Johnny Gargano recently appeared as a guest on the WWE After The Bell with Corey Graves podcast for an in-depth interview covering his recent return to WWE.
During the discussion, the WWE Superstar spoke about returning to the company after taking a hiatus last December, as well as whether or not he considered working for another promotion when his contract expired.
Featured below is an excerpt from the interview where he touches on this topic with his thoughts.
“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,” he continued. “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.”
Check out the complete episode of the WWE After The Bell with Corey Graves podcast by visiting Apple.com. H/T to Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.
