Carmella Credits Byron Saxton for Her Character

SmackDown Live Superstar and former SmackDown Women’s Champion Carmella recently sat down with Sam Roberts while at the Performance Center. During the interview, Carmella explained how WWE announcer Byron Saxton helped her figure out her character. The Superstar also gave an insight into who she wants to work with in the company.
Carmella first explains who she feels helped her the most during her time in the Performance Center before making the jump to live TV back in 2016 when she was drafted alongside Alexa Bliss to the main roster on SmackDown Live.

“Everyone here. Of course, Sara Amato has been- was the best coach. She really helped me so much and allowed me to have my personality. I think she knew I used that to the best of my ability. She would be like ‘insert this here, do this here’ because you can go out there and do all the moves you want, but if you don’t have a connection with the audience and you don’t have that personality where people are like ‘argh, I hate her’ or ‘ohhh she’s cool’ then you’re not gonna get the reactions you want. Obviously, Dream was such an influence with our promos and for me, characters- most of Carmella. So that helped a lot. I always credit Byron Saxton. He helped me- as much as he hates me now on TV, he helped me so much in coming up with the Carmella character-the little mannerisms, and it brought it to life.”

On Saxton specifically, Carmella goes into detail about how he helped her throughout her time there.

“I always credit him, because he helped me so much. I came to him and I was like- ‘I have this idea for Carmella, she’s like this mafia, mob-wife princess’ and he was like- and we were talking and just going over our promo for promo class and we were sitting in his office and he’s like ‘Carmella?’ and I was like ‘yeah?’ and he’s like ‘maybe you should do a promo on Paige’ ’cause she was the NXT Women’s Champion at the time. I was like ‘that’s a great idea’ and he’s like ‘Paige, what is that? Like a book or something? Paige?’ and I was like ‘Woah! This is Carmella!’ It just snowballed from there; he’s amazing!”

The NXT TakeOver shows always draw a huge reaction from the fans. Roberts asked the former Champion whether she ever knew how big those shows would get.

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s so crazy to look back at that time in NXT, and how it got to where it was. Everyone here was putting in the work and on the grind all the time. When you’re there and you’re seeing and feeling these moments- I’ll never forget when we were at TakeOver London. It was kind of the same thing. Everyone was backstage, and everyone was like ‘woah! We did this!’ It was- it wasn’t one person in particular, it was everyone’s efforts and everyone coming together to like- follow their dreams; to turn it into what it was. It was super magical, and everyone was just like…’this is nuts!'”

Finally, Carmella lists the one opponent in WWE she really wants to work with.

“Oh, well I would love to work with Sasha. I think that would be really cool. I think we both have big personalities, and we never really got to have an opportunity [to do that] in NXT, so I think that would be really cool.”

If you’re interested, Carmella had further comments to make about Becky Lynch, losing her Championship and teaming with R-Truth. You can read more about that here.
Does a proverbial match between Carmella and Sasha Banks interest you? Do you give Saxton credit for what he does? Let us know your thoughts, opinions, and reactions in those comments below.
(Please credit Ringside News for the transcriptions.)