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It’s Halloween week and while the vast majority are preparing their costumes and candy for the most horrific night of the year, WWE NXT’s Carmelo Hayes is in the midst of a different kind of preparation.
The 29-year old is seeking to solidify his footing back at the top of the WWE NXT brand, set to face current title holder Ilja Dragonuv on AllHallows Eve when for the first time in the history of the event, Halloween Havoc will actually air on the night it was named for way back in 1989.
For Carmelo Hayes, who signed with WWE back in 2021, he has leveled up from his days performing as Christian Casanova in the New England independent scene. Indeed, he’s ascended from talent to lynchpin for the NXT brand, someone who’s fought and battled his way from prospect to centerpiece of the Tuesday night USA Network series.
Hayes is confident he’s earned his place in the WWE NXT time capsule and surely, the odds are he’ll be heading to WWE’s main roster at some point in the near future, but even with all that he’s earned and with so much more to come on the horizon, he remains intensely focused on the job at hand tomorrow evening, seeking to return to the top of the NXT pyramid.
In Hayes’ eyes, he has more to lose with tomorrow’s Halloween Havoc main event than he did when he actually lost the NXT Championship to Dragonuv in their excellent No Mercy bout several months back.
“If you watched the first few matches with Ilja and I, you know you're going to see something very physical,” Hayes explained to PWInsider.com last week. “I have more to lose in this mess than ever. How can I be Him if I'm not NXT Champion? So, my motivation is so much stronger than it's ever been. And I need to, you know, I need to solidify myself as Him and I need to win back the NXT Championship, otherwise what is my purpose?”
Hayes is no stranger to carrying the NXT Championship. His initial 182-day championship run was an effort in proving Hayes could handle that challenge and ascend upwards as a star attraction for the brand. For Hayes, that first title win was the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle of finding himself as a performer under the WWE umbrella.
“In the lead up to winning that title, it was kind of like it was the last milestone that I need to accomplish,” Hayes explained. “Winning that NXT Title. Once I won that title, it was okay being the successful defender of the title. Take no prisoners and beat everybody. At that point, there was really nobody to beat, then [Ilja] Dragunov came along. It became ‘Oh, man, I got my hands full.’ When people come at you and you're defending the title, they come at you at their very best. When you're defending the title multiple times, you might not be at your very best, but everybody's always at their best when they're trying to win titles. So that was something that I learned [during the title run.] I had to turn it up on my end, because I knew Dragunov was going to come at me at 100%, even if I wasn't 100%. Most importantly, if I'm gonna call myself Him, and I'm going to be the man, then you're going to have to show for it and it's having that NXT Title.”
While Dragonuv vs. Hayes in their latest meeting will headline Halloween Havoc’s second and final week tomorrow on the USA Network, Hayes has evolved into a major piece of the WWE NXT engine, propelling the brand forward. In doing so, he finds himself as part of the central group of talents currently driving the rebound of WWE NXT television audiences and interest.
Of course, in recent months, WWE’s strategy to cross-pollinate NXT with Hall of Famers and top Raw and Smackdown players has been a major boost as well, including the ultra-competitive night several weeks ago NXT went head to head with All Elite Wrestling for the first time in years, with a loaded NXT broadcast coming out on top in terms of the overnight viewing audience.
Still, even with John Cena, The Undertaker and Paul Heyman all involved in his main event match that night, Hayes didn’t feel any pressure above and beyond the usual NXT live broadcast.
“Believe it or not, it felt very loose,” Hayes reflected. “It felt like a special show. Obviously there was pressure, but we're getting to experience this with John Cena and The Undertaker and Paul Heyman and Cody and LA Knight, Asuka. We had so many big names there that night that it was like, OK this is going to be fun. We were going to enjoy this. It wasn't like, ‘Oh my God, this is work.’ It was like, no, this has never happened, so let's just enjoy this moment and let's have fun. Taker and John and all those guys were super excited to be there and everybody had great attitudes all night and we're kind of looking around like this is so cool. It just really was like a great night for everybody top to bottom. It was a spectacle.”
