WWE star Carmelo Hayes recently appeared on the Battleground podcast to discuss various topics, including his victory in the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royale.
Hayes said, “I mean, I was always championship gold-oriented. I didn’t grow up saying I wanted to win the Andre the Giant Battle Royal. But it was cool, man. It did feel like it was a little bit of like, a reward for my hard work. But like I said, I was championship oriented regardless, so it wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t just like, ‘Yeah, I won the Battle [Royale]!’ It was like, ‘No, I want to be the freaking champ. This is cool, but like where’s my title? I’m looking for the gold.’ But it was a cool moment. And the crowd reaction was really really cool to hear, that so many people were excited. I was finally getting some some momentum.”
On who he wishes he could have defended the U.S. Title against:
“There was definitely names. Like, I wish I could have worked with a lot of people from Raw. I wish I could have worked with like, Kofi. There’s a bunch of matches that — I mean, there’s guys high up that obviously, yeah. But Kofi was one of them. Rey Mysterio was another one of them, I think that was on the table at one point. Yeah, guys like that. I mean, there’s a there’s a ton of guys I — you know, I went out there every week. Different styles, different companies, different opponent levels, all over the place. And I had to adjust, and that was a great learning experience for me. Like, that whole process and I don’t know how many weeks it was, but I think it was somebody said it was like three months and it was like eight defenses or something like that. So I learned a lot from that from that open challenge, and I feel like I got so much better being a part of that.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
