On a recent edition of the “Developmentally Speaking” podcast, TNA wrestler Santino Marella discussed his early days in the wrestling industry, his daughter Arianna Grace’s progress in WWE NXT, and more.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On his daughter Arianna Grace: “She’s already featured on NXT every week and she’ll just continue to do more and more. I’m hoping [in] 2025 maybe we see her somewhere on RAW or SmackDown. She just has to get more reps and more matches and more matches. She wouldn’t be ready to go have a match with Charlotte [Flair] at WrestleMania, but if she’s on the screen with Charlotte in a pre-tape [segment], they look like they’re in the same league. That’s really important — the perception of someone being a superstar. The wrestling will come.”
On why he decided to get into wrestling: “I thought that this would be a pretty cool job, beats a lot of other types of jobs, and I thought that I’d be good at it, you know? Just based on my interest, my athletic ability, I was on the national Judo team, and I wrestled in High School and University.”
On traveling to Japan very early in his career: “I was gonna try and break in there, have some success, and be recruited back to North America, that was my plan. But at the end of the year, I overstayed my tourist Visas, and I was banned for a year and that’s when I went to OVW. It was just so different, so bizarre down there [in Louisville, Kentucky]. I had no exposure to America like that. I just saw what you see on TV.”
