in the eyes of the audience and knew he had to break free of that label once his AEW tenure ended.
“I put out a video last year where I pitch to join a tag team with Lance Archer. Let me and him have this fun, little dynamic. I pitched me and Sammy (Guevara) becoming a tag team at one point. I pitched going to Japan for DDT just to freshen up my scenery and do something different, and then I pitched taking this mask off and doing something different. I really do feel that I had become a lovable loser in a sense and there’s a stench I’ve been dying to get rid of since leaving AEW.”
In his new chapter as K.J. Orso, he feels more in control of his narrative and more confident in his in-ring storytelling.
“I feel like I have been doing some of the best work of my career in GCW. Some of the best matches. I constantly would have fans walk up to me after a show and be like, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t know you were capable of all that. I didn’t know you were that good. I didn’t know that when given some time, how good a storyteller and a wrestler you are’ and I have a burning desire to showcase that to the world and you know, I get it.”
Orso acknowledged the obstacles he faced breaking out, particularly being a smaller masked wrestler from the South—a stereotype not often met with success in the American wrestling scene. He made the conscious decision to reshape both his body and his presence.
“I was a smaller guy at the time. I’m a Southern man wearing a mask. It’s kind of stereotypical but it’s not normal in wrestling to see someone like me find success so I put on the weight, I really honed in on my speaking ability and I busted my ass in the ring and I feel like Tony didn’t see that and even though I’ve been picking up steam in the past years, a casual wrestling fan is not seeing that.”
He also pointed to the overwhelming saturation of weekly wrestling content across major promotions, which makes it increasingly difficult for talent on the indie circuit or in lesser-seen companies to get noticed.
“There’s so many hours of television on television right now. Each week, just between AEW and WWE alone. So how many casual fans are watching the TNAs, the New Japans, the MLWs, the NWAs? Also, Game Changer Wrestling. It’s really difficult to make buzz and no matter how many steps forward I feel like I was taking, I feel like not the right eyes were seeing it and so I needed to do something different and this was that something different and if Tony Khan didn’t see it and the world hadn’t seen it yet, it was my time right now.”
After 11 years under the Fuego Del Sol mask, Orso finally feels liberated and ready for a new phase.
“It was no better time after the 11 years I spent as Fuego Del Sol to really switch things up, flip things on their head and flip the script and get this fresh coat of paint that I’ve been desperately wanting.”
Part of that “fresh coat” involves showing off skills that were hidden behind the mask—particularly his promo ability. Orso feels his confidence on the mic has long been overlooked, especially when storylines left him with little to work with.
“In a lot of ways, I feel like the mask held me back and promos are a big aspect of that that I felt I am very truly underrated at. I feel like I’m such a confident speaker… CM Punk told me one time, he said, ‘I believe it because I can see in your eyes you believe it’ and that’s how I’ve always felt and I feel like it’s so hard as a babyface to cut a meaningful promo when you know you’re gonna lose. It’s the hardest. You look like a scrub, you can’t make promises you can’t keep.”
With a new look, new name, and renewed purpose, K.J. Orso is ready to shake off the past and prove there’s far more to him than what fans once saw under the mask.
“Even when you feel like you’re great at promos, there’s no direct avenue or at least good avenue to use this and utilize a skill and I feel like finally, with this new direction, I had an opportunity to really burst on the scene and get a lot of people’s attention and people that maybe were sleeping on Fuego (Del Sol) are woken up to K.J. Orso.”
(H/T to Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.)
