Carmelo Hayes channeled John Cena during one of his first NXT appearances, stepping to Adam Cole and showing Ruthless Aggression.
In his nearly two years on television, Hayes has continued to show a brash attitude similar to the Thuganomics John Cena or a 90s Shawn Michaels.
Speaking to Cameron Hawkins for The Ringer, Hayes discussed working with Michaels in NXT and the similarities between the two.
“You’d be surprised how often [Shawn] pulls me back,” Melo said. “And there’s times where I have to be like, ‘Hey, don’t forget who you were.’ But he reminds me, like, ‘Hey, don’t do as I did. Do as I say.’ And he reminds me [that it] was a different point in his life. And if he could go back, I’m sure he probably would change a lot of those things.”
Michaels has been open about his addictions and attitude during his first WWE run in the 90s before he was forced into retirement in 1998.
One of Michaels' most famous moments in WWE came when he threw Marty Jannetty through the barbershop window. Splitting from Jannetty eventually led Michaels to being paired with Diesel (Kevin Nash).
Trick Williams acts as Hayes' Diesel and the two have filmed segments where they talk shop in the barbershop.
“It’s like a cheat code. I got it on my own. But it’s like somebody that just makes you so much better, you know what I mean? He complements me so well. I complement him so well. And there’s so many different things that we can do as a duo in one match. There’s so many different backstage segments, promos; it’s endless with Trick and I, we’re just so creative individually. Then we put it together, and we just make what we do every week on TV. [Shawn] told us, ‘Hey, we need to get you guys doing something, but maybe we’ll throw you guys in a barber shop or something like that.’ OK, no problem. We get a couple of people, and we really just riff, man. We just sit in the barber chair and we just talk how we would talk. And obviously we still got to pull back on a lot of things that we would say we would do, but yeah, man. So smooth, man," said Hayes.
Hayes will compete in the match Michaels helped make famous at NXT Halloween Havoc as he tries to regain the NXT North American Championship in a ladder match.
Fans can check out the current lineup for NXT Halloween Havoc by clicking here.
