Santino Marella on His Belief TNA’s Greatest Strength Over AEW and WWE Is Giving Talent Creative Freedom & His Praise of BirthRight Faction In WWE NXT

A recent episode of the We R Wrestling Podcast featured Santino Marella as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Marella’s thoughts about what separates TNA Wrestling from WWE and AEW and his belief that TNA’s greatest strength over the other two is giving their talent creative freedom.

“So TNA is not overproduced. We don’t have 15 writers or we don’t have 15 producers. We have more freedom. The individuals in the ring have a little more freedom, and when you have freedom, because you hear about back in the golden day of wrestling, they didn’t write their promos for them. They knew their characters. They came from other territories, and you’ll hear guys like Roddy Piper back in the day say, yeah, they didn’t write any promos for me, and that was the golden era. So there’s something, you know, I know today it’s different, right? You’re on television, you’re on a network. You have to- there has to be some quality control. You got to make sure that people aren’t saying things that are, you know, going to offend sponsors and stuff. So you do have to know what’s happening on television that basically every second, right? To protect yourself. But I think that’s one of the strengths in TNA is that we do have some more creative freedom at the individual level.”

Marella also gave his thoughts about his praise of the BirthRight faction (Lexis King, Charlie Dempsey, Uirah Connors, Channing “Stacks” Lorenzo, & Arianna Grace) in WWE’s NXT brand and how they have had to “outwork everybody” to silence nepotism critics.

“It’s interesting because it comes with some pressure too. You have to perform, but the pressure is interesting. It’s not just to live up to your parents expectations. You have to exceed the expectations that anybody puts on you because you don’t want anybody to be able to say to you that you’re only here because of your dad. So they have to generally outwork everybody and everyone in the faction works really hard to take away people’s ability to say that you’re only here because of your parents and they’re getting the spotlight. They’re getting a lot of time. It seems to be a featured storyline and they’re capitalizing on the opportunity. They’re doing really well.”

Marella also gave his thoughts about his daughter Arianna Grace’s time working in TNA and her TNA Knockouts World Championship reign as part of the working partnership between WWE and TNA.

“Yeah, she came over for a year and nine months and she became Knockouts World Champion and she just really got polished during that time. It’s good. Everyone in the faction is really good and I just hope they get an opportunity one day on Raw or Smackdown and they’re good wrestlers. They just get it. When you’ve grown up around it, there’s a level of just kind of getting it more than someone that came from an NCAA athletic background. There’s tremendous athletes, but when you’re second generation, third generation, look at some of them, Eddie Guerrero, Chavo Guerrero, the Usos, and these guys, they had rings in their backyard and they’re next level.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com, F4WOnline.com