In reflecting on lessons learned that evening that he’d pass on to younger members of the NXT roster, Hayes commented, “More than anything, it would be to just handle [a night like that] like a pro. It's not just another day at work, but it is just another day at work [with] just bigger names around you. Don’t allow that to eclipse the truth of what we were trying to accomplish, which was to come out and get a lot of people to tune in. That's pretty much the main goal. [That night] wasn't about me, it was about us, WWE NXT as a whole. I wanted to really represent the show.”
As WWE works towards a new media rights deal for Monday Night Raw and WWE NXT, it is obvious the long-term strategy here is for NXT to grow up and stand on its own as a distinct, unique television brand that is far more alluring than just being “the developmental brand.” While WWE works towards getting what will likely be the greatest rights fees for the NXT brand to date, Hayes remains undaunted and unfazed in regard to that pressure trickling down to the NXT talents themselves, Hayes included.
“I don't want to even say it's pressure because essentially, we're just doing what we've been doing,” Hayes explained. “Every week we go into [television], [we] try to do the best job that we possibly can to help the show. From being in the tail end of The Black and Gold era all throughout the 2.0 era into this new, current era, I've seen everything up and down, up and down, up and down. So, it's super rewarding to kind of feel and see the ratings and everything jump. Having all these talents from the main roster come down to work with us ... .but so far as that goes with the [TV] deal, I'm not too sure on how that works. We're not even focused on that, believe it or not. Talent, we're just focused on just killing it. It’s above our pay grade, people handle that but as far as what we can do is we can bring the best product every week.”
In terms of bringing the best product that he can conceptualize and then perform to manifest it physically in the ring, Hayes has a reputation for being extremely driven as a performer, never wanting to just be another competitor on the NXT roster, but someone who brought something of merit to everything offered to him.
In explaining how he looked upon a talent’s position in the company and trying to balance their individual goals against what WWE NXT may need from them, Hayes noted, “I actually had a conversation with somebody recently about this, a younger guy, and it's not so much what can you do for me, it's what I can do for you. I think a lot of people are kind of like, ‘Give me this opportunity - I need it’
Explaining further, Hayes explained, “It's like, we all need it, but as opposed to like where it's like, ‘Hey look, I think I can add a lot of value to this tournament.’ That was pretty much the conversation I had with Shawn Michaels. I was like, ‘I think I can add value to your title scene in NXT, maybe not overnight, but eventually I can’ and I think that that's sort of like a confidence thing that you have to have. Now, I don't recommend it for everybody because you have to back it up. The hardest part is backing it up. The easiest part is going and talking about it, but I think you know, I get that advice. It's not so much what you can do for me, it's what I can add into your show because I got really good advice early on. I heard, ‘you're an actor and you know, it's not all about you, it's about the movie and they can replace you, anybody else can play you for the most part.’ So, once I learned that I was like, okay, how can I play my role best and how can I add to this? How can my role make this movie better? Once you learn that and you kind of tap into that, you're kind of on the right path. So, I just try to tell that to younger guys.”
As Hayes has evolved into a locker room leader providing advice and context for the newer generations of talent that have followed him into the WWE Performance Center environment, he hasn’t lost track of the knowledge he himself can tap into when names like The Undertaker, Becky Lynch and John Cena pass through Orlando.
“It's great,” Hayes notes, his excitement clearly coming through. “It comes down to that point where you're like, ‘I have to be a pro’ and then you know you want to be a fan and you realize you put that fan aside and understand that on this night you're talking to your peers. You're talking to guys who you know…you're not on the same level by any means, but like you're talking to guys that work next to you now. You're not watching them at home on TV, so it becomes like a lot of….they have so much knowledge. I think the biggest thing that I realized when talking to these guys is certain things I'll never understand until I've experienced what they've experienced. It's easy for them to talk about certain things like this, like that, and you're kind of realizing like, ‘Okay, I know what's going to come into play down the road. Let me hold on to that.’ One day I'm going to be able to kind of utilize that, but right now it's probably not the best time so that's the biggest thing I got from talking to these legends and Hall of Famers.”
