Insight with Chris Van Vliet - Santino Marella on creating the cobra, his fake accent, Santina, comedy wrestling

Episode Date: November 28, 2019

Santino Marella chats with Chris Van Vliet at The Big Event in New York City. He talks about how he created “the cobra”, speaking with a fake Italian accent, whether he thinks he will be inducted into the Hall of Fame, his option on current comedy wrestling gimmicks, winning the Miss WrestleMania Battle Royal as Santina and much more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's Chrysalamia, brother. That's a great question. Look at you, man. What's the powerful question. Woo! This is the Chris Van Bleach Show. Chris Van Bleet Show. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Van Blitz.

What is going on, my friends? Thanks for hanging out. Happy Thanksgiving as this, while this is dropping on Thanksgiving. So whenever you're listening to this, it's either a happy belated Thanksgiving or like a really early. Happy Thanksgiving to you. How can you not love Santino Morella? People ask me all the time. Chris, how do you get your interviews?

And this one, this one's kind of interesting. I've been wanting to do an interview with Santino for a while because I think he's a fascinating guy. I think his character work is seriously second to none. He also lives like 30-ish minutes from where I grew up. So we got we got that in common there being a Canadian. And so when I did the interview with Teneal Dashwood, aka Emma last month, she talked about her partnership with Santino. So I tagged him in the tweet talking about that interview. He then started following me on Twitter. So I saw my opening. Boom. Went in. I DMed him. And I heard nothing back.

And then I remember that Aaron Stevens, better known as Damien Sandow, actually trained with Santino at his gym in Mississauga, Ontario. So since Sandow was on the show, I reached out to Sandow. I said, hey, can you connect me with Santino? Boom, he made it happen. We were both at the big event in New York a few weekends ago where we made this interview happen in my hotel room. It's such a great chat. I really enjoyed this. I know you will too with Santino Morella, although he doesn't sound like that.

that at all. In fact, at no point. At no point during this interview does he speak in that kind of accent. Keep those reviews coming in on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much. They're seriously the most helpful thing you can do to support the show. CMFT 1869 says this is the best podcast around. Five-star rating here. I've only been listening for a few weeks, but I am hooked. Guests equal awesome. Stories equal awesome. Chris Van Fleet equals Awesome. That's the review there. Thank you so much, my friend.

Appreciate that. Keep those reviews coming in. I'm going to keep reading one on the show. So you can be part of the show by leaving a review on either your iPhone or on iTunes. Thank you to Samson for the mics and the audio equipment that make us sound so good on the show. If you're looking to start a podcast or YouTube channel, audio is seriously the most important thing. Even if it's a YouTube channel, audio is the most important thing. Head to samsonTech.com.

You can see their full lineup. And it is so much cheaper than you think. The mics that I use are 80 bucks. Yeah, you don't have to spend hundreds of dollars. 80 bucks. Also, thank you to Greenroads for supporting the show. And I know you hear a lot about CBD products, a lot of CBD companies popping up out of everywhere. They're flooding my Instagram feed.

But if you're going to get into trying CBD products, go with Greenrose. They're a pharmacist founded company that have the lab results to back up their claims. A lot of CBD companies don't even have CBD in their products. products. How crazy is that? It's wild. The benefits are really wide ranging with CBD products, but for me, it's been, you know, it's about like relaxing. It's about like calming my brain when I've got 70 things on the go. And it's also about recovery from the gym. And Green Roads products have really changed my life since I started taking them about about a year ago. I use my code Chris 15, you'll get 15% off your order at greenroadsworld.com.

That's Chris 15 for 15% off at greenroadsworld.com. Since this is dropping on Thanksgiving, I just want to give a big thank you to you. I'm thankful to you for making this whole thing possible. I mean, putting these interviews on YouTube, now putting these YouTube interviews into the podcast, I mean, it's completely changed my life. And it's all because of you. Because otherwise, I'd just be sitting here in my, spare bedroom talking into a mic i say it all the time but it's crazy i'm

i'm sitting i'm actually kneeling up against my bed my mic stand is sitting on my bed right now i'm wearing my samson uh headphones and i'm talking in here to myself i don't know if my girlfriend can hear me down the can you hear me honey okay she can't hear me so yeah it's basically it's just me and you in here so thank you for making uh this possible i'm super thankful and grateful to you and we're going to keep this going, man. You know the goal in 2019 was 50 wrestling interviews. I counted the other day and I've uploaded 91 videos. So we absolutely crushed that goal, which means 2020 is going to be a massive year. Who, can't wait for it. So Santino Morella, when I started doing the research for this interview, I was blown away and a little surprised that Santino had been with

WWE for 11 years if you include his time and developmental. I think a lot of people remember the Cobra and the funny storylines, which are very good. But I don't think anyone does comedy wrestling quite like Santino. I mean, he's great at it. But if you look at his accolades, it's such an impressive career before he was forced to retire because of that neck injury. Intercontinental champion twice, tag team champion once with Vladimir Kozlov, United States champion once. And of course, he won Miss WrestleMania Battle Royal as Santina. We talk about Santina. We talk about how that all came together and why he was okay with doing stuff like that.

