Former WWE Superstar Santino Marella (real name Anthony Carelli) recently joined Busted Open Radio. During his appearance, Marella discussed his last run with IMPACT Wrestling.

Marella currently runs his own professional wrestling gym out of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada called “Battle Arts Academy.” IMPACT Wrestling has now become a Canadian-based company.

A working relationship between the pair developed, as Marella allowed IMPACT to use his gym to film some of their content. He has even become good friends with Impact Wrestling vice president Scott D’Amore:

"Impact Wrestling moved their head office to Toronto,” Carelli said. “I mean we’re here, right? It started off as Scott D’Amore has become a very good friend of mine and they need different venues.

“So I implemented a little OVW in Battle Arts where we have a little arena in the middle of the gym it transforms into an arena it holds 500 people pretty comfortably.

“Impact started using our venue to do one of their platforms there. They have the Global Wrestling Network and they have Twitch.”


Marella appeared on IMPACT Wrestling TV, however, he did not compete. Instead, he sent Battle Arts Academy’s Dustin Quicksilver to represent the school. Quicksilver was defeated by Austin Aries.

Now, Marella isn’t ruling out a future appearance with IMPACT but isn’t up for a long storyline:

“Somehow they got me on [the show]. I was talking to Scott [D’Amore], I really didn’t want to appear as a character anywhere, I’m just enjoying everything else.

“But you have to be determined to make a long answer short. I might do something, I don’t know. It might be here or there, I’m not going to be a regular, that’s for sure.”