Santino Marella Recalls His Transition to a Comedy Wrestler, Winning Miss WrestleMania

Santino Marella is known primarily these days as a comedy wrestler, and he recently discussed how that transition happened in WWE and more. Marella appeared on INSIGHT With Chris Van Vliet and the show sent along some highlights. You can check out a few of them below:

On becoming a comedy wrestler: “The shift happened, so the WWE Universe, as you probably know, they do not like to be force fed anything. And all of a sudden, this guy comes out of the audience. And, you know, he beats Chris Masters and, you know, Shelton Benjamin, he sneaks a victory, and it’s like, if he’s not fully trained, he’s beating the roster kind of doesn’t make sense. And, you know, there is a pay-per-view in the summer and Umaga was like, killing me in Houston. The audience was like one more time, and like the audience wasn’t taking to the initial babyface Santino that was kind of like, just thrust in you know, into them. So they said okay, we’re gonna have to turn him heel, and if that doesn’t work, you know, see you later repackage. And immediately upon turning heel, Vince found it very funny, because once I did my first heel promo, I did guest commentary next week, another promo, another promo, another promo and another pre-tape, because I actually separated my shoulder, this one. So it was an opportunity to get to speak on the mic.

“And, you know, people that were in Gorilla are like, dude, Vince is cracking up when you’re out there. He loves the character as a heel. So, if you can pop Vince you got a job, right? That’s, that’s the idea. So Vince was a fan and from what I hear, and you know, and there was actually no competition for a long time in terms of the comedic, the comic relief character. R-Truth a little bit at the time, he’s kind of doing now but at the time, there was really no no one was like, like Hornswoggle a little bit, but I was on Raw. So for a long time. I just kept quiet and didn’t draw attention to it, but there was no competition.”

On winning the Miss WrestleMania Battle Royale: “Is that the Santina one? Yeah, no, I’m bad with the years and the numbers. It’s oddly enough, that was my biggest WrestleMania moment actually. I was the captain of Team Teddy, I had a match with Kofi against Big Show and Kane, so I had some matches. But that was like, the most highlighted, spotlighted moment in Wrestlemania. [What was the lead up to that?] So the lead up was the storyline with Beth Phoenix in my life where I was just trying to, I was battling to be the alpha in the relationship. So the relationship dynamics was what we were going after. And you know, I was insecure, and I’m trying to show that men are better athletes. So I’m going to dress up as a woman and enter the Women’s Battle Royale. And the whole idea was just for the storyline with Beth and I, and it was supposed to be a one off. But it was so funny that it ended up lasting for months and months. I had to get fake lashes every day and all that stuff. I had to to go shopping in Houston at a mall for the gear that day.”

On having the fastest ever Royal Rumble elimination: “I know how to beat the record. I’m the only one that knows how to do it. Well, no one’s done it yet. But that’s a perfect example of when you’re given lemons, you make lemonade. You know, when they were going, we were going through the Rumble and Dean Malenko was like, Yeah, you’re coming out getting eliminated pretty fast. I said, you know, can we try and break the record? He’s like, let me get back to you. [The record was] Like two seconds? I think it was Warlord. And he [Malenko] came back to me and said, ‘By the way, you’re good on trying to break the record.’ So Kane had a huge part in that he had to be there at that moment, right. I’ve slid under, stood up and I’m gone. I’m going. And he was there. I mean, he was there. Like it was perfect.”