In Your Head Wrestling Radio sent out the following:

Host Jack E. Jones welcomed Anthony Carelli, better known as former WWE superstar Santino Marella, to IYH Wrestling Radio.

Highlights included the following:

Your release from the WWE, was it primarily due to your injuries?: “Yeah, probably, I can’t wrestle anymore. Of course, I could’ve done stuff on the mic as a general manager, manager, commentator, whatever, but I guess they didn’t see it that way or maybe there’s nothing going on right now, but they were pretty clear about this is just a Level 2 contract and I can still do stuff on the WWE Network. My goal is to have a developmental territory up in Canada here, so we can get the Australian guys and the English guys and the Canadian guys and do a whole new NXT-North type thing.”

What are your thoughts on the WWE once again doing a brand-split and the need for new talent?: “They have the talent, but the talent isn’t being seen, because when the top guys are on both programs, you never see those mid-card guys. Now that there’s going to be two brands, you can get those even entry-level guys, because they need entry-level guys on each show, up and comers and mid-card guys, not just all main eventers, so it’s really going to allow for more of a fair opportunity for guys to rise to the top and hopefully, it will be on crowd reactions.”

What are your thoughts on the wrestling saying Funny = No Money?: “Well, there has to be funny in every single show, there has to be dramatic moments, there has to be funny moments, there has to be exciting moments. If there’s no funny, it’s all just monotonous and the same, that’s why I was lucky, nobody else was competing with me for that spot, but that’s why I was in the WWE for 10 years because you have to have that comedy element. The thing is, yeah, you’re not going to be the Heavyweight Champion, but you’re going to have a job for 10 years, I’ll take that.”

Do you think the Santino character could’ve been a main event guy?: “Yeah, at the end of the day, it’s whatever you want to write. If somebody wrote in a storyline and said Santino took ninjutsu lessons and now he’s a badass, it would take 3 weeks before everyone would completely believe that I was a badass. People have a short memory when it comes to programming and you could totally change your character and be a certain way in no time. I wanted to do a hypnosis gimmick, where I was indestructible and would beat up everybody and then, of course, when he loses his hypnosis, he’s weak again, then he realizes that it was actually him all along, he had the potential and all that kind of stuff, just like a kids’ TV special or cartoon, learning that lesson that it was you the whole time. Yeah, you can do anything, but I enjoyed making people laugh and having fun.”

When you invented the Cobra, what were some of the other guys’ reactions to it and when you first did it and to the reactions from the fans, what was it like?: “I was at a house show and I was wrestling Carlito and I just leaned over to John Cena before my match and said, watch this, I’m going to try something in my match, so during my comeback, I was giving him clotheslines, jabs, whatever and as he was selling out, I put my arm out, did the Cobra and hit him. The audience had never seen it before, but they laughed immediately. When I came back through the curtain, he said, I would keep that if I were you. We kept it and basically, I would only do it on live events, I’d never do it on TV, then one time, I was having a match, I think Ricky Steamboat was my producer and he goes, you’re going to go over with the Cobra, he says Vince McMahon wants to see it, he’s heard about it from reports on all the live events, so we did it and he loved it and that’s it, the Cobra was born.”

Other topics discussed included:

– Did his judo background help him in professional wrestling?

– What are his memories of the incident in OVW with Jim Cornette?

– If he could manage a current WWE superstar, who would it be and why?

– Did he feel that it was too much, too soon beating Umaga in his debut?

For information on Santino Marella’s multi-sport training facility in Toronto, the Battle Arts Academy, go to http://www.BattleArtsAcademy.ca/. This interview is available in full at this link.