Carmelo Hayes intends to take it all.
In the 2024 WWE Drat, SmackDown selected former NXT Champion Carmelo Hayes. As soon as he was drafted, he confronted Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes and challenged him to a match. Rhodes scored the win, but Hayes delivered an impressive performance.
Speaking on WWE's The Bump, Carmelo Hayes was asked to reflect on getting drafted and facing Cody Rhodes.
“I’m feeling like I see what I could have did to beat Cody Rhodes after I watched the match back. There’s a couple of slip-ups that we could have fixed up, and I might have had him when I had him in that Crossrhodes. Then he tried to catch me with the Cody Cutter in mid-air, but he was just too slow, and I’m too fast. But all of that removed, I feel like I’m just so ready to put the rest of the SmackDown roster on notice. I’m so much hungrier than a lot of these guys. A lot of these guys have been up there for so long, they’ve been getting paid for so long they’re comfortable. The one thing you can’t be around Carmelo Hayes is comfortable or complacent because I’m coming for it all, like I did in NXT. I took everything, and I plan to do the same thing on SmackDown," Hayes said.
“One of the things I’ve always been about, closed mouths don’t get fed on this boulevard. I don’t sit around and wait for opportunities to come to me, I never have. If you look as far back as my NXT career, I stepped to the man at that time in my second match. My first match was a Cruiserweight Championship match. I don’t sit around and wait for opportunities. I go out and I take them. That’s part of my motto with shooting my shot. It takes shots to make shots. To go at Cody Rhodes, it was shot I was willing to miss if I had to miss it, but one thing that everybody on SmackDown’s gonna learn and needs to realize is that I’m second to none. I’m the one, man. I’m one of one, and I am him," Hayes said.
Click here to see what Carmelo Hayes had to say about coming to WWE SmackDown after his match against Rhodes.
Check out Shawn Michaels' comments about Carmelo Hayes here.
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