Santino Marella Talks About Cena Leading the Locker Room, Being Paired with Emma, Playing “Santina”, If He Had Heat with the Divas

Santino Marella had a very good WWE career. It’s a shame that it had to end due to an injury, but that’s not uncommon in this industry. Recently, Santino joined the Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling John and Chad on their show and had an in-depth interview about his career, the WWE locker room, John Cena’s leadership and many more topics.

Here are many of the highlights:

Was playing Santina at WrestleMania 27 and competing in a “Divas” match detrimental to his character:

I’m always up for a challenge and when you get a role like that some people would be concerned like “oh GOD” this is the end of his career because once you dress like a woman that’s it. I thought I was going to do a good job and knock this out of the park, do a good job and kind of reverse the joke. Well like if the joke was supposed to be on me well I did a good job it’s like I got praised for it. I know the girls were pissed. But I was given the job by the boss and you just do the best you can.

Having heat with the Divas locker room for “taking a spot”:

I guess the girls always have something to prove in regards to their place in the industry because they want to be viewed more and these days they are very technical and very smart, they are awesome performers but they have that unspoken association to back in the day when it was just like a hot chick so they are constantly working hard to gain respect in the industry. At that time I wasn’t making a joke out of women’s wrestling but I was in women’s wrestling and making a joke. But it wasn’t about women’s wrestling it was more about Santino. I hope the girls were able to distinguish between the two because they are an integral part of our show and they do the exact same stuff as us and they travel, they work out and take bumps they do the exact same stuff we do.

Being paired with Emma briefly:

At that point I was pretty established and she was a pretty up and coming young girl and was really sweet and very funny. It was kind of for her to get her going but she was just taking the ball and running with it.

Creating the Cobra finisher:

There was a guy who showed me this cobra move a long time ago at a bar in Japan and I just did it one time and tried it in a match and I asked John Cena to watch and tell me what he thought of it and when I came back because the crowd laughed immediately when I did it we kept it and it just took on a life of its own. It’s an entertaining move. It’s a little bit silly but the people loved it so you gotta give them what they love.