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As Carmelo Hayes prepares for the biggest match of his current NXT run against Ilya Dragunov at Halloween Havoc, with a win taking him back to the top of the power rankings and a loss effectively icing him out of the NXT Championship picture, at least for now, another question has been fresh at the front of fans' minds around the professional wrestling world: Did the “A-Champ” attack his best friend Trick Williams in order to better his odds for a title shot at Halloween Havoc?
Now granted, Hayes has denied attacking Trick both online and in person, going so far as to dedicate his win to his friend with a new catchphrase, #JusticeForTrick, but still, the questions have persisted, so much so that “Him” had to address them once more on the Black Rasslin' Podcast in order to hopefully put the assumptions behind him in order to focus solely on the match at hand.
“I mean, I'm not tired of people asking. I'm tired of people assuming. Because you gotta understand, there's no evidence that I did that,” Carmelo Hayes said via Fightful. “I could understand if it was this or that, and it's like, ‘Oh, Melo did it.' But it's people kind of disrespecting my name a little a bit, disrespecting my character a little bit, assuming that I would do something like that without even, ‘Well, let's see the facts,' you know what mean? It really exposes people on how easily they switch. That's been my biggest revelation in this whole thing. I'm like, ‘D*mn, they really switch up on you so quick without even knowing.' So it kind of makes you realize, ‘Oh, y'all ain't really for me.' If y'all was really for me, y'all would be like, ‘No, you know Melo. Melo would never do that.' But instead, it's like everybody turning their back on me. So it really opened by eyes on a lot of the way people are.”
Is Hayes slowly learning the lesson Bron Breakker has been trying to impart for months now, that the fans of NXT and WWE as a whole will only love as long as you're on top and will turn on you the second that changes? Or is Hayes simply in a down period, with the love and affection of his fans bound to rebound in the not-too-distant future, like when it's revealed that Wes Lee attacked Trick Willie? Fans will have to keep tuning into NXT to find out.
Carmelo Hayes comments on his future with Trick Williams.
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Elsewhere in his appearance on the Black Rasslin' Podcast, Carmelo Hayes was asked about his relationship with Trick Williams and whether or not the duo will ever break up in order to pursue their own goals within the WWE Universe.
While Hayes acknowledges that there will be times when he and Williams have their own goals, in the end, they are Trick and Melo Gang through and through.
“No, we always talked about, ‘Yo, bro, you gotta go do your thing. I'm gonna do mine,' which played out on TV. It was never like a, ‘Hey, screw you.' It was never that,” Hayes said. “It didn't even need to be that. Why can't we both be successful? Why can't we both succeed? It was never a, ‘Let me get one on you, you get one.' It was never that. It is still that. That's why I don't understand why people, they were trying to turn us against each other before anything even happened. That's become a them thing, it's not a what it is thing. You're almost trying to manifest it into something that it's not. I understand, outside viewers, people don't know what's really going on inside. But me and Trick, we just both want to kill it. There's no animosity of, ‘I'm gonna get one on you, you get one on me.' No, it's like, why can't we both be successful? There's enough room for all of us to eat.”
In professional wrestling, there are all sorts of different dynamics for an act. There are traditional tag teams, manager-client relationships, and even just general friendships that can wax and wane depending on what a storyline demands. The relationship between Williams and Hayes doesn't necessarily fall into any one of these groups, as they don't really tag together, don't really manage each other, and yet remain committed to their friendship because they genuinely seem to enjoy each other's company. No matter what the future holds, WWE would be wise to keep the pairing together and keep their friendship as it is, even if it's a tag unusual when compared to what is typically presented on television.
