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Charly Caruso is the latest interviewer to leave WWE. Her departure came just a few months after Renee Young's exit.
Although reports suggested that her departure was due to backstage heat with top WWE management, Caruso denied the rumors, insisting she left on good terms with the company.
Caruso revealed to Scott Fishman of TVInsider.com the real reason behind her exit from WWE:
“There is always going to be chatter. The contract was coming up. Instead of renewing, I’m moving on. Everyone is going to have their own opinions regardless. I never had any issues while I was at WWE. Nothing bad happened. As far as I’m concerned, I’m leaving on a positive note and beginning what I believe to be the next step in my career.”
The former WWE interviewer will now work full-time on ESPN where she has worked part-time on First Take and SportsCenter.
Caruso will appear on ESPN+’s morning show, SportsNation, among other digital series.
Despite spending nearly five years in WWE, many fans might not know much about Caruso's life outside of the company.
Here are five things you did not know about Charly Caruso.
#5. Charly Caruso had a tough childhood
Charly Caruso's father was a newspaper reporter, while her mother was a speech pathologist. She was their only child.
Caruso opened up about growing up as an only child during her interview on Chasing Glory with Lilian Garcia:
"I was an only child which I think taught me some valuable lessons in many different areas. I can’t really say the areas that it was a disadvantage because I don’t know but as far as being an advantage I’m definitely ok with being by myself which I think, you know, being on the road all the time you just spend a long time by yourself. That’s, you know, taught me big lessons."
Caruso stated that growing up as an only child helped her adjust to the WWE's always-on-the-road lifestyle:
"A lot of people they just kind of develop feelings of loneliness. For me, It is kind of what I was used to. I mean, I always had a lot of friends growing up. I was surrounded by family, schoolmates, and things like that so I was never like always just me but you know I can totally entertain myself. I think one of the biggest things is that I can make friends with just about anyone that I meet anywhere that I go. So, even if I’m by myself, I have just a very outgoing personality, where the next thing you know I’m chatting it up with the person next to me and we’re making plans to meet up in a few weeks because we realize that we are both going to be in the same place at the same time. So, that’s I think a pretty valuable quality".
Caruso's parents finalized their divorce during her college sophomore year. She confessed that it still affects her up to this day:
“It was tough because I was old enough to know exactly what was going on and I was aware of the situation. No divorce is easy. Some divorces are difficult than others. I can categorize this in the more difficult than others just because of the circumstances surrounding it. But it was tough. So, still something that I think affects me in ways that I don’t even really realize."
"I do have some resentment towards my dad for not being there probably as much as he should have, but there is not much you can do, and actually we are in the process of trying to repair our relationship a little bit. It is not that, like I said, we are not not close. We are close but it is just a very different relationship that I have with my mom and I think not the relationship that has, you know, his only daughter that I would want to have with him, but we are trying to take steps to get closer in more deeper ways, not just, you know, on the surface."
#4. Charly Caruso wanted to become an Olympic gymnast
Charly Caruso was an athlete growing up. She played several sports in her childhood, starting with soccer:
"I played sports from when I was a tiny girl on an all-boys soccer team. I, of course, dominated. Once I got to college, I got into weight lifting and exercising on my own", she told TV Insider.
According to The Miami Herald, Caruso also participated in gymnastics, softball, and volleyball. She could not achieve her dream of becoming an Olympic gymnast due to injury. She also could not make it in college volleyball due to her height- 5-foot-2.
Caruso became a sports broadcast journalist. She covered many events and tournaments, including NBA, the NFL and the IndyCar series.
Caruso then joined WWE and spent nearly six withars in the company before announcing her departure to join the ESPN team.
She expressed her excitement regarding joining ESPN full-time in her TV Insider interview:
"For me to go somewhere like ESPN, the opportunities are endless. Judging by what I’ve already accomplished on a part-time basis, I’m going to see the fruits of that labor plus so much more."
