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Arn Anderson Reveals Favorite Matches He’d Recommend From His Career, Why WWE Didn’t Do Enough With Santino Marella

October 31, 2020 | Posted by Blake Lovell
Santino Marella Cobra Image Credit: WWE

In a recent edition of ARN, Arn Anderson discussed three of his favorite matches from his wrestling career, why he thinks WWE didn’t do enough with Santino Marella, and much more. You can read his comments below.

Arn Anderson on three of his favorite matches that he would recommend from his career: “Larry Zbyszko and myself wrestling Dustin Rhodes and his mystery partner with the dragon head, which would be Ricky Steamboat as it was revealed. I think Larry was at his very best and I think that crowd in Savannah was really shocked and entertained by the fact that Steamboat was underneath there, which no one in the building knew about. I enjoyed probably wrestling – when I first came back from the WWF to WCW – I enjoyed wrestling Muta for the television title even though I was miscast as the babyface. He was hot at the time and he had Buzz Sawyer and the Dragon Master with him ringside – a lot of drama and a lot of odds to overcome. And maybe Tully and I against the Rockers.”

On why WWE didn’t do enough with the Santino Marella character: “Santino Marella was a Russian prior to being Santino Marella. He had a pretty fair amateur background as far as – I don’t remember exactly what it was whether it was judo or wrestling or some of all of it – but we didn’t know he was a pretty bad apple. But he was destined to go nowhere until he came up with this character. The first time I saw it, I almost hit the ring and beat him up myself because I hated it so bad. But I stepped back and talked to a couple of guys that night that I trusted their opinions, and they said ‘Give this guy a chance because this guy really has a grip on this character’.

“After about the second night of watching this, I was absolutely rolling because you had to just accept the fact that this guy has found his niche and is 360 degrees from where it was prior to this. He was so entertaining and was so much fun. That’s another guy I think they might have missed the boat on – he should’ve got a little bit bigger push and it was hilarious. It was just accepting something I wouldn’t have come up with – I couldn’t have pictured that guy in a thousand years. But he did, and he made it work, and he was very successful with it.”

If using any of the above quotes, please credit ARN with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.