His attitude is basically like you're given a character to play. You're given this role. Go out there and do it. So this is such a good chat. Please put your hands together, my friends, for Santino Morella. Thank you so much for making this happen. Oh, my pleasure. Absolutely.

It's been a busy day down there. but we can find some time. Two Canadians just hanging out here. Yeah, yeah. Pickering. Pickering is like the parallel dimension to Mississauga. Yeah, so I'm from Pickering, you're from Mississauga. We're like equal distances away from Toronto.

Yeah, exactly, yeah. So to our west, we have Oakville, to your west. You have Ajax. That's right. Wow, yeah. Yeah, we're actually very similar. And now you're still living up there. Yeah, when I retired, I made Mississauga, my permanent residence.

and it was nice to be home, man. It was interesting to kind of return home, just return home, really. I was going to say with a hero's welcome, but, you know, because all my friends in Mississauga, they knew what I was doing and they were following and they were, you know, proud of the fact that I was on the road representing Mississauga. So to come home and open up my business after all that, it was kind of like a little bit of a homecoming.

Sure. And your business is still, you know, kind of in the industry. Yeah, we do one. piece of the pie is pro wrestling. So we're still producing, I mean, excellent talent. The kids that come through there are incredible athletes. But then we also focus

on, you know, sports, combative sports, Olympic sports. I coach judo. We also do amateur wrestling and boxing. Those are our Olympic kind of sports. And now we do MMA and we actually got some guys fighting for some titles. Wow. At the end of this month.

So it's a lot. And of course we have the Don Koloff Arena where we put on our shows. and we just started something called the battle arts fight league we're going to have some amateur uh mMA was as well as boxing and kickboxing and stuff so it's a lot so big big undertaking but it's it is rewarding but this is your background though like m ms and you know combat sports that was your background before russudo yeah judo i mean i had one m m mhm a fight but i did not train in m m m m i just jumped in one one time uh without training for it but no i was a judo athlete that I represented Ontario, represented Canada, right through university. I participated in

judo and was on the national team. And that's really my first love in terms of if I could do anything I wanted to do. It'd be judo. And I'm coaching, yeah. You know how many people are watching this right now going, he doesn't have the accent? Yeah, yeah. Well, these days, there's enough footage out there. People can see me doing interviews. I work on Sportsnet. So aftermath, so Canadians know, Santa Claus is not real. And then from time to time, I still do get a lot of comments when something happens. People are like, it's freaking me out without the accent.

But there's some stuff I did, even with WWE or when Renee came to battle arts and did the, Where Are They Now? There's a lot of people that, you know, realize this is. Oh, there's still going to be comments on this video. People are going, oh, I didn't realize you didn't have that accent. Yeah, the accent is, it was an interesting accent. It kind of evolved over the years.

There was a little borat, a little natural, Libre, a little Italian, like one of my uncle and stuff. So it was pretty interesting. Growing up in Canada, in Mississauga, almost all of my friends were first-generation Canadian. Same, yeah. Yeah, your parents moved from Holland. My mom.

Sorry. My mom actually moved from Greece. Oh, wow. My mom's Macedonian was born in Greece, came over when she was four. The other side of the family has been in North America for a long time. But I agree with you. Almost all my friends, their parents were born in Italy. the grandparents were born in Italy, Greece, wherever.

Yeah, and I look at my, there's a definite pattern. I was looking at my elementary school pictures, and it's Poland, Malta, Greek, not too many Greeks, because I went to Catholic school, and they're Orthodox, but Italian, Portuguese, and just repeats, you know, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, Maltese, Italian Portuguese. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was interesting. So was this an accent that you had, like, heard growing up?

Well, that's the thing. So it's actually a combination. of all my friends' parents, Croatian, Slovenian. My neighbor, Ivan, is where I got son of my gun from. Ivan says son of a gun. And, you know, all our parents kind of butchered the language or had a funny expression that I just, and my friends would call me out on it.

Like, you're making a living off, making fun of our parents. Or copying our parents. When you go, like, we're at a convention here, the big event in New York, when you're at a convention like this, do people go, hey man, Do you do the accent for me? Yeah, I don't do the accent.

Really? Yeah, well, once I've started a conversation, being me, it's kind of hard to do it. So actually, here's a funny story. Kofi Kingston, when he first started and it was Jamaican, he had the accent. So we were the only two guys at the time that were speaking on television in a way that we don't speak in real life. So when I would do interviews with radio stations with WWV, there's someone, there's a liaison, between the two. And he would say, okay, hold on.

Hey, Santino, you're on the line with Joe from 102.5. And then I would immediately be in character the whole time. Yeah. But the WW Magazine, they have your direct number. So they will call you, hey, hey, Santino. It's Josh from the magazine. Could I do an interview with you? And can you be in character?

But I've already started the conversation. Yeah, yeah. So I remember one time, Kofi's like, hey, can ask you a question? He goes, when the magazine... When the magazine calls you, do you use your accent? And I was like, I know, it's so awkward. But once I start talking with somebody, I don't like to do the accent. I think that your run in WWE is a fascinating run,

because you came in and won the Intercontinental Championship in your debut match. I don't know if that's ever happened before. At the time, no. There have been people that won titles on their first. I think Carlito won the Intercontinental, maybe, on his debut, but he wasn't from the audience. So if you want to break it down and his first

WW match, I was the only audience member to come in and win the title. Where was the, where did the transition happen from? Like you had this character at first of being like the badass, you know, guy who could legitimately win a fight to kind of transitioning to the comedy character. Where did that happen and how did it happen? Yeah, it was crazy. So I was driving to Elizabethtown, Kentucky. I was, I just, I had gotten.

and signed in August of 06. And then I had to go home for a few months to get the visa papers and everything. So now I returned, I believe, November of 06. And then I was in developmental like everybody else and we're doing all our live events. And then this is April of 07. So we went home for the holidays, came back. And I'm driving to Elizabethtown, Kentucky. I get a phone call.

And it was by Mike Bucci, who was Nova with ECW. and he knew that my background, my dad's from Italy, and Anthony Corelli is my real name, and he just called to see if I could speak Italian. And I was Boris Alexiev, the Russian fighter guy. And when I used to work downtown Toronto, I worked there for one year for a company called New Ad Media. You know the washroom ads?

Yeah. Yeah, that company. The things you stare at while you're pissing at a urinal? Yes, I worked for that company. Wow. Event marketing. Okay. And so I'd be in rush hour traffic every morning for a year.

And I had a cassette, tourist Italian. I always wanted to speak better Italian. So I would listen to this cassette. Just, you know, it would play, click, other side, play, click. And I'd just be on the background. Sometimes I'd pay attention, but it was always playing. So when they called, Mike Bucci called and said, hey, hey, Boris, it's Mike Bucci here.

I'm sitting here with some writers. Can you speak Italian? And I'm like, yeah, sure. and a month earlier, Dusty Rhodes had called a guy who was playing a character named Fearless Jack Bull

and said, Jack Bull, my dusty impression is not good. Dusty Road, can you ride a motorcycle? And he goes, nope, because he thought someone was

ribbing him because everyone does a dusty impression, right? Right. And he goes, well, can you learn to ride a motorcycle? He goes,

nope. He's like, okay, well, thank you very much for your time. And then looks at the phone and sees a 203

8. Oh, yeah. Connecticut. A coronary, you know. So they laughed about it. Dusty Rhodes came down to speak to the OVW and said, if anyone

ever asks you, if you can do anything, the answer is yes. And then you better learn how to do it. So can you speak Italian? Ding, Dusty in my head. I said, yeah. And I said, well, can you say some words for us? And I just repeated a couple phrases

from this tape that I would listen to. and I believe it was Vorre, a mezzo kilo di Formagio, which means I want half kilo of cheese. Like the most random expression, you know. And then I said something, my name is Anthony Carelli, where's the hotel or something like that?

And then I could literally see them looking around at each other going, I don't know, it sounded good. Okay, yeah, that's good. We're going to fly you out tomorrow to Italy. And, you know, you might, fingers crossed, you might debut as this a time. Italian guy. It all depends on, you know, things could change last minute. Don't get your hopes up.

