The former North American Champion chats MVP and Trick Williams.
Since NXT’s reboot into NXT 2.0, Carmelo Hayes has been consistently featured on the weekly program and he’s a former North American Champion on top of being the last NXT Cruiserweight Champion as of this writing. On June 4th, Hayes will be challenging Cameron Grimes for the North American Title at ‘In Your House’.
Carmelo was welcomed onto The Black Announce Table podcast and discussed his friendship with Raw’s MVP. It began when Hayes approached him to get his thoughts on an idea and that led to further conversations. Hayes added that when MVP was at the Performance Center training, he requested to work with Hayes.
That’s my dawg. Man, MVP, I’m so grateful to have him in my corner. He’s one of the — he’s like an O.G. that will give you the realness of it, because he’s not — he’s not gonna get anything out of me in that way, so he’s like, ‘Hey man, don’t do this, don’t do that. Do this, do that,’ like one of the — like a father figure for real. Actually, more even like a cool uncle, you know what I mean? If Shawn [Michaels] is like the father figure, MVP is like the cool uncle who’s like, ‘Hey man, I’m gonna give it to you for real’ but, yeah, I shot my shot with that [training with MVP in the ring]. He showed up one time at the P.C., I said, ‘Hey man, can I talk to you?’ And I pitched him an idea I had and he was like, he liked it. He was digging it and stuff and from that point, I was like, yo, let me take down your number and now, we cool and he requested to train with me to help him get back ready to get back in the ring and me and him, we got in the ring, working for a couple weeks and now, he’s like a mentor to me for real.
Hayes’ on-screen partner is Trick Williams. He detailed how their partnership came to be and credited Brian ‘Road Dogg’ James for coming up with the idea to pair them together.
Carmelo would stress to Trick that they are not a comedy act because it can be easy to fall into that category. Williams and Hayes later agreed on the dynamic of letting Williams lean more into the entertainment and Hayes weaving in and out of seriousness and entertainment.
He [Trick Williams] was here. They were trying to figure out a way to get him on TV and I had just won the [NXT] Breakout tournament and we were just getting ready to rebrand. They were trying to get a bunch of these 2.0 — I don’t wanna say ‘2.0 guys’ but, you know, all the guys that you saw introduced within that first couple weeks on TV. So Road Dogg, that was Road Dogg, he was like, ‘Hey, let’s put him with Melo’ and we didn’t know what we were really gonna do but I told Trick, I’m like, ‘We not funny.’ I’m like, ‘We’re not a comedy act,’ because I didn’t wanna be a comedy act bro [Hayes laughed]. I didn’t wanna be funny guys. It’s so easy to fall into that, you know what I mean? It’s so easy and I wanted to be entertaining but I didn’t want to be — I wanted to be fun, I didn’t want to be funny if that makes sense. That’s an Undertaker quote, ‘You wanna be fun. You don’t wanna be funny.’ But we worked it out and we figured out our dynamic quick, you know what I mean? We were like, all right, yeah, you be funny, I’ll be kind of straight up but then we’ll have fun together and that’s our formula.
In addition to Hayes versus Grimes for the North American Title, here’s the remainder of the In Your House match card:
- NXT North American Championship: Cameron Grimes (c) vs. Carmelo Hayes (w/ Trick Williams)
- NXT Tag Team Championships: Pretty Deadly (Elliot Prince & Kit Wilson) (c) vs. The Creed Brothers (Julius & Brutus Creed)
- NXT Championship: Bron Breakker (c) vs. Joe Gacy (If Breakker gets disqualified, he’ll lose the NXT Championship)
- NXT Women’s Tag Team Championships: Toxic Attraction (Gigi Dolin & Jacy Jayne) (c) vs. Kayden Carter & Katana Chance
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit The Black Announce Table with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