With the pressure on to have a great main event at Halloween Havoc, Hayes notes the legacy of the event, astutely bringing up Eddie Guerrero vs. Rey Mysterio from WCW Halloween Havoc 1997 before pointing out he doesn’t want to take from the past. He wants to create and add to NXT’s own legacy this week.
“We're trying to establish our own [legacy],” Hayes states. “So, it's not like we're not trying to take from the past, you know? We're trying to create our own history. So, there's a lot of things that we're doing now to make sure that people look at NXT now and say, ‘that happened in NXT as opposed to like, you know, people thinking WCW.’”
Of course, while Hayes can’t look past Halloween Havoc, it’s impossible to deny that NXT Deadline is heading to Bridgeport, CT in December, a night that will place Hayes back in the New England area where he first broke in as a professional wrestler.
Hayes admits he's “Very excited” for the event, explaining, “I cut my teeth in that area and there's a lot of people out there that enjoyed seeing me before I got to WWE. I'm hoping that they come out for that show, and get to see me one more time, with NXT at least…”
With that comment trailing off, one has to wonder if Hayes isn’t just looking forward to Halloween Havoc or NXT Deadline, but a potential future on the WWE main roster, and if so, how does Hayes feel about everything he’s built for himself over the last few years since signing a WWE NXT deal?
“I feel very satisfied with everything I've done in NXT,” Hayes admits. “I feel like I've helped build the brand back up. I feel like I've been a cornerstone to the success of NXT 2.0. I feel very satisfied. I feel like I've accomplished everything there is to accomplish there. You know my relationships that I've built there, everything that you know, I'm willing to give back if I need to get back in. The next step for me is whenever they're ready to let me go, I'm ready to take that next step.”
Chief among those relationships on camera in NXT has been Trick Williams, who was laid out just before the match Hayes won to earn tomorrow’s NXT Championship bout against Ilja Dragonuv. When Williams is brought up alongside the interview on last week’s NXT TV broadcast that saw Hayes embroiled as a suspect in the attack, Hayes slides right back into promotional mode.
“I mean, it's just crazy that there's no evidence and people want to point fingers,” Hayes says, providing exposition to a potential future involvement between the two. “That's really the craziest thing to me. I could see if there was a little bit of evidence, and I was looking a little guilty. I mean, he wanted the NXT Championship, you know, I want the NXT Championship, but I think it's a crazy accusation to say that I would attack him to get the NXT Championship, you know what I mean? There's other ways to go around that. A simple conversation probably would have worked. To attack him is a crazy accusation….”
Trick Williams or main WWE roster in his future or not, Carmelo Hayes steps back onto NXT programming tomorrow, all eyes on him as he steps into his championship rematch with Ilja Dragonuv. Noting that he’s very focused, Hayes is looking at perhaps his second NXT Championship run, an honor bestowed upon only six of the twenty-two men who have held the title since it was first instituted in July 2012.
“Not having that title and trying to call myself Him doesn't feel right,” Hayes admits. “So you know, if I'm gonna continue to call myself him then I need to win back that NXT Title Tuesday against Ilja Dragunov.”
In a world where real life and art mix to the point that sometimes even the performers can’t split them apart again, one thing is for sure - and it’s that Hayes has been laser-focused on training and preparing for this rematch, seeking to elevate beyond their classic at the NXT No Mercy 2023 PPV in Bakersfield, CA.
Just a little over two years and eight months into his WWE tenure, Hayes once again strives towards excellence when he steps in the ring at Halloween Havoc against Ilja Dragonuv. Win or lose, an excellent showing means Carmelo Hayes continues his upwards trajectory to the WWE main roster, Wrestlemania and everything else that comes with it.
Before those magical moments can become reality, however, Hayes must complete his NXT journey, including one more milestone performance, main eventing Halloween Havoc on the USA Network. The drive for perfection continues on, once more.
Mike Johnson can be reached at MikeJohnsonPWInsider@gmail.com.
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