They flew you to Italy for this? Yeah, I debuted in Milan. So I was on my way to E-town, Elizabethtown, Kentucky on a Friday. They had my passport for some reason. Anybody, my passport arrived at 8 a.m. got to the airport at noon, landed on a Sunday. And in the middle of a tour, a European tour. And I just kind of, you know, walked around sightseeing in Milan for the day. And then, Everyone showed up that night, Sunday night, and then Monday was raw. And I went to Raw, and as soon as I walked through the door with my bags, Aaron Anderson, was just coming out of the production meeting, and he goes, oh, you're having a good day, kid, you're winning the IAC title.

And he walks away. I'm like, did he just say I'm winning the I? What? Why, why, what? And that was it, you know, and someone came up to me and said, hey, Vince wants to meet you and meet me. Like, he hasn't even met me yet. And, like, they're going with this. They were getting good feedback with everything I was doing at OVW, and they,

had enough confidence in me to do this. And I did, sometimes I watch it back because people that haven't seen it. I haven't watched it in a while, the debut moment. Yeah. But the acting was good, you know, people thought that Jesus Christ, this guy's the audience and this guy's, you know, in disbelief. Yeah. The audience loved it. And that was it.

Buckle up and we were on the road for eight years straight. Man. So how did it transition into being like the more comedic role? Oh, yeah. So, so originally I was supposed to be this, you know, I'm undersized. I'm five foot 10. And the locker room at the time was big guys. There was just really rare mysterious at the time.

Afterwards, there was, you know, Tyson Kidd and Daniel Bryan. Right. Smaller than me. But that's it. I mean, there was a big locker room. So I was going to be this underdog baby face. And the audience, and it's the same thing, this is the same scenario you have today where they don't like to be force fed.

Yeah. And they don't like to be saying. to be told, this guy is going to be someone you're going to like. And all of a sudden, I beat, you know, Umaga, and I beat Chris Masters, and I beat Sheldon Benjamin. And everyone's like, come on, man. This guy comes out of the audience. And now he's beating everybody just like that.

You know, no, we don't want this guy. And they're kind of rejecting the character. And Vince said, well, let's turn him heel. And if that doesn't work, well, repackage or whatever. So I became a heel. and immediately being a heel and complaining, but having the accent was comical. And Vince thought it was hilarious.

And I guess they saw something on the mic. And actually got hurt at the time. I separated my shoulder in a live event. So Vince liked it. So for the next four weeks, I couldn't wrestle. I was on the mic every week for four weeks. And really, those four weeks were what really, cemented me as this funny bad guy on the mic.

And I was doing guest commentary during matches. And I really took off from there. I made the right person live. And you did some pretty memorable stuff of Stone Cold. I feel like that really put, like, put you, put that character on the radar. Yeah, that was a measuring stick. And Michael Hayes had a really good analogy. He goes, you've been running the ball, upfield, first down.

Now we're going to see if you can score a touchdown when you're in there with the big boys. Wow. I was like, wow. And at the end, he just gave me the nod and be like, yep, you did it. So that was a, yeah, that was definitely, I remember Vince walked by and looked at me, he went like this. Like, you just went up a notch. Wow. And I was like, I knew exactly what he meant at that time.

And it was pretty cool moment. Was there any part of you that was like, I don't want to be this comedy character the whole time? Well, I'm also at the time, I was 5'10 and I debuted at 33. years old. So I was kind of defying the odds. I did not want to ruffle any feathers. I was actually the reason I think I had longevity with the company was because I was grateful from day one. And yeah, I wanted to be a badass and I trained to be a badass and I fought I did workshoots in Japan and in OVW I was stiff and a lot of judo and that's what I trained for. But I was also capable of being this comedic character. So it was an honor and a privilege to be Santino. And after a while, it's just

what I did, you know. Was it equally an honor and a privilege to be Santina? Well, funny, oddly enough, as potentially, I mean, there were a lot of family and friends who are like, oh, my God, what are they doing? There's no coming back from this. Yeah. You're dressed like a woman. But it's actually some of my best work in terms of acting and some of the pretexts. tapes we did in my reactions and some of the subtleties I did, I really actually was proud of the work we did as Santina. Santina was supposed to be a one-off thing just at WrestleMania. But it was people were telling me that in Gorilla that Vince was pissing his pants laughing and he loved it so much. They ended up lasting for three months.

But what was your initial reaction when you were told you were going to debut as Santina and win this women's match? Well, when I was first told, I was kind of told it was going to be a one-off thing. So I thought, okay, it's going to be funny. It's going to be a memorable moment. It's good payoff. It's a, it's a WrestleMania moment. Yeah.

Probably my most significant WrestleMania moment ever, actually. And then, like, the following week, Vince wants the Santina thing again, and Vince wants a Santina thing again. Like, oh, man. But you know what?

