"The Princess Of Staten Island" found her own way.
In 2015 one of the more popular and entertaining tag teams in NXT at the time--Enzo and Big Cass were called up to WWE's main roster. The duo made their way onto the Monday Night RAW scene without Carmella who was a part of their act in NXT.
A few months after Enzo and Big Cass were called up the main roster Carmella was drafted to SmackDown Live as a singles wrestler as the last pick in the 2016 WWE Draft. Although she was drafted, Carmella still did not know where her career was headed because she was so accustom to being alongside her then-running mates.
“It was devastating I’m not gonna lie." Carmella said during an interview with Inside The Ropes. "I’ve said it before, I wasn’t sure what was gonna happen to my career. All I ever knew, like I said in NXT was being a manager for Cass and Enzo. All of my catchphrases and everything was related to them. So when I found out they were going up and I was staying, I was really upset but I knew it was because Hunter told me--because he saw something in me and, I was going to be on my own." She said. "So I just thought, ‘Ok, now I need to take this disappointment that I was feeling and channel it into getting to be the best I can be' and three months later, I got called up to SmackDown Live. Again, I did think there was a possibility I could join them on RAW and I thought that would be exciting--the whole group will be back together but that's not how it went and its all for a reason and then I had to kind of reinvent myself and change my character a little bit to the moon-walking, trash talking Princess Of Staten Island, and it all worked out so I’m really, really grateful for that.”
The current SmackDown Live Women's Champion Carmella is the last one standing in WWE from that NXT trio as Enzo was released this past January and Big Cass was released from his WWE contract last month.
If you are going to use the quote above, please credit Inside The Ropes with an H/T to Fightful for the transcription.