Caruso also launched her fitness app "Train With Charly" last year. It offers access to her workouts, nutrition guides and other health insights into how she stays in the best shape.
#3. Charly Caruso broadcast a show from her guest bedroom
Five years ago, Charly Caruso tried her luck launching her own YouTube show. She created a YouTube channel under her real name, Charly Arnolt. Her channel now has nearly 2700 subscribers.
Caruso launched a web series on her channel called "BackTalk Ball". She introduced her show on the first episode saying:
"Hi guys, welcome to BackTalk Ball broadcasted to you from the Charly Arnolt studios in Indianapolis, aka my guest bedroom. I am here to tell you right now that this is your source for sports news and lots of other random ****."
Caruso asked her viewers to "take notes" to help her adjust the show:
"Adjustments obviously are going to be made along the way, so I'm going to be counting on you to help me out a litte bit. While you are watching take some mental notes and then afterwards let me know what you liked, what you didn't like, and maybe some stuff you would want to see going forward".
The former WWE interviewer broadcast only six episodes of "BackTalk Ball". Her third episode is the most watched on her channel, with 15 thousand views.
The current ESPN TV host published the last episode of her show on May 5, 2016. Caruso has stopped posting on her channel since then. The series, which started on March 31, lasted for less than two months.
#2. Charly Caruso started her career as a crime journalist
Charly Caruso graduated from college with a degree in Broadcast Journalism. She minored in Criminal Justice and Spanish. Following her graduation, she moved to West Virginia to join WSAZ-TV.
During her time as a reporter on WSAZ-TV, Caruso had to visit unsafe areas and work on stories she felt were uncomfortable. The former WWE interviewer then moved to Kansas to work for WDAF-TV. The situation was a little better there for the 33-year-old.
Caruso had a crew in Kansas, unlike when she worked in West Virginia. She worked on the Morning Live segment. Despite this, she felt crime reporting was not what she thought it would be.
Charly Caruso told the story on Chasing Glory with Lilian Garcia:
"Even though we were covering like some kind of crazy situations like SWAT scenes and double homicides, at least I was with someone and surrounded by other people. It’s funny because I wanted to be a crime reporter from the very beginning. That was initially what I saw me doing in my career, and I minored in criminal justice… So I thought that that was what I wanted to do."
After discovering that she was not as passionate as she thought about crime journalism, Caruso moved back to Indianapolis to take a sports journalism job:
"That’s where I got to start doing sports and I was like, ‘This is it. I love this.’ It’s like the worst thing that happens is your team loses, but guess what? You play again next week, and people are watching you to be entertained, and they are watching you to smile, not to, you know, find out all the, you know, terrible things that are happening in your neighborhood."
#1. Charly Caruso did stand-up comedy
Despite her serious-career-driven personality, Charly Caruso has another side that many people do not know. Caruso is a person who likes to try different things. One of these things was stand-up comedy.
She told the story to Lilian Garcia on Chasing Glory:
"So I’ve done a couple of stand-up shows. My first one being years ago when I was with Fox in Indianapolis. They had like local celebrity comedy show for charity. So, that was my first time that I did it and I just, it’s such a cool adrenaline rush getting up there and like, you know, just hoping that people will like think what you are saying is funny, it’s just, it’s a really cool rush."
Caruso went on to take improv and sketch comedy writing classes. She also performed again at the Greenwich Comedy Club in New York:
"So, that was my first time doing it and I had a great time with that and then from there, since I moved to New York, and even before, I was taking improv classes in Indianapolis, and now in New York, I am at the Upright Citizens Brigade. I’ve completed the first two levels of improv. Potentially will do the third. I haven’t decided if I want to do it right yet. Then I took a sketch comedy writing class, then I performed once at the Greenwich Comedy Club in New York just on a whim one of my friends signed me up that night without telling me. He was like 'you’re performing, I was like ‘What?!’. So, there was that and then I did Dolph Ziggler’s comedy Show the weekend during SummerSlam. So, I mean, it’s fun."
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