The former WWE Intercontinental Champion has big hopes for his daughter.
For over a year, Arianna Grace, daughter of Santino Marella, has been with WWE. She’s part of NXT and has been sidelined since the fall of 2022. She underwent ACL surgery and this past April, she underwent a second procedure.
Marella spoke about Arianna during his appearance on Refin’ It Up. He hopes she is called up to WWE’s main roster in 2024. Marella stated that her injury occurred because she was put in the ring with less experienced talents and something went left. He went on to add that their goal is for her to become a female Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson.
I can’t wait to go to WrestleMania with my daughter in a match and it’s gonna be so much more fun than going to WrestleMania to participate. Just to go as a dad, you know?… I’m hoping she’s called up some time next year. She’s gonna do well. I’m pretty sure that my lens is objective. It’s not just because she’s my daughter. She’s good, she’s very good and she was really growing in popularity very fast before her knee injury and the reason she got the knee injury is because she knows how to work with people that are green because she knows how to guide them and tell a story and they put her with some rookie athletes and they did something and blew her knee out but, yeah, and I’m not talking about just being there. I’m talking about top-five girls, breaking off into movies later. Our goal is that she’s a female Rock. We’re not just looking to participate. She has the potential to be a female Rock.
Santino is with IMPACT Wrestling and is in a authority role on-screen. He competed for the company on the 7/20 episode of IMPACT on AXS against Dirty Dango. Marella said he was blown up during the bout.
So, I had a singles match with (Dirty) Dango but holy crap did I blow up. Apparently, you couldn’t tell but I was f*cking drowning out there. It was bad (he laughed).
IMPACT is taping its 1,000th episode this weekend on 9/9 and the day prior, they’ll be running their Victory Road special.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Refin’ It Up with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
