WWE Raw star and a former three times WWE NXT North American champion Johnny Gargano who is also a former WWE NXT champion recently talked about his decision to return to WWE. He also revealed the opportunities he received from other professional wrestling promotions.
Johnny Gargano started his professional wrestling career in 2006 at a very young age. He worked in various independent circuit promotions where he was majorly successful. He also worked in WWE during his developmental days, but he could not get any recognition. But he was a big star on the independent circuit where he won a lot of championships.
Johnny Gargano Talks His Return To WWE
In 2016 he made his return to WWE once again, this time as a member of the NXT roster. Upon making his return, he started as a tag team wrestler along with Tommaso Ciampa. Later he started working solo and he won all the possible championships on the NXT.But later last year he was let go by the promotion since it was going through a massive budget cut.
Since leaving WWE he did not appear in any professional wrestling promotion, however, there were lots of rumours of him joining the AEW. But that did not happen. After Triple H became the Head of Creative of WWE, he brought him back, this time directly on to the main roster. Instantly he got involved in a feud with his former on screen partner Austin Theory.
Johnny Gargano who is also a former WWE NXT champion recently spoke on WWE After The Bell where he talked about his decision to return to WWE. He also revealed the opportunities he received from other professional wrestling promotions. He said;
“Obviously, it crossed my mind, but I was at the point to where I wasn’t ready to come back yet. I was enjoying myself. I have people that work around me that go out and talk to other places, and I have a great team around me that have those discussions so I don’t have to. That was a big thing too while I was gone.
“I was very focused on being a dad and letting the business stuff be handled by other people. It was cool that promotions respected that and said, ‘Okay, we’re going to leave Johnny alone, but we’ll talk to his people about what could potentially happen.’ I’m lucky to be in that spot. It’s weird to say something like that given I’m from the Indies and I do everything myself,” he said before joking with host Corey Graves about how Mr. DIY has people to help him.
“Obviously, it crossed my mind. I watch everything. I’m a wrestling fan. We’ll all wrestling nerds at the end of the day. I’m a wrestling fan. It always just came back down to, and I said this in my return promo, when I was a kid, I dreamed of being Intercontinental Champion. I dreamed of being WWE Champion and wrestling at WrestleMania.
“Those things hold so much weight to me. I don’t know if 20-30 years down the line, if I could forgive myself for not trying. I never really tried. I did everything in NXT and was fulfilled in NXT and proud of it, but I didn’t try on that scale yet. I haven’t done it and I wanted to do it.”
H/T to Fightful for the transcription