Carmelo Hayes spoke about this topic during his recent appearance on Out of Character with Ryan Satin including his WWE NXT career. Here are the highlights:
How much of his real self is in his wrestling persona:
“It mostly is me. It’s one of those things that as I’m progressing, I’m just kind of figuring I’ll take things from my real personality and put it into I guess, my character, Carmelo Hayes. But, I don’t really do a gimmick. I’m not a gimmick guy. It’s just my personality. I don’t talk how I talk on TV in real life, but if I could, I would talk like Carmelo Hayes, but I don’t. So that’s more or less the reality of what I do and who I am. I believe in myself like I do on TV in real life but I just don’t talk like that.”
Why he is not on social media often:
“There was a point where I tried to be, before I even got to WWE, where I tried to be a little bit more personal, but then after that, I just decided that there’s really no reason to open up too much as far as me personally and stuff. It’s almost like if you know me, you know me, and I want you to know me for what I’m doing on TV and things like that. But people have asked and people want to know. I thought about it. I just really don’t care. Here’s another thing. If I wasn’t doing this, I probably wouldn’t have social media. I don’t feel the need for validation. I don’t feel the need for any of that. I just want to work hard and do what I do. I’m passionate about what I do. I’m very passionate about what I do and this comes before anything, honestly. So, I mean, as far as personal life stuff goes, I mean, I really have no care to even, you know, just start posting like, ‘Hey, I’m at the beach. Hey, I’m doing this. I’m doing that.’ But I’m normal, man. I just do all that regular stuff. I just don’t talk about it and post about it.”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription