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Carmella

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Carmella
Statistics
Ring Names Carmella
Height 5 ft 5 in (1.65 m)
Weight 110 lb (50 kg)
Born October 23, 1987 (37)
Spencer, Massachusetts
Died
Resides Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Billed Staten Island, New York
Trained by Sara Amato
WWE Performance Center
Debut June 6, 2014
Retired February 21, 2025

Leah Van Dale is an American professional wrestler, dancer and model. She is best known for her tenure in WWE, where she performed under the ring name Carmella. She is a former WWE SmackDown Women's Champion, WWE Women's Tag Team Champion and WWE 24/7 Champion.

Biography[]

By reading her background on paper, you’d be forgiven if you assumed that Carmella was never going to make it in WWE. A former Laker girl who found her first success as the third wheel of a boys’ club with two of NXT’s most popular stars, the so-called “Princess of Staten Island” seemed destined for a steady, if unremarkable, career when she was chosen as the very last pick of the 2016 WWE Draft to fill out SmackDown LIVE’s Women’s Division.

How wrong those assumptions would have been. In just a couple of short years, Carmella’s résumé expanded at lightning speeds. She won the first-ever Women’s Money in the Bank Match (and the second), defeated no less a talent than Charlotte Flair to win the SmackDown Women’s Championship, and won the second-ever WrestleMania Women’s Battle Royal. Her competitiveness is matched only by her creativity, which exploded in the freewheeling sideshow of the WWE Mixed Match Challenge, where she joined forces with R-Truth to originate an endearing seven-second dance break en route to winning the competition.

Despite her incredible achievements, Mella ruthlessly reemerged on SmackDown with an "untouchable" persona, making it clear that her best days still lay ahead. If that wasn't enough, the stunning Mella soon became the self-professed "Most Beautiful Women in All of WWE" and took her talents to Raw as a result of the 2021 WWE Draft.

Her beginnings are as humble as it gets, but Carmella has a career that is a testament to hard work, perseverance and making the most of any opportunity that comes your way, whether it’s as a hairdresser or a moonwalkin’, trash-talkin’ girl from the 718. She proved them all wrong, and fabulously so.

- WWE.com

Other media[]

Carmella made her video game debut as a playable character in WWE 2K17 and appeared in WWE 2K18, WWE 2K19, WWE 2K20, WWE 2K22 , WWE 2K23 and WWE 2K24.

Carmella joined Total Divas as a main cast member for the show's seventh season in June 2017. Despite being a guest in the eighth season, Carmella returned to the show as a series regular in the ninth season, which premiered in October 2019. The season featured Carmella's real-life relationship with Matthew Polinsky (better known as WWE commentator Corey Graves).

In 2019, Van Dale appeared on Ron Killings' 2019 single "Run It".

On June 11, 2020, Van Dale and Polinsky launched a weekly podcast called Bare With Us, where the two discuss different issues regarding relationships including issues within their own. It is Van Dale's first podcast as a host and Polinsky's second (along with WWE After the Bell, which he hosts as Corey Graves).

Personal life[]

Van Dale was in a relationship with fellow wrestler William Morrissey, better known as Big Cass in WWE.

In 2019, she began a relationship with fellow WWE employee Matthew Polinsky, better known as Corey Graves. The two got married on April 7, 2022. On October 31, 2022, she revealed on her Instagram account that she had an ectopic pregnancy, which resulted in a miscarriage. On May 1, 2023, the couple announced they were expecting their first child. Van Dale gave birth to a son on November 8, 2023.

Van Dale is a certified fitness instructor and a personal trainer. She is a lifelong fan of professional wrestling, and idolized Miss Elizabeth as a child.

On February 3, 2020, Van Dale launched her own wine label called Capo Cagna.

Championships and accomplishments[]

Notes[]

  • a.^ Carmella won the Money in the Bank ladder match for the first time at Money in the Bank, but due to the controversial finish at the event she was stripped of the briefcase two days later. A rematch took place on the June 27 episode of SmackDown Live, where Carmella won, officially becoming the inaugural winner of the women's Money in the Bank ladder match. However, WWE recognizes Carmella as a two-time Money in the Bank winner.

Social Media[]

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