Santino Marella appeared on this week’s “Stories with Brisco and Bradshaw.”
During it, the former WWE star reflected on an incident with Jim Cornette while he was training in OVW where Cornette, who was the booker there at the time, slapped him because he didn’t act afraid of The Boogeyman when he was supposed to do so during a segment at an event.
“I was there for a month and it was summertime. So my daughter came to visit, and I just graduated to the intermediate class,” Santino began. “The intermediate class would go to the TV tapings, and they would fill in the audience and motivate the audience to cheer and boo at the right time. It’s my first day. I showed up with my daughter and our class kind of sits over there.”
“So I’m sitting there with my daughter. She’s in front of me and the Boogeyman comes out. He kind of looks towards my daughter. She’s 10. So she’s terrified and I’m just getting a kick out of it because she’s like, totally into it. She’s just mesmerized. She’s freaking out. So I got this big smirk on my face sitting behind her like, this is awesome. She’s gonna remember this forever,” he continued.
“The smirk on my face made him (Jim Cornette) snap. He thought I was no selling. I was trying to explain to him like, ‘This is my first day, man. I’m just in the audience with my family. Like really, it’s my first time here.’ He called me backstage and he slapped me and stuff, and then, you know, it got out. Yeah, it was a bit mean.”