Santino Marella Details How His WWE Raw Debut Came About

While appearing on Developmentally Speaking, Santino Marella discussed how his WWE Raw debut came about while over in Italy in 2007 where he was picked out of the crowd to take on Umaga and won the Intercontinental Championship from him. Here are the highlights (per Wrestling Inc):

On who came up with the idea: “So Vince [McMahon] had an idea for someone to debut in Italy and he asked somebody to look at the developmental roster and see if we have any Italian people there,” recalled Santino. “So my shoot name, of course, Anthony Carelli is Italian and they called me and they asked me if I could speak Italian and I could speak a little. I could say a few things, I wasn’t fluent by any means but, you know, fake it till you make it, and I flew down and like the next day I flew to Italy.”

On who came up with the idea: “So Vince [McMahon] had an idea for someone to debut in Italy and he asked somebody to look at the developmental roster and see if we have any Italian people there,” recalled Santino. “So my shoot name, of course, Anthony Carelli is Italian and they called me and they asked me if I could speak Italian and I could speak a little. I could say a few things, I wasn’t fluent by any means but, you know, fake it till you make it, and I flew down and like the next day I flew to Italy.”

On portraying a Russian character called Boris Alexiev in OVW: “I was driving to Elizabeth Town, Kentucky, and I was Boris then, 48 hours later Boris was like … I felt sad. I felt like Boris died, I felt like it betrayed him because Boris got me hired and then Santino came along and that was the end of Boris.”