Carmelo Hayes Discusses Working With Triple H & Shawn Michaels In WWE NXT

Reigning NXT Champion Carmelo Hayes recently appeared as a guest on WWE After The Bell and spoke about discovering his character in NXT as well as working with Shawn Michaels & Triple H.

You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:

On finding his character in NXT: “Yeah, when I came in I had so much confidence in myself. I’ve always had confidence in myself, but I tell I story about a lot of time you have to fake it till you make it. And coming into the WWE system, not knowing pretty much how anything works here. And you’re there with a bunch of OGs, especially like when I started it was the Coles and Garganos, and Ciampas — you know, really OGs, And Samoa Joe and them. So I had confidence, but it had to be kind of quiet, just because I know I was I was like, ‘No no no, I’m not where I need to be.’

“So I just needed the opportunity to be able to express myself and express my confidence out loud. And I think that has a lot to do with my character. It’s truly me, but at the same time it’s like, in real life you would never talk about yourself and your accomplishments and stuff. But on TV in wrestling world, you know what I mean? People love it. Talk your talk. People wanna hear you talk your confidence. So that was the biggest thing for me as far as my character development was being able to express my confidence out loud and then back it up.”

On working with Triple H and Shawn Michaels: “Man, I’m so fortunate to have a good relationship with those guys from the get-go. I know Shawn was one who was pulling for me early on, who wanted to just get me in front of Triple H. And then Triple H, he kind of gave him the seal of approval on me when I worked with Kushida, and they gave me the trust to work with Adam Cole. And the whole stuff with the [NXT] Breakout Tournament, I think they saw like, ‘Okay, well we have something here.’

“Which like I said, I believed in myself and I think a lot of times when you believe in yourself and you express that, then they’re like, ‘All right, if he believes in himself then we’ll give him a shot. Hopefully we’re not wrong.’ And it’s been my goal to make sure I prove they were not wrong about running with me. But Shawn and I like day to day, he’s constantly just checking in as far as like, ‘Hey man, you need to do this better or don’t do this, just trust me on this.’”

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