My philosophy has been, you give me lemons and I'm going to make lemonade. But that's the right attitude to have. Because there's a lot of guys where creative gives something and they're like well what do you i'm not going to do this thing and then they don't have a job for very long yeah you cannot walk around with a boo-boo face and and the whole notion of this perceived stock value it's and i actually downstairs today was talking to ron simmons and we had a talk in the beginning i guess it was about not that i was frustrated but about the comedic character

and he said look you can do ha ha for 10 years and at the right time you win one match guess what your world heavyweight champion yeah and i remember like yeah thanks man you know so i always had that in the back of my mind where i can i can and it happened you know for example the elimination chamber we came a a one count away from being the world heavyweight champion yeah um royal rumble we almost had the main event at wrestlemania so being this comedic character was fine but you are always that close to winning the big one was the cobra your idea the cobra was my idea. Well, originally you were just doing, you didn't have the thing on your arm. Yeah, it was from a bar in Japan. This guy showed me this hand puppet transformation thing where he chopped his hand

and made it this thing. And literally like five years later, I was in a match. It was a live event. I believe it was Carlito or Chavo. And I went to the scene. I go, hey, watch this. Watch my comeback. I'm going to try something. So I was like jab, jab, jab. Transform the arm. Cobra strike. Turn around. School. boy and the audience immediately laughed at that at the arm strike and um i don't even know if it had a name at the time anyway it quickly became the cobra and i remember i went to raw and rickie steemboat was my producer and he's like uh you're going to go over tonight i think it was against heaths later it was a vince wants to see the cobra i'm like vince knows about the cobra because i only did it

on live events and it was getting good reviews and the producers were you know writing down the audience is reacting. It's funny. And later I found out that it was the perfect finisher. You can do it at any time to any size person. And that's true. And then I saw another article recently how it's one of the most statistically speaking. It's one of the most effective finishers of all time. One person kicked out of it without the sleeve, Seamus. And one person kicked out of it with the sleeve, Daniel Bryan. So I mean, and I've probably given thousand Cobra's

And only two people have ever kicked out Yeah that's 99% Wow Yeah that's a pretty good move 98 Do you think with the career That you had

That you'd be a Hall of Famer Or you will be People joke about it JTG always says that He calls me He's been calling me a Hall of Famer For a long time I don't know

I mean if I mean for example I do have a specific genre For sure So as a comedic wrestler I could say, yeah, I would see myself being in the Hall of Fame one day, but not now. I guess it kind of has to be more nostalgic, maybe down the road. But just as a general, you know, I wasn't never a heavyweight champion.

And I wasn't, I didn't have WrestleMania singles matches and that kind of stuff. But for being a comedic wrestler, I could see it happening. Do you think that, you know, the work that you did 10-ish years ago really open the doors for you know there's a lot of comedic wrestlers now you've got uh joey ryan does his thing uh orange cassidy does his thing do you think that you kind of helped open the doors for those guys yeah a lot of them though they're not like they do funny stuff but it's not quite uh my comedy wrestling was like 80s sitcom wrestling and and and that i grew up watching a lot of 80s tv so joy Ryan does something very funny, but backstage he's not an 80s comedy wrestler.

Maybe Colt Cabana. Polkabana is good. He's very good. He has an excellent sense of humor. And there are guys that are funny that are out there. Yeah, Orange Cassidy is entertaining as well. I've seen some of the stuff that looks great. But I found that the majority of my comedy was from pre-tapes.

I mean, stuff I did in the ring was fine, but you have to wrestle. You can't, you know, avoid the wrestling to just to do comedy. Sure. So I had comedic wrestling, but the comedic wrestling was also from, I think, there was a year, a whole year where we had a lot of guest general managers. Yeah. And I didn't wrestle on Raw for a year, but I was in every pre-tap, every week. And then when I came back to wrestling, I was so much more over

because they got to know me so much more from these pre-tapes. So I think some of the comedy kind of carry over, carried over to the matches, but I believe they got to know me comedically from the pre-tames, I think. Well, now your daughter's getting into wrestling. Yeah, she's not comedy at all. And she's a badass. She's a heel, and she's very good.

She was identified quite early when she was younger as being, you know, an excellent actress. She cut a promo when she got home was she. So that must have been 10 years old. or 11 years old she came down for a month in OVW spend a month with me in the summer and she wanted to

do a promo on promo day we had promo days and Al Snow was like okay he kind of was impressed that this kid had the guts to want to get in the ring and do a promo in front of everybody so promo day came

and promo day went and I kind of sat down I mean she still wants to do it and he's like okay he thought she was just saying that and wasn't going to end up doing it But I had spoken to her earlier in the weekend. I said, I want you to do a heel promo.

