Santino Marella recently spoke with Justin Barrasso for Sports Illustrated Extra Mustard’s Week In Wrestling. You can read a few highlights below:
Santino Marella makes his pick to win the 2017 Royal Rumble match:
“I love Brock Lesnar and hope he wins. I’d have him eliminate Undertaker at the end. That would be a good swerve. Everyone would think Undertaker was going to get his revenge on Brock, and then Brock would eliminate him, as to say, ‘Not today.’ But there are a lot of big names in the Rumble, which means there will be all these big names who don’t win.”
Santino comments on his record for shortest time in the Rumble match:
“Hopefully that record stands for a long time. I actually know how to beat it, but I’m not going to tell anybody. I found a way to shave off half a second, but I don’t want anyone else to beat it.
“I knew the Warlord’s record was beatable. There was no sense of urgency in the way he entered the ring. When I broke the record, I had my technique down: I was going to slide under, pop up, and Kane was going to meet me at the right time. I had very little room for error, but I found a way to even beat my record. I think I could do it in about a second-and-a-half.”
Santino talks about nearly winning the Royal Rumble in 2011 and the memory it created:
“I was just a few steps away from headlining WrestleMania. The way I was living it in the moment, people really thought I was actually going to do it. When you can give people a real solid swerve, they remember that for a long time.”