Ahead of his big NXT Championship title defense on Sunday against Bron Breakker, Carmelo Hayes appeared on “Cheap Heat with Peter Rosenberg” to talk about his title reign and the match on Sunday at NXT Battleground.
Carmelo Hayes talking about being paired with Trick Williams:
“I had just won the breakout tournament and that whole 2.0 thing was getting ready to start. We had about four or five guys that came in the same class that were not ready to get on TV just yet, but they had to find something for them. I remember Trick came up to me. Me and him weren’t really super cool. I was kind of still just doing my own thing. He came up to me and said, ‘Hey man. I think they are going to put us together as a team or something.’ I was like, ‘Oh cool. Let me know.’ It was as simple as that and we ended up on TV with him coming in as my heater in a way because they were getting ready to turn me heel. We formed our chemistry as we went. I don’t think they knew what to do with us. We had to figure out like, let’s bring in pop culture. I told him straight up, ‘I’m not going to be funny. I’m trying to be serious and different. I’m not trying to be silly. You do funny and I’ll do serious and we’ll balance it.’ That was our idea to make it work together.”
Hayes talking about his athletic beginnings:
“I was big in baseball. I did amateur wrestling when I was eight years old. We were doing backyard wrestling and the wrestling coach came, he lived down the street, and he was like, ‘Whoa, you need to stop doing this. Come to the gym where we train the high school kids and we’ll teach you the basics so you don’t get hurt.’ We ended up competing in tournaments and stuff for like three or four years. So I have an amateur wrestling background and then I played football for three years, Pop Warner. Then I played in high school. I got kicked off the team because my grades were bad. Then I got kicked off the wrestling team. I was a bad student, but I was a great athlete. That’s the one thing. I’ve always been athletic my whole life. I just never really applied myself the way I should. I can only say that now because I’ve matured. I remember I just wanted to chase girls, get in trouble, and hang with the wrong people, and do all that type of stuff. I wish I would have applied myself more, but I got where I got perfectly fine, so I’m ain’t mad at it.”
On Cody Rhodes choosing him to help Cody get back in ring shape after his pec injury:
“They mentioned to me, ‘Hey, Cody requested to train with you and Joe Gacy.’ I was like, ‘Yea, cool.’ Cody had reached out to me like two or three times before just giving me critique on my work and stuff like that, so I already had a back-and-forth relationship with him and I had met Cody in the past. I thought it was like, wow, out of all the people that he knows and he’s picking me and Joe Gacy. I was like, okay, let’s go. A lot of people are like, we helped Cody, but I learned a lot from Cody in that time working with him. It was fun. I think he just needed clearance from medical to go through, so we had worked for like three or four days. We did matches on the fly. We were working and we were just having fun.”
Click below to listen to the entire interview.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit The Ringer Wrestling Show with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