So at, gosh, was she 10 or 11? It was probably 11 years old? She gets in the ring and cuts this heel promo. And standing ovation at the end, it was almost like, you know, in the movies when someone cuts a promo and there's, like, silence for like three seconds. Right. And then everybody erupts. And that's what happened.

So even when she'd come backstage at Raw, she'd get into the pre-tape room. and she just get on the mic. I remember the Brooklyn Brawler coming out. She's a star. She's going to be a star. And she's always been around it. And she's always been really good at it. And now she's learning the,

and she understands the psychology really well, I guess from conversations and long car rides we've had growing up. But now she's just learning the physical side, getting her moves, you know, crisp. And once that's the final piece of the puzzle, she'll be a megastar, actually. She'll be one of the top female talent, I believe, in the WW. And what's her name so everyone can look out for her?

Yeah, Bianca is her real name, Bianca Corelli. And I think it's, I don't know, whether social media is Bianca, Sophia. We'll figure it out. Bianca Sophia or something. But yeah, you'll hear about her. She's undeniable. Well, she just had a WWE tryout. She had a tryout, and she destroyed everybody on the mic,

and they just wanted her to tighten up her strikes or moves, and, you know, they're getting better every week. And that's it, just a matter of time, really. It's funny because the daughters and sons of wrestlers either dive right into it, follow after their parents' footsteps, or they want to go as far away from it as possible. Absolutely. You know, and there's really no in between, yeah.

Yeah, and, you know, the psychological side, like, she wants to know where I was, and what was I doing when I wasn't home? Because you're not home a lot. Yeah. And I mean, the plan was when I left to go be a professional wrestler, she was eight years old, and I said, look, you are a star. And you need to be in Hollywood. But how do we get there?

I know a way to get in. I don't know if it's the best way, but it's the only way I can see right now. I'm going to go become a wrestler. And I'm going to work for the WW, and then WW. And then WW does WW movies, and I'll get connections to Hollywood. it. And then when the time is right, I'll bring you in and all this stuff. So that was really our our game plan when she was a kid. And it's worked. I did a movie and I do, I do television to this day and just try to keep those connections fresh so that when the time is right,

she can come over and make a living for herself. How old is she now? Just turned 24. So she's got all kinds of years in front of her. Yeah, she finished university and that's big. Where'd she go? She went to Western. Yeah, that's my rival school. I went to Laurier. Oh, no, yeah. Yeah, she went to Western, and she graduated. And I did the same.

I went to Concordia, and I graduated. So I started wrestling late. I started wrestling at 28 years old. Wow. Wow. So she's ahead of me already. And she knows that, you know, there's life before wrestling, and there's life after wrestling,

and we have to plan accordingly. And if you have a six-year run, just say, and how are we going to parlay that, you know, fame, I guess you can call it, or that TV time into the next chapter in your life. So we're realistic about what needs to be done. Well, and you mentioned a little bit earlier, but people that don't live in Canada

don't realize that you're on TV all the time. Like sports net's like the equivalent of being on Fox Sports or something like that or ESPN. Yeah, it's national TV. It's funny when I got to the airport on Friday. I recorded, we record aftermath on Friday at noon, and it airs at like 630 now. It's just a wrestling show.

It's a talk show, yeah. It's a panel, four people. Jimmy Cordares is on it. Caroline Shved and his guy Nug, Nargang. He's a, you know, a comedian, I guess. And yeah, we talk wrestling. We talk, all, WWNXT, SmackDown Raw, pay-per-views. And it's a fun show.

It's short. It's only half an hour. Every time we do it, we're like, but we need an hour show. Well, half an hour on TV is, you know, 20 minutes with three breaks. It's like it flies right by. It's fast. people dividing up the talking time. It's pretty fast.

But I was walking through the airport and it was playing in one of the bars. And one guy immediately saw me and looked and it was like, how are you here? Magic how that happens. Yeah. And that's why a lot of Canadians, they get to hear me speak about wrestling honestly and as myself. And we try and keep it positive, obviously. But there's some stuff to complain about, but you have to complain about it in a constructive way. I was actually like kind of blown away when I found out you were Canadian.

