Carmelo Hayes Makes Bold Claim After Match With Cody Rhodes
Carmelo Hayes is reflecting on his WWE SmackDown main event match with Cody Rhodes while stating that he’s “hungrier” than his peers.
During the first part of the WWE Draft on Smackdown in Cincinnati, Carmelo Hayes was announced as a first-round draft pick after the blue brand took Bianca Belair and Raw took Jey Uso. What was unique about the announcement is that the Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes was the man who read the pick for Smackdown.
For Hayes, it was his official call up to the WWE main roster after two and a half years in NXT that saw him win the NXT Championship along with two reigns as the NXT North American Champions. During Melo’s NXT run, he started out as a cocky heel, then he became a beloved babyface that ended the long NXT Title reign of Bron Breakker and ended his NXT after turning on his best friend Trick Williams.
After getting drafted to Smackdown, Hayes challenged Cody Rhodes to a match that main evented the show. Cody picked up the win, but Hayes was impressive in defeat.
While speaking on WWE’s The Bump, the confident Carmelo Hayes claimed that he was hungrier than a lot of the other wrestlers in WWE.
“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.”
Carmelo Hayes Doesn’t Wait For Opportunities
As he continued, Hayes made it clear that he was not about to sit back and wait to be given anything on the Smackdown brand.
“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 a 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.”
The WWE Smackdown brand heads to Lyon, France this Friday just one night ahead of WWE Backlash on Saturday, May 4th, which is also in Lyon, France. Cody Rhodes will be defending the Undisputed WWE Championship at that show against former WWE Champion AJ Styles.