Former WWE Intercontinental Champion Santino Marella recently shared the pivotal moment his career changed, crediting Vince McMahon’s reaction to his heel turn for his increased television time and character development.
Speaking on Insight With Chris Van Vliet, Santino recalled his initial babyface run in 2007 after debuting from the crowd: “As you know, the WWE fans does not like to be force-fed anything. They will spit it out. They were being force fed this new guy who was in the audience; he beat Chris Masters, and he beat Shelton Benjamin… They’re like, Yeah right. BS, don’t tell us to like this guy.” After a decisive loss to Umaga where fans wanted Umaga to “kill this guy,” Santino said, “Then I guess they had the conversation where they said, okay, the audience is not kind of accepting this. Let’s turn him bad guy, I guess, and if that doesn’t work, maybe see you later.”
The turn was an immediate success with the key person: “The moment I turned into a bad guy and complained with the accent, apparently Vince popped. He’s funny. He thought it was because as soon as I turned bad and I got the mic as a bad guy, had the mic every week, guest commentary in ring promos. So I popped the right guy, and I was given the ball.”
He recalled Michael Hayes telling him, “Every promo is like a first down… Then you work up to getting in the ring with Stone Cold Steve Austin… Can you cross the goal line now we’re watching?’ That was an awesome segment. I remember backstage, Vince looked at me, and he went like he just went up a level. And I was like, Oh, I know what that means, man.”
