Former WWE star and current TNA Wrestling star Santino Marella recently appeared on an episode of Developmentally Speaking, where he talked about a number of topics including his Monday Night RAW debut and who came up with the idea.
Marella said, “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.” “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.”
Marella also talked about playing the role of 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.”
You can check out Marella’s comments in the video below.
