Carmelo Hayes Says His NXT Stand & Deliver Match On Par With WrestleMania 39 Main Event

The increasingly-crowded weekend surrounding WrestleMania has led to everything from midnight shows to brunch shows to WWE's own developmental program "NXT" running one of its biggest events of the year on a Saturday afternoon. For Stand & Deliver main eventer Carmelo Hayes, he feels that his upcoming match against "NXT" Champion Bron Breakker will still steal the weekend.

"Somebody just asked me if I feel like [I'm being in] WrestleMania's shadow," Hayes said on "Under The Ring" recently, "but nah, I don't look at it [like that] at all. You got a bunch of big-time matches happening that weekend and I consider this one of the top three, and I don't take that lightly."

Hayes says that he wants his Saturday afternoon match with Breakker to stand next to Sunday night's WrestleMania 39 main event.

"I expect people to be talking about this in same respect that they're talking about Cody [Rhodes] and [Undisputed WWE Universal Champion] Roman [Reigns] by the end of WrestleMania weekend," Hayes said confidently.

So focused on his "NXT" Title match is Hayes, that he's found himself blocking out the rest of the weekend.

"Once I get the match out of the way, then I can look at it like, 'Ok, what do I want to enjoy?'" Hayes confessed, noting that there will be plenty of "great matches" over the course of April 1 and 2.

But he says he's focused mostly on Roman versus Cody, not as a fan, but as someone that sees unnamed parallels between his match and the WWE title match. "NXT" Stand & Deliver will air on April 1 at 1 PM ET on Peacock in the United States and on the WWE Network around the rest of the world.