Santino Marella appeared on this week’s “Stories with Brisco and Bradshaw.”
During it, the former WWE star shared how he came up with The Cobra idea:
‘Well, I was drinking at a bar and some guy showed me this thing where he would just transform his arm into this little snake puppet thing,” Marella revealed.
“I didn’t even get it at the time. I looked at my buddy and said, ‘I don’t get it. What is that?’ He said, ‘It’s just a funny thing he does.’ Then the next time I saw him, he asked me ‘Do you remember how to do it?’”
“Then like, fast forward five years, I’m at a house show in Atlanta, and I think I was wrestling Chavo or Carlito. I said, ‘I’m going to try something in my comeback. So I’m going to do like, you know, jab, jab, jab, this arm transformation thing, hit you with it, turn away, and I’ll do a schoolboy. It’s funny. I used to call it the school boy from hell, actually. So I did it at a live event. I told Cena, ‘Hey, watch this. I’m gonna try something, and I did the Cobra. The audience laughed.’”
“I came back and he goes, ‘I would keep that if I were you. That was funny as hell,’ and so I just did it on the live events. It was always Cobra into the schoolboy from hell.”
“Then one day, Regal bumped off the cover, so that was the first time it kind of became like a finishing maneuver, but it was only on live events.”
“Then one day, I was at RAW. Ricky (Steamboat) was the producer. I was wrestling Zack Ryder, and he said, ‘You’re going over with the Cobra. Vince wants to see the Cobra. He’s been reading the reports and he wants to see the Cobra.’ Okay. I did the Cobra, and in three weeks, it took three weeks of doing it on television, before I would gesture for it. I remember almost being blown away, like in shock that I would see in the corner, in my peripheral vision, the audience jumping out of their seats. They were screaming for The Cobra. I did it for about a year without the sock. Then, you know, we developed some merchandise for it.”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription