Wrestling princess gets Pittsburgh address, status as wine boss
On a warm March afternoon, Leah Van Dale wears a New York Yankees cap as she walks briskly through Downtown on her way to the gym.
“That’s the last step,” Matt Polinsky said, laughing. “I bought her a Pirates hat on our first trip to PNC [Park] last summer. She hasn’t worn it since.”
He is known as Corey Graves when he works as a wrestling commentator for WWE Smackdown. She is known as Carmella, the former WWE Smackdown Women’s Champion, and she is still getting used to her new hometown.
Mr. Polinsky and Ms. Van Dale moved into a Downtown apartment to put down roots in the place where he grew up.
“We had to be in walking distance of her new favorite place in the world, Wholey’s,” he jokes.
“Just drop me off,” she replies. “I could spend a whole day in Wholey’s.”
On Monday, Ms. Van Dale will put down another root in Pittsburgh. From 4 to 6:30 p.m., she will host a launch party for her wine label, Capo Cagna, at Garbarino’s in East Liberty. It will be the first restaurant to carry Capo Cagna’s cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay.
“The timing was just right, and we have had success on the online store,” she said. “But I want to get into restaurants, and this is the perfect place to start.”
Ms. Van Dale grew up in a big Italian family in little Spencer, Mass.
“I think there were more cows than people,” she said “It was such a small town, and it inspired me to want to get out and see the rest of the world.”
One of her fondest childhood memories was a weekly family dinner of pasta and wine. “Even when we were younger,
we always had a glass of wine. It’s a tradition.”
Ms. Van Dale is no wine snob, however. The name of her winery means “boss bitch” in Italian, she says.
“I like wine that I know tastes good and that isn’t going to break the bank. I figured if I live like that, I’m sure there are other chicks or guys that like to drink wine like that.”
Her father, Paul Van Dale, was a boxer who got into mixed martial arts. He eventually became a wrestler who occasionally worked for WWF.
“That just showed me — and my parents always reinforced — that I could do whatever I wanted to do,” says WWE’s first Women’s Money in the Bank winner.
As a child, she watched wrestling with her father and fell in love with largerthan-life characters such as Miss Elizabeth and Macho Man Randy Savage. At age 3, she began taking dance lessons and by high school was in the studio five days a week. After college, she moved to Los Angeles and became a fitness instructor and dancer for the NBA’s Lakers.
Ms. Van Dale got her start in wrestling for WWE’s NXT brand. Fit but with no prior wrestling experience, she quickly realized that she excelled at creating a character and entertaining the crowd on a microphone. That was the genesis of Carmella, a “moon-walking, trash-talking princess of Staten Island.”
Although she has never lived in New York, she spent months watching TV shows like “Mob Wives” and perfecting the accent and attitude of Carmella. In July 2016, she was called up to Smackdown.
Although she’s at the top of the game, she knows how quickly it can end. Just ask her boyfriend. Mr. Polinsky grew up wrestling in rings all over Western Pennsylvania and Ohio. Just when he had reached the big time, his career was cut short by injuries and concussions.
“I will never forget, I wasn’t even on NXT at the time,” Ms. Van Dale said. “We were in the auditorium watching the show, and he was just sitting there, miserable.
“He was like, ‘I just found out I am not wrestling anymore. … They just told me I have to retire.’”
Ms. Van Dale was shocked and saddened.
“I know he loved this business, and that is all he had ever wanted to do,” she says. “I remember feeling admiration watching as he received this heavy blow and turned around and made it into a positive.”
Mr. Polinsky took to the microphone and is now WWE’s premier announcer.
“He’s so talented, and he makes everything relevant, especially for kids and young people watching,” Ms. Van Dale says. “He tries to tie what we are doing in the ring to pop culture.”
She said the fleeting nature of the wrestling business is part of the reason she started the winery.
“I would like to have a kid one day, and I am not going to go back to wrestling after I have a kid. I think it’s very important to not put myself into one single category, and allow myself to grow and learn. I don’t want to get to 40 and realize the only thing I can do is wrestle.”
Mr. Polinsky says he was skeptical that his girlfriend, who has lived in Los Angeles and has a beachfront condo in Florida, could feel at home in Pittsburgh. She opened his eyes when when she dug into a Primanti’s sandwich on her first night in the ’Burgh.
“I was like, there is no way she is going to like this. She’s a health nut in the way she eats. She is very particular. But I had spoken highly enough about them that she was willing to try.”
“Best thing I have ever had,” Ms. Van Dale says,
She’s also become very passionate about Turner’s Tea and will drink Iron City beer if there is no wine. But this former cheerleader for the New England Patriots draws the line at football.
“I’m trying to bite my tongue here because I don’t want to say anything now that I am a Pittsburgh resident,” she teases. “Obviously my loyalty lies with the Patriots. I’m from New England. I love that team.
“But we’ve come to an agreement that as long as the Pats and the Steelers are not in the same game, I will root for the Steelers. I am trying to chew my cheek as I say this, because it is really hard for me. I’m embracing it.”