Because, you know, like, it took me many years to realize you were a Canadian. And then I'm like, oh, and you're from like super close to where I'm from. Yeah, even Chris Jericho, the first time I met him, he'd be watching, he had been watching the product on television. And he can just see him shaking his head like, you know who it's like, Fez from the 70s show? Yeah, yeah. The first time you hear him speak, it's like, this is weird. So I guess that's kind of a similarity. Well, also because so many of the Canadian wrestlers have had gimmicks where it's been like,

I'm Canadian. You know, like Brad Hart's gimmicks like that. So many other gimmicks are like, I'm Canadian and then it plays into their character. You were Canadian, but you were really, you know, playing this Italian character. Yeah, that's actually one of the reasons why I like to take Canadian indie bookings across Canada. And the reason is because I want to, and there's still people that don't know. They maybe they don't watch aftermath or whatever it is. And it used to drive me because I'm really patriotic.

absolutely love being Canadian. And the fact that I couldn't say I was Canadian, you know, it kind of bothered me a bit. So actually, there was a speech I made when I had my neck issues where they flared up for the third time. It was in the Rico Coliseum. And I had to say the speech in character, which I didn't want to do.

I wanted to be honest with the Canadian audience. And I just said, look, if this is it, we don't know yet, it ended up being it, but we didn't know at the time. I said, if this is it, the only regret I have is that I couldn't say to Canadians that I'm from Canada. And it was, again, it was an honor and a privilege

to be an Italian character. Since becoming Santino, I have become a dual citizen. I have an Italian passport. Wow. I learned the language. And I used it as an opportunity to get in touch with my Italian roots. Yeah.

But the Canadian people didn't know I was Canadian, you know? And they do now. and I make a point to let people know that, you know, I'm one of you guys. Yeah. I like maple syrup too. And beer and hockey. Yeah, yeah. Of course.

Was there one certain move that led to the neck injury? Back in university, I think I partially herniated a disc. And then that disc kind of calcified and became bone. And the bone was touching the spinal cord. So I was susceptible to stingers all the time. And I protected my neck as long as I could, man. I did traction. I would travel on the road with the device that I could hook up to a lap pull-down machine

and just do traction to my neck and try to strengthen my neck and not to do stupid things, like backflips from where you land on your head, trying to land to your head, period. And I just try to hold on for as long as I could. And then it just reached that point where, yeah, it was, I would have flare-ups. and then the flare-ups got more frequent until the point where it was stuck in a flare-up

and I remember I was getting ready for a match against Jack Swagger and all of a sudden I'm like I had like a one-centimeter window to move my neck and otherwise I was like ah it just couldn't move my neck Wow and I remember I couldn't even get up off the bed

I'd have to roll to my stomach and push up because I couldn't lift my head forward and yeah I had a narrow spinal canal and the disc was the bone was touching it was a bad situation and and I didn't really fully realize how bad it was till we had MRIs and looked at it and they said yeah you need surgery right wow so we had a double cervical fusion and I actually could have had a triple cervical fusion which means they would have taken out three discs and put in three pieces of bone but it was shin bone from a donor.

And the shimbone, I guess, is a similar diameter to the disc. And yeah, they put it in. So we only did two levels, which means you have a chance to come back.

If you have three levels, you can't come back. So the hope was that we can come back and wrestle. And you just never got well enough to come back. But does it affect your judo or anything

you're doing with the training? I can't do neck bridges anymore. Okay. I can live with that. I'm comfortable. Okay. And I do have another level. that is bad, but I'm going to try and address that in 2020 with some stem cells.

Oh, okay. Well, I know that that completely changes the game. Yeah, if it works as well as I'm hoping, I'll try and come back a little bit for a couple years and maybe try and win the big one. Yeah. Miracle moment. Why not? The Milan miracle.

Yeah, I've got to have one more miracle. What's the advice that you give to your daughter as she's approaching this career? You have to learn. And to all my students as well, you have to fight what you're going to see. So I'm training you to wrestle a certain way. And then you're going to go in the Indies and you're going to see guys not doing it.

And it's not because you're not supposed to. It's because they were improperly trained. Or they don't have the maturity to try and not do a million things. Like learn how to work and don't just, you have to stand out. So if everyone's doing this, okay, so for example, let's say we're playing basketball. And everyone shoots a basketball a certain way. That's probably the best way to shoot a basketball.

Yeah. So you should learn to shoot that way. Sure. But in pro wrestling, you want to stand out. So if everyone's doing something in one way, you've got to learn to do it another way. And in most cases, the other way is the right way. Because there's a lot of, I don't know where the quality of wrestling became diluted, but it is, you know, all the holy shit chance and oh my God chance.

And that's not where you're, that's not. what you're supposed to be aiming for. And people think that that's, it's good, but it's the reaction to the finish of the match. It's all you should really be aiming for. Not the moments in the match. No,

the moments in the match are going to lead up to that thing. And the analogies with sex, right? It's all about the big finish. And that's, that's what determines whether or not that sex was good. It's the big finish. A lot of people,

myself included, say that, you know, this is the best time to be a wrestling fan. 2019, there's so many options. There are, but there's a, I'm afraid that it may implode. Because it's, everyone's a wrestler, and there's a million companies, and it's becoming less special. When there was 12 channels on the television and one was wrestling, that was big, less is more. You know, you were on TV, you were known by the whole world, and now there's just so many

wrestlers and so many companies and it's becoming a little less special yeah well you know maybe this is wrestling is very cyclical you know this maybe this is just the cycle maybe we're at the high spot right now and maybe it'll go back down to you know a different time yeah and i mean i mean it's also it's cyclical but there's also different uh factors like the internet social media right the ability for anybody to what do you call it when you live stream sure any event

with $500 of equipment before you needed a big a big money backer to break into television was massive but now you know the value of going viral yeah is is real

it's real man you can have a video with 8 million views and raw can't get 8 million views so viral is legitimate yeah So there's interesting factors It's constantly adapting as well as being cyclical

So it's interesting I mean it's fun to watch it develop and evolve You know look at the the women in wrestling That is a positive evolution The ability to not have to have that money backer That's a positive thing too There's also positives and also negatives The everyone giving their opinions

Like it matters That's kind of a negative Yeah I want to be be super respectful of your time. I know you have another book you need to get to, but it's such a pleasure to speak with you. Oh, thanks, man. It's my pleasure's all mine.

There you go, Santino, Morella. Thanks for checking out this chat, and thank you for being you on this Thanksgiving day as this interview is dropping. The interview was actually going to be like a lot longer, but we had a super short window because Santino was riding to another event

that night with Vladimir Kozlov. And Kozlov was blowing up Santino's phone, the whole interview with text being like, hey, we're in the car waiting for you. Where are you? So as soon as the interview ended, he's like, ah, I got to go like right now. Although we did take a photo, which you can see on my Instagram or Twitter, where we're both doing the cobra. We took that as we were waiting for the elevator to go because we had to go. We had to rush. But 30 minutes with Santino, man, I will take it. Such a great guy, a great interview, great Canadian. And how weird is it to hear him talking the whole

time without an accent, not even a hint of the Santino Marela accent. Let me know what you thought of this one. Tag me, tag Santino, he's at the Milan miracle. Share this episode with your friends. Let them know what you thought of this one. Future Hall of Famer, I think so. Nobody does comedy wrestling, quite like him. And you've got a, you know, you've got a lot of comedic gimmicks right now. We mentioned, we mentioned him in the interview, but you've got Colt Cabana. You've got Orange Cassidy. You've got Joey Ross. Ryan, you know, I'll kind of doing their own variations of this, but I don't know if anyone's done it like Santina Morella. And on the complete other end of the spectrum, when you have a minute, look up some of the footage of his daughter, Bianca, in the ring.

Ooh, she is going to be an absolute killer in the ring. So as we wrap this thing up, once again, super thankful for you. It's that time of year. You know, it's that time of year to be thankful. It's Thanksgiving if you're listening to this in America. If you're listening to this anywhere else, you know, be thankful as well. I'll be grateful for whatever's happening on this Thursday or whatever day you're listening. Here's the quote that's, man, this has been something that's resonated with me for a long,

long time. Back when we used to have like AOL or MSN Messenger, ICQ, my fellow Canadians know all about ICQ and MSN Messenger. You would change like your info in your bio so you could like put a quote in there or like, oh, I have a crush on this girl or I'm really into this movie this week or whatever. You could change it all the time. And I had this talent in there for this talent. I've already given away part of the quote here.

I had this quote in there for the longest time. It's something that's spoken to me for a long time because it's so true. It's from Tim Notkey. And it's hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. So chew on that for a little bit. Have a great day. If it is Thursday as you're listening to this, fill up on your turkey, fill up on your stuffing. Don't forget the pumpkin pie.

We will see you next Thursday. day. The Hammer Alley podcast, an 80s flashback mockumentary. Back in the 80s, there were a thousand bands trying to make it in the world of rock, but there was one band that had it all. Hammer Alley. Whatever happened to Hammer Alley? How did they go from top of the rock?

I'm looking for a music video. They're a band from 1987. Hammer Alley. Ever heard of them? To Rock Bottom. Dude, I was born in 1987. I can't believe he's doing this. Hammer Alley.

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