WWE Superstar Santino Marella Retires Due To Neck Injury

WWE.comDuring Sunday afternoon's WWE live event in Toronto, long time WWE Superstar Santino Marella announced that he was retiring due to a serious neck injury. It's his third major neck injury. No word on if he will require surgery soon, but it's bad enough that he is not going to wrestle anymore. Santino, real name Anthony Carelli, is 35 years old. Santino was signed by WWE in 2005 and he was in OVW. There was a famous moment while there when he didn't act scared of the Boogeyman, so booker Jim Cornette slapped him in front of other wrestlers and it ended up leading to Cornette being fired by WWE. When Paul Heyman took over in OVW, he named him Boris Aleiev although that didn't carry over when he was on the main roster. His WWE debut was on the April 16, 2007 edition of Raw in Italy when he won the Intercontinental Title from Umaga thanks to Bobby Lashley's help. It was a memorable debut angle that put him over as just some fan who won by fluke. As the years went on, he had storylines with divas Maria and Beth Phoenix. With Maria, he got jealous because she was in Playboy. With Phoenix, it was more of a comedy thing where she was the tougher one in the team. Then he started doing the Santina Marella gimmick, which was absolutely awful. In 2010 he became part of an odd couple tag team with Kozlov. Neither guy was really succeeding in singles, so it made sense to pair them up. They actually went on to become Tag Team Champions too. A particularly great Santino/Kozlov bit was done with Sheamus during a "Tea Time" segment in England. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_UDgp4Xtxw His most recent role saw him portray the awkward love interest of Emma. The two of them are so awkward that nothing ever really happened between them. It seemed like it was building to that, but now it's over. It was not a great angle by any means. He was a comedic character for most of his seven year run on the main roster. He had the silly accent, he did the trombone celebration and of course the Cobra strike as a finisher that involved bringing out a green sleeve to strike his opponent. It was silly and often times stupid to watch, but there were many instances where he found ways to make it entertaining. In July 2013, Santino opened the Battle Arts Academy gym in the Toronto area. At the time, he was given several months off by WWE so he could work on it with his partners. Now that his in-ring career is over, he can concentrate more on his business. He was born in the Toronto area and has lived there for many years. He noted in his goodbye speech that they always billed him from Italy, but he was really a Canadian. While he was not a main event level performer, it's still really sad to know that he had to retire at the young age of 35. Hopefully he can treat his neck injury and not deal with that kind of severe pain for the rest of his life. It's just another example of how difficult the wrestling business is. You just never know when your career might be over. At this time it's not known if he'll say goodbye on TV possibly on Raw in Montreal or at a future date. He could stick around in WWE in a non-wrestling role although that's not known at this time. His in-ring days are over, though. You can follow him on Twitter @milanmiracle for more info or to send him a message. On behalf of everybody here at WhatCulture.com, thank you to Santino for providing us with so many memorable moments.