Santino Marella Explains How He Got The Italian Character

– Anthony Carelli (aka Santino Marella) recently appeared on The Art Of Wrestling With Colt Cabana (transcript via wrestlinginc.com), here are the highlights…

On How Paul Heyman Tried To Endear Him To Vince McMahon: According to Carelli, he adopted an MMA-inspired gimmick in OVW and then-booker Paul Heyman gave him the ‘Alexiev’ surname for his character because WWE Chairman Vince McMahon is a big fan of Olympian Vasily Alekseyev and thought the name would endear Carelli to McMahon.

On The Boris Kolov Name: “When I was Boris Kolov, after Rip Rogers gave me the name Boris, now that’s just my nickname. Like, ‘Boris? What the hell? I’ve got to work with that?’ All of a sudden, in the middle of the night, I go, ‘my coach was Dan Kolov. I could be Boris Kolov.’ And I think there wasn’t that combination of Boris’ and Kolovs yet.” Carelli added, “and when I became Boris Alexiev, Paul Heyman gave me that last name because there was a famous Russian powerlifter, Alexiev, and Vince was a big fan, so he wanted to have the association. And if Vince hears ‘Alexiev,’ he’ll have a positive image in his mind, which was brilliant on Paul’s [part]. I love him.”

On The Santino Character: On the subject of getting the Santino Marella character, Carelli said that Nova asked him if he spoke Italian and he took the advice of professional wrestling legend Dusty Rhodes, which was essentially to say ‘yes’ up front and figure it out later. In this instance, it worked out for Carelli, who won the WWE Intercontinental Championship on the night he debuted on WWE Monday Night RAW back in April of 2007.
“One day, I get a call from Nova and he’s like, ‘can you speak Italian?’ and I remember Dusty Rhodes told me, the answer is ‘yes’ and then you’d better go learn how to speak Italian. And I said, ‘yeah, of course, sure, my dad’s from Italy’ and they said, ‘say something.’ And I remember, I used to work out of town and I would put in this cassette, Basic Italian Phrases, so I just repeated a couple of things from the tape with a decent accent, and I could just picture them going around the room saying, ‘it sounds like Italian.’ And then they go, ‘great, we’re going to call you.’ They sent me my passport and I flew the next day and I get to Italy on a Sunday and I’m kind of just chilling and walking around Milan.”

: “I remember talking to Nova. He goes, ‘this character or whatever,’ I don’t know if he said ‘Santino,’ no, he said, ‘Italian character.’ And I’m like, ‘what’s going to happen to Boris?’ And he’s like, ‘forget Boris! This is a Vince idea.’ [Carelli replied] ‘But I’m loyal to him. He got me hired! Yeah, that gimmick,” Carelli recalled. “When I come to OVW, I’m doing battle arts stuff, which is why I’m standing out like a sore thumb because everyone’s doing tackle, drop down, get it again. And I’m doing Germans, and Saito suplexes, all this crazy stuff, armlocks, so it got me hired and it’s like, ‘thank you for getting me hired. Now I have to forget you.’ Santino was like a little babyface, whatever, and it didn’t really catch so, [in] three, four months, I turned heel, later finding out if that didn’t catch, it would’ve been a repackage or arrivederci.” Carelli continued, “and for some reason, me speaking in an Italian accent and being a heel amused the right person. And there you go. Enjoy yourself.”